«« Intégration et religion

Sharply different

You'd never know from the recent actions of the Marguerite Bourgeoys School Board that Quebec's public schools are desperately underfunded.

The French-language board, whose territory covers the western part of Montreal, is apparently so well-off it could afford the luxury of paying a lawyer to carry on what became the petty legal harassment of Gurbaj Singh and his family.

Singh is the 12-year-old "kirpan boy" who insists on wearing to school the blunt, short-bladed, symbolic dagger that baptized Sikhs are supposed to wear at all times. The board refused to let him do so. Last May, a Superior Court judge ruled that the boy should be allowed to wear the kirpan, under strict conditions.

The Landry government, as well as the board, immediately announced they would appeal, citing the board's "zero-tolerance" policy on any kind of weapon.

First Province

This made Quebec the first province whose government has tried to prevent Sikhs from wearing the kirpan to school. Other provinces with larger, longer-established Sikh communities allow students to carry kirpans, and there has never been a recorded incident of violence in schools in this country involving a kirpan. In fact, their religion forbids Sikhs from using the kirpan as a weapon.

For the last month of the school year, the boy attended school wearing his kirpan without incident.

But the ruling allowing him to do so applied only to the elementary school the boy attended last year, not the high school he would attend next year. So two weeks ago, the board announced it would ask the Appeal Court for permission to ban him from high school until the court ruled on the appeal.

Nobody has ever bothered to explain what it is about either "our" Sikhs or their fellow pupils that makes the kirpan more of a threat to safety in Quebec schools than elsewhere.

This week, the board's lawyer claimed to reporters that the board is defending the secularism of Quebec's non-denominational public school system. Maybe, he suggested, Quebec is more secular than the other provinces where the kirpan is allowed in schools.

This was said, with straight face, by someone representing a board that has more than a dozen schools named for Catholic saints or clergymen.

Quebec is more secular than other provinces? Two weeks ago, the Radio-Canada television public-affairs program Second Regard released the results of a survey it had the CROP firm conduct July 4-14 on the religious and spiritual practices of 16-to-35-year-olds in Quebec and the rest of Canada.

They suggested that only 13 per cent of the young Quebecers agreed that the crucifix should be banned from schools, compared to 23 per cent in the rest of the country.

On the other hand, 28 per cent of Quebecers thought the hijab (the head covering worn by some female Muslims), the turban, or the kippa (the skullcap worn by some male Jews) should be banned. The figure outside this province was only 15 per cent.

As for the kirpan, a majority of Quebecers (62 per cent) said it should be banned, while only a minority of the other Canadians (38 per cent) said so.

In general, "secular" Quebecers were more likely to support the banning of other people's religious symbols and less likely to support the banning of their own.

After the Marguerite Bourgeoys board's latest legal ploy, the Singh family announced that next year the boy will attend a private English school, where he can wear his kirpan.

English School

So how's this for a symbol, and a message to the world? An immigrant boy who attended a French-language public school because he says he wanted to learn French is driven into a private English school, with the help of a Parti Québécois government.

And how's this for irony? His new school is run by the Seventh Day Adventists, a denomination more tolerant of the symbol of his religion than is a public school board.

Don Macpherson is The Gazette's Quebec-affairs columnist, based in Montreal. His E-mail address is dmacpher@thegazette.southam.ca.