Post 227--Bureaucrats to Assess "Sincere Beliefs"

The powers that be in Canada, consider it a secular country.  Whether that describes the majority of Canadians is something that is assumed, but may not be true. Certainly, there are millions of Canadians who do not consider themselves secular, with me being one of them. But even among those who do not consider themselves secular, there are many who have been so deeply influenced by it that in fact they are secular, including many Christians, in the sense that they support many secular causes.  Just like African Christians are still influenced by African Traditional Religion (ATR), so many Canadian Christians are profoundly influenced by secularism. In Africa, ATR is in the air and people as it were "breathe" it;  in Canada the same with secularism.

When the government insists on neutrality of religion, it defines neutrality in a secular way--which means it is not neutral. To make it worse, our high government officials at every level of government, are highly educated people in a secular perspective, but in religion they are at the level of Religion 101. They are at best at Grade 1 level in religion. So, people with Ph.D.'s, highly educated, think their insights in religion are at the same level as their knowledge of their subject of graduation.  In fact, their knowledge does not go beyond Grade 1--which means they are bound to get it wrong.  Highly sophisticated officials make Grade 1 decisions about religion and often sound stupid and clumsy., all the way to the top, hardly anyone excluded.

Now, it is with that scenario that mid-level Quebec officials are to make decisions about sincerely held religious beliefs and on that decision decide other things for citizens.  But they do so at a Grade 1 level! How can you trust that situation, those decisions or those officials? 

Okay, now go read the rest of this post and then see what you think of the issue.  Can you really have confidence in the decisions to be made?   

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Greame Hamilton recently published an article in the National Post of June 6, 2018, that appeared also in some other newspapers, including the Vancouver Sun of the same date.  The Sun  title of the piece is "Quebec to assess 'sincere beliefs.'"

Beginning next month, at least one employee in every Quebec government body, municipality, transit agency, school board, university, daycare and hospital will need a new skill: judging the sincerity of religious beliefs.

Across the province, hundreds of “accommodation officers” are getting crash courses on whether to accept or reject requests for accommodations made on religious grounds, such as meals respecting dietary restrictions or time off for religious holidays.

In recently published guidelines, the provincial government says the officers will apply a number of criteria established over time thorough jurisprudence, including whether the request for a religious accommodation stems from a “sincerely held belief.”

Quebec women attend a protest in 2010 Allen McInnis/The Gazette

This month’s training blitz is the final chapter in enacting Bill 62, the Liberal government’s controversial legislation that it hoped would settle a decade-old debate over the place of religion in Quebec’s public sphere.

But there is no sign the law has settled anything. Its most controversial provision, prohibiting people from giving or receiving public services with such face-covering religious garments as the niqab and burka, has been suspended pending a court challenge.

And the entire law could be short-lived, as the front-running Coalition Avenir Québec has promised to “tear it up” if elected in the Oct. 1 provincial election.

In comments last month about the new guidelines on religious accommodations, Justice Minister Stéphanie Vallée did little to dispel the impression that the law is a solution in search of a problem. “There is no invasion of requests for religious accommodation, as some would have you believe,” Vallée told a legislature committee May 16.

In fact, less than five per cent of the 582 complaints of rejected accommodations received by the provincial human rights commission in the last five years alleged religious discrimination. The large majority — 90 per cent — related to physical disabilities.

The new guidelines for dealing with requests for religious accommodations take effect July 1. It is expected that existing employees will take on the work.

Quebec Justice Minister Stephanie Vallee provides further details about how the government’s controversial Bill 62 will be implemented at the legislature in Quebec City Tuesday, October 24, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot

The government has published a 15-page guide aimed at clarifying the process, but its instructions are vague. “A request may be reasonable in a large organization, but unreasonable in a small one,” the guide says. “The analysis is carried out on a case-by-case basis. It is important to be innovative and creative to find a solution acceptable to all.”

To be approved, an accommodation must address a situation of discrimination under the provincial Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, it must be based on sincere religious beliefs, it must be consistent with the principles of equality of the sexes and state religious neutrality, and it must not cause undue hardship for the government agency concerned.

Isabelle Marier St-Onge, an aide to Vallée, said it was impossible to offer a template for specific accommodation requests. She gave the example of two women police officers seeking to wear the Muslim headscarf known as the hijab, one in Montreal and one in Quebec City. The one in Montreal might be prepared to wear a sports-type hijab posing no safety risk, while the one in Quebec City might insist on a more free-flowing garment that would pose a danger.

“The Montreal request could be accepted and the Quebec City one refused,” Marier St-Onge said.

Marie-Michelle Lacoste, who now goes by Warda Naili after converting to Islam, left, and her lawyer Catherine McKenzie speak to the media at a news conference Tuesday, November 7, 2017 in Montreal. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

While the safety issue in her example makes an accommodation officer’s job relatively easy, things will undoubtedly become trickier when trying to establish whether a request is based on a sincerely held belief.

The guidance from the government states: “The religious belief that is asserted must be in good faith, neither fictitious nor capricious, and must not be an artifice. It is not necessary for that practice or belief to be based on a religious precept recognized by established religious authorities or shared by a majority of believers.”

Supreme Court judges have wrestled with these questions; now it will fall to mid-level bureaucrats.

Nathalie Roy, secularism critic for the Coalition party, said the government should have provided more specific guidance, drawing on previous cases adjudicated by the rights commission. “I worry that the door is being swung wide open to subjectivity in these decisions,” she told the legislature committee.

Her party, like the opposition Parti Québécois, wants stricter rules barring religious symbols for all state employees in a position of authority, from police officers to teachers. “For us, a school is not a church . . . and a police car is not a place of worship either,” Roy said.

Vallée accuses the opposition parties of seizing on the secularism issue to sow division.

“This question of identity is polarizing . . . and certain political parties will no doubt try to exploit it in the coming months,” she said at the committee hearing.

• Email: ghamilton@nationalpost.com | Twitter: 

http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/quebec-begins-training-accommodation-officers-to-assess-religious-sincerity

Post 103--The Bible in Abbotsford Public Schools

Bible Belt, Right and Left

Today (March 31 2016) the local CBC news programme featured an item about Bibles in the Public Schools in Abbotsford, a city some 70 km east of Vancouver, nestled in the centre of BC’s so-called “Bible Belt.”  To me, I hasten to add, that is a title of honour even when the BC secular media use it largely with scorn, though I do sometimes cringe at the right-wing orientation of the place. I do not understand how Christians, let alone a Christian community as a whole, can be right wing, even when that is a rather common occurrence in much of North America. Which is not to say, I prefer left wing. In no way. That’s often worse than right. I want Christians to be independent of both of these orientations and just be themselves, be Christian. This means that sometimes they will sound right, at another, left, but usually creatively different and free from both. I am tempted to shout, “The plague on both of your houses!”  But that would neither be very kind nor Christian. Christians don’t wish a plague on anyone.

Bibles in Public Schools

So, what is the issue according to CBC?  The Abbotsford School Board is promoting the distribution of Bibles among its students. These Bibles are offered free of charge by the Gideons, a business people’s organization that distributes free Bible, all over the world, especially in hotels. If you use hotels, you must have seen them tucked away in a drawer.  The Board does not force them on the students. The latter are given consent forms for their parents to sign. The students of those parents who approve are given the Bible in the principal’s office—nothing public; all very private.

Objections to Bibles in Public Schools

Some members of the public are voicing objections. These include notions such as Bibles not having a place in Public Schools or the system should not use up public funds for religious purposes. The Bible may be free, but the progamme’s administration takes time and money, public time and money. According to the programme’s anchor,  Andrew Chen, the complaint was initially delivered by the Humanist Association. 

Secular "Neutrality"

These objections are exactly what I expected, for they are the classic reaction of secular minds to religion; in BC, especially to the Christian religion. The general attitude is that to be neutral one must leave religion out of public affairs, including education. To be neutral means, well, simply to be secular!  And to be secular means to exclude religion, exclude belief systems. 

Secularism Just Another Belief System

The problem is, of course, that secularism itself is a belief system that is based on a view of reason that constitutes faith in reason’s ability to know all and to fix all. The truth of that has never been proved but is simply accepted as “common sense” that is beyond questioning or doubt. So, when secularists want to push out what they consider religion, we really have a case of one belief system (secularism) ousting other belief systems. It would be exactly the same if Roman Catholics or any other faith system were to demand the ouster of all others, including secularism. The Humanist Association is actually demanding the status of establishment state religion at the expense of every one else, something that, I would have thought, our insistence today on pluralism would never even allow us to think about.   

Secular Establishment

Pluralism leaves room for everyone and resists any group seeking establishment rights and privileges. Unfortunately, the earlier Anglican establishment of BC has been replaced by a Secular one with many government privileges, especially in the educational sector. Secular says: Everyone clear the deck; we take over. We are the only rational neutral people around!  What a myth. What blindness.  The blindness? Inability and/or refusal to recognize their own faith-based orientation towards autonomous reason. Every religion in BC, to the best of my knowledge, is open about its being based on faith. It is only the Secular faith that will or cannot acknowledge its base. It is simply blind to it. Closed minded. It is caught in a narrow tunnel vision.

Poser--An Exceptional Pluralistic Humanist

However, not all Humanists think this way. I was once member of a multi-faith group that included three Humanists, one of whom was a former leader of the Vancouver Humanist Association, the late Ernest Poser. In fact, he was the founder of this group and Chairman till he became terminally ill. His idea was to encourage the teaching about all major worldviews in BC’s public schools, including Humanism!  Not proselytism or “evangelism,” but to help students understand each other and, later in their adult years, as neighbours. Why do my neighbours behave as they do? The answer is often found in religion. So, Poser reasoned, let’s teach that stuff in the public schools to enhance mutual understanding among the citizenry. However, he did admit that he did not find much support among his fellow Humanists, but still enough for them to provide our low-level budget for a few years, however grudgingly. Poser and I became very close friends; I loved him dearly, though we deeply disagreed with each other.

My All-inclusive Pluralistic Solution

My solution to the Abbotsford “crisis” is, like Poser’s, not to ban religion from the schools. That’s impossible; it is already there in the form of Secularism. And Secularism occupies all the space,  every square inch,  to indoctrinate students in its worldview. That space needs to be shared with everyone—Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Humanists, Atheists, Animists, etc. That’s the only way to be pluralistic, but it will require Secularists to open their eyes to their own belief system and admit it for what it is. Of all the religions, they are probably the most blind to themselves.