The head of Quebec's Women's Status Council says the provincial government is taking away her organization's independence in a bid to garner support for the Charter of Quebec Values.
Council president Julie Miville-Dechene issued a statement saying the provincial government was explicitly taking steps to prevent research, and to make sure nobody criticized the highly divisive Charter.
While Bernard Drainville, the minister in charge of the Values Charter, has said there have been a growing number of complaints and issues regarding religious accommodation, he has been unable to provide any figures regarding specific complaints.
Miville-Dechene said her group (CSF) was going to decide this week whether it should undertake research to determine exactly how many public servants wear veils, kippas, or other religious symbols when the government stepped in to prevent any such research.
On Wednesday the provincial government named four new members to the Council's 11-member board, all of whom reportedly strongly support the Charter: Julie Latour, Leila Lesbet, Ann Longchamps and Lucie Martineau.
Martineau is an executive with the union of public and parapublic workers (SFPQ) and is a strong supporter of the Charter of Quebec Values. Last week she said that her union would go so far as to refuse to defend any employee who was fired for wearing a religious symbol.
Miville-Dechene said this bloc of four women immediately acted to prevent the Council from doing any fact-finding on religious symbols.
"There is no research [on this issue]. We don't even know how many civil servants wear a veil, and we don't know how these women will act if confronted with the obligation to remove their veil," wrote Miville-Dechene.
"Will they feel liberated or, on the contrary, will they be forced by their husband or their community to quit their job and stay at home. Nobody has even begun to study this issue, and the Council should do this."
Estimates are that 97 percent of civil servants in Quebec are white francophones, but the ethnic and spiritual breakdown for public employees is not known.
Quebec Solidaire leader Francoise David, a long-time women's rights leader and former president of the Women's Federation of Quebec, was quick to denounce the PQ government's actions.
Meanwhile the Liberal Party is demanding that the four women newly-appointed to the Council this week be removed from their posts and that Miville-Dechene be allowed to conduct research.
"She wants to see what will happen with this Charter and I think that this is a good thing," said Liberal MNA Christine St-Pierre. "This government doesn't want to see the conclusion because I think that the conclusion would be that those women will have to choose between their large symbol and their job."
On Friday Agnes Maltais, the Minister for the Status of Women, said that the appointments she made this week were not political interference, but simply a way to include four exceptional women on the Women's Status Council.
She went on to say that their selection was a matter of "historical continuity" and that they were not chosen because of their support for the Charter of Quebec Values.
"The president of the CSF told us 'I want to make studies and I'm aware the government has appointed people so I cannot make these studies.' Please. The CSF should do its job and if they want to make studies, if it's pertinent, they should do it," Maltais said.
The Women's Status Council has a history of calling for the complete secularization of the public sector. In 2008 and 2011 the CSF issued statements in favour of a complete ban on religious symbols for all government workers.
