The Supreme Court of Canada is just a few weeks away from hearing the challenge to Quebec\u2019s controversial secularism law known as Bill 21.<\/p>\n
For five days, beginning on March 23, Canada\u2019s highest court will hear from teachers, civil rights and religious groups challenging the law<\/p>\n
The challenge is being brought by the English Montreal School Board (EMSB), which argues the legislation is discriminatory and makes it harder to hire teachers by banning public-school employees from wearing religious symbols.<\/p>\n
The Quebec government invoked the notwithstanding clause when it adopted the law in 2019, shielding it from parts of the Canadian and Quebec charters.<\/p>\n
But the EMSB says the legislation still violates Section 23 of the Canadian Charter, which protects the rights of the English-language minority to manage its own school system.<\/p>\n
Lower courts largely upheld the law. The Supreme Court of Canada will decide whether it can stand.<\/p>\n
In defence of the law, the court will hear from Quebec\u2019s attorney general, ministers Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Roberge and Simon Jolin-Barrette, as well as groups that promote secularism in Quebec.<\/p>\n
At the centre of the case is the use of the notwithstanding clause, Section 33 of the Charter, and how far governments can go in overriding certain rights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court of Canada is just a few weeks away from hearing the challenge to Quebec\u2019s controversial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-516510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}