In a recent opinion piece published in the New York Times, Minister Jean-François Lisée defended the merits of his government's Charter of Values. He extolled the virtues of a strict secularism, contrasting it with the failures of multiculturalism in Europe. Mr. Lisée also wondered why those who sharply criticize the ban on wearing religious symbols in the public service are not equally outraged by the requirement of political neutrality already imposed on state employees.
If public servants must already refrain from displaying their partisan colours at work, why could they not leave their conspicuous religious symbols at home? His analogy, while not without merit, does not hold up.
First, it seems absurd to suggest that giving up a symbol that forms an integral part of one's faith amounts to the same sacrifice as the duty of political restraint. Does the public servant who goes to work without his PQ T-shirt really feel forced to betray his intrinsic political convictions? I doubt it. Moreover, there is a fundamental difference between political neutrality and religious neutrality in the context of public administration, and it undermines Mr. Lisée's argument.
The public service is inherently secular because nothing ties it to any particular religion. It is, on the other hand, inevitably associated with a political ideology, ultimately that of the party in power, which must strive to keep its executive mandate and its electoral interests separate. Ministers, for instance, are first and foremost agents of Parliament and must daily manage the delicate balance between their mandate as elected officials and their duties as administrative decision-makers. Institutionally, then, there is no airtight separation between the legislative and the executive.
Apparent neutrality
From this narrow and unavoidable convergence of powers flows the need to maintain institutions that appear neutral. The duty of political restraint imposed on public servants does not stem from a presumption that any individual with a partisan affiliation would be incapable of carrying out their duties with the required neutrality. It rests instead on the need to eliminate any apprehension that the governing party might interfere in the implementation of neutral policies.
Our legislative representatives write, debate and vote on laws in keeping with their party lines and political ideologies, while setting aside any religious conviction. For that reason, and the Parti Québécois now agrees, religious symbols have no place in the Blue Room of the National Assembly. Once enacted, however, these laws are applied neutrally. Citizens' confidence in their democracy depends on it, as does the assurance that government jobs are awarded on merit rather than through partisan connections.
Since religion plays no part in the legislative process of a secular government, there is no reason to conceal a public servant's faith. Because their religious convictions underlie no law, those convictions cannot enter into the permitted exercise of their duties.
The apprehension of proselytism, unlike the apprehension of political bias, is therefore not grounded in a risk inherent to the parliamentary machinery, but arises instead from a mistaken presumption of misconduct on the public servant's part. It is on this fundamental distinction that Mr. Lisée's analogy collapses.
Let us recall: the executive answers to the legislative; the legislative forms the executive. The only way to ensure the stability and effectiveness of responsible government is to consolidate a neutral public service that, though headed by one, remains impervious to the other. This straightforward theoretical nuance deserves far more attention, at the expense, one hopes, of inflamed identity-based arguments that impoverish political debate and undermine social cohesion.
One certainty: the secularism of the State does not fundamentally require the individual secularism of its public servants. To this day, no study has shown us otherwise. A second certainty: the people of Quebec deserve better than the decoys they are being offered.
