The Supreme Court of Canada has dis­al­lowed the World Sikh Or­ga­ni­za­tion the leave to ap­peal against the de­ci­sion of the Que­bec Na­tional As­sem­bly to not per­mit WSO rep­re­sen­ta­tives Har­min­der Kaur and Bal­preet Singh to pre­sent their views in Jan­u­ary 2011 on Bill 94 which would deny es­sen­tial gov­ern­ment ser­vices, pub­lic em­ploy­ment to in­di­vid­u­als who wear fa­cial cov­er­ings.

Express­ing the re­ac­tion of the WSO to the de­ci­sion, WSO Pres­i­dent Mukhbir Singh said, “we are dis­ap­pointed by to­day’s de­ci­sion to deny leave to ap­peal in the Singh v. A.G. of Que­bec case.  While we ap­pre­ci­ate that this de­ci­sion is not so much about the kir­pan as it is about par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege, we be­lieve that there con­tin­ues to be a se­ri­ous vi­o­la­tion of free­dom of re­li­gion by ex­clud­ing Sikhs who wear the kir­pan from the Que­bec Na­tional As­sem­bly.”

In Feb­ru­ary 2018, the Que­bec Court of Ap­peal had re­jected the WSO’s ap­peal on the grounds that the Que­bec Na­tional As­sem­bly may ex­clude in­di­vid­u­als based on par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege. The Su­pe­rior Court de­ci­sion had up­held the au­thor­ity of the Que­bec Na­tional As­sem­bly to “ex­clude kir­pans from its precincts as an as­ser­tion of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege over the ex­clu­sion of strangers.”

The Que­bec Court of Ap­peal de­ci­sion noted that the court  “make[s] no com­ment whether the as­sem­bly’s ex­er­cise of the priv­i­lege to ex­clude the kir­pan is a wise de­ci­sion.”

Ear­lier in Oc­to­ber this year, the Supreme Court of Canada re­leased a de­ci­sion in the case Chagnon v. Syn­di­cat de la fonc­tion publique et para­publique du Québec which de­vel­oped a new frame­work for leg­is­la­tures ex­er­cis­ing par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege when Char­ter rights are at stake.  The frame­work de­vel­oped in Chagnon re­placed the frame­work that was used to de­cide Singh v. A.G. Que­bec.

In a sharp re­sponse, the WSO has stated that, “ex­clud­ing an en­tire re­li­gious com­mu­nity from the province’s leg­is­la­ture is deeply trou­bling.  Given the po­lit­i­cal cli­mate in Que­bec with the cur­rent gov­ern­ment threat­en­ing a ban on re­li­gious sym­bols in gen­eral, we fear that re­li­gious mi­nori­ties in Que­bec risk be­ing mar­gin­al­ized and ex­cluded even fur­ther. While we were hope­ful that our case would be re­vis­ited based on the new frame­work for par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege de­vel­oped by the Supreme Court of Canada in the re­cently re­leased Chagnon case, we are re­view­ing all our op­tions un­der Cana­dian and in­ter­na­tional law.”

The WSO’s team was ex­cluded from the hear­ing be­fore the Com­mit­tee on In­sti­tu­tions be­cause they were wear­ing the kir­pan.

Now the Supreme Court of Canada has de­nied the WSO’s leave ap­pli­ca­tion to ap­peal the Que­bec Court of Ap­peal de­ci­sion. The Québec Na­tional As­sem­bly is the only leg­is­la­ture in the whole of Canada where the kir­pan is pro­hib­ited.

Ot­tawa, 25 Oc­to­ber 2018, WSN News Bu­reau