More from Quebec: Ethnic and Religious Behavioural Codes

Danny Auron sent the following issue to the blog:

Recently the town of Saint-Roch-de-Mékinac, Quebec adopted a behavioural code which "forbids stoning women, the donning of burqas, and wearing Sikh ceremonial daggers in school." Read about it in a Toronto Star article titled Quebec Town Spawns Uneasy Debate.

As we learn from the article, there are no foreign-born residents and no visible minorities in Saint-Roch-de-Mékinac. Nonetheless, the measure passed unanimously before the city council. "This should have been done here long ago," said Claude Dumont, Saint-Roch's elected mayor. Saint-Roch is not the only town to adopt such a code; a nearby town, Hérouxville, had previously put into place a similar code of conduct. Mayor Dumont acknowledged that he had little knowledge of immigrant communities and that "we don't live with them side-by-side here like they do in Montreal, but if I've chosen to live here it's because I like the way we live ... and I don't want it to change."

What does it mean when behaviour codes are based more on tradition than on reasoned principles? What does it mean when positive law is used as a means of countermanding behavior that is completely outside of the experience of the drafters and so closely focused on the potential activities of religious, ethnic or racial Others?

Such codes raise obvious Charter concerns. Section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms recognizes Canada's multicultural heritage and is generally read to mean that courts should respect multiculturalism when making decisions under the Charter. But beyond that, the drafting of such codes raises more general concerns about relatively non-hierarchical processes of rule-making (like the city council action here). Many may argue that rules which appear to express obvious bias will easily be understood as the doings of persons who are out of step with the norms of equality that most of us embrace. However, when such groups first articulate policy and then translate it into positive law they may give added luster to the law because of the presumed reasonableness of rules reached by local community consensus as opposed to more distant executive fiat. This remains true even where the rules may be used as tools of oppression.

What do you think?