In a rare show of unity, all three major Ontario political parties have denounced Quebec’s controversial new law, which targets Muslim women.One day after Quebec’s Liberal government passed a law prohibiting anyone from getting or performing a public service with their face covered, MPPs at Queen’s Park expressed their collective outrage.“We have a very close working relationship with Quebec. But on this issue, we fundamentally do not agree,” Premier Kathleen Wynne said Thursday.“Forcing people to show their faces when they ride the bus, banning women from wearing a niqab when they pick up a book from the library will only divide us,” Wynne told the hushed chamber.“Sometimes life in a diverse society is uncomfortable and that is exactly when it is even more important that we work to understand each other. Religious freedom is part of our identity,” she said.“Every one of us should be able to live our lives and go about our days and practice what we believe without discrimination and without fear. This is the kind of actions that drives wedges in communities.”Although Wynne is close to Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, she said his province’s Bill 62 “would disproportionately affect women, who are sometimes already at the margins, and push them into further isolation.”“They are our neighbours — the grandmother who, if she lived in Quebec, would no longer be able to drop off her granddaughter at a city-run daycare or a mother who would not be able to bring her children to a hospital to see the doctor. That is not the kind of society that we stand for in Ontario.”Progressive Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod (Nepean-Carleton) said her party stands shoulder to shoulder with Ontario’s governing Liberals on this issue.“The law brought in by the Liberal government in Quebec has no place in Ontario — indeed, it has no place in Canada,” MacLeod said. ...
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