Dallas Cullen Memorial Lecture

Patriarchy, Populism and Anti-Muslim Prejudice: Can Women's Rights Withstand the Notwithstanding Clause?

Monday, March 17, 2025 @ 3:30 - 5:00 pm MDT
City Room, Peter Lougheed Hall

Register Here!

Quebec’s controversial Law 21, An Act Respecting the Laicity of the State, is on its way to the Supreme Court of Canada. The law bans public sector workers in positions of authority—like teachers, police officers, and judges—from wearing religious symbols, all in the name of promoting secularism in the province.

Beneath its appeal to securalism, Law 21 has disproportionately targeted Muslim women who wear hijabs or niqabs. These women are now barred from teaching and excluded from most public sector jobs. The law also mandates that faces must be uncovered to access many public services, effectively excluding women who wear niqabs from participating fully in public life.

Critics argue that this law is blatantly discriminatory, especially on the intersectional grounds of sex and religion. This is why the Quebec government invoked the notwithstanding clause to shield it from certain Charter challenges, but this case also engages Section 28 of the Charter: “Notwithstanding anything in this Charter, the rights and freedoms referred to in it are guaranteed equally to male and female persons.”

This pivotal legal battle will be the focus of an upcoming panel discussion featuring two of Canada’s leading feminist constitutional scholars. Together, they’ll unpack the complex legal, social, and gendered implications of this landmark case and what it means for the future of rights and freedoms in Canada.

Kerri Froc is an Associate Professor at UNB Law and is currently the Law Foundation of Saskatchewan H. Robert Arscott Chair at the University of Saskatchewan College of Law.

Dr. Froc writes on topics such as constitutional interpretation, access to justice, reproductive rights, women’s rights of political representation, and complex rights violations experienced by working women, poor women and racialized and Indigenous women.  She is an expert on section 28 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and is a well-known media commentator on Canadian constitutional issues.

 

Dr. Vrinda Narain is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, McGill University and a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa.
Professor Narain’s research and teaching focus on constitutional law, social diversity and feminist legal theory. She is the co-editor of Women and Constitutions in Muslim Contexts (Revival Press, UK, 2024) and the author of Reclaiming the Nation: Muslim Women and the Law in India (University of Toronto Press, 2008) and Gender and Community: Muslim Women's Rights in India (University of Toronto Press, 2001). She was Associate Dean, Academic, at the Faculty of Law from 2016 to 2019. She is a Board Member of the transnational research and solidarity network, Women LivingUnder Muslim Laws (WLUML) and President of the Executive Committee of the South Asian Women’s Community Centre in Montreal.