Sikhs Refused Entry to Quebec Legislature For Wearing Kirpans

“Multiculturalism is not a Quebec values,” says a Parti Québécois’s Louise Beaudoin.

Somebody should have seen this coming. Four Sikh representatives were invited to speak at a hearing at the National Assembly Tuesday, only to have their ceremonial daggers set off the building’s metal detectors. Sikh men are required to carry a dagger, called a kirpan, by religious law. The incident has further enflamed the debate over what constitutes reasonable accommodation in Quebec, the very subject of the hearing the Sikh men attempted to enter. The PQ’s Louise Beaudoin defended banning the daggers, saying multiculturalism is a Canadian value but not a Quebec one. Secularism has been seen by many as a key pillar of Quebec society since the province’s Quiet Revolution curbed the influence of the Catholic Church in the 1960s.