Parent volunteers on Montreal’s South Shore say Quebec’s Bill 94 is already affecting students and straining an education system they argue is stretched thin.
Several volunteers affiliated with the Riverside School Board say the law is excluding them from school communities where they’ve spent years giving their time.
“I’m being told that my free time, my volunteer time, is not okay,” said Sabaah Khan, who has volunteered for more than a decade in both English and French school boards in Brossard.
“For the first time, it’s kind of feeling like I’m not being accepted by the community,” added Pavan Magon, a parent volunteer of five years.
“It really felt isolating and discriminatory,” said Asma Qureshi, who has volunteered for seven years.
Bill 94 expands Quebec’s secularism rules, extending restrictions on wearing religious symbols to all support staff and volunteers in education.
Students are also not allowed to wear face coverings under the bill, as well.
It was adopted on October 30.
However, volunteers say the impact goes further — affecting school activities that rely heavily on parent support.
Magon, who wears a turban as part of his Sikh faith, said he was initially told he wouldn’t be allowed to volunteer at his childrens’ elementary school winter carnival in February.
“Our turban is there to stand out, and we’re supposed to stand out like a police officer,” he said. “It’s our duty, our responsibility to help out (…) and now I’m being told that we can’t.”
He later received another message reversing that decision. The Riverside School Board “would not stop anyone from volunteering,” he attributed the email to have said.
Magon added that volunteer turnout at the event was already low, and without him, there would have been just one parent volunteer.
“I’ve never heard the opposite — that it’s better without these people in the school,” he said.
In a statement to CityNews, the Riverside School Board said it had been contacted directly by Quebec’s Education Ministry and informed that the law was in force.
CityNews did not receive a response from the ministry before deadline.
Staffing shortages are also at the forefront of volunteers’ worries about the law, especially for extracurricular activities and events.
“A lot of volunteers are needed to help a school function. And now that the bill has passed, it’s cut out a lot of help for our teachers,” Khan said.
It’s a sentiment echoed by Irene Costamis, a former member of a parent participation committee with Riverside School Board’s elementary schools.
“We had a good 70 to 80 volunteers,” she said of last year’s elementary school volunteers.
If Bill 94 had been in place then, she said, they would have lost a third of them.
Volunteers argue schools can’t afford to lose that support, especially following a total of $30 million in cuts this summer.
“I’m doing my part to fill in the gaps that you created,” Khan said, “and you’re closing the doors on me.”
Related:
Some parents say the implications go beyond education, adding that they’re afraid of how Bill 94 could shape how their children see themselves and their place in Quebec.
“I don’t want (my daughter) to think that there is no future for her just because of the way she decides to dress,” Qureshi said.
She says the issue goes beyond access to volunteering.
“This is beyond just me not being able to volunteer,” she said. “At the end of the day, this is indirectly affecting all of us.”
