MONTREAL – Quebec’s controversial Bill 78 came under fire from the United Nations Monday morning.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights commented on the province’s emergency legislation in her opening statement to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland.
Navi Pillay reported at length on human rights abuses around the world including Syria, Côte d’Ivoire, Eritrea, Latin America, Europe, Russia and Canada.
She then commented on Quebec’s recently introduced Bill 78, a new law that imposes limits on student protests in the province.
“Moves to restrict freedom of assembly in many parts of the world are alarming,” Pillay said.
“In the context of student protests, I am disappointed by the new legislation passed in Quebec that restricts their rights to freedom of association and of peaceful assembly.”
The Quebec government passed the bill as emergency legislation on Friday, May 18 to counter ongoing student protests against the government’s proposed university tuition fee hikes.
It requires demonstrators to provide police with a precise itinerary eight hours prior to any protest involving 50 people or more, at the risk of incurring fines as high as $125,000.
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The bill also suspended the winter semester for those institutions that had voted to strike and restricted where demonstrations could take place.
Quebec premier Jean Charest has described it as “a just law,” created in response to the increasing violence by protesters at demonstrations.
The UN watchdog group UN Watch has issued a statement criticizing the Commissioner’s comments on Quebec.
“While Canada is certainly fair game for criticism,” said the executive director of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, a Montreal-born lawyer, “for Pillay to divert the world’s attention to what in a global context is an absolutely marginal case . . . is simply absurd.”
UN Watch suggested that the Human Rights Commissioner has lost perspective and allowed herself to be influenced by misguided Canadian activists.
“She just needs to keep things in proportion,” says Neuer. “Quebec’s Bill 78 was adopted by an elected democracy and will now be scrutinized by a series of independent courts . . .”
Quebec student federations have already filed a second legal challenge against the special law and arguments began last week in Quebec Superior Court.
This is not the first time that the Quebec government has been criticized for its handling of the student crisis.
In April, Amnesty International urged the province to find a peaceful solution.
“Amnesty reaffirms its concern regarding the tuition increases, which would undermine the progression to access to university for all,” the group said in a statement.
In May, it strongly criticized the province’s emergency legislation, calling it a breach of Canada’s international human rights obligations.
“Bill 78 is an affront to basic freedoms that goes far beyond what is permissible under provincial, national or international human rights laws,” said Javier Zúñiga, Special Advisor at Amnesty International.
“It is unreasonable and unacceptable to require citizens to apply to the authorities in advance any time they wish to exercise a basic human right. Quebec’s National Assembly should rescind this restrictive law immediately.”
In May, Canada’s largest Protestant denomination, the United Church also denounced the Charest government’s special law.
Delegates attending the Montreal and Ottawa Conference of the United Church of Canada adopted a motion calling for the law to be annulled, saying that rather than restore peace and order, it has “thrown oil on the flames.”
The Anglican bishop of Quebec also spoke out against the law in May.
“No citizen should be arrested for participating in a peaceful and non-violent march protesting an issue that is, in their view, highly important to them and to their community,” wrote Dennis Drainville in his blog.
“This abuse of power must stop.”
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