Canada: accommodation, how far away?
Canada has no institutional secularism. It is the jurisprudence that has forcefully sanctioned the principles of separation between Church and State to guarantee the equality of all citizens with an instrument: reasonable accommodation. In 2001, the Multani affair inflicted a “knife blow” on this company, which had in any case engaged in accommodation. The kirpan, a small traditional knife, of the young orthodox Sikh Gurbaj Singh Multani accidentally falls in the courtyard of his school. Religious symbol for the pupil’s family, weapon for the heads of the institute, whose regulation reasonably forbids it. The case became a legal saga, brought before two Quebec courts – the Superior Court and the Court of Appeal – and then before the Supreme Court of Canada. In 2006, the final ruling authorized the use of the kirpan at school. A sharp object, no matter how small, can therefore be worn by a child to school.
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