Behind the Headlines a Long Hard Battle

Sabbath-abserving owners of small stores in Quebec have been given the right to conduct business on Sundays under certain conditions. A new provincial government regulation permits observant Jews to open their shops on Sunday if they close Friday before sundown and all day Saturday. They must have no more than three employes working in the store on any day it is open.

For almost a decade, the Canadian Jewish Corgress (CJC) has been pressing the Quebec government for a change in its business hours legislation which would recognize the right of Jews to conduct their business according to their religion.

However, the CJC is not satisfied with the new regulation for several reasons. It believes there should be no restriction on the number of employes working. It has also asked the government to put into law a general principle of tolerance toward any group which does not observe the traditional Christian sobbath.

The CJC has argued that forcing a Jew to close down his business on Sunday, despite being shut down on another day of the week, is an infringement of freedom of religion and conscience as guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Human Rights, part of the Constitution signed in November 1981. B’nai B’rith’s League for Human Rights has called it discriminatory.

CJC CITES A NUMBER OF PROBLEMS

The CJC is also unhappy with the fact that the new regulation requires that business owners apply to the government for permission to open Sunday and obtain a letter of recommendation from the CJC. But CJC officials say their organization is not a central religious authority for the Jewish community and that it does not want to, nor it it capoble of investigating the religious practices of merchants.

The CJC Quebec chairman, Bernard Finestone, said this requirement will turn the CJC into an “unpaid agency of the government.” The situation has assertedly been made even more absurd by the fact that, because the regulation does not specify Jews, it is conceivable that other groups, such as the Seventh Day Adventists who observe the same sabbath, will have to come to the CJC for a recommendation for the exemption.

A member of the opposition Liberal Party in the Quebec National Assembly (Iegislature), Herbert Marx, who is a constitutional lawyer and the party’s justice critic, said the Quebec government should clear up the matter once and for all and take it to the highest provincial court, the Quebec Court of Appeal.

In the neighboring province of Ontario — home of the largest number of Jews in Canada — its Court of Appeal, by a unanimous decision of five justices, ruled in September that the Lord’s Day Act does not apply to observant Jews. The Lord’s Day Act, passed in 1908, is federal legislation which prohibits just about every type of commercial activity on Sundays. However, each province has the right to pass legislation making exceptions to the Act.

The Ontario courtjudgement was based on sections of the Canadian Charter of Human Rights dealing with both freedom of religion and the principle of multiculturalism (an expression used in connecttion with the many ethnic and religious groups which make up Canada’s population.) In June, the Quebec government passed a bill amending its existing commercial hours law. While more types of small stores are now allowed to open seven days a week, the new legislation also includes much higher fines for those who do business illegally. Where fines used to be little more than nominal, first offenses now carry fines of $200 to $5,000. Subsequent infractions within two years of the first offense will be punishable by fines of $400 to $10,000.

In the past, a “gentlemen’s agreement” existed between CJC and the Quebec government under which charges against Sabbath-observing Jewish businessmen found with their stores open on Sunday were waived. However, complaints still came to the CJC from store owners charged and it was often a rigamorale to reach the Attomey General to have them quashed.

“It’s been a long hard battle,” said a CJC official.