Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 23, 2020

The lawyer for a former Hasidic couple suing the province for failing to make sure they got a seculareducation says the judge hearingtheir case has an opportunityto help children attending religious schools today by urging the government to act.

The plaintiffs, Yohanan and Shifra Lowen, want Quebec Superior Court Justice Martin Castonguay to issue a declaratory judgment.

They're seeking to compelthe province to take additional steps to ensure children attending religious schools receive an adequate secular education.

"I think it could help everyone," Bruce Johnston, the lead lawyer for the couple, told the court in his closing arguments Wednesday.

"It could help the government to have the necessary political will to act.... It will help the community."

The trial, which began last Monday, has put a spotlight on Tash, a Hasidic community of about 3,000 people in the suburb of Boisbriand, north of Montreal.

Over the course of five days of testimony, the court heard from officials with the Education Ministry, staff with the province's youth protection agency, a Hasidic man who represents a Jewishhome-schooling association, and from the Lowens themselves.

Yohanan recounted how the secular education he received as a boy was particularly limited, leaving him with no knowledge of basic subjects such as science, math or geography.

He said he was ill-equipped to get a job when he left Tash and moved to Montreal with Shifra, where they now live with their school-aged children.

In his closing arguments, Johnston argued that the failure to provide children in Tash access to secular education isn't just a historic problem, asric Cantin, a lawyer for the Quebec attorney general, arguedat the outset of the trial.

"What the evidence shows is that these problems continue today," he said.

Cantin took issue with that point in his own closing remarks.

He said none of the evidence produced during the trial relates to the present day.

A youth protection worker testified that, in 2015, roughly 280 of the 320 boys who were assessed were flagged for further monitoring, given their poor level of English and math skills.

By 2017, she said, the situation had improved, thanks to collaboration between parents and the local English school board, Sir Wilfred Laurier.

Castonguay told the court that he would need to take into account alaw, passed in 2017, aimed at ensuring children attending religious schools receivehome-schooling which followsthe provincial curriculum.The law was thentightened by the CAQ government in 2018.

"We don't know that the current law isn't working," he said. "There is a reality that changed in 2018."

He saidhe would also need to take into consideration the religious freedoms enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

David Banon, lawyer for the Tash community, said Lowens "are attempting to put the blame for their misfortunes on a community they left in 2007."

Since then, he said, things have improved and parents of Hasidic children are registering their children and following the law.

"Things are going well,"he said, reminding the court that the Hasidic community is not on trial. "We aren't here to validate the beliefs or the lifestyles of these people."

The judge is expected to issue a written decision in the coming months.

Read this article:

Judge could give Quebec 'political will to act,' argues lawyer for ex-Hasidic couple suing government - CBC.ca

Category: Hasidic
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