The Montreal-based Center for Community Organizations (COCo) has just released this statement on the muchly debated and deeply socially divisive Charter of Values (Bill-60). The Charter of Values is the current Parti-Québécois-led attempt at contributing to Quebec's secularization and would arguably have significant impact on the rights and freedoms of anyone whose cultural makeup isn't, you know, white and soft-christian.
This issue is significant to COCo given the social-justice mandate which many service-based community organizations have as part of their mission and because of their fairly close ties to government funding bodies. Few service-based community organizations have issued such statements and I'm hoping that COCo's statement will lead to others.
COCo’s Staff and Board unanimously denounce and oppose Bill 60. We are concerned about the impacts of Bill 60 on the organizational health and development of community organizations, specifically limiting the capacity of autonomous organizations to protect the rights of their employees, to determine and to apply their own internal anti oppressive human resource policies.
Full disclosure: I previously worked at COCo and am currently a member of the board of directors.
