Quebec's face veil law descending into farce

The province of Quebec's laudable pursuit of state secularism and religious neutrality is descending into farce as it tones down its recent contentious Bill 62 to force people to show their faces and remove religious face veils in order to obtain public services, which has the unfortunate effect of discriminating against the tiny minority of Muslim women who wear burqas or niqabs.

Although the initial rules would have applied throughout the whole time individuals were receiving the public services, the law now only requires faces to be shown "at the point of interaction with a public servant". Thus, library patrons would be required to show their faces while dealing with librarians, but not while walking around the library. Public transit customers who are using a card with photo ID (e.g. students) would have to show their faces when boarding, but not while actually travelling. Health service patrons would need to uncover their faces while dealing directly with doctors, nurses or other staff, but could then cover up in the waiting room. In theory, school children and university students would have to be uncovered while interacting with a teacher in the classroom, but not while walking in the corridors, although this will apparently depend on the individual school's security policies.

Estimates as to how many Quebecois niqab and burqa-wearing women this law might affect vary between 50 and 100 (i.e. negligible). Why would the Quebec legislature even bother? These women are already well used to uncovering their faces for security purposes (at airports, licence bureaus, etc), so, again, why the need for a new law, if not merely to further goad an already vilified minority? Furthermore, by their own admission, most of these women choose to wear the face coverings, often even against the advice of their families, thus putting the Quebec government in the awkward position of seeking to save the women from themselves. 

The whole plan sounds totally unenforceable, and many public bodies (including McGill University and the whole City of Montreal) are openly stating their opposition to even these scaled-back rules. Add to this the fact that the law stipulates no fines, and that a woman can apply for an exemption on the basis of her religion(!), and the whole affair becomes something of a joke, albeit a joke that has garnered Quebec a lot of criticism and bad press both within and, particularly, outside of the province. And the longer the Catholic crucifix remains in a prominent position in the Quebec legislature, the less convincing their commitment to secularism appears.