Trudeau talks China and Quebec’s Bill 21 in CityNews year-end interview

From pandemic recovery, to reconciliation, to racism, it’s been a hectic year for our country.

CityNews, along with our colleagues from Breakfast Television and OMNI News, got the chance to sit down with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to look back at some of the biggest stories from 2021, including the recent events out of Quebec this week where a teacher was reassigned out of her classroom for wearing a hijab.

The Western Quebec School Board confirmed it had no choice but to remove Fatemeh Anvari from her Grade 3 class at Chelsea Elementary School because of Bill 21 — a provincial law banning some civil servants from wearing religious symbols at work.

Trudeau called the situation “just wrong” adding the federal government has not ruled out intervening against the controversial Quebec bill.

“To have to see that in a country like Canada that prides itself on its freedom, on its openness, to be told, no because of your religion you don’t get to do the job you want is just wrong. That shouldn’t happen in Canada,” said Trudeau.

“But a provincial government passed a law and, the important thing for me, is that Quebecers themselves are fighting that law in court. As it moves forward there may be a moment for the federal government to intervene and that’s fine.”

Trudeau was also asked about the strained relationship with China, following comments from Beijing’s top diplomat in Ottawa. The Chinese ambassador said there will be a price to pay if the Liberal government bans Chinese tech giant Huawei from its 5G internet network.

This comes on the heels of the Canadian government’s decision to join a growing diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics due to “repeated human rights violations” committed by China.

“We’ve been very, very clear that the human rights abuses by China, that the coercive diplomacy – the perfect example and most disruptive example was the arrest of the two Michaels – was unacceptable,” said Trudeau in the year end interview, while giving no hints about Huawei’s fate on Canadian 5G.