the food restrictions might seem overkill, and some media is suggesting it'a ban on kosher or halal. it isn't. the legislation says that public institutions, specifically, cannot offer exclusively religious meals. they can still offer religious meals, but not exclusively religious meals.
there is a singular example where this seems irrational, namely the jewish hospital in montreal. however, there's a deeper question here: why do we have a jewish hospital in the first place? montreal has a significant jewish minority, but it's not enough for a segregated hospital. that's what the jewish hospital actually is. the jews may have said "fine, if it's going to get your noses in a schnitzel, we'll have have our own hospital, and maybe we'll let you see our jewish doctors if you ask nice, in classical hebrew.", but they wouldn't have done that if they didn't have to. so, now the jews have a kick-ass hospital in montreal that's across the street from the secular/catholic hospital. and i don't think they check your dna on arrival, or refuse you service, you just have to eat funny tasting jello if you get your appendix out there instead of across the street.
ideally, you don't want a publicly funded jewish hospital at all, but that should be tolerated so long as the market (to abuse the language) justifies it, given the history. given that the jewish hospital is across the street from the normal hospital, that they don't deny access and that it's basically a branch of the normal hospital, you can always go across the street if you really want your free lunch to have experienced immense pain before it died, as you experience immense pain in recovery. why should the lunch get it better than you?
besides that, and the food thing is clearly the least of my concerns, canada has to do this. there are too many religious groups that aren't integrating, because we told them they didn't have to. that was a mistake. our public institutions and secular society are potentially at risk if the issue isn't addressed in a broad scope. the quebecois more recently fought a long fight against the catholic church for freedom of thought and are more sensitive to this than the rest of the continent, as the fight is still real to them, it's not a relic of colonial history. they can't be allowed to save themselves, while the rest of us collapse into ignorance and backwardsness. we should let them lead the way and follow their lead.
quebec is ahead of us, but this needs to become a dominant issue on the left, as soon as the left pulls it's head out of it's ass and stops trying to pretend it's the new right.