Quebec Premier François Legault said Friday afternoon that he wants to ban praying in public and that he was considering using the notwithstanding clause to do so.
The premier was giving an overview of the past year in Quebec City before lawmakers break until January when he made the announcement. He said he had instructed his team to look into ways to put the ban in place.
“Seeing people praying in the streets, in public parks, is not something we want in Quebec,” Legault said.
His comments, a departure from the other topics of the overview, came after a report in La Presse described religious behaviour at Saint-Maxime school in Laval, Que., which included prayer inside classrooms. It also reported teachers communicating among themselves and with students in Arabic.
“We have seen teachers implementing Islamist religious concepts in schools. Teachers who forbid girls from playing sports, among other things. Teachers, we see it again this morning, in Laval, who say prayers in the classrooms of our schools,” Legault said.
“When we want to pray, we go to a church, we go to a mosque, but not in public places. And yes, we will look at the means where we can act legally or otherwise.”
Asked by journalists about the legal and constitutional repercussions of such a measure, the premier said he was not ruling out using the notwithstanding clause, which his government has already used twice to push bills into law.
“Today I want to send a very clear message to the Islamists,” Legault said. “We will fight, and we will never, never accept that people try to not respect the values that are fundamental to Quebec.”
Minister wants law to ‘strengthen secularism’ in schools
Quebec Education Minister Bernard Drainville also reacted to the newspaper report Friday, saying the government intends to introduce new legislation to “strengthen secularism in our school system.”
Drainville said he had no details of what would be in the new legislation and asked reporters at the National Assembly to “be patient.”
The minister, too, had scathing words for the allegations reported in La Presse.
“That’s not our Quebec,” he said. “Students praying in the classroom, while class is in session, with the teachers there. Hallways used as prayer spaces, in contravention of the directive against prayer in schools … heckling during sex education … that’s not our Quebec.”
Quebec’s Education Ministry announced in November that it was monitoring 17 schools for possible violations of the province’s secularism law. That announcement came after a 90-page government report highlighted an allegedly toxic environment for teachers and students at Bedford elementary school in Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood.
Eleven teachers at that school were suspended after an investigation.
Jean-François Roberge, the minister responsible for laicity — often referred to as secularism — said Friday that the incidents involving religion that are being reported in the province’s schools are indicative of what he described as a wider problem.
“What we see in the schools seems like the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “It’s a manifestation of a deeper problem where we see people, and institutions, that are intentionally trying to influence things, trying to have religious considerations put in our institutions that are somewhat incompatible with the notion of state secularism.”
The report into Bedford and the subsequent reports of incidents at other schools have drawn the attention of provincial politicians.
On Friday, opposition parties echoed the minister’s concern about the influence of religion inside Quebec schools.
Both interim Liberal Party Leader Marc Tanguay and Québec Solidaire co-spokesperson Ruba Ghazal said they were open to new legislation, or an amendment to the current secularism law, known as Bill 21.
The controversy at Bedford elementary school in Montreal is reviving some familiar political debates in Quebec, including whether the government should be funding private religious schools in the province.
Ghazal said her party would like the government to focus on equitable disparities inside the province’s school system, which she described as the root of the problem.
“The government tells us, no the problem is secularism, and we’re going to reinforce the law. We’re open to that, but we want to see what they present,” she said.
Meanwhile, Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said there was an “Islamist infiltration” taking place in the province’s schools. He said there is a backlash to Bill 21 that he says has placed a chill on some Quebecers and made them unwilling to speak out if they see religious behaviour in a public institution for fear of appearing racist.
“It’s not a question of Christian Quebecers or secular Quebecers against Muslim Quebecers,” he said. “We are all in this together in search of a model in our schools that respects everyone and doesn’t include religious elements.”