Quebec says it will ban prayer in public, a move that civil rights groups described as an “alarming measure” that targets religious minority groups and would infringe on “basic democratic freedoms”.
The province’s secularism minister, Jean-François Roberge, said the move had been prompted by the “proliferation of street prayer” which he described as “a serious and sensitive issue” adding that the government had watched with “unease”. Roberge said the government would introduce legislation in the fall.
The announcement follows public statements from Quebec’s premier, François Legault, who expressed mounting frustration over public prayers in the province’s largest city, Montreal.
“To see people praying in the street, in public parks, this is not something we want in Quebec,” he said last year. “When you want to pray, you go in a church or a mosque, not in a public place.”
For more than half a year, the group Montreal4Palestine has organized Sunday protests outside the city’s Notre-Dame Basilica that include public prayer. The demonstrations have also prompted counterprotests.
Legault’s governing Coalition Avenir Québec has made secularism a key legislative priority, passing the controversial Bill 21 in 2019.
That law, which runs afoul of both Quebec’s charter of human rights and freedoms and Canada’s charter of rights and freedoms, bars judges, police officers, prison guards and teachers from wearing religious symbols while at work. Other public workers such as bus drivers, doctors and social workers must only keep their faces uncovered.
In 2021, Quebec’s superior court upheld the statute despite a finding that the law violates the freedom of expression and religion of religious minorities. Governments in Canada can pass laws that breaches certain fundamental rights if they use a legal mechanism known as a the “notwithstanding clause”.
It is unclear if the province would once again invoke the clause when passing legislation on public prayer.
The Canadian Muslim Forum said the provincial government should be focusing on “real problems, not policing the fundamental rights of its citizens” instead of putting in place policies that would “stigmatize communities, fuel exclusion, and undermine Quebec’s social cohesion”.
The push to ban public prayer follows a detailed report by the province’s independent committee studying how to strengthen secularism. Among the 50 recommendations, the committee suggested extending the religious symbols ban to daycare workers. Notably, the report did not call for a province-wide ban on public prayer and new tools to protect universities from being compelled to install prayer rooms. Instead, it found municipalities already have the “necessary competences” to enforce rules surrounding street prayer.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association said banning prayer in public spaces would infringe on freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association.
“Suppressing peaceful religious expression, individually or communally, under the guise of secularism not only marginalizes faith-based communities but also undermines principles of inclusion, dignity and equality,” said Harini Sivalingam, director of equality program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
Despite the outrage from civil rights and advocacy groups, the move has support from other political leaders.
The Parti Québécois leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, whose party is leading in public polling, called public prayers an “appropriation of public space by religious fundamentalists” and pledged to hold an internal referendum to determine his party’s formal position on the issue.
Still, the issue is likely to once again revive fierce debate over the scope and reach of the government’s focus on secularism.
“Let us be clear here: it is not prayers in public places that are disturbing; Catholics have been praying in public for decades and no one has ever protested, even though Quebecers have thrown religion in the trash,” André Pratte, a former journalist and senator, posted on X. “No, what is disturbing is Muslims who pray, in the same way that the ban on religious signs was really aimed only at the Muslim headscarf.”
Pratte said there was “no need for a new legislative arsenal that will make a religious practice disappear from public space” and that the latest push reflected an unpopular government “desperately trying to regain points in public opinion”.
