While Muslims praying in public is likely the precipitating cause (or excuse) for Bill 9, Quebec’s secularist CAQ government can use and likely will use the opportunity to strike at traditional religion generally. One group that will be significantly affected is the pro-life movement. The Campaign Life Coalition’s Jack Fonseca has warned, “I suspect the real goal … is probably to drive Christianity out of Quebec society once and for all, and essentially, to make the public expression of belief in Jesus Christ illegal. 

The prohibition against public prayer looms on the horizon in the struggle over religious freedom in the Western world. In Quebec it may be expanded by secularists from bubbles around abortion facilities to public places generally. This general prohibition seems likely to be enacted soon in the province. The proposed Quebec Bill 9 in the Quebec National Assembly, which has been introduced by the ruling Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) party, prohibits public prayer in streets, parks, universities, and government funded (which need not be public) institutions.

A Radical Reduction of Space for Religious Practice

Earlier, Quebec’s Bill 21 in 2019 prohibited public officials and teachers in public schools from wearing religious symbols while on duty. Bill 9 currently being considered would also prohibit the wearing of religious symbols by any school employee or student, employees in daycare centers, and prohibit “collective religious practices” (in particular prayer) in public spaces, and as well as prayer rooms in universities or other public institutions, as Paul Marshall of the Hudson Institute pointed out in the linked article. It would seem that this might prohibit street preaching, since if anyone listens, would be a “collective religious practice.”

Indeed, quite a lot of religious practice will be prohibited, as the Canadian Centre for Christian Charities listed at the beginning of December. Notably, the offering of prayer will be prohibited (even individual private prayer in schools, according to Decree 707-2023, noted below) in public institutions (or private institutions receiving state funding), in accredited private schools, and daycare centers receiving public funding. Religious institutions that serve the public, such as hospitals, cannot offer only food based on their own religious requirements. They must offer food the general public consumes as well. In general, it seems that a public square consisting of spaces outdoors, public institutions, and private institutions receiving government funding will be swept bare of any evidence of religion. Only private religious schools receiving no public funding will be free of the ban on religious activities.

Islamic Practices at the Frontline of the Struggle

The proposed law seems aimed particularly at Muslims, not historically part of Quebec. Quebec’s Muslim population has dramatically increased from 2001 to 2021 from 108,620 to 421,710, and in Canada from 479,640 to 1,775,715 They are  now a very visible presence, conducting public prayer on streets and other outdoor public places. The prohibition of prayer rooms in universities and other public or publicly funded institutions is particularly severe for Muslims, since they are required to pray five times daily, and outdoor prayer as well as prayer rooms are prohibited.

Collective prayer on the street can obstruct traffic, but otherwise, the real objection seems to be that the ruling secularists find it offensive. “Seeing people praying in the streets, in public parks, is not something we want in Quebec” Quebec Premier François Legault has said in connection with the legislation. As Marshall observes, confining the practice of religion to houses of worship misunderstands religious commitment, which must cover all of life. No one is inconvenienced, although they might be offended at collective prayer in a park. There ought to be applicable laws prohibiting obstruction of traffic.   

The immediate precipitating cause of Bill 9 and the related Bill 94 seems to have been reports of a school in Montreal in which several North African teachers were introducing Islamic values in their authoritarian manner of education, rarely touching on science or sex education in instruction, and preventing girls from playing soccer. This “Bedford affair” – referring to the Bedford School where the Muslim teachers were located – along with the greater Muslim presence in Canada and open air group prayer in public places becoming a noticeable occurrence seems to have given the stridently secularist CAQ government the justification it felt it needed to move against all public religious activity.

Shrinking Corporate Religious Life

Another part of the law would effectively require that religious schools become secular over the next three years if they wish to continue to receive government funding. The law also specifies that religious schools cannot hire and retain only people of their own faith if they choose to receive government funding. Nor can there be religious instruction in the school, so the school would effectively be secular.

Although the law is framed as expanding secularism or strengthening secularism, it in fact amounts to shrinking the areas in which there may be free exercise of religion. Legal appeal cannot be made to fundamental rights on this issue, since unlike the United States, Canada has a “notwithstanding clause” in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which allows the national or a provincial legislature to override rights guaranteed in the charter. The one restraint on this, Marshall noted, is that the legislature must specify that the notwithstanding clause applies in each act which the legislature wants to make immune from judicial review, and the “notwithstanding” immunity must be renewed by the legislature every five years.

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