PROPOSALS to ban public prayer in Quebec would be a violation of human rights, threatening Christian festivals and the many acts of public blessing carried out each year, the Bishop of Quebec, the Rt Revd Bruce Myers, has warned.
The Premier of Quebec, François Legault, has announced plans to prohibit prayer in public places in the wake of a series of pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have incorporated Muslim prayers. One was held in front of the Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal. Details of the Bill have yet to be published.
The Secularism Minister, Jean François Roberge, has said that it will be introduced in the autumn.
Quebec already has laws in place to protect secularism. Teachers, police, and all state employees are banned from wearing visible religious symbols, and there are protections for the French language.
The RC Archbishop of Montreal, the Most Revd Christian Lépine, said, in a letter on his website in response to the announcement, that forbidding public prayer would be like “forbidding thought itself”.
Bishop Myers said that the Bill as outlined by the Government would be “very problematic”.
“Such a law will violate the declarations and charters of human rights and freedoms of the United Nations, Canada, and Quebec,” he said.
“Who is going to determine what constitutes prayer? A government official? On what criteria? Determined by whom? And what are the consequences of praying in public going to be? Quebec’s English-speaking community is well acquainted with the so-called ‘language police’ who enforce the Charter of the French Language. Are we now going to have provincial ‘prayer police’ who are going to make sure people aren’t praying in public?”
He said that the attempt to address the recent prayers during protests was a “heavy- handed solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist”, and that it would affect Christian festivals such as the Good Friday walk and the blessing of the boats at the beginning of the fishing season each year.
The announcement of the new law was an attempt to distract attention from the Government’s own issues and falling popularity, Bishop Myers said.
“We support a secular state and a secular government, but not a secular society. And this government continues to cross the line from being religiously neutral — which we support — to actively interfering in the religious practices of its citizens.
“Hundreds of thousands of Quebeckers attend churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, or other forms of faith communities every week. Very, very few of us are extremists, zealots, or coercive proselytes. Public prayer is not a threat.”
Opinion polls suggest that a public prayer ban is more popular in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada: 43 per cent of Quebeckers believe that organised prayers in public spaces should never be permitted. Faith groups and civil-liberties organisations have condemned the proposal.
“Suppressing peaceful religious expression, individually or communally, under the guise of secularism not only marginalises faith-based communities but also undermines principles of inclusion, dignity, and equality,” the director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Harini Sivalingam, said.
The Canadian Muslim Forum said that public prayers were a manifestation of freedom of expression, and that a blanket ban would stigmatise communities, fuel exclusion, and undermine the social cohesion of Quebec.
“The government should be focused on solving real problems, not policing the fundamental rights of its citizens,” the group said in a statement.
Though such a law is likely to violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Quebec government could use the “notwithstanding” clause to override sections of the charter and protect the proposed legislation from constitutional challenge. Quebec has done this previously in relation to, for example, strengthening the use of French and barring state employees from wearing religious symbols.