Quebec to expand religious symbol ban, force students to uncover faces

The Quebec government has tabled a bill that would expand the province’s religious symbols ban to school staff beyond teachers.

The bill would update Quebec’s Education Act to also require students and staff to have their faces uncovered at school. It would require teachers to submit educational plans to school principals, who would have to evaluate teachers annually.

“The overall idea is to protect students from any religious indoctrination,” said Education Minister Bernard Drainville.

“If we are going to be coherent with this idea that a figure of authority should not wear a religious symbol, well, any adult can be a figure of authority and therefore no adults who are working within the school system should be allowed to wear a religious symbol.”

The bill would also expand the requirement for employees at French-language schools to speak only in French with students and staff. 

Drainville has for months promised legislation to strengthen secularism in schools following a controversy over reports of religious practices at several of the province’s public schools. 

“I have rarely spoken to a child who actually knows who, let’s say, the technician who takes care of my computer is, or what their name is or what they look like even,” said Montreal public school teacher Maha Kassef. “I don’t understand this need to go for people who are behind the scenes who we’ve established already that they are not an authority figure for these kids.”

“They just come back with more religious intolerance and more restrictions on people’s free exercise of religion,” added Joe Ortona, Chair of the English Montreal School Board, which has sought leave to appeal Bill 21 at the Supreme Court.

Other amendments would ensure a ban on places of prayer and would also require teachers to be evaluated annually by school principals.

“We already have things in place that kind of govern if the principal feels that you need to be reviewed or that,” said Kassef. “So I don’t, again, don’t see why we’re talking about this because, again, we’re trying to find solutions for problems that we’ve already found solutions for.”

Quebec’s secularism law, known as Bill 21, already prohibits public employees such as teachers and police officers from wearing religious symbols on the job. Drainville has suggested he could extend Quebec’s religious symbols ban to school staff. 

He says that religious accommodations have no place in Quebec schools, and that science, sex education and gender equality must be taught properly. 

Drainville says he was “stunned” to learn about the situation at Bedford elementary school in Montreal, after a government report last fall documented a toxic climate created by a group of teachers. The teachers allegedly imposed their religious beliefs by ignoring or barely teaching science and sex education classes, and preventing girls from playing soccer.

The government has since investigated more than a dozen other schools over allegations they were violating Quebec’s secularism rules. 

“In Quebec, we made the decision that the state and the religions are separate and today we say the schools, the public schools are separate from religion,” Drainville said.

Ortona says prior to these proposed changes, there were already adequate rules in place to address what happened at Bedford Elementary.

“This is just a smokescreen for this government who’s sinking in the polls to try to show that they’re doing something,” he said. “And again, they’re not. They’re just coming up with phony solutions that really play to their base, which seems to be intolerant of any mention or of any public display of any religion whatsoever.”