Quebec committee says government should extend religious symbols ban to daycares

MONTREAL — The Quebec government should phase out public funding of religious private schools and extend the religious symbols ban to daycare workers, says a committee tasked with advising the province on how to strengthen secularism.

A nearly 300-page report published Tuesday sets out 50 recommendations to combat what its authors see as a growing presence of religion in some Quebec institutions, particularly schools in Montreal.

“It’s the whole religious atmosphere that is taking hold that has no place in a secular state,” Christiane Pelchat, a lawyer who co-chaired the committee, told a news conference.

Pelchat and co-chair Guillaume Rousseau, a lawyer and professor at Université de Sherbrooke, want the government to limit religious accommodations, force municipalities to regulate public prayer and create a national day for secularism.

The report is the product of a five-month review announced in March by Secularism Minister Jean-François Roberge, who said the committee’s recommendations could lead to changes to Quebec’s secularism law, Bill 21.

The move was spurred by a public outcry following a government report published in October that documented how a group of teachers, many of North African descent, had allegedly imposed autocratic rule at a Montreal elementary school.

On Tuesday, Roberge said he welcomed Pelchat and Rousseau’s report. “The points raised by the committee provide us with excellent ideas for modernizing the law,” he said on X.

He did not say whether the government would consider ending public funding of the province’s roughly 50 subsidized religious private schools. Premier François Legault has previously defended the government funding against calls from opposition parties to axe it.

The committee also wants the government to phase out tax benefits and subsidies granted to religious organizations — a recommendation that was quickly panned by the Assembly of Quebec Catholic Bishops.

“We believe that these exemptions remain a benefit for the entire population,” a spokesperson for the assembly said in an email. She added that government aid allows churches to offer space free of charge or at low cost to community organizations and food banks.

Another key recommendation is to apply the province’s religious symbols ban to daycare workers. The measure currently prohibits public sector workers in positions of authority, like teachers and judges, from wearing religious symbols on the job.

The report also says people should be required to have their faces uncovered while giving or receiving public services, a measure that would apply to students. “As a feminist lawyer, to accept that women are completely veiled throughout a course, it is an attack on the dignity of women,” Pelchat said.

The Quebec government has already tabled a bill that would forbid elementary and high school students to cover their faces, and would extend the religious symbols ban to all public school staff.

Stephen Brown, CEO of the National Council for Canadian Muslims, said extending the ban to daycare workers would exacerbate an existing shortfall of daycare spots, and said the idea is based on “zero evidence.”

“What the (committee) is saying with this is that if your kids see somebody from another religion it could harm them,” he said. “It’s asinine.”

Several of Pelchat and Rousseau’s recommendations deal with religious accommodations, which the authors say are becoming more frequent in colleges and other institutions, though the evidence they provide in the report is anecdotal. The government should allow accommodation requests to be refused if they would create a “more than minimal” constraint on services, the committee says.

The authors say most requests for public services to be provided by a person of a certain sex should be refused “except for reasons of health, sexual privacy or security.”

Pelchat pointed to examples of men requesting not to be served by women at Quebec’s auto insurance board, which administers driving tests. “We ask that from now on, there is no more sexual discrimination,” she said.

The committee wants universities to be given the explicit right to refuse to create prayer rooms for students. Junior colleges, meanwhile, should not allow rooms intended specifically for prayer, the report says. A recent government investigation of two Montreal colleges claimed prayer rooms can foster radicalization among students.

During Tuesday’s press conference, Rousseau raised concerns about students fasting for religious reasons. “We find that worrying, we even find it disturbing,” he said. The report recommends the government document fasting and its effects on school-aged children.

The committee also touches on the matter of public prayer, which Legault has said he would like to ban. The authors stop short of recommending a blanket ban, instead saying the province should require municipalities to regulate religious events.

Asked why she believes there’s an increasing influence of religion in Quebec institutions, Pelchat pointed to an “influx of believers” to the province, especially from North Africa. She stressed that the phenomenon is “really concentrated in Montreal.” The report provides little quantitative data.

However, Brown said there’s “absolutely no problem” with religious accommodations in Quebec right now. “I don’t think that there’s a greater presence of religion in schools. I think there’s a greater number of people that don’t come from a Christian background in schools,” he said.

“We really need to get back to focusing on the real problems that we’re facing as a society, as opposed to these distractions that don’t help anybody.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 26, 2025.

Maura Forrest, The Canadian Press