Prayer rooms banned in Quebec schools | 24CA News
Quebec’s schooling minister has formalized a promise to ban prayer rooms and different spiritual practices within the province’s public colleges.
Bernard Drainville issued a directive late Wednesday saying colleges should make sure that none of their areas are used “in fact and in appearance, for the purposes of religious practices such as open prayers or other similar practices.”
“Schools are places of learning and not places of worship,” Drainville wrote on his Twitter account, the place he revealed a replica of his order.
No requests for lodging will probably be heard, the federal government added.
The directive got here after Drainville stated earlier this month that he had discovered of no less than two Montreal-area colleges allowing college students to assemble for prayer. He stated the idea of prayer rooms runs counter to Quebec’s coverage of official secularism. The province’s secularism legislation, generally known as Bill 21, already prohibits many public servants, together with academics, from sporting spiritual symbols on the job.
Read extra:
Only ‘silent’ praying allowed in Quebec colleges as province strikes to ban prayer rooms
The directive notes that the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms acknowledges freedom of faith but additionally the basic significance of secularism.
It additionally notes that “according to the principle of freedom of conscience, a student has a right to be protected from all direct or indirect pressure aimed at exposing him or influencing him so that he conforms to a religious practice.”
Drainville has stated that he can’t ban prayer altogether and that college students who need to pray ought to accomplish that discreetly and silently.
The directive applies to public colleges, vocational colleges and grownup schooling centres, however to not personal colleges or Indigenous faculty boards.
It will probably be as much as faculty service centres — which changed faculty boards — to make sure “appropriate corrective measures” are taken in circumstances of non-compliance.
The ban has been denounced by Muslim teams, which have stated they might preserve an in depth eye on the way it’s applied to make sure rights aren’t violated.
© 2023 The Canadian Press
