Drainville vows to strengthen secularism
Bernard Drainville is vowing to strengthen and enlarge Quebec’s secularism laws, after a report on “uneven” obedience to existing secularism rules in some schools. Horrors, “students were allowed to pray on school grounds” and teachers converse among themselves in languages other than French, even in front of students!! (What the latter claim has to do with secularism isn’t made clear.)
Daycare supervisors and other school staff may soon be subject to Drainville’s ukase.
H. John 12:41 on 2025-02-28 Permalink
@Kate “teachers converse among themselves in languages other than French”
This is a clear reference to the original Bedford Report from last June. In that school, 80% of their students do not have French as a first language, and don’t speak French at home. The report covered the issue of providing a French atmosphere for their students in common areas like hallways. On a broader scale, the issue had already been raised by management as an inclusion issue effecting not only students but other professors who didn’t speak Arab. This lead to a petition on employees right of expression, and the union was clear that the language used by teachers in their break-room, or in any common area was none of the employers business.
This morning on 98.5FM Patrick Lagacé interviewed Bernard Drainville about the latest report and his concerns:
https://www.985fm.ca/audio/681898/quebec-songe-a-legiferer-sur-le-port-de-signes-religieux-par-les-eleves
jeather 12:45 on 2025-02-28 Permalink
Wouldn’t want to see prayer in a secular school like École Saint-Enfant-Jésus.
DavidH 13:29 on 2025-02-28 Permalink
My first thoughts about the language thing was they forgot laïcité is supposed to be the cautionnable front for their xenophobia and they are just exposing it for what it is.
BUT, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe, those teachers were reciting latin religious texts in a pre-Vatican II manner? Could it be?
mare 13:45 on 2025-02-28 Permalink
I was surprised to see a large 3-metre tall cross on the outside wall of a neighbourhood primary school. Impossible to miss, slightly above eye level. The school doesn’t even have a religious name (École Madeleine-de-Verchères) and as far as I can tell from their web pages on the CSSDM website aren’t a Catholic school. But apparently the cross isn’t a religious symbol, just tradition. Laïcité is just other-ism.
Nicholas 14:20 on 2025-02-28 Permalink
mare, the school down the street from me has a cross above the entrance too, and doesn’t have a religious name either. But maybe the rule is you can’t have religion in the school, but it’s fine outside of it.
walkerp 14:30 on 2025-02-28 Permalink
The name is a historical artifact. Saint-enfant Jesus (or “Baby Jesus” as we anglophone parents call it) is definitely secular on the inside.
jeather 14:32 on 2025-02-28 Permalink
I thought we cared very deeply about visible religion in schools, like veils and jewelry, and not what they meant in the hearts of the teachers or if it actually had an effect on their teaching.
Kate 14:50 on 2025-02-28 Permalink
The school crosses would be left over from when it was the Montreal Catholic School Commission. Confessional public schools ended here in 1998 on which the CSSDM took over most of the Catholic commission’s buildings, crosses and all. I doubt there are any crucifixes left inside the buildings, as there certainly were when I went to school.
jeather 14:53 on 2025-02-28 Permalink
Some of the school crosses are carved into the building which — fine, whatever, I see the argument to leave it be. But some are removable, and school names could be changed, but neither happen, because it’s not laicite at all, it’s hiding only non-Catholic religions.
JP 15:44 on 2025-02-28 Permalink
Whatever school is now housed at 1995 rue Victor Dore also has crosses at the door…
Having said that, I do find the idea of teachers speaking other languages in classrooms or hallways, a little off putting. I don’t think it has to be malicious but it can feel like maybe your teachers might be talking about you or your classmates.
Andrew Aitken 16:40 on 2025-02-28 Permalink
I still believe the most egregiously non-secular school in the CSSDM is the Petit Chanters de Mont-Royal. Every single student is learning catholic hymns in school and singing them every Sunday in the Oratory.
Meezly 17:48 on 2025-02-28 Permalink
Laicité had its place in the separation of Church and State in France, but many human rights orgs have observed over the past decades how laicité has been weaponized against Muslim communities. It’s a thing. I believe in secularism but laicité has been co-opted and often seems like code for xenophobia though well-meaning intellectuals would deny this. Quebec is merely taking its cues from France.
Kate 17:56 on 2025-02-28 Permalink
JP, looking at that school on Streeview, it’s obvious that those crosses are not part of the structure or the façade, and could very easily be removed.
Meezly, I think you’re onto something. And Quebec was dominated by the Catholic church more recently than France, which adds an extra twist.
Uatu 09:21 on 2025-03-01 Permalink
I’d rather QC take it’s cues from France regarding access to the medical system especially GPs.
Ian 10:24 on 2025-03-01 Permalink
Well, careful what you wish for – France may have ditched the rule of the Church but their secularism is largely informed by a hatred for Jews and more recently, Muslims, even more intense than that on display here – the Vichy government & Algerian war of Independence come to mind.
Kevin 12:53 on 2025-03-01 Permalink
Of course the crosses should come down, just like how an earlier generation forced schools to mortar over engraved words like ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ /s
Meezly 13:01 on 2025-03-01 Permalink
It’s not me who’s onto something, I’m just reading stuff put forth by sociologists, historians, human rights activists and the like.