MontrealAn independent committee looking at ways to strengthen secularism in Quebec is recommending extending the province’s religious symbols ban to educators and administrators in public daycares.Committee makes 50 recommendations aimed at strengthening secularism in QuebecCBC News · Posted: Aug 26, 2025 5:14 PM EDT | Last Updated: August 26Christiane Pelchat, left, and Guillaume Rousseau, co-presidents of the Committee to Study Respect for the Principles of the State Secularism Act and Religious Influences, unveil their report and recommendations in Quebec City on Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025. (Francis Vachon/The Canadian Press)An independent committee is recommending extending Quebec’s religious symbols ban to educators and administrators in public subsidized daycares, while providing an acquired right.The idea is one of 50 recommendations included in a report published on Tuesday morning, looking at ways of strengthening secularism in the province. “It’s a hefty report,” said Guillaume Rousseau, one of two lawyers heading the committee, who specified that the recommendations are aimed not only at strengthening secularism but addressing concerns of people on the ground. The committee said it feels that banning religious symbols for daycare workers is necessary in light of testimonies it gathered and other findings it collected over the last six months.Rousseau said employees have a right to work in secular institutions and children need to have freedom of conscience and be protected from religious pressures.The nearly 300-page 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 spent years working as a “dominant clan” and spreading fear within a Montreal elementary school.Rousseau and Christiane Pelchat unveiled their report five months after Quebec tabled Bill 94 which, if passed, would extend the province’s ban on the wearing of religious symbols to support staff in schools and prohibit students from having their faces covered.That bill has not yet passed into law, but the report released on Tuesday goes even further — with its authors lamenting that Bill 94 would only apply to services provided by staff who are accountable to the province’s Education Ministry.The pair recommends modifying the province’s secularism law to force people to have their faces uncovered while receiving any public service, which would include CEGEP students.Rousseau and Pelchat both pointed to CEGEP teachers who told them teaching a student wearing a full face covering is difficult and goes against all basic rules of communication. WATCH | Quebec’s secularism debate: Quebec’s secularism debate 2.0: Do we need more tools to enforce ‘laicity’?Quebec’s government wants better laws to protect secularism. Is it necessary or is it just politics?As for daycares, Pelchat said there were reports of children being chosen to fill daycare spots based on their ethnicity or because they belong to a certain religious group. In other instances, children were served Halal food in daycare regardless of their beliefs, to accommodate those who follow certain dietary laws. “They receive public funds,” Pelchat said, pointing to a climate of religiosity in certain daycares that she said is problematic. The wearing of religious symbols in daycares only strengthens that connection to religion, Pelchat said, adding it’s not up to the government to provide religious services. The committee says the government should also phase out public funding of religious private schools and says universities should be able to refuse to create prayer rooms for students.The report also says municipalities should enact measures to regulate religious events, following Premier François Legault’s stated desire to ban public prayer.In a written statement, the secularism minister’s office said the minister welcomed the report and said the points raised by the committee provided excellent ideas on how to modernize the law.Next steps will be announced shortly, following further analysis of the report.Meanwhile, opposition parties were starting to react as well, with Pascal Bérubé with the Parti Québécois writing in a publication on X, that the report included several proposals already made by the PQ that were rejected by the ruling Coalition Avenir Québec government. The Liberal Party for its part expressed specific concerns on extending the ban on religious symbols to daycare educators, saying it wasn’t “desirable” seeing as daycare workers are not employees of the state but rather employees of the community sector and non-profit organizations. Québec solidaire said it wanted to take the time to read and analyze the report before commenting.Written by Annabelle Olivier, with files from The Canadian Press
Quebec committee recommends extending religious symbol ban to public daycares
