EDITORIAL: Quebec premier actually believes in secularism

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When “pro-Palestinian” protesters shut down one of Canada’s busiest intersections in Toronto for a prayer service, police said there was nothing they could do because prayer is protected by the Charter of Rights.

In other words, the rights of people trying to go about their daily lives were subordinate to the rights of protesters who took it upon themselves to stage a religious service on public streets.

Quebec Premier Francois Legault, at least, is looking for a way to outlaw such practices in his province and says he might invoke the Charter’s notwithstanding clause to do it.

“Seeing people praying in the streets, in public parks, is not something we want in Quebec,” Legault said on Friday, as he also promised to introduce legislation to strengthen secularism in the province’s schools.

“There are teachers who are bringing Islamist religious concepts into Quebec schools,” Legault said. “I will definitely not tolerate that. We don’t want that in Quebec.”

Calls for the government to take action were prompted by a government report and media stories on teachers allowing prayer in classrooms and school hallways, preventing girls from playing sports and disrupting a sex education class.

By contrast, in Ontario, to cite just one example, recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in school classrooms has been banned since 1988.

The Canadian Muslin Forum condemned Legault’s statements, arguing he views Muslims as second-class citizens and that “these remarks add to a pattern of political rhetoric that unfairly targets Quebecers, especially those of Muslim faith, based solely on their backgrounds.”

Our view is that while our governments at all levels constantly lecture us that Canada is a secular society, they then make exceptions for one religion.

Add to that the fact that some “pro-Palestinian protesters” have been allowed to call for the death of Jews, in public, for more than a year, without consequences, while police advise law-abiding Jews to vacate the area because it might upset the protesters.

We believe that any death threats to Muslims, Jews, Christians or followers of any other faith should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

But it is also time for our political leaders to start pushing back on these blatant double standards and not just in Quebec.