Listen, I'm an atheist. I've made no bones about that throughout this blog, even celebrated it at times. But even I know that Quebec's bill to ban all prayer in public is a bad idea.
It's no secret that François Legault's Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) party is stridently anti-religious, or pro-secularism as they might term it. They even have a Secularism Minister, Jean-François Roberge, in the Cabinet. They have already adopted a law requiring all immigrants to Quebec to "embrace the common culture" of the province, and have passed the contentious bill that would ban public workers from wearing any religious symbols in the course of their work (using the Charter's "notwithstanding clause" to avoid claims that it is unconstitutional).
This latest bill is another step down that road, and it too will require the use of the notwithstanding clause, because it too would be unconstitutional.
It's also wrong-headed. For one thing, Legault has (accidentally or otherwise) admitted that, when he says he wants to ban prayer outdoors, he really wants to ban prayer outside of Montreal's Notre-Dame Basilica, where pro-Palestine Muslims have been holding public prayer meetings for months now. He has said he wants to send "a very clear message to Islamists".
Don't get me wrong, I think prayer is stupid, whether Christian or Muslim. To think that some putative God is listening intently when individuals pray is the ultimate in solipsism, and seems sadly deluded. But if that's really what people want to spend their time doing, well, knock yourself out, I say. Passing a law to ban it is so completely against the letter and the spirit of Canadian law that only Quebec (and maybe Alberta, for different reasons) would have the chutzpah to even try it.
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