There was a collective unease for some Quebecers who were marking Good Friday after the provincial government passed a new law that bans public prayer without explicit consent from municipalities. The new law, known as Bill 9 before it was passed, also expands a ban on wearing religious symbols in public workplaces to daycare workers and prohibits prayer rooms in public institutions, such as universities. Here’s what some people had to say about the new law on Friday. Christian Lépine, Archbishop of Montreal After leading the Way of the Cross procession through Old Montreal on Friday, the head of the Catholic Church in Montreal, said he has serious concerns with the new law and its impact on personal freedoms. He also questioned whether a law to limit praying in public was necessary. “If laicité or secularity means restricting freedoms, why?” he told reporters. “I think it’s a legitimate preoccupation.” Lépine said the province has a role to carefully balance principles of secularism and fundamental rights and freedoms. “The hallmark of a democratic society is its ability to welcome a plurality of convictions and allow their expression in a spirit of respect for all,” Archbishop Lépine said in a statement published Friday. “To restrict prayer to the private sphere is to reduce the space of freedom for society as a whole,” he said, adding that the freedom to express one’s faith is right enshrined in the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He said the church has been seeking authorization from the city and police to walk and pray in the streets for years and he will continue with the new process, which he expects will take more time. Fiona Ham One of the people who attended the procession on Friday said she can understand the motivations behind the new law following incidents of public prayer by pro-Palestinian groups outside the Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal over the past several months and the scandal at the Bedford school in Montreal. However, she doesn’t believe a prayer ban was the right call. “I understand why praying was happening, but in front of the church was uncalled for,” said Fiona. “I don’t go to a mosque and flash my crucifix and go to the men’s side without covering my head. You know, we don’t do these things. So I understand that some people said it wasn’t a provocation, which I’m sure it wasn’t.” She said the law is “unnecessary for everyone.” “We don’t need to have this law in place. It’s very disrespectful,” she added. “The people who built all the churches that are here, I’m sorry, but this is the history of Quebec, and it’s not erasing everyone’s right to live here and have a peaceful life, but I don’t think it’s necessary, and before Easter, I don’t know how good that’s gonna look for the ratings.” National Council of Canadian Muslims Other groups were also concerned about the law’s impact on Quebecers’ fundamental rights. The head of the National Council of Canadian Muslims said the law helps create “a licence to discriminate against religious minorities in this province, and once again, the system of checks and balances in our liberal democracy just aren’t working.” “Praying in front of the Montreal cathedral, which was not a smart thing to do, certainly had an impact. The Bedford incident certainly had an impact. But the other thing is, the government also saw these as opportunities to be able to advance its own agenda and try to divide Quebecers,” said CEO Stephen Brown in an interview. “Yes, you saw some people saying they’re very uncomfortable with prayers in front of the Notre-Dame Cathedral. However, these are people that are protesting, and ostensibly they have a permit to protest, and if they don’t have a permit to protest, well, then fine them,” he added. “We already have the laws necessary to be able to deal with these issues. So a lot of these are, unfortunately, pretenses to be able to take away the rights of citizens.” Brown said the NCCM is looking at its legal options when it comes to the new law, but said the organization will likely wait to see what the Supreme Court of Canada says when it renders its decision in Quebec’s secularism law, Bill 21. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) called the new law a “clear and alarming infringement on freedom of religion, expression, peaceful assembly.” “Public spaces belong to everyone. The right to peacefully protest and publicly express religious beliefs should not be curtailed under the guise of state neutrality,” said Anaïs Bussières McNicoll, director of the Fundamental Freedoms Program at the CCLA, in a news release. “State secularism does not provide a licence to infringe fundamental rights and freedoms that are essential in a democratic society.” When asked if the CCLA will challenge the law in court, Harini Sivalingam, director of equality, said it will continue to explore “all available avenues to challenge measures that restrict fundamental rights and freedoms.” Guillaume Rousseau, Mouvement laïque québécois One of the groups that welcomes Quebec’s Bill 9 is Mouvement laïque québécois. One of their lawyers, Guillaume Rousseau, who represented the group in the Bill 21 legal challenge, said Bill 9 incorporates several parts of a 2025 report from a committee on secularism that recommended expanding Quebec’s religious symbols ban. “The application of principles and rules of State secularism to childcare services is excellent news, given the strong religious influences we have observed in several facilities,” he wrote in an email. “Similarly, the new rules governing religious accommodations will be very useful, considering that previous legislation made obtaining such accommodations easy for applicants but burdensome for employers, particularly those in the public sector.” With files from CTV News’ Laurence Brisson Dubreuil
