Minister Bernard Drainville now prohibits schools from turning classrooms into prayer rooms.
• Read also: Prayers in schools: premises should not be reserved for one religion, says Drainville
“School is not a place of prayer, it’s not complicated, school is not a place of prayer!”, Launched Wednesday the Minister of Education, who was once the father of the defunct Charter of Values of the PQ government of Pauline Marois.
Cogeco Nouvelle revealed at the start of the week that at least two Laval secondary schools have authorized the temporary opening of a “resource” room to allow students of the Muslim faith to pray.
On Tuesday, Minister Drainville told our Parliamentary Office that schools should not reserve prayer rooms for just one religion.
On Wednesday, he corrected the situation. “I will issue a directive to ban prayer rooms in public school classrooms in Quebec. It is simply not compatible with the principle of secularism, with the Law on secularism, ”he insisted, in a press scrum at the National Assembly.
pray in silence
Students who so wish will be able to continue to gather “silently”, but not in premises dedicated to teaching or in gymnasiums. “There are all kinds of ways to pray, so no, I can’t ban prayer,” he said.
The Parti Québécois has been demanding since Tuesday a strong signal from Bernard Drainville to the Education network, to avoid the multiplication of prayer rooms in schools. PQ MP Pascal Bérubé feared that Laval’s case would become a dangerous precedent.
“During the breaks, you can meditate alone, you can live a spirituality, but to set up a room for this purpose, even a gymnasium in certain cases, that does not fit in the spirit of Law 21”, he pleaded.
On his initiative, the elected members of Parliament unanimously adopted a motion on Wednesday stating that “the establishment of places of prayer, regardless of faith, in the premises of a public school goes against the principle of secularism”.