The Provincial legislature of Quebec passed Bill 9, an act respecting the reinforcement of laicity in Quebec, into law on Thursday, April 2nd. This significantly expands Quebec’s widely criticized Bill 21, commonly known as the religious symbols ban, into post-secondary institutions, childcare centres, healthcare facilities, and private schools. This is the final legislation passed by premier Francois Legault before his resignation took effect last week.

The enactment of this law comes just a week after Canada’s highest court, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC), heard the English Montreal School Board v Attorney General of Quebec case. This case challenges the constitutionality of Bill 21. If ruled in favour of the English School Board, then the bill will be overturned and be rendered of no force or effect.

How does Bill 9 Restrict Freedom of Religion?

Bill 9 expands the scope of state secularism in Bill 21 by expanding those restrictions to new workplaces. Under Bill 21, people serving in public roles are prohibited from wearing religious symbols while occupying that position. In effect, this forces women who wear hijabs, Sikhs who wear turbans, Jews who wear kippahs, or anyone else who wears religious symbols to choose between practicing their faith and keeping their job.

Bill 21 applies for people working in public schools, like teachers or principals, and anyone employed by the province in the justice system, like police officers, prison guards, judges and crown prosecutors. Bill 9 expands the ban on wearing religious symbols to new workplaces. This includes workers at post-secondary schools and day cares which receive funding from the Quebec government. Bill 9 also creates new restrictions not seen in previous legislation.

New restrictions imposed by Bill 9:

• Prohibition on publicly funded institutions, such as hospitals, from exclusively offering food based on “religious precept or traditions”, including halal or kosher food;
• Prohibition on dedicated prayer, or dedicated prayer spaces, in publicly funded universities during operating hours;
• Prohibition on “collective religious practice”, for example communal prayer, in public parks or roads without express approval by the municipality;
  • For a municipality to approve communal prayer, the practice must be “of short duration” and “accessible to all”, it is not clear how these criteria can be met;
• Prohibition on persons covering their faces while receiving services from a post-secondary school, educational institution, or childcare institution;
• Removal of public funding from private religious schools.

How have people reacted to the new bill?

Civil rights groups and religious communities have condemned the new bill as furthering the Quebec government’s attack on freedom of religion broadly, and on Muslim women in particular. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association condemned the bill as overriding fundamental rights and freedoms. The municipality of Cote Saint Luc worries about how the bill will affect institutions’ ability to provide kosher food to residents in the municipality’s majority Jewish neighborhoods.

Speaking to the Montreal Gazette, Stephen Brown, chief executive officer of the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), stated:

There is something broken in our society. This is sending a very clear message to minority communities and faith communities in Quebec, but also around the country: your rights don’t mean anything. Right now, speaking to many Muslim Quebecers, they feel that their Charter rights … don’t mean anything more than the paper the Charter is written on.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) expressed support for some elements of the bill, but opposition to others. CIJA welcomed the ban on communal prayer in public and the ban on face coverings in educational institutions, calling the practices instruments “used by radical Islamists to spread hatred and glorify terrorists.” However, the lobbying group was dismayed by the restriction on funding to private religious schools.

What is Quebec “Laicité”, is it the same as secularism?

Laicité is a French word which is often mistranslated into English as secularism. The anglicized word is laicity and it refers to the neutrality of the government on religious matters and the supremacy of the civil law over religious requirements in the public sphere. Quebec and France have similar histories regarding secularism and laicity, but Quebec has consistently adopted the policies later. The process of secularizing institutions began during the Napoleonic Era in France. Quebec secularized much later, only after the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s.

Laicity, on the other hand, is a distinctly 20th and 21st century ideology. France adopted laicity into their constitution in the mid-20th century and, despite earlier attempts to implement laicity into Quebec law, the 2019 passing of Bill 21 was the first true implementation of laicity in Quebec.

Laicity became a hot topic of discussion in Quebec after a 2006 ruling by the SCC. The Multani case was about whether a Sikh student could wear a kirpan, a religious dagger, to school. The court held that the student’s freedom to practice religion was violated by prohibiting him from wearing a kirpan, so long as it is in a wooden sheath and sewn securely in a cloth enclosure.

The public debate in Quebec following the Multani decision led to the enactment of Bill 21 in 2019.

Why is the Bill 21 case so significant?

The SCC heard the Bill 21 case one week before the provincial legislature passed Bill 9. The high court will decide on the constitutionality of Bill 21 later this year. We know that the decision will come in 2026 as one of the justices who heard the case is retiring in May, she has 6 months to write decisions after her retirement.

Central to the Bill 21 case are Sections 2(a), 15, and 28 of the Charter. Section 2(a) provides the right to freedom of conscience and religion. Section 15 enshrines equality rights on enumerated grounds including religion and sex. Section 28 guarantees equal protection under the Charter to men and women.

Bill 21 and Bill 9 both prima facie violate the freedom of religion and equality rights given the disproportionate impact on Muslim women who wear hijab. Despite this violation, the two bills are saved by Section 33, the “notwithstanding clause”, of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. When the notwithstanding clause is invoked, it prevents a court from declaring that legislation covered by it is “of no force or effect”.

Section 33 allows a provincial or federal government to enact legislation which violates Charter rights for periods of five years, with the possibility of indefinite renewal. The five-year period ensures that any government who invokes the notwithstanding clause must face an election. When the Charter was first enacted in 1982, it was believed that the notwithstanding clause would be used rarely and would upset the public when invoked. While the federal government has never invoked it, provincial governments have been using it more and more frequently in recent years.

Section 33 applies to certain sections of the Charter. Section 2(a) and 15 are both subject to the notwithstanding clause allowing governments to temporarily override these rights. Section 28 however, is not subject to the notwithstanding clause. Bill 21, and the new Bill 9, have a particularly adverse impact on Muslim women. Intervenors in the Bill 21 case, like the Muslim Advisory Council of Canada, have raised that given the adverse impacts on Muslim women in particular the Quebec government’s use of the notwithstanding clause should fail on Section 28 grounds.

The Bill 21 hearing is so impactful because the SCC has been hesitant to interpret Section 33. The SCC has only once interpreted the notwithstanding clause, that was in the 1988 Ford v Quebec decision when the SCC decided that Section 33 could not be applied retroactively.

What’s next?

While the SCC works on writing a decision about whether or not Bill 21 is constitutional, the government of Quebec has enacted a new law which restricts religious freedom even further than that same bill under debate. Even if the SCC declares Bill 21 of no force or effect, we do not know how this could impact the recently enacted Bill 9.

The governing party of Quebec, the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ), elected a new leader on Sunday, Christine Fréchette, who is set to be sworn in as premier this Wednesday. Despite leaving the Parti Québécois over disagreement with their Charter of Values, Fréchette has said that she will not touch the CAQ’s similar policy of laicity. While it is unlikely that the CAQ will undo their most recent legislation, the province is also scheduled for an election no later than on October 5, 2026. The CAQ is behind in the polls, and unlikely to win the next election. The religious symbols ban is sure to be a hotly debated topic in the upcoming election, and presents an opportunity outside of litigation to revoke the limitation these bills impose on religious expression.