Legault’s proposed ban on public prayer is miles off-target: Selley

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Fourteen months after Hamas’s October 7 pogrom in southern Israel, many Quebecers share with many other Canadians a weariness — if not stronger emotions — over anti-Israel protesters blocking streets, bellowing through megaphones, and harassing Jewish businesses and neighbourhoods. Some of us, for various reasons, are particularly put-off by the sight of the protesters kneeling in prayer in the streets en masse.

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The Quebec government and its counterparts in the Rest of Canada do not, thank goodness, share a proposed solution: Premier François Legault says he wants to ban all forms of public worship. Because people won’t get off the bloody road.

“I think we have to make the difference between public places and praying in a church or a mosque,” Legault said. “You should pray in a place that’s for praying, but in public parks or public streets … we’ll look at what we can do, but that’s not what we want.”

This, he said, would “send a clear message to Islamists,” namely, that “we will fight for the fundamental values we have in Quebec, like the equality of men and women. We will never accept that people don’t respect these values.”

The triggering event here wasn’t actually the anti-Israel protests, but rather further revelations — this time in La Presse — that certain Montreal schools have essentially been taken over by Arab Muslims. Sources told the newspaper that students pray during class time, including with teachers; that teachers speak Arabic to each other; that kids aren’t punished for being late after attending Friday prayers. A presentation about sexually transmitted infections and sexual consent allegedly went off the rails with students “throwing firecrackers, shouting (and) setting off alarms.” Homophobia is allegedly rampant and freely expressed.

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No other provincial premier would ever propose banning public prayer. It would be flamboyantly unconstitutional without use of the Charter’s notwithstanding clause, which Legault has said he’s willing to use yet again in this regard. But in a way it’s a very Canadian solution. When certain laws aren’t enforced, our politicians have this quite irritating habit of making new, more specific laws that aren’t intrinsically any more likely to be enforced than the ones on the books.

Right now, the rules of engagement in most Canadian cities call for de-escalation above all else. We’re well past that point, I think

The classic example might have been during the 2019 CN rail blockade near Kingston, Ont. Blocking a rail line is already illegal. A judge issued an injunction demanding the blockade be cleared. Police ignored it. The federal Conservatives proposed a new law that would ban blocking critical infrastructure, even without a court injunction. There was no reason at all to think the police would have enforced the new law, either.

That law, at least, would have targeted the actual villains. Legault’s secularism-related proposals rarely do. Quebec banned all forms of prayer in public schools last year — even individually, in a dedicated space, out of sight of others. Clearly it’s not being universally respected — and nor are existing laws against blocking streets and impeding access to public buildings being enforced.

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So now … people can’t pray in parks? Ridiculous. None of this has anything whatsoever to do with one or two people (of any faith) praying unobtrusively in a public place, or a chaplain’s prayer at a Remembrance Day commemoration, or a menorah-lighting ceremony. And mass prayer that blocks streets for the Palestinian cause (or any other) has nothing to do with five students praying out of sight in a classroom at lunchtime.

Generally speaking, with some notable exceptions, the Rest of Canada isn’t so jittery about private prayer in public schools. But a lot of us are well sick of those same anti-Israel protests, appalled that Canadian Jews feel threatened in their own country, all because of a conflict that no one in this country has any power to affect in any meaningful way. If we want to get serious about it, let’s actually get serious about it — not with new laws but with the ones we have.

We have laws against blocking streets. We have laws against excessive noise. We have laws against impeding our fellow citizens’ lawful daily business. Right now, the rules of engagement in most Canadian cities call for de-escalation above all else, and that’s defensible up to a point. We’re well past that point, I think, and the police do, after all, work for us. No one’s fundamental freedoms need be sacrificed when we finally say enough is enough — not freedom of speech, not freedom of assembly, and certainly not freedom of religion.

National Post
cselley@postmedia.com

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