May 8, 2026

Unconstitutional prayers in New Brunswick municipal council meetings

In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that opening a municipal council meeting with a prayer was an unconstitutional breach of the state’s duty of religious neutrality. Despite this precedent, over a decade later, there are still examples of local councils flouting the law.

As part of the ongoing Saguenay Project, here we report on our audit of practices in New Brunswick municipalities with populations over 1,000. Through careful examination of council proceedings, we quantify religious and secular practices, documenting inaugural and regular meetings for evidence of prayer and other religious elements, as well as secular moments and indigenous content.

In particular, we note several examples of “stealth prayer” in New Brunswick municipalities, where crafty councillors seemingly attempt to find loopholes in the judicial rulings by merely dropping the “god” from well-established Christian prayers.

Overall, this report provides a comprehensive review of the impact of the Saguenay decision on municipal prayer practices in New Brunswick, offering valuable insights for policymakers, legal scholars, and community stakeholders concerned with religious neutrality and inclusivity in public governance.

The following table summarizes our findings, showing the number of municipalities that met our criteria and that we found data for; and how many of those meetings included prayers, secular practices, and/or Indigenous content.