To mark Religious Neutrality Day, the BC Humanist Association has released a report offering a critical analysis of the state of laicity in Quebec.
Lost in Translation: From Laicity to True Religious Neutrality responds to fifty recommendations issued by Quebec’s Comité d’étude sur le respect des principes de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État in 2025. While the BCHA applauds measures to dismantle institutional religious privilege, it warns that other proposals risk undermining fundamental human rights in the name of "appearance."
The report was co-authored by BCHA Executive Director Ian Bushfield, Research Coordinator Dr Teale Phelps Bondaroff and board members Therese Boullard and Adam Highway. Three of four authors are bilingual and were able to review the committee's report in its original French.
The BCHA strongly supports many of the report's recommendations including:
- Clearly defining the separation of church and state
- Phasing out religious tax privileges and subsidies
- Ending government funding for religious schools
- Protecting sexual health education
- Ending funding of anti-choice groups
On the other hand, the authors are critical of recommendations that infringe individual religious freedom and expression, including:
- Expanding the religious symbols ban
- Watering down the duty to accommodate
- Regulating collective religious demonstrations
Some of these latter recommendations have recently been passed into law with Bill 9.
Fundamentally, the report argues these assaults on individual freedoms undermine the promise of secularism and the government's duty of religious neutrality. It therefore draws a sharp distinction between Quebec's approach to laicity and the duty of religious neutrality or secularism.
Under laicity, we see the Government attempt to claim neutrality even as it actively intervenes in its citizens' personal expression.
Religious Neutrality Day marks the anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark 2015 MLQ v Saguenay ruling, which established that the state has a duty to neither favor nor hinder any particular belief system. The BCHA continues to advocate for an inclusive secularism that limits the power of the government rather than the people.
An initial draft of this press release was written with the assistance of Google Gemini. The final version was edited by humans.