(CBC) The Quebec government wants to place limits on praying in public and extend a ban on wearing religious symbols to daycare workers as part of a sweeping new secularism bill tabled Thursday.
Bill 9, titled An Act Respecting the Reinforcement of Laicity in Quebec, sets out to build on two previous secularism laws passed under Premier François Legault.
Jean-François Roberge, Quebec’s minister responsible for secularism, said the bill is part of the government’s longstanding goal of ensuring the “religious neutrality of the state” and “equality for all citizens.”
“We think that when the state is neutral, Quebecers are free,” Roberge said at a news conference Thursday. Roberge rejected a suggestion from a reporter that religious minorities were unfairly targeted with Bill 9.
