Quebec will continue to subsidize religious schools

Photo: Adil Boukind Le Devoir Québec a renouvelé jusqu’en 2025 le permis de l’école juive ultraorthodoxe Belz, et ce, malgré un avis défavorable de ses propres conseillers.

François Legault’s government will sanction private schools — denominational or not — that violate the Quebec Educational Regulations, Education Minister Bernard Drainville said Thursday. However, public funding for religious institutions is not at stake.

As a general rule, Quebec will maintain the subsidies it grants annually to private educational institutions with a denominational vocation. This is even if it is considering strengthening the scope of secularism in the school system. The Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) government reiterated this position Thursday by opposing the adoption of a motion by the Parti Québécois (PQ).

Tabled in the wake of the Bedford public school controversy in Montreal, the PQ text proposed in particular “strengthening the State Secularism Act” and “enshrining the principle of secularism in the Education Act.” It also brought forward a historic demand of the PQ: the immediate cessation of subsidies to religious schools. This is the main reason why the CAQ rejected it.

“Our conviction is that there is no problem with the vast majority [of private religious schools],” Minister Bernard Drainville said Thursday to justify his government’s decision. “Verifications” will still be carried out to ensure that “all schools in Quebec [provide] the content of the Educational Regime,” the elected official said. And sanctions up to and including the withdrawal of subsidies could be imposed.

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“It takes gestures of consistency”

Like the PQ, the Quebec Liberal Party and Québec solidaire are each calling for an end to public funding of religious schools. According to calculations by PQ MNA Pascal Bérubé, these establishments are subsidized by the Ministry of Education to the tune of approximately $160 million per year.

In the morning, the elected representative from Matane-Matapédia had urged the government to support his motion. “In a Quebec that has had many debates on secularism, that has adopted a law on secularism, now, we need consistent gestures,” he said.

Later in the morning, his Solidarity colleague Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois added to the issue, recalling from the Salon Rouge that Premier François Legault—then PQ Minister of Education—had himself passed a law in June 2000 repealing the denominational status of public schools. “Why does the Premier refuse to complete his own work??” he asked.

Quebec does not have a list of schools with denominational status in its territory. However, a quick review shows that at least twenty subsidized private schools in Quebec explicitly state their religious nature on public platforms—the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) website, for example.

In Montreal, for example, the Jewish school Talmud Torah Unis, which received nearly $4 million in grants for the 2022-2023 school year, writes online that its mission is “to inspire academic excellence and prepare our students to become leaders, firmly committed to Jewish values, traditions and Israel.” Regina Assumpta College, funded to the tune of $11.8 million that same year, offers “Christian teaching and education,” it maintains on ARC platforms.

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Legault defends his decision

In the House on Thursday, François Legault asked to obtain proof of religious schools violating the ministry's educational program.

Citing establishments such as the Notre-Dame, Brébeuf and François-de-Laval colleges — schools “created by members of the clergy, among others,” but which later became secularized — he defended public funding of the private education network. “In our opinion, there are no problems in these schools,” he said.

Across the Red Room, Mr. Nadeau-Dubois pointed out to him that several private religious schools still stubbornly refuse to apply the Quebec educational program. Loyola High School, for example, went all the way to the Supreme Court in 2015 to avoid having to offer the ethics and religious culture course.

This year, Quebec also renewed the permit of the Belz Jewish community school in Outremont, even though it had flouted health guidelines during the pandemic and does not comply with the Basic School Regulations. In 2022-2023, Belz received more than $5.3 million in subsidies from the Quebec government.