QUEBEC — The Quebec government has opened an investigation into another incident of religion reappearing in a public elementary school, with Education Minister Bernard Drainville saying Quebec will not turn a blind eye to the fresh allegations.
One day after suspending the teaching licences of 11 teachers at the Bedford elementary school in Côte-des-Neiges over allegations of violations on Quebec’s state neutrality laws, Drainville said he was troubled to hear about another case.
Cogeco Nouvelles Wednesday reported that the Maghreb parents of an 11 year-old-boy had decided to withdraw their son from the Alphonse-Pesant school in St-Léonard out of fear a teacher would try to indoctrinate him into the Muslim faith.
The parents told the radio network they did not want their son to be subject to the teaching and even feared for the safety of their child.
“This information is certainly very worrying,” Drainville told reporters reading a prepared statement on his way out of a cabinet meeting. “If these reports are confirmed, this information certainly does not respect the kind of values that want our schools to be teaching.
“I take this story very seriously. We are already in touch with the school service centre. I’m expecting the Pointe-de-l’Île service centre to shed light on this information quickly.
“If, once the verification has been brought to fruition, if these events are confirmed, you can be sure decisions will be made. I’m not going to let this go on without a very firm and determined response.”
According to the Cogeco report, which does not name the individuals, the incident started Sept. 11 when the teacher presented her teaching plan for the year to three sets of parents, all Muslim.
“She gathered us together and started to talk to us in Arabic and I will quote what she told us, which we translated,” the parent told Cogeco. “She said ‘I have come far away to be with our community and to be with Muslim children to share with them Islamic religious values in class.
“‘As Ramadan is not far, I did not call in Quebec children because I cannot share my Islamic values with them. I am talking to Maghreb children because they are better educated.’”
The story says the parents did not inform the administrators of the school off the top because they wanted to observe the teacher’s actions.
They observed (and recorded) scenes where the teacher is seen separating the boys from the girls, in the classroom and in the schoolyard.
When the parents did speak to the principal of the school, they were told the teacher had seven years of experience teaching in the school and there was nothing they could do.
The parents later took their complaint higher to the school service centre, where the suggestion was that the parents change schools.
Late Wednesday, the Pointe-de-l’Île service centre issued a response to the report.
“No complaint has been filed regarding this teacher on the part of parents or personnel,” service centre spokesperson Valérie Biron said in a statement. “Additional verifications are underway to rapidly shed light on the situation.”
But the new development comes as the question of religious neutrality in the education system roared back to life at the legislature following a series of government reports on the status of Bedford elementary school in Cote-des-Neiges, part of the Centre de services scolaire de Montréal.
Besides Bedford, government investigators are probing the situation in three other schools in Montreal that are also beset with allegations of religion entering the classroom.
In the afternoon, MNAs launched into a debate over a Parti Québécois sponsored motion calling on the government to step up its laicity measures, including entrenching it as a principle of Quebec’s Education Act.
The motion also includes a clause asking the government to put an end to public financing of private religious schools.
The opposition parties have argued this week that the financing of these schools — 50 of them share a total of $160 million a year — runs contrary to Quebec’s state secularism values.
While the PQ’s motion to end financing had the support of Québec solidaire, the Liberals initially were expected to stick to their traditional view that such subsidies were legitimate.
But in a political flip-flop during the debate, Liberal MNA Marwah Rizqy announced the Liberals are shifting gears and now will support the PQ motion ending public finds in private religious schools.
“I can’t turn a blind eye to what is also happening in private schools,” Rizqy told the house. “We cannot condone this here today solely because it was part of compromise of the time (when Quebec opted to deconfessionalize its school system).
“We in the Liberal party of Quebec are now of the opinion we should stop financing religious schools.”
The decision means the Coalition Avenir Québec is the only party in the legislature still supporting the subsidies.
The debate ended shortly after 5 p.m. with MNAs deciding to delay the vote on the PQ motion until Thursday.