First Reading is a daily newsletter keeping you posted on the travails of Canadian politicos, all curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.
TOP STORY
Just before a weekend that saw anti-Israel marchers holding Islamic prayers in front of Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica, Quebec Premier François Legault announced that this province will “fight” Islamism.
“I want to convey a very clear message to the Islamists. The fundamental values we have in Quebec, like secularism, like equality between men and women, we will fight for them, and we will never, ever accept people disrespecting those fundamental values,” Legault saidFriday during a year-end press conference closing out the current session of the National Assembly.
The speech occurred amidst multiple allegations that Quebec schools have been infiltrated by Islamist teachers and ideas.
In October, 11 teachers were suspended from Montreal’s Bedford elementary school in the wake of a Quebec Ministry of Education report finding that the 11 comprised a “dominant clan” that had intimidated staff and students and sought to undermine administrators.
As per the report, girls were forbidden from playing soccer, and select subjects – such as science, religion and sex education – were barely taught at all. At the time, Legault characterized it as an “attempt by a group of teachers to introduce Islamist religious concepts into a public school.”
More recently, École St-Maxime in Laval was the subject of a La Presse report alleging that the school was hosting Islamic prayers in class and holding Arabic-language lessons.
“Students who pray in classrooms during courses in the presence of teachers? Corridors being used as prayer areas. Classes on sexuality where students are heckled or where people set off firecrackers or the fire alarm?” Education Minister Bernard Drainville said at a Friday press conference, where he urged others within the school system to report similar violations of laïcité – a word roughly translated as “secularism.”
Added Drainville, “This is not our Quebec, this is not our Quebec.”
Earlier this month, Quebec also announced investigations against two English-language CEGEPs (junior colleges) that have been accused of failing to rein in anti-Zionist forces on campus.
Pascale Déry, Quebec’s higher education minister, told Radio-Canada last week that at both Vanier College and Dawson College, there are “students that refuse to go to school or fear for their safety.”
Dawson College, in particular, suspended classes on Nov. 21 in line with an anti-Israel student walkout that would see post-secondary campuses across Montreal packed with demonstrators blocking corridors, interrupting classes and vandalizing school property.
“The Government of Quebec will not tolerate Middle East conflicts being imported to Quebec,” Legault said in a Dec. 3 statement commenting on the probe into Dawson and Vanier colleges.
In his Friday year-end speech, Legault announced plans to seek a province-wide ban on public prayers – and to potentially invoke the notwithstanding clause to do so.
“To see people, on their knees, in the street, praying … we have to ask ourselves the question. I don’t think it’s something we should see,” he said from behind a lectern, reading, “Protect our economy. Protect our identity.”
As Montreal has been hit by regular anti-Israel demonstrations over the last 14 months, they have frequently featured scenes of mass Islamic prayers conducted in parks or even on blockaded streets.
As far back as October 2023 – just one month after the October 7 massacres – radical imam Adil Charkaoui was leading a Montreal crowd in prayer for the death of the “Zionist aggressors.” “Allah, count every one of them, and kill them all, and do not exempt even one of them,” he said from a balcony.
On Sunday – just two days after Legault’s speech – several dozen demonstrators convened by the anti-Israel group Montreal4Palestine conducted an Islamic public prayer outside Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica in Arabic.
“O Allah, besiege those who besieged Gaza, O Allah, whoever opposes the people of Gaza and the Muslims, oppose them … O Allah, whoever betrays Gaza, abandon him,” reads a translation of the prayer prepared by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.
IN OTHER NEWS
In the wake of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump threatening ruinous tariffs if Canada doesn’t step up its border security, Manitoba has become the second province to announce plans to unilaterally step up its border security rather than wait on the feds to do it. Premier Wab Kinew said last week that Manitoba conservation officers – who are usually tasked with finding poachers and investigating wildfires – will now to be asked to act as “additional eyes and ears” at the U.S. border. This follows on Alberta pledging to patrol its border with sheriffs.
A new Ontario war memorial has accidentally included the names of several Canadian Armed Forces veterans who are still alive. The Highway of Heroes Tree Campaign planted 2.5 million trees along Highway 401, and included a bronze sculpture honouring “heroic Canadian Armed Forces members who paid the ultimate sacrifice.” One of them was Helene Le Scelleur, a retired Canadian Army captain who told CTV, “I am here, I am alive.”
Get all of these insights and more into your inbox by signing up for the First Reading newsletter here.