Un droit acquis élargi pour le port de signes religieux dans les écoles

2026/04/21 Leave a comment

Of note, even if small change. But the impact on a number of employees being let go is being reported on:

L’adoption du projet de loi 94 visant à renforcer la laïcité dans le réseau scolaire aura-t-elle fait plus de peur que de mal dans les écoles de la province ? Un récent élargissement de l’accès au droit acquis de porter un signe religieux dont bénéficient les employés embauchés avant le 20 mars 2025 a fait pousser un soupir de soulagement à plusieurs, a constaté Le Devoir. Des centaines de congédiements demeurent tout de même à prévoir dans la grande région de Montréal.

L’adoption du projet de loi 94, le 30 octobre dernier, a semé l’émoi dans le réseau scolaire en laissant présager, en particulier dans la région métropolitaine, une vague de congédiements d’employés refusant de retirer leur signe religieux pour pouvoir garder leur emploi. « Au moins 500 emplois » étaient menacés uniquement dans la métropole, affirmait ainsi en février dernier la présidente de l’Association montréalaise des directions d’établissement scolaire, Kathleen Legault.

Appréhendant des répercussions majeures sur les services offerts aux élèves, des centres de services scolaires (CSS) ont réclamé des précisions au ministère de l’Éducation sur le droit acquis accordé dans la loi aux employés embauchés avant le 20 mars 2025. La loi, telle qu’adoptée l’automne dernier, prévoyait que tout employé admissible à ce droit acquis perdrait celui-ci au moment où il changerait de fonction. Ce qui laissait présager d’importants départs d’employés, notamment parmi le personnel de soutien scolaire et professionnel.

Le 18 mars dernier, cependant, la sous-ministre de l’Éducation, Carole Arav, a fait parvenir aux directions générales des CSS de la province un document apportant des précisions sur l’application de la clause de droits acquis inscrite dans cette loi, qui est venue élargir l’interdiction du port de signes religieux à l’ensemble du personnel scolaire.

La lettre, que Le Devoir a pu consulter, mentionne ainsi qu’une « fonction » ne doit pas se limiter à une classification administrative rigide, mais plutôt être définie par les responsabilités d’un employé. Ce dernier conserve donc son droit acquis s’il change de poste ou obtient une promotion, dans la mesure où ses tâches sont « substantiellement similaires ou analogues » à celles qu’il occupait auparavant, indique le document.

Résultat : des CSS de la province ont défini des regroupements de fonctions assez vastes, qui permettent, par exemple, à une surveillante d’élèves devenue éducatrice en service de garde ou encore préposée aux élèves handicapés dans les derniers mois de conserver son signe religieux. L’effet de cette loi sur le départ de personnel sera donc « beaucoup moins grand » que prévu, soupire, soulagée, Kathleen Legault.

Source: Un droit acquis élargi pour le port de signes religieux dans les écoles

Will the passage of Bill 94 to strengthen secularism in the school network have caused more fear than harm in the schools of the province? A recent expansion of access to the acquired right to wear a religious sign enjoyed by employees hired before March 20, 2025 has caused many to breathe a sigh of relief, Le Devoir said. Hundreds of layoffs are still to be expected in the greater Montreal area.

The adoption of Bill 94, on October 30, sowed a stir in the school network by suggesting, especially in the metropolitan area, a wave of layoffs of employees refusing to withdraw their religious sign in order to keep their jobs. “At least 500 jobs” were threatened only in the metropolis, said last February the president of the Montreal Association of School Directors, Kathleen Legault.

Apprehensive of the major repercussions on the services offered to students, school service centres (SSCs) have requested clarification from the Ministry of Education on the acquired right granted in the law to employees hired before March 20, 2025. The law, as adopted last fall, provided that any employee eligible for this acquired right would lose the right when he changed his position. This suggested significant employee departures, especially among academic and professional support staff.

On March 18, however, the Deputy Minister of Education, Carole Arav, sent to the general directorates of the CSS of the province a document providing details on the application of the acquired rights clause inscribed in this law, which extended the ban on the wearing of religious signs to all school staff.

The letter, which Le Devoir was able to consult, thus mentions that a “function” should not be limited to a rigid administrative classification, but rather be defined by the responsibilities of an employee. The latter therefore retains his acquired right if he changes position or obtains a promotion, to the extent that his tasks are “substantially similar or analogous” to those he previously held, the document indicates.

Result: CSS in the province have defined fairly extensive groupings of functions, which allow, for example, a student supervisor who has become a daycare educator or a disabled student attendant in recent months to maintain her religious sign. The effect of this law on the departure of staff will therefore be “much smaller” than expected, sighs, relieved, Kathleen Legault.

Filed under Laïcité, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

Jamie Sarkonak: The Liberal state always wins

2026/04/20 Leave a comment

Arguing for purges and inspired by Orban and Trump. Countering one set of excesses by a reverse set of excesses not helpful:

…It can be overcome, but that starts close to home, with provincial governments actively taking back what is rightfully theirs and installing onside allies — not thoughtless centrist donors who fear alienation from their Liberal-voting friends more than they want to win. It takes a careful and concerted effort to take back professional schools, not by defunding them, but by funding academic chairs to break the monoculture, provide role models to onside students, and provide alternative experts to lean on during contentious policy debates. The federal party can’t do much of this, but it can certainly build relationships with onside provinces to make it happen — or hammer them for failing to live up to their responsibility.

It means firing every activist and replacing every Liberal appointee at the top of any public department, every member of a public board, and abolishing those that exist only to prop up Liberal ideology. That means abandoning gender and anti-racism initiatives, something that even Alberta and Ontario struggle to do.

At this point, defund-everything libertarianism is a gambling strategy: it puts all the movement’s eggs into the basket that is the party’s election platform, and takes a crisis in the Liberal party to have any viability at all. In the off-chance it does result in victory, it is incapable of perpetuating itself.

Aimless tax and budget cuts don’t build movements or develop the careers of up-and-comers; they actually impede your future performance by depriving you of the necessary pipeline of manpower required to run complex institutions for years to come. “Just go to the private sector” doesn’t work, by the way, when the major corporations and companies have some kind of Liberal dependency, which is true for all the major consulting firms, law firms, pipeline companies and banks.

The wisdom that institutional control is the easy path to victory was internalized by the Liberals long ago. It’s time Conservatives started thinking the same way. It won’t deliver overnight, but that’s what it’s going to take to build a machine that can win in the absence of a catastrophic Liberal mistake. Anything less is just rolling the dice.

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: The Liberal state always wins

The right should not shy away from doing this when they regain power, which is hopefully a matter of when, not if. A government that refuses to stack the deck with its own people is effectively subsidizing a sort of Viet Cong within the state it supposedly heads. As the Americans learned painfully in the Vietnam War, merely shrinking the size of the Viet Cong with napalm did not eliminate the threat. Familiar or friendly and trusted people can be empowered a great deal within the bounds of the law.

Allies should be rewarded, and parallel institutions should supplant or compete with those that already exist. For example, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper made the mistake of not doing more to support the Sun News Network, which might have blossomed into a true conservative institution in the private sector.

§source: Geoff Russ: Orbán gave Conservatives a blueprint for capturing institutions

Filed under DEI, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Montreal’s largest school service centre loses more than 100 support staff due to new secularism law

2026/04/20 Leave a comment

Not surprising:

Montreal’s largest school board has lost more than 100 support staff because they refused to remove religious symbols to comply with the province’s new secularism law. 

The law, known as Bill 94, expanded a ban on wearing religious symbols, like crosses and hijabs, to include support staff workers in schools — lunchroom monitors and special education technicians, for example. 

Several school service centres told Radio-Canada in February that dozens of staff had already been fired, suspended or decided to resign because of Bill 94. 

Now, the Centre de services scolaire de Montréal (CSSDM), says it, too, has had to let staff go. 

A spokesperson for the CSSDM told Radio-Canada that the service centre had recently informed staff members that they were at risk of losing their jobs if they didn’t remove a religious symbol to comply with the new law. 

Many decided to comply with the law, according to the spokesperson — meaning that they agreed to remove a religious symbol. 

But approximately 150 did not….

Source: Montreal’s largest school service centre loses more than 100 support staff due to new secularism law

Filed under Laïcité, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

2025 Staffing and Non-Partisanship Survey

2026/04/20 Leave a comment

Ironic timing, released at the same time as the Fox ethics scandal:

…Fairness

In 2025, more than three quarters (76%) of employees agreed that the process of selecting a person for a position is done fairly, consistent with 2023 (77%).

Employees who perceived the selection process as unfair were asked to describe how. The main reasons cited were a perception that appointments in their work unit are not transparent, that they are based on “who you know” and that some appointees have benefitted from nepotism or favoritism.

Expanding on the perceptions of fairness in staffing processes, a new question on non-advertised appointments was introduced in 2025. Overall, 71% of employees agreed that non-advertised appointments are done fairly. The main reasons cited by respondents who perceived non-advertised appointments as unfair were that non-advertised appointments depend on who you know (74%) and that they are not transparent (70%).

Statements related to fairness20232025
Process of selecting a person for a position is done fairly77%76%
Non-advertised appointments are done fairlyn/a71%
Reasons2025
Non-advertised appointments depend on who you know74%
Non-advertised appointments are not transparent70%
Non-advertised appointments are not based on merit48%
Non-advertised appointments are never fair30%
Non-advertised appointments are not inclusive28%
Other12%

Employment equity and equity-seeking groups’ perceptions on fairness

With the exception of women, all employment equity groups expressed less positive perceptions than their respective comparator groups.

Employees identifying as two-spirit and intersex had less positive perceptions of both statements related to fairness compared to all other identities

Employees identifying as another gender had the least positive perceptions of fairness in the staffing process of all groups

Members of visible minorities, Indigenous Peoples and persons with disabilities had less positive perceptions of fairness in the staffing process than their respective comparator groups

Members of religious communities had less positive perceptions of fairness in the staffing process compared with employees who are not members of religious communities

Employees who are separated, divorced or widowed had less positive perceptions of fairness in the staffing process compared with employees who are married, living common-law or single

Employees identifying as asexual and pansexual had less positive perceptions of fairness compared with all other sexual orientations

Source: 2025 Staffing and Non-Partisanship Survey

Filed under Multiculturalism, Government, DEI Tagged with , , , ,

Canada is overhauling its signature skilled immigration system. Here’s what is changing

2026/04/15 Leave a comment

Good overview with some of the usual worries about impacts:

Canada is proposing a sweeping overhaul of its skilled immigration system that would include prioritizing higher wages and lucrative job offers when it comes to deciding who gets invited for permanent residence in this country.

Among the proposed changes to the country’s signature “point system” for economic immigrants are factoring in wages and earning potential; offering an edge for those with a job offer in high-wage occupations; and downplaying the need for a Canadian education.

The reforms, currently undergoing public consultation, have created a buzz among experts and critics, some concerned about the use of wages to assess prospective permanent residents and their impacts on local communities where low-wage, low-skilled jobs are also unfilled.

“In the absence of strong pay equity and in the absence of strong employment equity, we know that women and racialized groups still earn less,” said Naomi Alboim, a senior policy fellow at Toronto Metropolitan University specializing in immigration. “If you’re doing it on what their wages were, you’re building potential inequity into the system.”  

…TMU’s Alboim said it’s hard to assess the impacts of these changes to economic immigration without knowing Ottawa’s plan with the provincial immigration nominee program and other regional immigration streams that are meant to meet local economic and demographic needs.

Immigrants who tend to leave are those who are highly skilled because they are in demand everywhere, and removing points for family ties in Canada may further erode their incentive to come and stay here, she noted….

Source: Canada is overhauling its signature skilled immigration system. Here’s what is changing

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Dimitri Soudas: The secular state we’ve forgotten

2026/04/14 2 Comments

Largely a lost “battle” outside of Quebec but valid reasons to limit some of these accommodationsL

…But freedom of religion has two sides to it — and we have become dangerously comfortable with only one of them.

A secular state means that the state does not favour one religion over another. It also means that the state does not allow religion — any religion — to colonize public institutions funded by the common purse. A school funded by taxpayers is not a cathedral, a mosque, a synagogue, or a temple. It is a public institution, bound by a civic compact: to educate every child, regardless of background, to the best of its ability, for the maximum number of instructional days possible.

Prayer rooms in public schools are a violation of that compact. Not because prayer is wrong. But because prayer belongs in the home, in the house of worship, in the private sphere that a free society zealously protects. When we install prayer rooms in schools, we are not being inclusive — we are blurring a boundary that exists precisely to protect everyone equally, including the believers. The moment the state endorses one form of worship through the infrastructure of a public building, it has taken a side. And the secular state has no business taking sides on matters of faith.

The same logic applies to diamond days. If a school board is scheduling days off to mark religious observances — and doing so more frequently than it schedules days for teacher training — it has drifted far from its mandate. The mandate is education. The mandate is to provide every child in that school with the maximum number of quality instructional hours the calendar allows. Parents who wish their children to observe specific religious holidays have every right to do so. They also have options: religious schools, private schools, charter schools.

The public system should not be bending its calendar to accommodate the liturgical schedules of any faith — including mine.

I say this as someone who will be in church on Sunday, deeply grateful for the freedom to be there. That freedom is real. It is precious. It was won at great cost. But it ends at the doors of public institutions — and that is not a limitation on freedom. That is the very architecture of freedom.

Canada is not a collection of solitudes pressed together in geographic proximity. It is, or aspires to be, a civic nation — a country where what binds us is not ethnicity, not religion, not heritage, but a shared commitment to certain principles. Chief among them: equality before the law, and equality before public institutions.

If we allow those institutions to fragment along religious and cultural lines — accommodating some, ignoring others, pleasing everyone a little and no one fully — we do not end up with a more inclusive country. We end up with a weaker one. A country where the child who shows up to write a test on Greek Orthodox Easter is told there are no exceptions, while the school itself has prayer rooms and religious days baked into its calendar.

That contradiction should bother all of us.

Secularism is not the enemy of faith. It is faith’s greatest protector. It is the guarantee that no religion may dominate the public square — and therefore, that every religion remains free in the private one.

That is why I believe the answer is not complicated, even if it is uncomfortable to say. Public schools should close on statutory holidays — the ones enshrined in law and shared by all citizens. They should schedule PA days as their operational needs require. That is the extent of their calendar obligations to any creed. And there should be no prayer rooms within their walls. Not because faith is unwelcome in the lives of students, but because a public school building is not the place where the state should be making space for worship, any worship. The classroom is not a chapel. The hallway is not a corridor to the divine. Students who need to pray may do so privately, as students have always done, and as the Charter fully protects. But the institution itself must remain neutral ground.

We would do well to remember that.

Source: Dimitri Soudas: The secular state we’ve forgotten

Filed under Laïcité, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with

HESA: Boycotts and Antisemitism

2026/04/14 Leave a comment

    Reasonable call for firm set of principles that reduce the risk of double standards:

    …So, here’s where I want to divert a bit to get back to the issue of Israel’s actions since late 2023 because I think they change the context for the “what about actions of other regimes” argument. October 7, 2023, was of course a terrible atrocity and there were few who thought that Israel did not have some kind of right of response. Equally, however, few would suggest that a response which involved killing twice as many as lost their lives on that day every month for the next 30 months is a proportional one. The actions of the Government of Israel since the events of October 7, 2023 – which was, let us all agree, a terrible atrocity – have been inexcusable. You may not be OK with use of the term “genocide” for what has happened in Gaza and more recently South Lebanon (and the term genocide often seems too elastic to be useful), but when a former Likud prime minister feels comfortable describing Israel’s actions as war crimes, it suggests that there is a degree of inhumanity involved in Israeli policy that can’t dismissed as the ravings of antisemites. 

    Back to McGill and the issue of how to create boycott policy. What if the LSA had used language such as “this institution should boycott universities in any countries whose current regimes are in front of the International Court of Justice for War crimes or crimes against humanity” (at present, I believe that would yield a list of Israel, Russia, Myanmar, and Iran, which doesn’t sound so bad to me). Would a referendum like this still have passed: or might it perhaps have passed with a bigger margin? Would it still be considered antisemitic?

    My guess is no. Obviously, there are some that will simply always hold that criticism of Israel = antisemitism, but that’s, as I have been arguing, an untenable syllogism that should be beneath any serious academic or group of academics. But a firm set of principles, which take concerns about double-standards seriously, would have a similar effect on institutional posture towards Israel while avoiding the trap of appearing hypocritical. Perhaps all parties in Canadian universities could think about the value of such an approach rather than getting involved in unnecessary and unseemly slanging matches about “antisemitism”.

    Here’s hoping, anyway.

    Source: Boycotts and Antisemitism

    Filed under Antisemitism Tagged with , , ,

    NDP’s Leah Gazan calls MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ critics ‘bigots’

    2026/04/13 Leave a comment

    Understandably mocked for a ridiculously long acronym that throws everything in. Time for plain language rather than this alphabet soup:

    NDP MP Leah Gazan is standing by her use of the initialism MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ and denouncing those who are mocking her online for using the term.

    A clip of the Winnipeg Centre MP saying “the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+” during a news conference in Ottawa went viral this week and sparked backlash, including insults from Elon Musk and U.S. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

    “Bigots are bigots,” Gazan told CBC News in response.

    “I certainly am really happy that bigots are offended by my positions around equality. What I am concerned about and certainly motivated — continue to be motivated about — is ending systemic racism in this country.”

    MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ stands for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual+. It’s derived in part from the more commonly used initialisms MMIWG (missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls) and 2SLGBTQ+.

    Gazan calls the pushback a distraction from the continued violence facing Indigenous women and girls, two-spirit and gender diverse people, along with federal funding cuts to programming aimed at prevention.

    “My concern is the fact that Prime Minister [Mark] Carney has gutted funding to deal with something that was recognized as a Canada-wide emergency in the House of Commons unanimously across party lines,” Gazan said. …

    Source: NDP’s Leah Gazan calls MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ critics ‘bigots’

    Filed under DEI, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

    Sasson: Israel’s New Death Penalty Law Is a Warning

    2026/04/08 2 Comments

    Further decline and reinforcing Apartheid state comparisons…:

    The Israeli parliament, the Knesset, last week passed a law allowing the hanging of Palestinians convicted of killings during militant attacks, using language that effectively exempts Jewish perpetrators of nationalistic violence. This legislation is both unconstitutional and discriminatory. Beyond its fundamental immorality, the law is part of a larger, accelerating effort to systematically end once and for all the possibility of a Palestinian state. That effort includes the uncontrolled surge in violence by settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, and a strategic restructuring of the West Bank’s administration intended to make it easier for settlers and the state to seize Palestinian land.

    An alliance of settlers and far-right politicians is the primary engine behind this radical transformation. While polls show that most Israelis support it, the legislation was pushed through by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to ensure the survival of his governing coalition by indulging the vengeance narrative that serves as the cornerstone of the political goals of the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a key partner in the coalition.

    Its passage comes on the heels of a sharp escalation in near-daily acts of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank over the past year. Settlers have raided Palestinian villages, setting fire to homes and vehicles, harming livestock and uprooting trees. In February and March alone, settlers reportedly killed eight Palestinians….

    Talia Sasson is a former senior official in Israel’s State Attorney’s Office and former president of the New Israel Fund. She wrote from Tel Aviv.

    Source: Israel’s New Death Penalty Law Is a Warning

    Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

    Expert’s report criticizes CRA over audit of Muslim charity, calls for improvements

    2026/04/02 Leave a comment

    Reasonable recommendations for more education and awareness:

    …MAC has long contended that an audit of its activities by the revenue agency’s Review and Analysis Division was fundamentally tainted by systemic bias and Islamophobia.

    During court proceedings over the agency’s audit, federal lawyers said preliminary audit findings identified “several serious issues’’ concerning the association’s non-compliance with its charitable registration obligations.

    These allegedly included involvement in foreign political activities, buying considerable real estate, providing support to an organization listed as a terrorist entity and issuing improper donation receipts.

    Gallant’s report says scrutiny for support of extremism places charities “in the unenviable position of making decisions about what actors, or actions, the administrator of charities law might think are linked to terrorism.”

    “Despite the distinctive ambitions of the administrative agency — the effort to police terrorist abuse — in the case of the MAC audit that effort proved seriously deficient.”

    Gallant said the agency drew heavily on MAC’s links and ties with others in its analysis.

    “Considerable dispute exists over the implications and effectiveness of such ‘links,’ or associational, methods,” she wrote. “It risks capturing innocent activity through associational connections, risks ‘over-inclusion’ and can fail to accurately discern between suspicious activity and authentic legitimate activity.”

    Leaders of Muslim charities, volunteers and employees exist within their religious communities, the report adds. “Any anointing of the notion that associations — connections — indicates terrorist abuse risks overidentification and the attraction of ‘guilt’ by association,” it says.

    The revenue agency could play a bigger role in educating charities about the possible risks of involvement with certain groups or people, Gallant said in an interview.

    “I think that if the charities directorate was a little more forthcoming in educating, specifically — don’t interact, don’t be doing things here, we’re suspicious about these things — then charities can make a choice, right?” she said….

    Source: Expert’s report criticizes CRA over audit of Muslim charity, calls for improvements

    Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , ,

    ← Older posts

    Newer posts →