Overview

• An independent committee released a nearly 300-page report with 50 recommendations to strengthen secularism across Quebec institutions.
• Top proposals include phasing out public funding for roughly 50 subsidized religious private schools and allowing universities to refuse to create prayer rooms.
• The report urges extending Quebec’s religious-symbols ban to daycare workers, prohibiting face coverings in schools and daycares, and requiring uncovered faces to receive or provide public services.
• Authors recommend that municipalities regulate public prayer, that religious accommodations be limited when they create more than minimal constraints, and that Quebec establish a day dedicated to secularism.
• Secularism Minister Jean‑François Roberge welcomed the report as guidance for possible updates to Bill 21, while faith and civil-rights groups criticized several measures and the premier has not committed to ending school subsidies.