Longueuil, Canada - The Quebec government is struggling to find ways to accommodate religious groups' demands for greater freedom to exercise their rights in the province's secular education system.
Education Minister Jean-Marc Fournier set up a special committee this week to examine the issue and propose parameters that could be used by school boards to make "reasonable accommodations" for religious groups.
The committee will also examine why some reclusive sects operate outside mainstream society by setting up clandestine schools.
Two Christian fundamentalist schools closed recently after it was discovered that they were operating outside the government-approved curriculum. There was no reasonable accommodation possible in the case involving the sect Mission de l'Esprit-Saint because the group was acting illegally, Mr. Fournier said.
"We need to find ways to avoid this type of situation. And once a clandestine school has been discovered, you need to bring parents to understand what they are doing. What good is it to put a policeman next to a child and bring him to a school when parents tell their child that what they are learning is no good?"he asked yesterday.
Quebec's public school boards received a sudden increase in demands from various religious groups after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled last March that a Sikh student could carry a ceremonial dagger to class. The decision was immediately hailed as a victory for religious freedom in the country.
Schools have been obliged by the Supreme Court ruling to find "reasonable accommodation" for religious groups, but some have had difficulty defining the term "reasonable."
Solutions were found in some instances -- for example, in the case of three Muslim teenaged girls who asked to be excused from swimming class because their religion bans the sharing of a pool with boys. The school administered a separate test for the three girls.
In another instance, a school faced accusations of racism after a seven-year-old Filipino boy was reprimanded for his eating habits that excluded the use of a knife. The school's treatment of the boy created an uproar among Filipinos.
"In these cases, we need to find a reasonable accommodation," Mr. Fournier said. "But in other cases, we must avoid accommodations that could be viewed as unreasonable."
Mr. Fournier referred to a Quebec Human Rights Commission decision last March that ordered a Montreal engineering school, L'École de technologie supérieur, to allow Muslim students to "pray in dignity" within the confines of the institution, but did not require it to offer a "special prayer space." A similar human-rights complaint was filed at McGill University.
Mr. Fournier said that a reasonable accommodation was found in this case, but that the situation got out of hand when Muslim students at the engineering school demanded compensation, claiming damages for the violation of their religious freedom during the time their rights had been denied.
The committee will report back to the minister at the end of the current school year with proposals on how to improve the integration of religious groups in the secular school system. The proposals will also give school boards guidance on how to adapt to religious and ethnic diversity, Mr. Fournier said.