Quebec’s immigration minister says he will fully collaborate with an investigation by the legislature’s ethics commissioner into whether he violated conflict of interest rules.
Jean-François Roberge is being investigated for allegedly sharing data produced by his department with the two Coalition Avenir Québec leadership candidates — Bernard Drainville and Christine Fréchette.
Drainville had boasted in a Journal de Montreal article and online that the Immigration Department had confirmed his policy would result in 18,000 temporary foreign workers being grandfathered into a fast-track residency program that had been closed.
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La Presse has reported that the analysis conducted by Roberge’s office indicated Fréchette’s plan would open permanent residency to between 123,00 and 126,800 immigrants.
The Liberals and Québec solidaire accused Roberge of violating the part of the ethic’s code that bars elected officials from disclosing information that is not generally available to the public to further the personal interests of themselves or others.
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In a statement to The Canadian Press, Roberge confirmed he was under investigation and planned to collaborate with the office of the ethics watchdog.
He did not say whether he shared the information with Drainville and Fréchette.
Drainville and Fréchette are squaring off in a race to replace outgoing Premier François Legault.
Voting is already underway and the winner is expected to be confirmed on April 12.
Christians across Quebec are about to face a new legal landscape on Good Friday, only a day after the provincial legislature adopted a law that could crack down on their annual Way of the Cross processions.
In Montreal, several hundred people are expected to join Archbishop Christian Lépine in a march of “prayer, reflection and silence” that winds its way through the streets behind a large crucifix, stopping at several historic churches in a commemoration of Jesus’s journey to the cross.
But the Easter weekend tradition will likely become harder to organize in future years, now that the province has passed a law to ban public prayer.
The Quebec government adopted legislation on Thursday, extending a ban on wearing religious symbols in public workplaces to daycare workers, prohibiting prayer rooms in public institutions, and banning public prayer without explicit municipal consent.
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“No public road … or public park may be used for the purposes of collective religious practice unless a municipality authorizes, exceptionally and on a case-by-case basis, such a use in its public domain by resolution of the municipal council,” the text of the law reads.
Martin Laliberté, the head of the Assembly of Quebec Catholic Bishops, believes the new law turns religious people into second-class citizens.
He notes that street closures and public demonstrations happen all the time, including for sporting events, protests, and cultural events.
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“If we do it for religious reasons, we don’t have the right,” he said Wednesday in an interview. “So people in society who are believers become second-class citizens who don’t have the right, like any other citizen, to demonstrate (when it’s) in the name of their faith.”
He said organizers of Way of the Cross and other marches have always co-ordinated with local officials and respected municipal rules, but never before had to seek express permission to hold their events.
“It was a right, and now it’s not a right any more,” he said. The new law, he said, leaves churches relying on the goodwill of city councils, who can decide whether or not to grant permits for the event.
Laliberté says senior Catholic leaders are concerned the new law goes far beyond the effect on ceremonial processions. He notes that the legislation invokes powers that allow the province to override some sections of the Charter and shield the secularism law from court challenges.
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“We have rights, according to the Charter, which say you have a right to express your faith publicly,” Laliberté said.
But with the new law, he said people don’t have this right any more.
“That’s a big shift for us.”
Laliberté said the Quebec Catholic bishops participated in consultations on the new law, where they expressed particular concern with the public prayer ban and the expansion of the religious symbol prohibition. He said politicians appeared to listen, but were unwilling to adopt the changes.
He said he believes the new law has “no utility,” because the government already has all the tools it needs to protect secularism.
The Quebec government did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
John Zucchi, national director with Montreal Way of the Cross procession organizer Communion and Liberation Canada, says organizers always communicate with police about the event, but have been told in the past that it’s not necessary to inform the city.
He says the event last year drew nearly 1,000 people, who walk in silence behind a person carrying a crucifix to different churches, where there is singing, gospel readings and poems.
Unlike many church events, he says attendance has gone up in recent years, and numbers have roughly doubled since the COVID-19 pandemic.
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“I think people are struck by the soberness of the event, by the simplicity of it and by the quiet dignity that surrounds the event,” he said. “It’s not meant to be clamour or something loud. It’s a meditation from start to finish.”
Zucchi says he shares the views of religious leaders who are concerned about the law, but isn’t worrying yet about its impact on the march in Montreal. “We’ve only encountered goodwill with the city, with the police service … and count on that continued goodwill in the future,” he said.
He also questioned what events will count as “public prayer.”
“With the case of a procession done in silence, what constitutes prayer?” he asks.
François Legault is attending what is likely his last sitting at the legislature as Quebec premier.
The national assembly is on recess next week and the Coalition Avenir Québec is scheduled to choose a new leader on April 12.
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Either Christine Fréchette or Bernard Drainville will be sworn in as the new premier shortly after the weekend’s leadership convention.
Legault, who became premier in 2018, will stay on as an elected member of the legislature until the October general election.
The Air Transat founder got started in politics in 1998 under former Parti Québécois premier Lucien Bouchard and created the CAQ in 2011.
Legault has been known for his high approval ratings throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and for butting heads with the federal Liberals over immigration and his party’s controversial secularism law.
The two candidates vying to replace François Legault as Coalition Avenir Québec leader and Quebec premier are meeting today in a second and final debate.
Bernard Drainville and Christine Fréchette exchanged friendly greetings ahead of the start of the debate in Laval, north of Montreal.
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Both candidates indicated during an early exchange that they were open to more private involvement in the health system, although Fréchette suggested Drainville had changed his mind on the subject.
The debate topics include health and social services, education, security, housing and homelessness, and immigration and identity.
Fréchette, a former economy minister, and Drainville, a former environment minister, are the only two candidates running to replace Legault, who announced in January he was stepping down as leader.
The winner of the leadership contest will be announced April 12.
The Quebec Conservatives now have an elected member in the national assembly after a former cabinet minister with the Coalition Avenir Québec crossed the floor to join the party.
Maïté Blanchette Vézina, who had quit the CAQ to sit as an Independent in September, joined the Conservatives on Tuesday and announced she will run for the party in the October general election.
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Blanchette Vézina left the CAQ shortly after Premier François Legault shuffled her out of the natural resources portfolio.
Since then Conservative Leader Éric Duhaime had been courting Blanchette Vézina, who delivered a speech at the party’s convention in January.
With his new member Duhaime will now have access to the legislature — a similar situation to 2021 when he convinced former CAQ member Claire Samson to become his party’s sole elected representative.
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Duhaime’s Conservatives collected nearly 13 per cent of the vote during the 2022 provincial campaign but failed to win any seats.
In contrast the Liberals received roughly 14 per cent of the popular vote and won 21 seats.
The premiers of Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and Saskatchewan are jointly calling on the federal government to give them more of a say in judges who are appointed to their superior and appeal courts.
They say in a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney that having their governments actively engaged in the process will help ensure judicial appointments “appropriately reflect the diversity and the unique needs of each province and territory.”
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The premiers are asking for the federal government to choose from a pool of candidates recommended and approved by the provinces when appointing judges to superior trial courts and courts of appeal.
Justice Minister Sean Fraser says that is not something his government is considering right now.
He says the federal government consults with provinces and territories during the process to get their feedback, and the process is working well.
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The letter comes after Alberta Premier Danielle Smith made a similar request earlier this year, asking for more of a say on judicial appointments and threatening to withhold some court funding if that does not happen.
A challenge of Quebec’s secularism law, known as Bill 21, will be heard at the Supreme Court of Canada beginning Monday, with the notwithstanding clause at the heart of arguments.
The case stems from a law passed in June 2019 by the Quebec government led by François Legault, which bans certain public-sector workers — including teachers, police officers and judges — from wearing religious symbols on the job in the name of state neutrality.
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The Coalition Avenir Québec government pre-emptively invoked the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to shield the law from most court challenges over fundamental rights violations.
Legal experts say the arguments will centre on the criteria for suspending rights more than on state secularism.
Quebec Superior Court and the Quebec Court of Appeal have mostly sided with the provincial government in its rulings, while also criticizing how the government has employed the notwithstanding clause.
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Groups including the National Council of Canadian Muslims, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the World Sikh Organization will meet with reporters today ahead of the hearings, which are expected to run four days.
Quebec Finance Minister Eric Girard will table the province’s 2026-2027 budget Wednesday.
It is expected be the last one tabled by the Coalition Avenir Québec government before a general election in the fall.
The minister has said the new budget will focus on the government’s core functions and investments in infrastructure.
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Girard has also said the government wants to ensure stability at a time when there is uncertainty about a range of issues including trade with the U.S. and the war in the Middle East.
Business and labour groups have urged the government to invest more in the local economy as well as in areas such as education, health care and transit.
Girard said in his last fiscal update in November that the province was projected to have a deficit of $12.4 billion.
Quebec’s Superior Court is hearing arguments in a case about a teacher who claimed her Charter rights were violated when she was ordered to hide a student’s gender identity from the student’s parents.
Provincial policy allows children 14 years and older to change their name and pronouns in school without parental consent.
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The Montreal high school teacher filed a constitutional challenge in 2023 after she was told by her school to use male pronouns for a 14-year-old student in class and female ones with the student’s parents.
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Friday’s preliminary hearing is about the anonymity of witness statements.
The court has not yet set a date to hear arguments in the wider case.
The court is withholding the teacher’s identity to protect the names of students in the proceedings.
A proposed high-speed rail line between Toronto and Quebec City is facing growing opposition from some rural Ontarians and Quebecers.
A grassroots coalition of farmers, small-town residents and municipal councillors say the corridor would sever their communities, prompt hundreds of land expropriations and offer locals few benefits while costing taxpayers billions of dollars.
Caroline Stephenson of Madoc, Ont., worries that the walled-off, 1,000-kilometre track will block country roads and create longer, bottleneck-prone drives for commuters and first responders.
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Stéphane Alary, a regional president of Quebec’s farmers union, joined a demonstration last week that saw a long line of tractors rumble through the streets of Mirabel north of Montreal to protest what he calls a “catastrophe” in the making.
The Crown corporation overseeing the project is weighing two possible corridors for eastern Ontario, with one tracing a direct line between Ottawa and Peterborough and the other arcing along a more southerly path between the two cities.
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Construction of the first phase of the dedicated rail line is set to kick off in 2029 or 2030, linking Montreal and Ottawa in an effective test case for what would be a massive infrastructure project intended to transform rail travel in Canada’s most densely populated region.
