Alixe Charles, the organizer of Montreal’s annual March for Jesus, has spent the last two months trying to determine whether the Ville-Marie borough will allow the event under Quebec’s new secularism law.
The borough first denied his request, then said it was a city decision, before finally stating the city delegated the responsibility to its 19 boroughs. He still doesn’t know if he will get a permit.
“It’s total confusion,” Charles said this week.
Charles, who has organized the march since 2018, is among those contending with the law’s repercussions as Montreal navigates how to best apply it.
Passed in early April, Bill 9 expands Quebec’s secularism law to prohibit “collective religious practice” in public roadways or parks unless a municipality specifically authorizes it.
Montreal wants the law applied on a borough-by-borough basis, but religious event organizers have voiced concerns that doing so opens the door to uneven enforcement across the city.
Earlier this month, a Portuguese Catholic procession was denied a permit by the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough, though the event ultimately took place. The LaSalle borough, meanwhile, issued a permit for the Khalsa Day Sikh parade on the same day.
LaSalle says it issued the permit around the same time the law came into effect and, given the amount of planning already done, did not feel it was reasonable to stop the event at the last minute.
Still, the discrepancy raised questions about how the law will be applied going forward.
“I don’t think anyone should have to live through the difficulties we did two weeks ago,” said Emanuel Linhares, who helped organize the Portuguese event.
“Leaving it to different interpretations by each borough only creates confusion if one goes left and the other goes right,” he added. “There should be some sort of central alignment.”
In a letter to the Ville-Marie borough and Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada’s office this month, Charles also raised concerns about an “inconsistent and unequal application” of the law.
Asked about the concerns, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said Friday the city wants to apply the law in a way that reflects different realities across communities.
“That is why our administration is taking a proximity-based approach, where boroughs, which know their public spaces and local context best, are responsible for applying the law on their territory,” the spokesperson added.
Ericka Alneus, the leader of the opposition at city hall, said the city has no choice but to apply the law. But she expressed concern about its long-term effects, noting how important certain events are to the city’s cultural fabric.
“I don’t think the law took into consideration that beyond the practice of religion, there are people, there are communities, and there’s history,” Alneus said.
Charles said he still intends to hold the March for Jesus in mid-July, after receiving the go-ahead from police. While the event is openly religious, he does not believe it contravenes the law’s restrictions on public prayer.
He denounced how the uncertainty surrounding the law — and the city’s approach to enforcing it — is causing unnecessary strain on events that have taken place for years.
“There needs to be a clear directive,” he said. “We can’t go through this every year.”
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