Bill targets illegal religious schools

QUEBEC The province is giving itself the power to enter and inspect clandestine illegal religious schools and is moving to ensure immigrant children without residence status or in fragile family situations are not deprived of an education.

Education Minister Sébastien Proulx tabled legislation, Bill 144, on Friday giving government ministries and agencies sweeping new powers to keep tabs on hundreds of children living on the fringe of the conventional school system.

Some are harboured in underground religious schools, although that number is dropping; others are getting home-schooling, which will soon be monitored much more closely by school boards.

Another group includes recent arrivals in various tenuous circumstances who do not have the papers allowing them officially into the system, although many school boards allow them access anyway.

“There are children in Quebec in all likelihood who today don’t have the right to education because someone has made this choice in their place,” Proulx said at a news conference.

“We want these children to come out of the shadows to get educational services.”

The ministry does not really know how many immigrant “paperless children” there are. One estimate is between 800 and 1,200 provincewide.

A key clause of the bill will allow Quebec’s health insurance board to share the data it has on such youth with the education ministry. It will, in turn, hand the information on to school boards to follow up.

The government goes further, giving Quebec’s youth protection services more clout to intervene in educational matters for the first time.

Amendments to the youth protection law made public at the same time by Minister Lucie Charlebois will allow social workers to invoke a child being deprived of school as a motive for social workers to intervene.

And after months of delays, Proulx will act on the issue of underground religious schools operating without permits.

Until now, the ministry didn’t have the power to inspect or investigate reports of such schools even if they are often mentioned in the media.

“We would show up at the door and ask if we could visit,” Proulx said.

“They would tell us no and we couldn’t do anything. That will soon change.”

Clause 14.2 of the bill states education officials may “enter at any reasonable time, any place where the person has reason to believe children required to attend school are receiving training or instruction not governed by the this act.”

The issue of clandestine religious school schools has been around for years.

The most recent case in the media was in June 2016 when police and youth protection workers raided an ultra-Orthodox Jewish school to check on the quality of education being offered.

But Proulx stressed Quebec is taking a balanced approach to the problem. In many cases, the directors of such schools are anxious to comply with requirements to meet provincial norms and welcome the guidance of the ministry, he said.

The opposition parties, however, asked why it took Quebec so long to act.

As it is, the bill will not be adopted before the end of the current session, which means the measures will not be in place when school starts in September.

We want these children to come out of the shadows to get educational services.