Church Takes Legal Action Against Quebec Municipality Over Eviction Based on Secularism Law

A Bible is shown opened on a table in a file photo. Aaron Burden/Unsplash.com

A church is taking legal action against the city of Saguenay, Que., for evicting the Christian congregation from a public rental space on the grounds of adhering to the province’s secularism law.

The Church of Two Shores had leased a public basement rental space from the city since 2024. City officials recently terminated the lease while referencing the Act Respecting the Laicity of the State, Quebec’s secularism law, according to a June 11 news release from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), which is providing legal support to the church.

City officials had informed the church in March that the city did not authorize religious activities in its rental spaces in order to comply with the secularism act, and notified the church that it must stop religious activities in the public building or face eviction.

When the church told the city it could not gather as a church without engaging in religious activities, the city decided to terminate the rental agreement.

JCCF, a charity founded in 2010 to defend Canadians’ constitutional freedoms, says it is providing legal support to the Church of Two Shores in order to challenge the decision, whose outcome it says could set a “significant precedent” for religious freedom in Quebec. The group is challenging the city’s interpretation of the law.

Passed in 2019, the secularism law aims to confirm the province’s secular status, as well as to prohibit the wearing of religious symbols by civil service employees in positions of authority and by teachers in the public sector.

“The law does not specifically prohibit religious groups from renting or using public spaces,” JCCF said in a June 11 statement on the church’s case. “Rather, the act affirms both the religious neutrality of the state and the freedom of religion.”

Filed in the Superior Court of Quebec’s Civil Chamber, the church’s legal challenge argues that the city violated numerous constitutional guarantees without “reasonable justification”—including freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly, and the right to equality without discrimination based on religion, particularly in the conclusion of a legal transaction and access to public places.

These rights are set out in sections 3, 10, 12, 13, and 15 of the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms and sections 2(a)(b)(c) and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the violations of these freedoms are “not based on any rule or law,” says the case document prepared by constitutional lawyer Olivier Séguin.

The church is seeking a “symbolic sum” of $1 against the city and a judicial declaration of “unjustified infringement” of its rights and freedoms, according to the court filing.

Séguin said that the case aims to determine the extent to which the law requires “absolute” separation between the state and religions or establishes a “flexible form of secularism that respects religion.” 

“Overriding constitutional protections using the Notwithstanding Clause is a serious matter,” Séguin said in a statement. “The City of Saguenay is making a serious mistake by conflating the secularism law with a blanket ban on religious expression.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the city of Saguenay for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says that everyone has the fundamental right to freedom of religion. The federal government’s Charterpedia says that “secularism in the Canadian context has not been held to mean that religion has no place in the public sphere.”

Séguin said that normally this case would “clearly be an infringement of both the Quebec and the Canadian Charter,” but was complicated by the fact that the City of Saguenay based the eviction on their own interpretation of the act.

“So at the end of the day, because the [Act Respecting the Laicity of the State] contains the notwithstanding clause, it’s not really about a case of religious freedom based on the Charter, but based on the interpretation of the scope of [that act] in Quebec,” Séguin said in a video.

The release says that a timeline for the proceedings has yet to be set.