Quebec City, Canada, May 4, 2005 / 22:00 pm
The Quebec government has announced that it intends to cut Catholic and Protestant religious instruction from public schools and to implement a new program on ethics and religious culture by 2008.
Minister of Education Jean-Marc Fournier presented a bill in the provincial legislature yesterday proposing the change, despite the fact that more than 60,000 citizens had signed a petition in favor of maintaining religious instruction in the schools. The petition was presented to the province’s Liberal government March 24.
The Minister of Education said the new program would better respond to “the current social challenges and the needs of Quebec youth today.”
“In a pluralist society like ours, it is important that schools actively contribute to the acquisition, by youth, of the knowledge, skills and attitudes that will serve them personally and socially the rest of their lives,” Fournier said in his press release.