The City of Montreal, one of a growing number of municipalities in Quebec that has attempted to use zoning restrictions to restrict places of worship, acted in bad faith and breached the Charter’s guarantee to freedom of religion when it tried to shut down an Islamic cultural centre that hosted religious ceremonies, ruled Quebec Superior Court.
In a closely-watched decision by municipal and human rights lawyers, Quebec Superior Court Judge Jean-Yves Lalonde castigated the city for implementing a zoning by-law that “would promote a phenomenon of ghettoization, access problems and appears to be discriminatory compared to the Catholic churches in the borough that are generally found in the residential sector in the City of Montreal.”