A union representing early child-care workers in Quebec is demanding an immediate moratorium on the expansion of the ban on religious symbols announced by the province Thursday.

On top of potentially exacerbating the ongoing labour shortage across the network, expanding the ban to workers in subsidized child-care centres just isn’t necessary because pedagogical programs are already secular, Anne-Marie Bellerose, president of the Fédération des intervenantes en petite enfance du Québec (FIPEQ-CSQ), said Friday.

“There is no possibility of providing religious instruction or doing pedagogy based on religious issues,” Bellerose said. “Secularism has existed in our network for a very long time. We fully agree with that. But the fact that an educator, for example, wears a veil … Does that real

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