In Loyola High School v Quebec (Attorney General) the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) found that a Roman Catholic high school run by the Jesuits in Montreal, could be exempted from the provincial Ethics and Religious Culture Program (ERCP), legislatively mandated for all schools in Quebec, whether public or private, provided it offered an ‘equivalent program’, if from a Roman Catholic perspective. In the earlier companion case, SL v Commission scolaire des Chênes, the Court held that religious parents could not claim an exemption for their children enrolled in the public schools from the same course. This discrepancy between the legal treatment of children in fee-paying religious schools and children in the public school system is one of several interesting aspects of the Loyola decision which this comment will address. Notwithstanding this discrepancy, the Court also restated its earlier observations about the nature and meaning of section 2(a), ‘freedom of conscience and religion’, of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the Charter), thereby reassuring some Canadian observers that it is committed to a more robust protection of freedom of religion than may have been surmised from its earlier freedom of religion jurisprudence. Equally interesting is that, in coming to its decision, the majority of the Court moved away from the Court's earlier approach to freedom of religion issues of applying first section 2(a) and then section 1 of the Charter, which operates as a brake on full freedom of religion, to a proportional analysis more in tune with proportionality tests for religious freedom found in English and European cases. Whether this is the start of a long-term trajectory in Canadian freedom of religion cases or a single instance remains to be seen.

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“微妙的练习”：平衡加拿大的宗教自由和宗教自由：洛约拉高中诉魁北克（总检察长）

在洛约拉高中诉魁北克（总检察长）加拿大最高法院 (SCC) 发现，蒙特利尔的一所由耶稣会士开办的罗马天主教高中，可以免除魁北克省所有公立或私立学校的立法规定的省级道德和宗教文化计划 (ERCP)，如果从罗马天主教的角度来看，它提供了一个“等效计划”。在较早的同伴案例中，SL v Commission scolaire des Chênes，法院认为，宗教父母不能要求他们的孩子在公立学校就读同一课程。付费宗教学校的儿童和公立学校系统中的儿童在法律上的待遇之间的差异是该制度的几个有趣方面之一。洛约拉本评论将处理的决定。尽管存在这种差异，法院还重申了其先前关于《加拿大权利和自由宪章》（《宪章》）第 2(a) 节“良心和宗教自由”的性质和含义的意见，从而使一些加拿大观察员放心：它致力于更强有力地保护宗教自由，而不是从其早先的宗教自由法学中推测出来的。同样有趣的是，在做出裁决时，法院的大多数成员放弃了法院早先适用于宗教自由问题的方法，即先适用《宪章》第 2(a) 条，然后适用《宪章》第 1 条，这起到了制止完全的宗教自由，比例分析更符合在英国和欧洲案例中发现的宗教自由比例测试。这是加拿大宗教自由案件长期轨迹的开始，还是一个单一的例子，还有待观察。