Quebec Officials Harass Homeschoolers

They haven't yet legislated a complete ban on homeschooling, (the one that Germany has had since the nazi days and that is still being used to persecute parents that pursue independent education for their children,) but they already have the infrastructure to do just that.

Home-schooling is legal in Quebec and the rest of Canada. But as the number of home-schoolers skyrockets across North America, some school boards in Quebec are responding by siccing youth protection on home-schooling families, usually without any evidence of safety problems at home, Gauthier said. “That’s the worst fear for a parent. It’s traumatizing — it’s an invasion,” she said. “The parent is seen as the enemy who is mistrusted. They can’t imagine we could do something good.”

Carole Cardinal agrees. She is a home-schooling mom in the Quebec City area and the province’s rep of the Home School Legal Defense Association of Canada. She said many school boards in Quebec are misusing youth protection against home-schoolers, and that has contributed to the province’s reputation as one of the most inhospitable places in Canada toward the movement. Cardinal, herself a former elementary and secondary schoolteacher, said she helps 10 home-schooling families each year on average to fend off youth protection complaints from school boards. That’s up from just three or four cases annually up until four years ago. “It’s pretty nerve-racking for families. We feel we’re losing our freedoms,” she said.

...Quebec requires home-schoolers to get instruction "that is equivalent to what is offered in Quebec schools," said Esther Chouinard, spokeswoman for the Quebec Education Department, in an email.

The province also gives school boards broad powers to grant or deny permission to parents to home-school, as well as to scrutinize their progress.

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That's the province where the courts believe they have the power to order parents to send their children (that are below the mandatory school age) into a state-run daycare (from which the government has recently baned all reference to religion). The government's objective is obvious: they want to raise another generation of loyal, nanny-state-dependent subjects. Will the parents realize what's going on and show some resistance?