MISSISSAUGA – Today’s City Council meeting started with the Lord’s Prayer, perhaps for the final time.

Recitation of the Lord’s Prayer at Mississauga council meetings could be coming to an end after the Supreme Court of Canada issued a ruling today regarding a complaint from Alain Simoneau about Saguenay council starting its meetings with a Catholic prayer. The ruling requires that practice to stop.

Simoneau took his complaint to Quebec’s human rights tribunal, which ruled in his favour and ordered the prayer stopped. However, the tribunal’s decision was reversed on appeal and the matter was brought to Canada’s top court.

The Supreme Court ruling said the state has a duty of “religious neutrality” and that the evolution of “Canadian society has given rise to a concept of this neutrality according to which the state must not interfere in religion and beliefs. The state must instead remain neutral in this regard, which means that it must neither favour nor hinder any particular belief, and the same holds true for non-belief.”

The ruling agreed with the human rights tribunal’s findings and said the tribunal was “correct in holding that the state’s duty of neutrality means that a state authority cannot make use of its powers to promote or impose a religious belief.”

Ward 5 councillor Carolyn Parrish has been against the recitation of the prayer before the municipal meetings, arguing City Hall is a workplace and not a place of worship. She was pleased with the decision.

“Welcome news for as multicultural and multi-religious city as Mississauga is,” said Parrish, who alerted councillors to the Supreme Court decision during the council meeting today. “It respects all religions and relegates prayer to its appropriate place – in private and in places of worship where all share the same beliefs.”

The practice of reciting the Lord’s Prayer before Mississauga council meetings began a number of years ago and was started by former mayor Hazel McCallion. In December, councillors decided to continue with the prayer because there was overwhelming support for it in the community and it was a popular tradition.

Mississauga’s Derek Gray filed a formal complaint with the City of Mississauga regarding the prayer. He felt that councillors starting meetings with the prayer was exclusionary and illegal, based on a 1999 Ontario Court of Appeal ruling.

Reached by The News today, he applauded the Supreme Court decision.