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Ranil Prasad, a campaign manager for the association, said what they found was that prayers had been getting more sectarian, longer and increasingly Christian over time.

“We found this to be a bit weird, because the demographics of the province have been changing over time and we’re predominately becoming a less Christian, less-sectarian province,” he said.

Government house leader Mike Farnworth said MLAs have the option to say a prayer from their faith or spiritual belief, or to offer a secular or non-faith-based reflection at the beginning of a legislative sitting. Those prayers are not transcribed in the Hansard.

Of the hundreds of prayers the association looked at, nearly 92 per cent ended in “Amen,” according to the report. Of those that could be identified as religious, 93 per cent were considered Christian. About six per cent of all prayers included First Nation content, but that was mostly limited to the inclusion of a single Indigenous word. Every non-Christian religion, apart from Judaism, was under-represented in the prayers, according to the report, and there was “no apparent mention of Sikhism,” despite the province’s large Sikh population.

Legislature Speaker Darryl Plecas said the issue would be reviewed this fall.

“The prayers are as old as the parliament itself. It’s been a tradition. Whether or not that tradition should continue as it has in the past, is something that we need to examine, just as it’s been called to our attention to examine the whole business of dress code,” Plecas said.