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Playing the racist card in Quebec
October 26, 2007 - 3:16pm
Reported at canada.com, the law would allow Canadians "to hide their face before voting in a federal election for health reasons, but not because of their religion."
The customary wearing of a veil is associated, in Canada, with Muslim women. In that sense, a law is being introduced in Canada's House of Parliament, that is specifically aimed at a cultural minority and a group of minority women in particular.
It is difficult to argue that the intent is not racist. But it is also politically inspired.
According to the report, Transport, Infrastructure and Communities Minister, Lawrence Cannon, said the law is intended to to "fix a loophole in the Canada Elections Act which caused controversy during federal byelections last month in Quebec." Let's keep that in mind.
The minister was quoted as saying that "I’ve been told, for instance, in one poll in St-Hyacinthe (east of Montreal), some people came in there with masks on, they came in with veils, other people came in with other ridiculous attire.”
So, to be clear, the Conservative Party is introducing a law aimed at a religious minority to remedy not any wrong doing or specific violations of the election act involving religious dress, but, rather, to remedy anecdotal stories of people voting while covering their faces with non-religious garb. In fact, is there any evidence at all of an Islamic person, in traditional dress, violating Canada's election laws? Not according to any publicly available information.
Not only is evidence of a problem lacking, but the law applies to a very small number of people. According to another canada.com story, "only a small minority of Muslim women wear the niqab -- roughly seven out of Quebec's 150,000 Muslims." SEVEN!!!
All of this fuss and a law to deal with seven people.
If it strikes you that there is more to this than meets the eye, you are probably right. Let's return to the controversy cited above by Cannon.
To start, to win a majority government, Harper and the Conservatives must pick up seats in Quebec. But the war in Afghanistan has been unpopular in Quebec and Quebeckers were less supportive of Harper's openly racist, anti-Arab, pro-Israeli position with regard to the Lebanon war. What Harper needed for Quebec was a wedge issue. And not just a wedge issue but a racist wedge issue to drive apart Quebeckers and Muslim immigrants that could in turn help solidify Quebeckers behind the war in Afghanistan and develop sympathy with Harper's antipathy for Arab Muslims.
Along came Andre Drouin and Hйrouxville.
Drouin, an elected town councilor, introduced an "immigrant code". "In January, the tiny municipality (pop. 1,300) made international headlines by adopting a "code of life" that set out ground-rules for immigrants who might want to settle there. Targeting fundamentalist Muslims in particular, those rules included no public stonings or burnings, and no female circumcision," according to a National Post story.
The result was just the wedge Harper was looking for. Quebec society is dividing along racist, and xenophobic lines. A Globe and Mail report details the racist attitudes bubbling to the surface in Quebec. And it doesn't stop at Islam. Excerpted from the article:
It was in the wake of all of this that the issue of those seven Muslim women wearing a veil while casting a ballot came to the fore. And when it did and the chief election officer initially ruled correctly and thoughtfully as he should, Harper came storming into the debate solidly on the side of the racists.
"Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he "profoundly disagrees" with a recent decision by Elections Canada to allow Muslim women to vote with their faces covered by burkas or niqabs," according to a CBC story headlined "Harper slams Elections Canada ruling on veils".
It is worth noting that Harper found time during the APEC summit in South East Asia to comment on an election brouhaha in Quebec.
But will Harper's racist gamble pay off? It just might. In a tight race for votes against the Conservatives the Bloc seems ready to leap aboard the scapegoating bandwagon while the Liberals are fearful of doing anything lest the weakling Dion be seen as weak.
So far only the NDP seems prepared to stand on principal. But it is not enough.
If the Harper government is successful in using racism to win Quebec, it won't stop there. It is a show that will be taken on the road as another issue to divide Canadians and ride a wave of hatred and acrimony to a majority government.
[ 26 October 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]
It is nothing more then a rather pathetic trolling atempt by Harper in my view. All we need is a few voters showing up with heavy make-up and he would have to pass a law banning make-up, then he could very well have lost more then he gained. The joke is on him as far as I am concerned.
I am in.
sorry about the drift...
[ 27 October 2007: Message edited by: 1234567 ]
According to this and my recollection of the story when it broke, the NDP also opposed allowing women to vote if their faces were covered.
It would seem that the principled position would be to oppose advance polls if there is a principled opposition to the notion that allowing veils is a recipe for voter fraud.
I understand the NDP has floated a "compromise" position whereby a veiled woman could identify herself to a female poll clerk. How would this work for advanced polls where everyone is "veiled".
As there seems to be no record of anyone ever: 1. asking seriously to vote with their face covered, or 2. asking to show their face to a female only, I would say the NDP's compromise proposal unfortunately falls within the same categories as (a) and (b) above.
Sure remedying that ought to be a bigger priority - but the government seems to be proceeding at a very leisurely pace on passing a bill allowing people in rural areas to vote and i have not heard a peep out of the BQ on this issue.
Simple - because there's no party in the House with the courage and credibility to say loudly:
"This is pandering to racism and xenophobia - the people of Canada are way ahead of this - you are dragging us back to the Dark Ages - this will not be allowed!"
In fact, that lack of simple courage explains a lot of the wholesale destruction that Harper and his ilk are wreaking upon this country.
Because one is a needed public policy correction while the other is cheap demagoguery and pandering to bigotry. Which one would you expect a conservative government to choose?
If a million rural Canadians are about to be disenfranchised - about 250,000 of them must be in Quebec. But this is of little or no concern to Gilles Duceppe as long as the hypothetical possibility exists of a single solitary woman trying vote while wearing a veil.
Where are your priorities M. Duceppe?
Personally, I think the whole issue is ridiculous when you consider all the people who vote by mail and by proxy and ipso-facto don't show their faces. So all things being equal, I'd just as soon that the NDP oppose obliging people to show their faces - unless challenged by a scrutineer who has reason to suspect electoral fraud.
I suspect that they reacted too quickly in going along with the other parties on this issue in September because the whole thing exploded two days before the Outremont by-election. There was a fear that the BQ would have tried to exploit this as a wedge issue to get their people who were all swinging to the NDP to go back to the BQ.