Mulcair stands firm on face veil position
NDP leader repeats ban opposition, Harper defends Saudi military deal
The starkest themes of the French leaders’ debate lingered in the air Friday as the combatants retreated to their respective corners — either nursing their wounds or capitalizing on new-found momentum.
Tom Mulcair, however, was hardly hiding.
Even though the controversy surrounding the niqab risks dealing New Democrats a body blow in their Quebec stronghold, the NDP leader doubled down on his opposition to banning women from wearing the veil during citizenship ceremonies.
“Governing is about leading,” Mulcair told a news conference northwest of Quebec City. “Leading is about setting your priorities and telling people who you are and what you believe in.”
The issue is particularly tricky for Mulcair, who needs to retain support in Quebec, home to many voters who back Conservative and Bloc Québécois calls to bar women from wearing a niqab when they swear the citizenship oath.
“I’m going to continue to make the point that we live in a society where we’re lucky enough to have individual rights,” Mulcair said at the press conference. “You either believe in those rights, which is my case, or you find a way around them.”
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper headed straight for Quebec’s south shore, to a riding that went to the New Democrats by a hair’s breadth in 2011, happy to talk more about a wedge issue designed to bleed NDP support.
“I’m regularly told we want to pay less taxes and not more. We want neighbourhoods that are safe. We want new citizens that take the oath with their faces uncovered,” he said in his speech.
“We want a proper future for our young people; we want a future that’s worthy of the sacrifices and contributions of our seniors; and we want to protect ourselves against fanatics.”
Afterward, however, Harper found himself defending Canada’s military vehicle deal with Saudi Arabia.
The $14.8-billion contract to sell light armoured vehicles to the Saudis is said to be worth about 3,000 jobs across southern Ontario, including with manufacturer Gen- eral Dynamics Land Systems.
Human rights groups have warned that the Saudi regime might use the vehicles against its own people.
“Notwithstanding its human rights violations, which are significant, this is a contract with a country that is an ally against the Islamic State, a contract that any one of our allies would have signed,” Harper said in Rivièredu-Loup, Que.
“We expressed our outrage, our disagreement from time to time, with the government of Saudi Arabia for their treatment of human rights, but I don’t think it makes any sense to pull a contract in a way that would only punish Canadian workers.”
Questions about the deal came up during Thursday’s debate in connection with the jailing and lashing of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, whose wife lives in Sherbrooke, Que.
Both Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe and Mulcair raised Badawi’s case and pressed Harper to explain his position on the export contract.
A Saudi court this summer upheld Badawi’s sentence of 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison. He has already been flogged once in a public square.
Duceppe, who said Friday he detected a positive shift in momentum, was only too happy to talk about the niqab, since it was a Bloc campaign ad that first set the cat among the pigeons.
Polls suggest 90 per cent of Quebecers have the same position as the Bloc, which is that the niqab should be banned from both sides of the counter where public services are concerned, he said.
“He is against the niqab during oaths; that happens once in a lifetime, just once,” Duceppe said of the prime minister.
“The rest of the time, voting with their faces covered, Harper has no problem with that. Services rendered or received in the public service with a face covering, he has no problem with that.”
In Brampton, Ont. on Thursday, the Liberals appeared to be trying to chip away at another core Conservative constituency: immigrants.
Justin Trudeau released a Liberal party immigration policy that would emphasize family reunification, rather than the Conservative strategy of seeking economic migrants.
I’m going to continue to make the point that we live in a society where we’re lucky enough to have individual rights.