Liberals drop niqab Supreme Court appeal
Zunera Ishaq, who fought the ban, received surprise call from federal attorney general
OTTAWA—“I welcome you to the Canadian family.”
With those words during an unusual phone call, Canada’s new federal attorney general told Zunera Ishaq, who fought for two years for the right to wear a niqab while taking a citizenship oath, that her fight was over.
Jody Wilson-Raybould informed Ishaq the Liberal government on Monday formally dropped an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada launched by the Conservatives of two lower court rulings that sided with Ishaq and against the previous government’s niqab ban.
Dropping the appeal was expected because it was a Liberal campaign promise. The phone call from Canada’s new top lawyer was not.
“She was very gracious,” said Ishaq’s lawyer, Marlys Edwardh, recounting that Wilson-Raybould told Ishaq she was “pleased to sign” the papers dropping the litigation and “that she herself, as a First Nations woman, understood the importance of respecting diversity.
“She then said she understood that Zunera had taken her oath of citizenship and was now a Canadian citizen and wished to congratulate her.”
Edwardh said Ishaq and her lawyers were moved. “For Lorne (Waldman) and I and Zunera who went through this process of litigating an issue and then finding it (had) become so much part of a political discussion in this nation that I felt (the controversy) bred fear and divisiveness and Islamaphobia, I have to tell you (Wilson-Raybould’s call) spoke to the opposite. It spoke to inclusiveness and respect.”
In Edwardh’s long legal career, she’s only twice before seen a personal gesture toward an individual by a government official acknowledging a wrongful move. (Once when former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli called to apologize to -Syrian-Canadian Maher Arar and his wife, Monia Mazigh, for RCMP actions an inquiry said “very likely” led to his rendition to torture ordeal. And decades ago when a N.S. deputy attorney general crossed a restaurant floor to apologize to Donald Marshall Jr. after an inquiry determined his wrongful murder conviction.)
Wilson-Raybould told reporters “We had a good conversation and certainly as a government we uphold and respect the decisions of the two courts. . . . So I’m pleased as one of my first acts as attorney general of Canada to report to you on this matter,” adding it is “the start of the work that we’re going to do as a government in terms of ensuring those values are protected.”
Though it is clear the Liberals are not prepared to fight the same court battles as the Conservatives, it’s not clear what other ones they’ll drop.
Edwardh, involved in a separate legal challenge of the Conservatives’ Bill C-24 law that allows Canadian passports to be stripped from dual citizens convicted of terrorism offences, said federal lawyers have asked to slow the pace of that litigation while they take instructions from the new Liberal government.
Wilson-Raybould would not say if she will move soon to repeal that law, saying she’s still consulting.
Nor would she reveal what advice justice officials had given on whether a niqab ban was a constitutional loser or not. All she would say is that “decisions that were made by previous governments with respect to their approaches are decisions that are made by previous governments.”