Niqabs, burkas can be worn for Que. byelections

[GAP]

Niqabs, burkas can be worn for Que. byelections
Updated Thu. Sep. 6 2007 4:31 PM ET Canadian Press
Article Link

OTTAWA -- Muslim women wearing niqabs or burkas covering their faces won't have to remove them to vote in three federal byelections in Quebec on Sept. 17.

An Elections Canada spokesman says the women won't have to show their faces to vote.

Spokesman John Enright said Thursday women wearing niqabs or burkas can bring a piece of identification with a photo and another document proving their identity when they vote.

However, Enright says in cases where women wearing niqabs or burkas don't have any documents, they would have to show their faces to allow their identity to be confirmed or they would have to be vouched for by a qualified voter in the same electoral division.

In last winter's Quebec election, the province's chief election officer said Muslim women wearing niqabs or burkas had to show their faces to vote.
More on link

 

[krustyrl]

This is a touchy one and many won't want to share their opinion for fear of the stigma that could be directed towards their views.

Things that make you go  HHhhhhmmmm.! 

 

[vonGarvin]

Here's my view.  If you want to vote, show your face.  If your culture prohibits you from showing it in public, well, then, I suggest you join another culture.  If you really want to accomodate, then have them show their face to a female returning officer (along with photo ID).  I have to show my face when I go in.  One country, one set of rules equally applicable to all.

 

[krustyrl]

One country, one set of rules equally applicable to all.

Words to live by and heed by all when passing through the gates of this country.!    :cdnsalute:

 

[mudrecceman]

Here's my view.  If you want to vote, show your face.  If your culture prohibits you from showing it in public, well, then, I suggest you join another culture.  If you really want to accomodate, then have them show their face to a female returning officer (along with photo ID).  I have to show my face when I go in.  One country, one set of rules equally applicable to all.

+1

 

[GAP]

Politicians are afraid of tackling this issue....watch...everything will be blamed on Elections Canada, but the politicians make their rules

 

[Simon]

Amen, mud recce.

+1 if I may

 

[Strike]

If you really want to accomodate, then have them show their face to a female returning officer (along with photo ID).

+1

 

[mudrecceman]

Amen, mud recce.

+1 if I may

?

I didn't say it...I only quoted it.  I think your +1 is really for Captain Sensible...credit where credit is due.  ;D

 

[Cdn Blackshirt]

One country, one set of rules equally applicable to all.

Add me to the list of +1's on this subject. 


Matthew. 

 

[retiredgrunt45]

Next election how bout we all wear hoodies and face masks. God what's this country coming to :

Politically correct Bull s***

 

[WLSC]

:brickwall:What ... .... !?  We are (I am) in A-stan so women can get out of this none sense and at home they let them do this.  It leave a bad taste in my mouth !!!  ???

 

[1feral1]

All this PC crap, and it will end up taking away everything we have fought for. Good God, what has our nation become?

All this to appease a minority, they should have the intestinal foritiude to become part of Canada, embracing everything it has to offer, rather than drag their crap bag full of ethnic hatred, crime, and twisted morals from their former countries to Canada.

In the decades to come what will Canada be?? A nation of tribes who hate each other perhaps?

Shakes head in disgust, not in disbelief.

Wes

 

[retiredgrunt45]

:brickwall:What ... .... !?  We are (I am) in A-stan so women can get out of this none sense and at home they let them do this.  It leave a bad taste in my mouth !!! 

Stay safe over there brother.

Le séjour sauve à cet endroit le frère

In the decades to come what will Canada be?? A nation of tribes who hate each other perhaps?

Yes Wes, that could very easily become a reality, if the status quo isn't checked.

 

[2 Cdo]

Here's my view.  If you want to vote, show your face.  If your culture prohibits you from showing it in public, well, then, I suggest you join another culture.  If you really want to accomodate, then have them show their face to a female returning officer (along with photo ID).  I have to show my face when I go in.  One country, one set of rules equally applicable to all.

Couldn't have said it any better!

 

[a_majoor]

We could apply the same solution which was used in Afghanistan and Iraq: after placing their ballot in the box every voter dips their finger into a pot of indelible purple ink!

 

[Jarnhamar]

I've seen some afghan fellows with painted fingernails, I wonder if that's from voting too  :blotto:

 

[Flip]

Pinched this from CBC itself.

Seems Harper isn't down eith Elections Canada and their new ruling.
And for the record neither am I.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/09/09/harper-veil.html

Harper slams Elections Canada ruling on veils
Last Updated: Sunday, September 9, 2007 | 10:00 AM ET
CBC News
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.

Speaking at a news conference at the end of the APEC summit in Sydney, Australia, on Sunday, Harper said Elections Canada is subverting the will of Parliament by permitting women to cover their faces at polling stations.

"I profoundly disagree with the decision," Harper said, adding that it was at odds with federal legislation passed in late June.

"We just adopted this past sitting in the spring, Bill C-31, a law designed to have the visual identification of voters. It's the purpose of the law … and I think this decision goes in an entirely different direction," Harper said.

The prime minister also hinted that Parliament would take action if Elections Canada doesn't change course.

"I have to say that it concerns me greatly, because the role of Elections Canada is not to make its own laws. It's to put into place the laws that Parliament has passed, so I hope they will reconsider this decision," Harper said. "But in the meantime, if that doesn't happen, Parliament will have to consider what actions it's going to take to make sure its intentions are put into place."

Debate over the new voting provisions, announced on Thursday, comes amid preparations for three federal byelections in Quebec, to be held on Sept. 17.

The Bloc Québécois said on Friday it sent a letter to the federal elections office asking for the change for the byelections.

Bloc MP Pierre Paquette said the changes contravene "the spirit of the law."

"If you have to show some identification, you have to be able to see if the face in the ID is the same as the people in front of you," he said.

Elections Canada spokesman John Enright said Muslim women wearing the burkas or niqabs will have a couple of options at polling stations.

"They will be asked if they're willing to show their face. That's the first option that's presented to them," he said.

If women wish to keep their faces covered for religious reasons, they can present two pieces of ID, of which at least one must state their address, or they can have another voter registered in the same district vouch for them.

Veiled voters who only present one piece of government identification will have to show their face to confirm their identity.

Marc Mayrand, the chief electoral officer, has scheduled a news conference in Ottawa on Monday to talk more about the identification provisions of the Canada Elections Act.

 

[Roy Harding]

From yesterday's Montreal Gazette (http://digital.montrealgazette.com/epaper/viewer.aspx - I think you might have to be a subscriber to access it):

Accommodation


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey, here’s an idea: Let’s ask Muslims what they think

JAMES MENNIE


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“ Hey there, Mr. Elmenyawi. Guess why I’m calling.”

Normally, I’m not this flip on the phone, but seeing as how the headlines in the French-language media are worded with an intensity usually reserved for invasions from Mars, and seeing as how I’m speaking – yet again – with the head of the Muslim Council of Montreal about the perceived threat a length of silk poses to our very way of life, a little levity seemed in order.

Salam Elmenyawi chuckled ruefully before speaking. But it wasn’t so much my teaspoonful of humour that was making him laugh, as it was the dump truck-full of irony inadvertently unloaded onto Quebec Muslims on Thursday by Elections Canada.

“I was very grateful that someone out there was showing sensitivity to Muslim women who wear the niqab,” he said, alluding to a decision by the federal elections authority not to compel female Muslim voters wearing a face veil to remove it for purposes of elector identification during three by-elections next week.

“But we’d really like them to stop making those kind of announcements, because we don’t really need it.”

Given the blowback generated by Elections Canada’s announcement, you’d think what Elmenyawi really doesn’t need is a revival of the “Let’s vote with a bag on our head” movement sparked when Quebec’s chief electoral officer made a similar ruling before the provincial general election in March.

It’s an impression reinforced by a front-page headline in yesterday’s Journal de Montréal, summing up the Elections Canada announcement by noting: “We can even vote wearing a mask.”

But you’d be wrong, because Elmenyawi wasn’t speaking figuratively about not needing the ruling.

“Islam dictates that in the case of necessity, a woman must identify herself,” he said, adding that while “preferably” the identification should be made in front of another woman, the identification nevertheless has to be made.

“It’s very clear. ... When she’s asked for identification, she has to uncover herself.”

That includes identifying herself for a passport, driver’s licence or any other official document requiring visual identification.

While this would seem to nuance the issue somewhat, it will, of course, make absolutely not one molecule of difference to the newly revived “debate.”

The troubling timing of Elections Canada’s announcement – three days before the start of a Quebec public commission on the issue of reasonable accommodation of minorities – ensures that anything any Muslim has to say about wearing (or not wearing) a veil has become irrelevant.

The floor now belongs to anyone who believes religion – at least anybody else’s religion – has no place in 21st-century Quebec society.

That’s why the bumpkins in the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hamlet of Hérouxville are making a media comeback, getting space in Le Devoir to challenge the National Assembly to adopt a motion that would see the Quebec government “withhold from any individual, group or association the possibility of obtaining accommodation of a religious nature on its territory.”

Given the number of empty pews already in that territory, one might assume the Hérouxvillois’ proposal to sever church and state extends to all religions, and that they’d welcome the elimination of the cross on their town’s coat of arms – a cross that, according to the municipal website, “recalls the Christian faith of our parish.”

After all, why should religious symbology on a government building be tolerated in the new, lay Quebec?

But something tells me there’s as much chance of Hérouxville’s cross disappearing as there is of the crucifix in the National Assembly vanishing.

Elmenyawi, meanwhile, reckons that no matter what happens with the Elections Canada ruling, the damage has been done, a little more Islamophobia entering the social bloodstream.

Perhaps the furor over the Elections Canada verdict might be cited as more proof that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Or perhaps it proves that before government bureaucracies engage in what they feel to be the reasonable accommodation of religious minorities, they find out just whether that accommodation is actually necessary.

If nothing else, such a policy would keep Elections Canada from trying to be more Catholic than the pope, so to speak, when it came to dealing with Muslim voters.

 

[Good2Golf]

I don't have a problem with their not wanting to show their face...I understand completely.

We'll give them another option -- biometric reference still, just not using the face.  They simply register and have their fingerprints stored in NCIS and accessed at the polling station through a database bridge with Canada Elections -- presto!  Identity confirmed with a press of the thumb to a print reader.  Too easy.


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G2G