Emmett Macfarlane: Harper’s needless niqab fight

Good piece by Emmett Macfarlane on the niqab debate. Concluding paras below:

Justin Trudeau was not wrong to point out that there is a deeply troubling, corrosive element to this debate. (Full disclosure: I was asked to read a draft of his speech on this topic and provide non-partisan feedback.) The recent incident of a Quebec judge denying access to a woman wearing a hijab (head scarf) was deplorable. The judge denied someone access to justice on the basis of her identity, and should be removed from the bench for such a flagrant violation of her role and of the constitution. In the midst of such troubling anti-Muslim sentiment, policies that target minority groups in this fashion are irresponsible.

The policy also speaks to an ignorance about Canada’s success with social integration. Second-generation immigrants in Canada tend to do extremely well in comparison to their counterparts in many other countries on measures like intergenerational social mobility and language acquisition. There is no reason to think the niqab issue is any different; a tiny minority of Muslim women in Canada choose to wear it, and it is highly unlikely their daughters will. Opponents of the niqab might ask themselves, again, whether government intervention is even necessary on this issue. Of course, they might also stop to ask themselves if there aren’t other reasons why a woman would wear one, as opposed to just “oppression,” and why their allegedly “pro women” position requires telling women what they can’t wear and when.

Finally, the debate also raises a fundamental question about our politics. There has been much commentary about the place of social conservatism in the Conservative party, as people wonder how Stephen Harper has managed his caucus for so long while denying social conservatives opportunities to pursue policies like those related to restricting abortion. Looking at this debate, and government initiatives like Bill C-51, it has become clear that this attention has been focused on the wrong group of conservatives, because I am left asking myself, with some frequency lately, what happened to all of the libertarians?

Emmett Macfarlane: Harper’s needless niqab fight