Immigrant-screening proposal about promoting tolerance, Leith says [with a straight face]

Telling:

But the harshest words for Ms. Leitch have come from Mr. Harper’s former policy director Rachel Curran – now a senior associate at the former prime minister’s new international consulting firm, Harper & Associates.

Ms. Curran called Ms. Leitch’s proposal “really dangerous politics” and accused her of specifically targeting Muslim immigrants.

“We have never had the government actually test people on what their thoughts and beliefs and their values are in Canada, and I don’t think we should go down that path,” Ms. Curran said.

“It’s a pretty dangerous path. It’s actually a pretty Orwellian path.”

Ms. Curran called the barbaric cultural practices tip line an “ill advised policy” that was poorly communicated at the time, but defended it as a last-minute request from a specific ethnic community that she declined to identify. She said she hasn’t spoken about the issue with her former boss, but doesn’t feel he would support Ms. Leitch’s proposal.

“Much of our party’s support came from new immigrants who believed in what the party was doing, and believed in what prime minister Harper was doing. And there is simply no way that he ever would have pursued or proposed a policy that was frankly fundamentally anti-immigrant,” she said.

“I think it does the party a tremendous amount of harm, and if nothing else it divides the party, which is also a bad thing.”

Ms. Leitch denies her proposal targets Muslims in any way.

“I understand the compulsion to paint a discussion about values in this way. But I actually don’t think it’s fair, and I don’t think it’s right,” she said.

Ms. Leitch also brought up two instances where her party sought to block the entry into Canada of those who she said contravene Canadian values of gender equality and women’s rights: so-called “pick-up artist” Julien Blanc in 2014, and in February, Daryush Valizadeh, also known as “Roosh V,” an American blogger who says rape should be legalized on private property.

Source: Immigrant-screening proposal about promoting tolerance, Leitch says – The Globe and Mail