September 10, 2007 | In Politics |
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has joined with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD) in criticizing Elections Canada’s recent decision to let Muslim women wear face-concealing burqas while voting.
The federal election regulator announced last week that Muslim women would be allowed to “vote veiled” in upcoming by-elections in Ontario and Quebec, by merely producing two pieces of ID or swearing an oath and having another voter vouch for them.
Harper said yesterday that he “profoundly disagrees” with the decision, noting that all four federal parties voted this past spring for a law requiring the visual identification of voters.
David Harris of the CCD, meanwhile, said that the Elections Canada initiative “violates the basic premise of public voting in Canada and the principle of equality of all Canadians before the ballot box. It is an invitation to fraud, misrepresentation, and the debasing of our democratic electoral system.”
There is little doubt that outrageous decision to “accommodate minorities” with special treatment will meet with plenty of opposition from Canadians, hopefully forcing Elections Canada to scrap its vailed voting position, just as Quebec’s Election Commission was forced to do with a similar initiative earlier this year.
