mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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 Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 9:51 am Post subject: Muslim women can vote while veiled: Elections Canada |
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http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070909/harper_veils_070909/20070909?hub=TopStories
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Prime Minister Stephen Harper blasted Elections Canada Sunday for going against a parliamentary ruling by allowing Muslim women to wear veils and burkas while voting.
The move goes directly against a unanimous vote in the House of Commons this past spring to make visual identification mandatory when casting a ballot.
"I profoundly disagree with the decision," Harper told reporters in Sydney, Australia where he is attending the APEC conference. "We just adopted this past sitting, in the spring, Bill C-31, a law designed to have the visual identification of voters. That's the purpose of the law.
"That was the law voted virtually unanimously by Parliament and I think that this decision goes in an entirely different direction," he continued.
The Elections Canada ruling was prompted by three upcoming byelections in Quebec on Sept. 17. The arms-length elections agency has scheduled a news conference on Monday to discuss their decision.
On their website, Elections Canada reiterated their policies on wearing religious face coverings while voting.
It states that if an elector produces an original government-issued photo identification that contains her name and home address then she has the following options:
* She may choose to unveil to identify herself
* She may produce a second original piece of identification from Chief Electoral Officer of Canada's authorized list of identification
* She may come with another elector who is registered in the same polling division and who can provide adequate proof of their own identification to vouch for her identity. They would both need to make a sworn statement under oath.
Harper said Parliament will have to find a way to make sure the House's ruling takes effect.
"The role of Elections Canada is not to make its own laws, it's to put into place the laws that Parliament has passed," he said.
Speaking on CTV's Question Period Sunday morning, a panel of political strategists agreed a compromise has to be made on the issue.
Liberal strategist Don Moors pointed out Liberal Opposition Leader Stephane Dion's recommendation to place female Elections Canada Officers in voting booths to identify Muslim female voters.
NDP President Anne McGrath said Elections Canada is an agency that "knows what it is doing."
"Elections Canada goes around the world helping other countries with their elections," she said. "I think the officials at Elections Canada know how to make sure that the voting is accurate."
The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations in Montreal said the ruling will only affect a very small number of Muslim women.
"We're talking about a minority of a minority of a minority,'' spokeswoman Sarah Elgazzar told the Canadian Press. "It's a very small section of the practising Muslim women, which is already a small enough section of the Muslim community that actually wear the niqab." |
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