Let’s face it

Far from it. There is no issue at stake, nor is there even a small constituency aligned for or against such a move. Call it the imperfections of the democratic process and the role that the media play in exaggerating what would otherwise be footnotes.

Last fall, a straw debate got underway in the province of Quebec about women in veils casting their votes, and before most Canadians knew it, the issue had garnered national headlines. Political parties vied with each other to come out on the right side of the issue, pretending that a large number of women were showing up at polling stations in veils and niqabs.

The fact is that there is no known instance of women trying to exercise their franchise while hiding their faces out of religious observance or social tradition. The election law as it stands does not require facial identification, unlike at, say, border crossings to the US where visual recognition is a must. Further, Canadians living abroad and citizens housed in jails can vote by postal ballot, without ever showing up at a polling station in person.

How did Canada get to the stage where the government is introducing legislation to ensure that women uncover their faces before voting? Also, how does this square with Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees equality and religious and cultural freedoms, particularly when it appears to single out a particular community - namely, Muslims?

It all started with a reporter in Quebec tossing a hypothetical question during by-elections there three months ago. Set against the backdrop of a commission that is looking at “reasonable accommodation” of immigrants in Quebec, the reporter asked an election official if women who cover their faces in veils would be allowed to vote in the upcoming elections. Yes, replied the official, citing the fact that facial identification is not a must under current electoral law.

Newspapers in Quebec found the topic too tantalising for plain reporting. Bold headlines and pictures of women in niqabs and long black robes queuing up to vote at polling stations soon filled newspaper columns. Except that the pictures were never shot in Canada - they were, in fact, mostly from Pakistan. The reality that no woman was ever known to have insisted on voting after having been challenged by an electoral official seemed to make little difference to the manufactured debate in the province.

The debate took on an edge when about 70 people showed up to vote in the by-elections with their faces covered, including a few with sheets over their heads, carved pumpkins with slits for eyes and face masks. It would have probably gone no further but for a similar question posed to the chief of elections, Canada.

The answer was no different: Yes, he said, women in niqabs can vote because there is no law against it. That was when the federal parties rose to the bait, trying to outgun each other in their quest to stand up for so-called democratic principles and express their outrage over such a practice.

Referring to the pumpkin-wearing voter from last September, the government house leader, Peter Van Loan, said, “When people start to ridicule the rules that are in place for an election, that starts to erode public confidence in our system and I don’t think we as parliamentarians can stand by and allow this to continue.” He acknowledged that the Muslim community was being put on the defensive for no fault of theirs.

The Quebec legislature has also introduced a similar bill of its own, and even there, all parties appear to be in favour. However, in recent days, two opposition parties seem to be backtracking. The separatist Bloc Quebecois has trouble with the bills on grounds of “gender equity” because male officers would be barred from asking women to unveil their faces. The Liberals belatedly are invoking the Charter to highlight their concerns after initially lending enthusiastic support.

Like elsewhere in the West, Muslims are a growing minority in Canada and with that has come a larger number of women who prefer to cover their faces in keeping with cultural or religious traditions. As proud as Canadians are about their multiculturalism, the wearing of veils of any kind has not been an issue, unlike in Britain where former foreign secretary Jack Straw made the issue a lightning rod a year ago by suggesting that wearing a veil was somehow antithetical to a democratic conversation. He called it a “visible statement of separation and of difference”.

Veils have also come in the way of young female athletes competing in soccer and judo tournaments in Canada. Girls have been called off the field in Quebec, Alberta and Manitoba after they refused to remove their hijabs. The governing bodies of these sports, both Canadian and international, have endorsed the decisions of the referees, pointing out that the rules forbid players from wearing any head coverings that might injure members of a rival team. However, in a show of solidarity with the girls who were disqualified, entire soccer teams have walked off the field to express their dismay.

The changing of the electoral rules perhaps speaks to the law of unintended consequences, but also shows the difficult time that even a proud, multicultural nation such as Canada has with practices that have so far been alien to its way of living. Arab and Islamic organisations find themselves equally befuddled because they never advocated for special exemptions for niqab-wearing women in the first place.

A Nieman scholar from Harvard University, George Abraham writes from Ottawa. Reach him at diplomat01@rogers.co