Elections Canada position on 'faceless voting' undermines electoral integrity and equality before the ballot box

For Immediate ReleaseSeptember 6, 2007 Ottawa, Canada – The Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD) regards as unconscionable Elections Canada’s reported new policy of allowing Muslim women to wear identity-concealing face veils, including full burqas, when voting in upcoming federal by-elections in Quebec and Ontario. Canada’s federal elections’ regulator says Muslim women can “vote veiled” merely by identifying themselves with a driver’s licence and second piece of identification. As an alternative, “covered” women need only swear an oath and have another voter vouch for them. Outbursts of public condemnation overturned a similar initiative earlier this year by Quebec's Election Commission. The Commission was forced to reverse its consent to “burqa voting” when offended Quebec citizens and public interest groups threatened civil disobedience at election time. Highlighting the problem of double standards and arbitrariness, voters promised to attend polls with their faces covered by paper bags, sheets, hockey masks and other head coverings, and to assert “sensitivity” and special religious privilege as their justification for doing so. "Elections Canada’s 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," said David Harris, CCD Senior Fellow for National Security. Beyond the ballot box, religious face coverings have at times been misused in Canada and around the world to facilitate fraud and other criminal acts. Veiling has been used abroad to advance terrorist operations, including suicide bombings. Such risks compelled France to ban the burqa in certain public spheres, and the Netherlands’ government - among others - is considering doing the same. And last fall in Quebec, ADQ leader Mario Dumont went beyond the ballot box issue, stating that he did not “rule out the possibility of laws … to make illegal the wearing of the burqa.” Yet some of Canada’s elites, apparently unfazed by the threat to electoral integrity and public safety, appear helpless in the face of radical lobbying in the name of “accommodation”. "Canadians call upon Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Opposition leaders Stephane Dion, Gilles Duceppe, and Jack Layton, to demand an end to Elections Canada’s ill-considered policy of diminished electoral scrutiny for one religious group," said Harris.

"Government must promote one secular law for all, and an end to the appeasing of radical fundamentalism in whatever guise - or disguise."