The Harper government yesterday introduced legislation requiring all voters - including veiled Muslim women - to show their faces before being allowed to cast ballots in federal elections.
Peter Van Loan, the minister responsible for democratic reform, said he hopes the bill will settle the potentially corrosive debate over the accommodation of diverse religious beliefs.
But opposition parties and some Muslim groups suggested it will do just the opposite. They fear the bill will give a national podium to the heated debate that has provoked some ugly anti-immigrant sentiment in Quebec.
"I do not want this debate imported into the House of Commons," Liberal deputy leader Michael Ignatieff said.
While he supports requiring all voters to identify themselves, Mr. Ignatieff added: "What I don't like about this whole project is the idea that we take a bunch of women wearing veils and we make a whole big deal about this ... Let's not have politicians fishing around and creating divisions between Canadians about this."
Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress said the law is unnecessary and will feed discrimination against Muslim Canadians. And he suggested the Tories are hoping to make "political mileage among Islamophobes."
Sameer Zuberi, of the Council on American Islamic Relations-Canada, said the federal Tories are trying to "win over Quebec" by jumping on an issue that is already raging in the province. He questioned the urgency of the matter given that "there are hardly any" women in Canada who choose to wear niqabs or burkas to cover their faces.
The issue of veiled voters first came up during the Quebec provincial election last spring, adding fuel to an already heated debate over how far the province should go in accommodating newcomers. Action Démocratique Leader Mario Dumont's popularity surged after he suggested Quebec has gone too far in catering to immigrants.
Last month, the issue popped up on the national radar during three federal by-elections in Quebec. Marc Mayrand, the country's chief electoral officer, opened a political storm when he said the law did not require by-election voters to uncover their faces.
Led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, MPs in all parties ganged up on Mr. Mayrand. They accused him of thwarting the will of Parliament, which had passed a bill last spring aimed at beefing up voter identification requirements.
However, Mr. Mayrand pointed out that the bill did not specifically require visual identification. If that's what MPs had intended, Mr. Mayrand challenged them to change the law.
Yesterday's bill is the government's response.
The bill makes a limited exception for any voter whose face is swathed in bandages due to surgery or some other medical reason.
It also gives some flexibility to Elections Canada officials in administering the law so that it is respectful of religious beliefs.
For instance, Mr. Van Loan said, Elections Canada may want to arrange for veiled Muslim women to uncover their faces behind a screen and in front of a female elections official.
While the Bloc appeared supportive of the bill yesterday, both the Liberals and NDP seemed decidedly less enthusiastic.
NDP Leader Jack Layton reserved comment on the bill. But he questioned why the government decided it was more urgent to deal with veiled voters - perhaps only a handful of women - than to fix an oversight in last spring's electoral law changes that wound up inadvertently disenfranchising one million rural voters who do not have formal street addresses.