MONTREAL — The Bloc Québécois produces an attack ad depicting oil from a pipeline transforming into a black niqab and warns things have “gone too far.” A Conservative candidate running south of Montreal urges people to vote wearing ski masks to show their disapproval of the Muslim face-covering. The campaign poster of a Montreal NDP candidate is vandalized to obscure her face as if she is wearing a niqab.
The election campaign in Quebec has turned nasty since the Federal Court of Appeal ruled last week a Toronto woman should be allowed to take the oath of citizenship wearing a niqab, and it is the NDP that is feeling the pinch the most.
After facing repeated questioning about his party’s support of a woman’s right to swear the oath of citizenship wearing the face-covering, NDP leader Tom Mulcair devoted an entire speech to the issue Wednesday, the eve of the first French-language leaders debate.