The conservative action refusing to allow new Muslim immigrants to wear head coverings while taking their oath of citizenship was a good example. Fortunately they eventually lost their court battle defending that discriminatory policy. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/zunera-ishaq-niqab-ban-citizenship-oath-1.3257762
Interesting that you believe this "hurts minorities". It certainly shows a lack of respect for certain cultural norms, but I believe the niqab itself is more oppressive to vulnerable groups(namely women) than a policy that prevents their adornment. I do not believe the niqab is commiserate with western values. And I believe this policy affected minorities due to a correlation, not a causality(the motivation of the policy had little to do with the fact that Muslims are a minority in Canada).
I don't agree with it at all. I have a friend who became Muslim in her later life, and voluntarily chose to wear a hijab. She wasn't oppressed into doing either.
You can't start banning things because you think they might possibly be used to oppress someone without immediately running into serious problems. Christianity for example has a long history of being used to justify atrocities of all sorts and particularly to oppress women. Therefore by your logic we should deny citizenship to anyone who wears a crucifix - to avoid potential oppression of women. It doesn't matter if the women want to wear the crucifix or not.
Fortunately, the supreme court (unanimously) decided that people should be free to wear the symbols of their religion that they want to - and the government is not free to target certain religious groups under the guise of 'protection'.
There was also the Conservative party idea of a 'barbaric cultural practices" hotline to report Muslims.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/02/canada-conservatives-barbaric-cultural-practices-hotline
Perhaps more egregious, but given how Canadians are still occasionally subjected to arranged marriages, honor killings and FGM I don't think this is entirely out of line either.
My neighbourhood is predominantly Hindu and Muslim. Arranged marriages are common here, and seem to work out in practice about as well as non-arranged marriages around here. What do you have against them?
'Honour' killings are something totally different, a disgusting and indefensible practice. There was a case where there was an 'honour' killing a few streets away from us a couple years ago. The man (not Muslim - he was Hindu) involved is now serving time in prison. I don't believe that an anonymous hotline to report Muslims is the best way to prevent this sort of tragedy. That's the kind of action that will naturally cause people to close off from the rest of our society. If you're serious about wanting to stop 'honor' killings you want to integrate new immigrants with our society as quickly as possible. The honour killing in our neighbourhood would likely not have happened if the woman involved felt able to go to others for help.
Is Scheer suggesting an instatement of this hotline?
No. To the best of my knowledge, Scheer is not suggesting an installment of an anti-Muslim hotline. You had asked for examples of the conservative party being racist though.
An opinion piece on the matter:
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/malcolm-trudeaus-odd-statements-on-female-genital-mutilation-continue
How do you feel about 'male genital mutiliation' as commonly perpetrated by Jewish people on boys?
Then there was the full complicity of the Conservative government with the US torture and violation of rights of a Muslim Canadian minor. . . eventually costing us a ten million dollar settlement and apology in a unanimous Supreme Court decision about Omar Khadr.
The Khadr case was very complicated and I don't know if he was a child or an adult, which seems to be central to the issue. I'm not going to comment on whether he was or not, I'll leave that to the judicial branch, however the fact that he was closely involved with terrorism and killed a soldier lends some credibility to his detainment--again, I personally would not attribute this to some sort of racist or bigoted dogwhistling.
Our judicial branch
has commented on that. It is public knowledge that Khadr was illegally arrested and tortured by the Americans at the age of 15, for alleged crimes committed when he was younger. This happened with the knowledge, consent, and aid of our Conservative government. That's also why he received more than 10 million dollars of taxpayer money.
We are a society governed by the rule of law. Khadr may well be guilty as fuck. But if he is, then repatriate him and try him in a court of law - using our established legal process. Find him guilty and throw away the key - good riddance! But don't be a part of America's illegal torture prison and kangaroo court, where 'evidence' produced is so flimsy that it proves nothing, and torture is regularly used to obtain confessions that are often disputed by known facts. I believe that it's
much more serious when our government breaks the law than when an individual does.
Alone, I agree with you. Torturing an illegally detained Muslim child isn't a clear example of racism from the conservatives. But taken into account with all of the other anti-Muslim comments and policies it helps to paint a picture.
Sheer has totally accepted pretty egregious past racist behaviour from those in his party. At the same time, he's howling about how it's unacceptable to accept past racist behaviour from Trudeau. So as an apparent Sheer supported, I have to ask you . . . which is it?
Well mostly because Trudeau set his own standards for exceptional behavior and he hasn't come even close to meeting them, so it's the hypocrisy that is inflammatory to his political opponents. I wouldn't call me a Scheer supporter btw. Christie Blatchford covered this well in the National Post, I think the headline sums it up well:
Trudeau cuts himself the slack he has denied to others
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/christie-blatchford-in-cutting-himself-slack-its-trudeaus-hypocrisy-that-is-so-galling
Yeah, agreed. Trudeau is cutting himself slack he has denied others. That's bullshit. But it's not the question I asked you.
Scheer's argument appears to be that Trudeau set standards . . . and thus should be held to them. Since conservatives have set no standards . . . they should be forgiven. Does that make sense to you?
