Big Steve poops pants in paroxysm of rage as Zunera Ishaq becomes a Canadian

The think tank here at Falling Downs believes Zunera Ishaq is already a model Canadian - one who will fight for her rights!

One who will not be cowed by a bullying Prime Minister who used the full weight of the state to trample those rights. And how Canadian of her to head to Timmies for a double-double right after the ceremony!

From one immigrant to another, a warm welcome to Canada, Ms. Ishaq!

Towel-heads of terror threaten very fabric of Canadian society

Yup, that's Big Steve's story, and he's gonna double down on it. Never mind that his vendetta against that niqab-clad woman has now suffered three straight losses at the Federal Court of Appeal.

But that's not going to slow down the Harper train for long. Nosirree, Big Steve is promising real Canadians, the old stock, that his party will change the law within 100 days of being re-elected, making the paranoid niqab ban immune from both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada.

Oddly enough, this comes out on the same day as Harper is boasting about entangling Canada in yet another "free trade" agreement.

Now, coming from the shop floor as I do, I verily believe that these free-trade agreements have done infinitely more damage to the fabric of Canadian society than some woman in a niqab ever will.

Back in the day, new immigrants got a bumpy ride. That was true of every group of newcomers who ever washed up on these shores. Once your old-stockers had decimated the native population, the land was wide open for settlement, and the huddled masses from your overseas shitholes took the bait right quick.

You got here and you fought for a grip on the bottom rung...

That was true for the Scots and Brits looking for new pastures after the enclosures. That was true for the Irish fleeing the potato famine. That was true for the Jews fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe. That was true for my folks after the WW 2. That was true for Jamaicans and Sikhs and folks of every creed and colour.

But none of them had to face a government so determined to exclude them that even after the Federal Court of Appeal rules against them three times in a row, that government promises to change the law of the land to keep them out.

It's not immigrants or refugees threatening the fabric of Canadian society...

It's Stephen Harper.

Race baiting becomes essential re-election strategy for Harper team

On the face of it, I too would be inclined to agree with the proposition that "a prospective future citizen of Canada should not be allowed to hide their identity at a citizenship ceremony."

Except, when you look into it at all, nobody is "hiding" their identity.

If and when Zunera Ishaq is permitted to wear her niqab at her citizenship ceremony, the entire country will know exactly who that veiled woman is.

By the time she makes it to the ceremony, Zunera will have revealed and unveiled herself countless times to various government functionaries in their semi-private offices. Zunera can do that because her faith dictates that she cover up in public.

As in a public ceremony.

At no point has Zunera Ishaq's niqab been about "hiding her identity."

Our local MP Larry Miller had to do a little back-pedalling when he got on national TV for proclaiming "those people should get the hell back to where they came from" back in March.

But Big Steve himself has been playing the same ugly game.

We're either a tolerant and diverse society, or we're not.

Harper gang determined to milk niqab controversy to the very last racist vote

Yesterday I erroneously referred to the Federal Court of Appeal as the country's "top" court. It isn't. The top court would be the Supreme Court of Canada.

Therefore it shouldn't come as a shock that Big Steve plans to keep the phoney niqab issue alive by promising to appeal yesterday's rejection of the niqab ban by the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court. Observant Muslim women who choose to cover up in public would, if the Harperites prevail, join the one other identifiable, or rather unidentifiable group for whom covering up in public has been criminalized; anti-government protesters.

Two years ago Harper's Holy Rollers used their majority to steam-roll Bill C-309 through Parliament. That's a pungent piece of police-state legislation that makes it a criminal offence, punishable by up to ten years in prison, for anyone to cover their face at any gathering that the notoriously thin-skinned Harper gang deems "unlawful."

Makes you wonder where this country is headed, doesn't it? Luckily, there's still one group that's allowed to hide their identity while out and about in public...

Top court slaps down Harper's racist niqab obsession

It was just this morning that I heard Big Steve on CBC radio expounding on how "all Canadians" are aghast that some of them Mooslim women want to "hide their identity" at the very moment they are being sworn in as Canadian citizens.

What an odious crock of racist shit!

By late afternoon it became apparent that not "all" Canadian's felt that way, including the three judges at the Federal Court of Appeal who said ixnay to Big Steve's race baiting.

Here's a quote from the CBC News website:

The case started with a lawsuit from Zunera Ishaq, a devout Muslim who moved to Ontario from Pakistan in 2008 to join her husband. Ishaq agreed to remove her niqab for an official before writing and passing her citizenship test two years ago, but she objects to unveiling in public at the oath-taking ceremony.

In the Federal Court ruling, Judge Keith Boswell said the government policy, introduced in 2011, violates the Citizenship Act, which states citizenship judges must allow the greatest possible religious freedom when administering the oath.

Boswell asked how that would be possible, "if the policy requires candidates to violate or renounce a basic tenet of their religion."

Alrighty then!

I don't know who Ms. Ishaq will be voting for come October 19, but I have a pretty good idea who she won't be voting for!

Welcome to Canada, Zunera!