Iggy On The Quebec Niqab Debate: Total Shithead Or Canny Politician?

One is inclined to think the former when reading stories like this, especially if you feel Bill-94, which would ban the wearing of the niqab, a traditional Muslim veil, while dealing with public services, is the worst sort of pandering to Quebec's fourche utilisant le paysans ("pitchfork wielding peasants", according to Babelfish). But the thing with it is, Bill-94 is, as Chris Selley argues here, a bag of mush intended to defuse the redneck anger without making any real practical change:

And here’s Bill 94: “The general practice holds that a member of the staff of the administration of government ... and a person to whom services are being rendered ... will have their faces uncovered during the rendering of services.”

Huh? General practice? Oh: “When an accommodation involves a change to this practice, it must be refused if motives related to security, communication or identification justify it.”

So there will be accommodations, then? You sure wouldn’t have known it from Wednesday’s news conference. “There are some fudges,” University of Montreal political science professor Daniel Weinstock says of Bill 94. “And that’s a strange fudge.”

“It certainly doesn’t jibe with the public relations message they’re putting out there,” he adds.

Right. And Iggy is just endorsing Charest's artful dodge, which is necessary to prevent the truly crazy people from legislating much worse. Sometimes the Conservative Menace must be beat down via stealth and deception. Shush, children, shush!