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Op-Ed: Conservatives use adviser’s wedge tactics with niqab issue

Lynton Crosby has had several successful ventures into politics helping UK prime minister David Cameron and John Howard’s successful 2001 campaign in Australia. Crosby often uses what is called a wedge strategy. This strategy exploits social issues such as crime, race, or immigration to use as a wedge to divide and pry support from other parties to favour the party he is working for.

During the Howard campaign, the then-prime minister of Australia turned away the refugee-vessel MV Tampa with 440 people on board. Large newspaper ads boasted that “We decide who comes into this country.” His ministers reported, falsely it turned out, that people on the boat seeking asylum had thrown children overboard hoping to secure rescue and entry into Australia. This was alleged to be part of Crosby’s strategy.

Crosby also combines the wedge strategy with extensive polling to indicate what messages would resonate with voters and support a shift towards the party he is working for. He stresses the importance both of polling and careful targeting, often of groups only marginally involved in politics, using simple messages. Having such groups vote for a specific party can make a great deal of difference in close races.

In the present election the Harper Conservatives use of the niqab controversy shows a clear resemblance to Crosby’s strategy. Zunera Ishaq wanted to wear the niqab when she took the ciitzenship oath. When she was informed that the regulations passed by the Conservative government would not allow her to do so she appealed to a Federal Court that upheld her right to wear the niqab at the ceremony. Harper asked an appeals court for a stay of the decision until the Supreme Court heard an appeal that the government would make. The court turned him down. The Conservatives immediately announced that within 100 days of being elected they would ban face coverings during citizenship ceremonies. Harper went on to say that he would look at banning public servants from wearing the niqab as well.

Ishaq does not object to removing her niqab for identification purposes as part of the citizenship ceremony; she asked only that she be allowed to wear it when she took the oath. This position fits with that taken by the NDP leader: NDP Leader Tom Mulcair said he supports the current requirement that women show their faces at some point in the citizenship process but that they should not be forced to remove a face covering while taking the oath of citizenship.

While Trudeau may criticize Harper for making wearing of the niqab an issue, he in effect supported the ban, aware of the danger of taking any position that is very unpopular and likely to lose him votes. Trudeau said a Liberal government would not repeal the Conservative ban on the niqab. This is the same sort of strategy Trudeau takes on other issues such as Harper’s anti-terror bill, which he says he opposes but would vote for since he fears that Harper can use the politics of fear against him and say he is soft on terrorists. Mulcair will be rewarded for his principled position by losing support in Quebec and probably elsewhere in Canada as well. The Liberals, Conservatives, and Bloc Quebecois — which also supports the ban — will garner some votes from those who previously supported the NDP.

A telephone survey by Leger Marketing in March found that 82 per cent of Canadians favoured the ban on the niqab at the citizenship ceremony either “somewhat or strongly” with only 15 per cent opposed. In Quebec 93 per cent favoured the ban. Perhaps, the lawyer for Ishaq has at least part of the truth in his view of why Harper brought up the issue during the campaign: Lorne Waldman, Ishaq’s lawyer, says “there’s one reason and one reason alone for this policy — it is part of the government political strategy to pander to the section of the country where Islamophobia is at its highest — Quebec. It’s about consolidating the Conservative position in 15 seats there.” Given the polls, concentrating on this issue will not hurt Harper in the rest of Canada either. The latest polls show the NDP drifting down nationally and showing a steep decline in Quebec.

The video below shows how another contentious issue of regulations and what can be worn was solved by granting the demands of a member of a minority group a Sikh member of the RCMP.

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