It’s definitely starting to look like there’s a either a rift forming in the NDP when it comes to their position on the niqab, or they’re saying one thing in English and another in French, trying to please both audiences in contradiction to the other. Alexandre Boulerice went on Quebec media to talk about the need to keep it out of the civil service, and that we need a national Bouchard-Taylor-esque commission to determine reasonable accommodation for religious minorities around the country – because that worked so well in Quebec, and apparently the rest of the country has the same insecurities around multiculturalism that we need to develop some kind of nonsense term like “interculturalism” to cover for assimilationist policies. Meanwhile, in English, MPs like Paul Dewar and Pat Martin are saying there’s no issue with the niqab and no party policy around it, and Thomas Mulcair has been dancing around the issue when asked directly, talking only about how the Federal Court judgement on the citizenship ceremony issue went to process – a ministerial decree – than the substance of the niqab issue. And if you thought that Boulerice was just freelancing that opinion, it was being tweeted out by the party’s official French Twitter Machine account, and give the degree to which communications are centralised in that party (possibly worse than the Conservative centralisation), it would seem to indicate that such a message has been officially sanctioned, and that the party looks to be trying to please different audiences in the country with contradictory messages. Meanwhile, The Canadian Press took their Baloney Meter™ to the Conservative claims around the niqab ban for citizenship ceremonies (spoiler: It’s full of baloney).

Good read:

• In case you missed it, the Conservatives have been subjecting C-51 witnesses to McCarthyeque attacks, including Diane Ablonczy making some fairly serious allegations about a Muslim group under the shield of parliamentary privilege.
• The case of that man arrested in Turkey for allegedly helping those three UK schoolgirls join ISIS is claiming ties to our embassy in Jordan, thickening that plot.
• The Conservatives claimed that our warship stationed in the Black Sea was buzzed by Russian jets – but NATO disputes that account.
• There are questions about payments that Vic Toews’ wife received from a Manitoba First Nation for “strategic advice.”
• Susan Delacourt looks at the issue of Conservatives marketing with fear.

Odds and ends:

Jason Kenney and Erin O’Toole say reservists will get the same benefits are regular soldiers, but others are waiting to see the fine print.

Correctional investigator Howard Sapers is waiting to hear if he’ll be reappointed to the position.

https://twitter.com/davidakin/status/576548643764744192