Former Premier Danny Williams Calls Stephen Harper’s Tactics Borderline Racist!
Former Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams lashed out at Stephen Harper in a recent interview with CBC News, calling some of Harper’s political tactics as borderline racist. Williams called on those who can’t follow their political leanings, and are unwilling to vote for the Liberals or the New Democrats, to simply stay away from the polls on Oct. 19.
NEWFOUNDLAND – Former Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams called out Stephen Harper, saying some of the tactics of Conservative Leader are borderline racist.
Williams, who led a Progressive Conservative government in Canada’s most easterly province from 2003 to 2010, launched his latest scathing attack against Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada on Sunday during an interview with CBC News.
He used the word racism in reference to the debate over the wearing of the niqab by Muslim women taking part in the oath of citizenship.
Williams said the issue is not worthy of becoming a national issue, but the Conservatives have latched onto it in order to secure votes.
“He doesn’t care if he isolates the issues of women or if he isolates the issue of minorities, and even crosses, possibly, that racism line,” Williams stated.
“It doesn’t matter to him. It’s all about getting elected at the end of the day.”
And Williams is not alone as many minorities and other media pundits have said that the Conservatives are going out of their way to offend minorities, especially Muslims.
While the Conservatives purposely put the wedge issue of niqabs and other anti-Muslim propaganda in Quebec in hopes of derailing the NDP’s momentum there but it has had the opposite effect in the rest of Canada as minorities and other progressive people are moving away from Harper and parking their vote with Justin Trudeau and the Liberals.
With Canadians set to go to the polls for a federal election in just two weeks, Williams said many “progressive conservatives” have a natural inclination to vote for Harper and the Conservatives.
But he called on those who can’t follow their political leanings, and are unwilling to vote for the Liberals or the New Democrats, to simply stay away from the polls on Oct. 19.
“Don’t vote at all. Just don’t vote for him because he’s bad for the country,” Williams said.
Adding to Williams’ anger over Haper stirring the pot, CBC wrote a few comparing the rhetoric over the niqab in the federal election campaign being similar to another furor, more than 20 years ago, around the Sikh turban and its compatibility with Canadian values and the country’s dearest institutions.
What was allegedly at stake in that debate in the 1990s was the very fabric of the nation, and the sanctity and perhaps survival of an important historic symbol of the country — the Stetson of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, reported CBC News.
Baltej Singh Dhillon, a young Sikh-Canadian, wanted to become a Mountie. But his application to the force led to a kind of turban turmoil and an eventual intervention in Parliament by the Progressive Conservative government of the day.
[The ‘Progressive Conservatives’ were a completely different party from today’s ’Conservatives-Tories’; the latter, now led by Stephen Harper, is merely the reincarnation of the racist Reform Party which then led the fight to ban the turban.]
The debate was featured on newscasts and dominated the public conversation. Political parties took positions on it, including the Reform Party, which deemed allowing the right to wear a turban unnecessary, and went so far as to pass a resolution at its 1989 convention banning such religious attire for the RCMP. At the time, Stephen Harper was a defeated Reform Party candidate and the party’s policy chief.
In a video story produced by Telus Optik in B.C. and posted online, Baltej recalled the tone of the debate.
“It was vicious. It was angry. It was emotional. It had all the elements of racism in there. It was a disappointment is what it was,” he said in the video.
“The fear was that we would lose the symbols that defined Canadians and defined our culture and defined who we were and our branding with the rest of the world.”
“And that was the greatest irony: That on one hand, we need to protect our symbols, and in the same breath, we need you to not protect your faith or your religion or your roots.”
