Jason Kenney, Minister of Veils

He's outspoken, ambitious, and protecting our electoral system from non-existent threats.

Presumably displaying the breadth of opinion that will soon be on Sun TV, two Sun Media columnists square off on the virtues of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, who recently came out in support of a bill to compel Muslim women to uncover their faces while voting.

Michael Den Tandt likes him. Why? Well, he doesn’t go into specifics, but it has something to do with the fact that the minister “makes sense more often than not,” which as far as benchmarks for our politicians go, is fairly low. Den Tandt supports Kenney’s position on veiled voting as necessary to ensure “common standards are applied to all without fear or favour” and says Kenney is “pressing reforms the country, including recent immigrants, badly needs. The opposition, meantime, are dead in the water on this file.”

But what exactly is Kenney’s file, asks Warren Kinsella. He thinks Kenney has made a habit of speaking out about issues that are the responsibility of other politicians, like banning the kirpan in Quebec’s legislature (a matter for Quebec legislators), citizen’s arrests (minister of justice), the Dalai Lama (foreign affairs), and veiled voting (Elections Canada). Kinsella thinks all Kenney’s flurry of pronouncements is a sign of his troubling ambition to replace Stephen Harper as Conservative leader. Really? Is Kinsella surprised that a politician is talking to the media about things he barely knows about? Here we were thinking they made a living doing that.

While we’re on the topic of veiled voting, here’s a Toronto Star editorial that does a great job of showing why the proposed bill is a needless piece of legislation that “panders to narrow-minded fears about minorities.” Not only did not a single one of the 14 million people who voted in the last election attempt to do so while wearing a veil, but you’re allowed to mail in your ballot. If you do show up at a polling station, all you need is a hydro bill with your address on it in order to vote. So yeah, better tackle that niqab thing before those ladies bring the whole system down.