A former premier of a Canadian province has said prime minister and fellow Conservative Stephen Harper is "bad for the country" because some of his policies are close to being racist.
Ex-Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams urged Conservatives not to vote for Mr Harper, who has made the Islamic face veil a focus of the October 19 election.
Mr Harper's government failed in an attempt to ban the practice of wearing the niqab while swearing the citizenship oath and lost an appeal on Monday to have the decision delayed while it appeals to the Supreme Court.
Just two women out of more than 650,000 people have chosen not to proceed to the citizenship ceremony based on the requirement to remove their face coverings.
"Two women have been in that situation. Why is that a national issue?" Mr Williams said.
The Harper government also said last week it would create a phone line for Canadians to report those engaged in "barbaric cultural practices" such as early and forced marriages.
Opposition leaders have condemned injecting religion into the election campaign. Conservatives "are playing with fire, and people are going to get hurt", Gerald Butts, a close adviser to opposition Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, tweeted last week.
Mr Williams said Mr Harper was pitting Canadians against each other and said the prime minister "doesn't care if he possibly crosses that racism line".
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article