Sometimes the government has to answer questions with ambiguous language.

For members who have only ever been in government, the negativity and aggressiveness of the opposition is easy to caricature.

The federal court has not commented on niqab as being a violation of any putative Charter right, but rather has said that the court believes that the policy ought to be anchored in legislation or regulation as opposed to an administrative order from the Minister. We disagree with that. But this is not a Charter ruling.

I thought very seriously having something more like a normal life where I might have my weekends and evenings off, and be able to read and have a more robust personal life.

You go to a lot of small communities in rural Alberta and you'll find a degree of diversity that probably hasn't existed in terms of immigration for a century - you'll find the Filipino grocery store, and the African Pentecostal church and maybe a mosque. Albertans are pro-immigration; they're also pro-integration. In my years in this province I cannot recall more than a handful of expressions of xenophobia or nativism that I've encountered. It's the land of new beginnings and fresh starts - it is rare Albertans who trace their roots here back more than a generation or two.

Many, many times I would shake my head in dismay at the goings-on in the House of Commons, but that never caused me to lose my fundamental faith in the values of our parliamentary institutions.

I have said explicitly from day one when I announced this policy in, I believe, November of 2011, that I and our government oppose the idea of banning the wearing of the niqab in public.