The public citizenship oath done in a court in front of a judge and one's fellow citizens should be done publicly.

Finally, as I've said, this is - why are you talking about Jewish women's wigs and people wearing turbans? That has nothing whatsoever to do with niqab.

Sometimes there are no good choices for government.

My response to my friend Naheed Nenshi was simply to say that some of the hyperbolic language that's being used to critique this sensible reinforcement of the public nature of the citizenship oath is, I think, unhelpful, and is actually inflaming the situation.

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.

There's not a word in the Quran or the Hadith that requires that women cover their faces. To the contrary, the only requirement is that they uncover their faces when they're doing the haj.

The public citizenship oath done in a court in front of a judge and one's fellow citizens should be done publicly.