The leader of the New Democratic Party, which saw its number of seats in Parliament drop to 44 from 95 in last week’s federal election, says he would handle the controversial niqab issue the same way again.
In his first post-election interview, with the Canadian Press news agency on Monday, Tom Mulcair said he believes he did the right thing to stand up to Conservative leader Stephen Harper on the niqab, opposing efforts to ban Muslim women from wearing one during the citizenship oath.
Mulcair said maintaining a principled approach on the issue was one of the defining moments of his political career, adding that he believed it was wrong to divide Canadians on issues of race and religion.
“These were defining moments for me in my political career and in the campaign,” Mulcair said. “And could a different result have been achieved? Perhaps. But I wasn’t going to do something that I had never done in my career.”
Most analysts say Mulcair’s stand cost the NDP with voters in Quebec, where the number of NDP seats fell to 16 from the 59 they won in 2011.
Last week’s vote reduced the NDP from Official Opposition to third party status and the party lost a number of prominent MPs, including Paul Dewar, Megan Leslie, Peggy Nash and Peter Stoffer.
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