.... It set out a new test for how judges should balance a female witness’s right to freely practice her religion against an accused person’s Charter right to put forward a defence and cross-examine an accuser.
Dissenting justices Louis LeBel and Marshall Rothstein said the appeal “illustrates the tension and changes caused by the rapid evolution of contemporary society and by the growing presence in Canada of new cultures, religions, traditions and social practices.”
But they would have reconciled that tension by never allowing the niqab to override the rights of the accused, concluding a veiled accuser doesn’t square with the “constitutional values of openness and religious neutrality in contemporary democratic, but diverse, Canada.” [Toronto Star] Read more
