Mr. Speaker, if that were the choice on the directive given by the Chief Electoral Officer, I suppose the member is right. Therein lies the problem. This is very serious. That is why I am not prepared to dismiss out of hand some of the concerns that have led to this.
Indeed, what if we followed what some people did in some of the last byelections in Quebec, in jest or as a lark or to prove a point, by arriving with Halloween masks and so forth? Someone apparently arrived with a pumpkin, but I do not know about that. We cannot dismiss this out of hand.
I would hope that Canadians would understand. We have just celebrated Remembrance Day throughout Canada. We underline Remembrance Day. People have died to protect our right to democracy and the right to vote, so we cannot make a jest of the right to vote. I would discourage anyone from doing so. I suspect the Chief Electoral Officer might have in his discretion the ability to prevent that.
It is not a red herring in the sense that it has just flared up now as a reaction to this. I think we need to address these matters very seriously. If we were to choose to go to the polls with paper bags over our heads, we would start having problems. The problem that we are trying to solve now is non-existent. It is not a difficulty.
I have to repeat myself. If the bill is adopted, we are going to be forcing a small group of Canadians to not respect their own religious belief, if that is why they are wearing a veil. At the same time, we are not going to ask them to identify themselves visually because they could do so in any other way. It is incongruous. There is a huge gap in logic in the bill and I think it is problematic.