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The latest example came only last week. In an interview with Vice, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander defended the government’s stance against the niqab during citizenship ceremonies with a troubling non-sequitur.

“We’ve done a lot in the past year to strengthen the value of citizenship. People take pride in that. They don’t want their co-citizens to be terrorists,” Alexander said, choking only slightly on the last word.

Asked in the House of Commons later in the week why he drew a straight line between women wearing the niqab and terrorism, Alexander denied all wrongdoing and demanded an apology from the Liberal Party for the racist immigration policies of Mackenzie King, who, unbeknownst to most Liberals, has apparently been leading the party from beyond the grave for the last six decades. When pressed again the following day by Liberal MP John McCallum for an apology to Muslim Canadians for his comments, Alexander tried another tactic: “The words he has ascribed to me were never spoken by me,” Alexander said, before himself demanding an apology “on behalf of all the women of Afghanistan” and “all the victims of Taliban oppression.”

This is an incredible display of chutzpah, even by the standards of a government that counts Paul Calandra and Pierre Poilievre among its members. Here is a minister blithely maligning an entire religious community, refusing to own up to it, and insisting it’s others who are guilty of bigotry.

And Alexander is hardly unique. In 2013, the Parti Quebecois tried to push through its controversial Charter of Quebec Values, which would have banned religious symbols including Muslim head coverings in the public service. Although that effort failed, the current Liberal government of Philippe Couillard has tabled a bill that would ban face coverings for anyone providing or receiving government services in the province. The federal Conservatives, who admirably spoke out against the Charter two years ago, have endorsed this new version, using it to buttress their baffling ban of the niqab during citizenship ceremonies.

Asked about that very niqab issue by an Ontario radio station in March, Tory backbencher Larry Miller memorably told Muslims to “stay the hell where you came from” before hastily apologizing. A Tory fundraising pitch this spring covered similar territory, declaring niqabs “not the way we do things here.”

Defence Minister Jason Kenney has spread misleading photos online of Muslim women and girls in chains as reason for the fight against ISIL — even though the photos in question were of a Shia Ashura ceremony, an act akin to claiming a Passion Play re-enacting Christ’s crucifixion as present-day reality.