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One of Canada's most esteemed jurists, Louise Arbour, has had enough with what she calls the "unhealthy debate" over the niqab face-covering looming large in the federal election campaign.
Arbour — a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, one-time UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda — wrote in an open letter published Thursday in the French-language daily La Presse that constitutional rights guaranteed in law are being threatened in the niqab debate.
"You only need protection for these freedoms when they are threatened, and this, I think, is an example of that," Arbour told CBC Montreal Daybreak.