text: No, it's not funny, it's depressing that hashtag activists defend a symbol of female subjugation and social regression that is only common in societies where homosexuals face jail or worse and it's not a coincidence, the niqab is part and parcel of a fundamentalist belief system - this is true all over the world, without exception. European countries who share Canadian values of gender equality and LGBT rights have implemented even more strict bans because 15 years of hoping for the best and attempts to "accommodate" a regressive belief system only empowered religious fundamentalists. The community segregation and division throughout Europe speaks for itself. The fact that the niqab is not common in Canada is a function of progress.  The founder of modern Turkey implemented strict secular rules in a majority Muslim country that held for over 90 years and it's taken one Islamist government under 10 years to regress Turkey into an authoritarian regime, go figure.