By David Ljunggren and Randall Palmer
OTTAWA, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Canada's two main opposition
leaders accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper in an election
debate on Thursday of trying to win votes by pushing a ban on
Muslim women's face coverings during citizenship ceremonies.
Harper's Conservatives, locked in a tight race with the New
Democrats and the Liberals ahead of an Oct. 19 election, say
people wishing to become Canadians must show their faces.
Polls indicate the proposal is popular in the predominantly
French-speaking province of Quebec, where there are
long-standing tensions over how tolerant Quebecers should be
toward the customs and traditions of immigrants.
Quebec accounts for 23 percent of the seats in the new
expanded House of Commons, second only to Ontario. The
Conservatives hold just five Quebec seats.
The minority separatist Bloc Quebecois party of Gilles
Duceppe - trying to revive its fortunes after being crushed in
the last election in 2011 - support Harper's idea.
Both main opposition parties say the ban violates the rights
of Canadians and accuse the Conservatives of fueling prejudice.
"Mr. Harper and Mr. Duceppe want to play on fear and
division," Liberal leader Justin Trudeau said during a
French-language debate in Montreal, Quebec's biggest city.
"If a man can't dictate how a woman should dress, we can't
have the state telling a woman how she shouldn't dress," he
said.
Thomas Mulcair of the New Democrats said Harper was trying
to hide his poor economic record behind a veil.
"Mr. Mulcair, never, I will never say to my daughter that a
woman must cover herself up because she is a woman," Harper shot
back angrily.
The government is taking its case for the ban to the Supreme
Court after twice losing in lower courts.
The New Democrats unexpectedly swept most of Quebec in the
2011 election as the Bloc collapsed. The party has little chance
of winning power federally for the first time unless it can hang
onto its gains.
After Quebec came close to voting for secession in 1995, the
then-Liberal federal government pushed through a law saying
Ottawa would only allow a province to secede if a large majority
of the population voted in favor.
Mulcair says a simple majority should be enough and this
could open him up accusations that he would make it easier to
break up Canada if he took power. Polls show Quebecers have
little appetite for another referendum.
(Editing by Lisa Shumaker)