(Canadian Press) The keffiyeh took centre stage at the Ontario legislature Tuesday as protesters unfurling the scarves were ejected from the public galleries and an independent member draped one over her shoulders in open defiance of a speaker’s ban on the attire.
NDP Leader Marit Stiles had tried for a second time to get the legislature to pass a unanimous consent motion to overturn the speaker’s ban on keffiyehs, which he says are being worn to make a political statement, contrary to the rules of the assembly.
But a few Ontario members of the governing Progressive Conservatives voted against Stiles’s motion, and shortly after it failed a group of four people watching question period stood up, waved and put on keffiyehs, shouting “free, free Palestine” and “you can’t cancel us.”
