(Canadian Press) The speaker of Ontario’s legislature is allowing politicians, staff and visitors to enter the building while wearing a keffiyeh, loosening what had amounted to a ban on the scarf, while maintaining a prohibition inside the legislative chamber.
Sarah Jama, who sits as an independent after being booted from the NDP caucus last year, put on a keffiyeh in defiance of the ban as question period started Monday and was asked to leave.
Jama called it ironic that the moment before she was told to leave for wearing a keffiyeh in solidarity with Palestinians, the house held a moment of silence for Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“While we can spend time to recognize genocides of the past, we struggle as members of this house to recognize genocides of the present,” she said outside the chamber.
