Calgary mayor says no hard feelings after “people like Nenshi” comment
Posted Oct 3, 2015 5:12 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi found himself as part of a Twitter hashtag this week, after an exhange between him and Conservative candidate Jason Kenney on the controversial niqab issue.
On Wednesday, Nenshi criticized the federal Tories’ handling of the issue in a radio interview, to which Kenney responded the next day, saying, “… it’s the mayor and people like him who are politicizing the issue.”
The statement was considered racist by many, and lead to a flood of support for the mayor. Those who had something to say about Kenney’s response, including Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, started using the hashtag #peoplelikeNenshi.
On Sunday, Nenshi told reporters, he didn’t think Kenney meant any offense with his comments.
“Jason’s a friend of mine. Really what was happening is we were making fun of him for kind of careless language, which really, as a minister, you should be better than that. But it wasn’t because he was being racist. I happen to very much disagree with this policy,” Nenshi said.
He said if the Tory argument is that the niqab is a symbol of oppression, and fathers and husbands shouldn’t be allowed to tell women what to wear, then Jason Kenney shouldn’t be allowed to either.
“I don’t like the niqab. I wish no one would wear it,” Nenshi said. “But what I like even less is taking away peoples’ rights to choose.”
He added, there are no hard feelings, and that he doesn’t expect an apology.
“I’ll say that I thought it was more interesting, rather than the people like me comment, that he went on to say, ‘we’re used to the mayor’s running comment on everything,’ in kind of a dismissive way. I might remind him that, people did elect me to be the mayor of his city.”
He said he’d be sure to bring up the incident with Kenney the next time the two go out for chicken wings.
