The niqab. It's become controversial lately.
Forget the argument that the Conservative party has been using this as a wedge issue to cynically pick off votes from the NDP and Liberals. Forget the argument that the debate about the niqab has been veiled in quasi-anti-Muslim rhetoric (if not full blown racism). Forget that several panels of judges including the federal court of appeal (one step below the Supreme Court of Canada) have ruled that banning the niqab at citizenship ceremonies is unlawful. Forget the argument that it is deeply ironic to accuse people of forcing a type of dress on a woman while at the same time deciding that the government can decide what are acceptable clothing standards for any woman in Canada.
Lets uncover some statistics here. How likely are you to see someone wearing a niqab at a citizenship ceremony? This is not an unimportant fact. A federal government has only so much political capital to spend on an agenda. When it makes decisions to address issues it means that it cannot address other, perhaps more important, issues. I mean it's taken the Conservative party almost 10 years to fulfill its overarching legislative agenda of destroying the research capacity of the public sector. I have to assume that's the main reason why it hasn't accomplished anything else.
I joke but the point is that it doesn't really matter what you put forward as a part of a political agenda. It all takes time to work itself through the legislative intestines of government. So let's put this debate in statistical context to see how important it really is. And the best context I know is medicine. What is the chance of seeing a niqab at a citizenship ceremony as compared to your chance of contracting a rare and terrible medical condition?
First, what is the risk of seeing a niqab at a citizenship ceremony? Well according to this CBC article a total of two people have refused to remove the niqab in order to become a citizen of Canada in the last four years. Now that doesn't seem like a lot but if we only had, like, ten new citizens over that four-year period that's a big deal. According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada though, the number of new Canadians over that period was more like 686,195. That number is a lot bigger than ten.
Biostatisticians like to use measures to document incidence of disease or how many new cases of a disease occur in a time frame. To keep things comparable we'll do the same thing here with the niqab. The way I'll measure incidence of the niqab and disease is in person-years, which is just a fancy way of giving the rate of new disease/niqab occurrences in a years stretch. Biostatisticians also don't like small numbers and so they usually multiply these rates by 100,000, which gives you the incidence of a disease/niqab occurring per 100,000 people.
In the case of the niqab, the risk of observing one at a citizenship ceremony is (2/686,195). This is an incidence rate of 0.3 niqabs per 100,000 person years.
Now, what's your risk of contracting a serious infectious disease? Well first, let's talk about three pretty serious infectious diseases. Human immunodeficiency virus or HIV has a long and deadly track record of killing people. It was first described in the 1980s after a mysterious decade where gay men in particular were coming into hospitals with severe unexplained immune deficiencies. In 2013 alone, over 1.5 million people died of HIV with most deaths occurring in the developing world. Thanks to advances in antiretroviral therapies and prevention, far fewer people are being infected with the disease than ever before (at least in the developed world). Nevertheless, the incidence of infection in North America is about 15 per 100,000 people years or 50 times the probability of seeing a niqab at a citizenship ceremony.
How about tuberculosis? TB is also, thankfully, becoming a rare disease after having a long and storied history. Before doctors understood that bacteria and other microorganisms made people sick (which wasn't that long ago), they described a disease called "pulmonary consumption". It was caused by an infection of the lungs that makes people cough like crazy and lose a lot of weight until they became emaciated. Albert Camus, Paul Gaugin, and Robbie Burns all had or died of TB and at one point "consumption" was considered bohemian, hence why Nicole Kidman had it in Moulin Rouge. Today about 25 people per 100,000 will get TB each year in North America. You are over 83 times more likely to get TB than see a niqab at a citizenship ceremony.
How about an even weirder disease. Late syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection and its known as the "great imitator" for its ability to look like many other diseases. It can strike up to 15 years after initial infection and can make you go crazy (neurosyphilis), sprout giant growths all over your body and face (gummatous syphilis), or burn out your heart (cardiovascular syphilis). It was all but eradicated after the introduction of antibiotics like penicillin, which is why you so rarely see anyone walking around with giant gummatous growths all over their face. About 5.5 people per 100,000 will get late symptoms of syphilis. You are still 18 times as likely to get late syphilis as you are to see a niqab at a citizenship ceremony.
Ok, so that was infectious diseases. What about cancers? Well the rate of a true malignant brain tumor is about 9.3 people per 100,000 population. The rate of getting pancreatic cancer (essentially a death sentence if you get it) is 8.8 per 100,000. Mesothelioma, a lung cancer that you get from working in an asbestos mine for most of your life, has an incidence rate of 0.98 people per 100,000 people.
I'm just going to start listing them now. Multiple sclerosis - a neurologic condition where your immune system attacks your own nerves - 3.6 cases per 100,000 people. Psoriatic arthritis - a disease that obliterates your joints and causes your hands to look like this - 6 cases per 100,000 people. Cholangiocarcinoma - a cancer that blocks up your liver and causes you to turn yellow - 1.5 cases per 100,000 people. Aortic dissection - where the main blood vessel in your chest splits and you bleed to death in a matter of minutes - 3 cases per 100,000 people. Multiple myeloma - a blood cancer that can eat away your bones - 4.5 cases per 100,00 people. Endocarditis - an infection of the heart valves associated with IV drug use - 15 per 100,000 people. Pheochromocytoma - a tumor that pumps out catecholamines and causes your heart rate and blood pressure to go through the roof - 0.8 cases per 100,000 people. Stevens-Johnsons syndrome - look it up, it's gross! - 0.7 cases per 100,000 people. I could go on but you get the idea.
Let me put this in another perspective for you. I'm becoming a family doctor. A family doctor should probably see about 25 patients per day. If I see 25 patients a day for five days a week over a 50-year period I should see about 300,000 patients. Keep in mind that it's usually the case that the same patients keep coming back so that 300,000 patient-years is a very high estimate. Using this as a benchmark, if I'm lucky I might see one or two pheochromocytomas in my lifetime as a physician. If I'm lucky I might see four or five cholangiocarcinomas. If I'm lucky I might see 20 or 30 cases of a brain tumor.
Just so I'm clear, this is not a defense of the niqab. I find the niqab anti-feminist. But I also do think that in an open society we treat people like adults and let them wear whatever they want. And if someone is forcing a woman to wear a certain type of clothing then we have domestic abuse laws to deal with those cases whatever the type of clothing may be. I'm flabbergasted that the same man who described the long-form census as a massive invasion of government into the private lives of Canadians is so willing to decide what clothes they wear.
But if you're not convinced by that classically liberal argument then maybe you'll be convinced by the statistics. On the list of priorities of Canadians, maybe it should go HIV, then brain cancer, and then the niqab. Then, after all of that, we can prioritize re-electing someone who stooped low enough to use intolerance and xenophobia as a way to get votes.
