By Bryn Weese, Parliamentary Bureau, QMI AGENCY
MISSISSAUGA, ONT. - Conservative Leader Stephen Harper is kicking off the final leg of the election campaign Easter weekend by promoting his party's promise to create an Office of Religious Freedom.
Later Saturday, Harper is to travel to B.C. where the party hopes to quell the rising NDP surge there.Before a very ethnically diverse crowd at a Coptic Christian centre in this west-end Toronto suburb, Harper said a re-elected Conservative government would make defending religious freedoms a "priority" for Canadian foreign policy.
The new Office of Religious Freedom, which would be part of the foreign affairs department, would cost about $5 million a year.
Harper said in a statement Saturday that just because Canadians enjoy freedom at home, "we must not let our comfort be an excuse to shirk our commitment to the cause of freedom."
Invoking the memory of slain Pakistani Minister of Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti, Harper said, "(he) had asked us in Canada to shine a light on the persecution of religious minorities in Pakistan and around the world."
Bhatti, a Catholic, was gunned down in March of this year for his defence of Christians in Pakistan. Read more
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