In March 2015 the Privy Council Office, which reports to the prime minister, commissioned a survey conducted by Leger Marketing that included a question asking respondents whether they agree with a ban on niqabs in citizenship ceremonies.

The result of that survey, which was released on September 24 and found that 82 percent of respondents favoured the ban, was published in a Canadian Press article written by Stephanie Levitz. The result has since been published by virtually every major Canadian media outlet.

Yet the way the poll has been portrayed by journalists across Canada is misleading, according to the executive director of the Environics Institute, Keith Neuman.

The first issue with the result, according to Neuman, is the wording of the niqab question. The question on the survey was:

“As you know, the Government of Canada has issued a direction requiring people to show their faces when they are being sworn in as Canadian citizens. This direction means that face coverings, such as niqabs or burqas are not permitted during Canadian citizenship ceremonies. Do you support or oppose a requirement that people show their faces during Canadian citizenship ceremonies?”

Neuman says that question is problematic because “it implies that the requirement to remove face coverings is the law, with no mention of recent court rulings to the contrary.”

On February 6, prior to the poll being conducted, the Federal Court of Canada found that the law ordering new citizens to remove the niqab in the citizenship ceremony is “unlawful.” The Federal Court also noted that the ban must be immediately lifted unless the government appeals the ruling and is allowed to suspend the order. The government made this appeal as the poll was being conducted, and the appeal was rejected on October 5.

Neuman also notes there is no mention of the fact that new citizens are required to confirm their identity prior to the actual ceremony, which he says offers a wrong impression of existing laws.

A follow-up question on the survey asked those who agreed with the ban to cite reasons why. Of those who responded, 29 percent cited identification purposes as the reason for their agreement with the ban, while 11 percent said they agreed with the ban because it is the law. As such, according to Neuman, a more accurately worded question may have led to different results.

Another potential issue with the poll, according to Neuman, is that the niqab question was preceded by questions on support for Canadian foreign policy, as well as opposition to ISIL.

“Such questions would have set a context that might well have influenced opinions about government policy pertaining to Muslim practices here in Canada,” Neuman said, adding, “Perhaps if the survey had prefaced this question by first asking about civil liberties or the country’s ethnic diversity, the results may well have been different.”

Neuman says he doesn’t believe the poll was intentionally misleading, and also notes that the methodology is sound. He also calls Leger Marketing “one of the country’s leading research companies.”

Despite this, Neuman says “an issue like this can’t be fully addressed with a single survey question, and there is a problem when the media (and those who consume this media) relies on this one survey question in coming to judgement about what Canadians think about women remaining veiled at citizenship ceremonies, especially in the middle of a divisive election campaign.”

Neuman adds that “we do a grave disservice to the Muslim community and to all Canadians if we rush to judgment that our country is less tolerant of religious diversity than in fact may be the case.”

It’s unlikely that Canadian publications misled the public intentionally, but Neuman is right to note that the result of the widespread use of the poll without any notable analysis (with this Maclean’s piece as a notable exception) may have misled the public.

Editors at Canadian Press, the Toronto Star, the National Post, CBC, The Globe and Mail and CTV News were contacted for comment on Neuman’s claims at 5 p.m. on Thursday. At the time of publication none of these editors have responded with a comment. Their responses will be added to this post if they decide to respond.

Journalists have been enthralled with the niqab debate over the last few weeks. In order to get a better sense of what to make of the niqab coverage, I spoke to the communications director at the National Council of Canadian Muslims, Amira Elghawaby.

Elghawaby’s most pressing critique of niqab journalism is simply that there’s too much of it. Elghawaby noted that, “The media has a responsibility to report the news” but that journalists have had trouble distinguishing “between news, and the deliberate attempts of the Conservative party to keep the issue alive.”

The result of this failure, according to Elghawaby, is the amplification of the niqab “issue multiple-fold compared to other relevant issues raised during leaders’ debates.”

Elghawaby certainly has a point, and so I wanted to look a little deeper to get a sense of how much niqab coverage there has been. To do this, I went to the websites of the National Post, the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail, and counted how many articles from October 7 to October 14 contained the term “niqab,” and then did the same for “trans-pacific partnership.”

The niqab debate, as many commentators have accurately pointed out, is focused on an insignificant issue, with only two of 680,000 potential citizens being affected by the ban since 2011. Meanwhile, the Trans-Pacific Partnership has geo-political significance for states around the world, including Canada.

The results I found don’t reflect this, with 133 mentions of “niqab” found, compared to only 102 for “trans-pacific partnership.”

Despite this, Elghawaby notes that the overwhelming emphasis in journalism on the niqab has led to some positives.

“The diversity of voices given space on this issue has been refreshing. Women who wear niqab slowly were given space to share their perspectives and experiences.”

There are several good examples of this from the Toronto Star and the CBC.

As such, Elghawaby says that “while the [niqab] issue was over amplified, given its relatively minor impact on the lives of the vast majority of Canadians, including Canadian Muslims, there seemed to be a sincere effort on the part of media to hear from those directly impacted, or who had a perspective that countered popular opinion, to share.”

In a journalism landscape where people constantly speak for Muslim women, the fact that Muslim women have been given more opportunity to speak for themselves is important.

There are exceptions, of course, like this CBC piece that tells the exciting saga of what it was like for a white woman to wear a hijab for a day, as if there aren’t enough Muslim women who could speak more authoritatively to the issue.

Overall though, while the coverage of the niqab debate did draw up some positives due to the range of voices speaking on the issue, Elghawaby says, “It would be nice if other equally or more important issues were given this kind of treatment and attention!”

Let’s hope her wish comes true in the last few days of the election.