Human rights activist Amira Elghawaby, who was appointed by Justin Trudeau as special envoy to fight Islamophobia, has been controversial about Quebec in the past.
• Also read: Quebec demands Amira Elghawaby’s resignation, Ottawa insists and signs
In 2021an op-ed in The Globe and Mail by a University of Toronto philosophy professor argued that French Canadians “were the largest group to fall victim to British colonialism, being subjugated and forcibly incorporated into the Confederacy.”
Ms Elghawaby then wrote on her Twitter account: “I’m going to throw up”.
Also in 2021, in a text published on the CTV News website, Ms Elghawaby linked Bill 21 to the murder of four Pakistani family members in London, Ontario.
In 2019in an op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen, Amira Elghawaby and Bernie Farber, President of Canada’s Anti-Hate Network, who are Jewish, stated that “unfortunately, the majority of Quebecers do not appear to be influenced by the rule of law but by an anti-Muslim sentiment” .
The authors drew on a survey by Léger, which found that 88% of Quebecers with negative perceptions of Islam defended the state’s respect for secularism law.
In 2013, at the time of the Charter of Values proposed by Pauline Marois’ Parti Québécois, in a text in the Toronto Star, Ms Elghawaby had quoted the Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul as declaring that the “bourgeois civilizations” of “Western societies” were “gradually moving towards the paranoid Fears of the 20th century slipped.” “Afraid of what? Fear of losing purity – pure blood, pure race, qualities and values, and pure national ties,” he said.
Following this quote, Ms. Elghawaby reiterated that the author “might as well write about Québec today.”
-In collaboration with Gabriel Côté, agency QMI