The Trudeau government has no intention of showing the door to its first special representative for the fight against Islamophobia despite protests from Quebec, which had demanded a proper apology from the principal concerned.
• Read also: The CAQ calls for the resignation of the special representative for the fight against Islamophobia
“I don’t believe Quebecers are Islamophobic,” Amira Elghawaby tweeted last Friday as controversy over past statements began to brew.
For Minister Jean-François Roberge, “she only tried to justify her odious remarks”. “It does not go through. She must resign and if she does not, the government must dismiss her without delay,” argued the Minister responsible for Secularism and Canadian Relations on Monday.
In contrast, Justin Trudeau said he was “satisfied” with his development after inviting him to “clarify” his thinking last week.
“It’s clear that she has thought carefully through the years of the impact of different laws, of different political positions on her community,” he said before question period.
Trudeau foments “Quebec bashing”, according to Blanchet
By approving the former journalist and human rights activist, Amira Elghawaby, the Prime Minister has “launched a new insult in the face of Quebecers”, according to Yves-François Blanchet.
Photo archives, QMI Agency
The Bloc leader accused Justin Trudeau of deliberately creating a “bad image” of Quebec by associating it with racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia in order to derive political gains from it in the rest of Canada, where the strategy “ seems to work”.
“I am convinced that the Prime Minister of Canada is making great efforts to ensure that such words and thoughts are widespread in Canada. I think he finds his account there, that he finds his interest there, ”he said in response to journalists.
Unlike the Legault government and the Conservative Party of Pierre Poilievre, Mr. Blanchet is not asking for her immediate departure, but rather wants to meet her in order to “explain”. In question period, he asked the Prime Minister if he could “facilitate” such a meeting, to which Mr. Trudeau replied in the affirmative.
Singh defends the nomination
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh came to the defense of Amira Elghawaby by pointing out that Islamophobia was not a problem unique to Quebec, but that it was an issue present in Canada and elsewhere in the world.
“The fact that Muslims are killed because of their religion is a reality, something that happened in Canada,” said Mr Singh, who called it “problematic” and “unfair”. the treatment of “racialized women” like Mme Elghawaby.
SOME OF HIS CONTROVERSIAL STATEMENTS
Human rights activist Amira Elghawaby, appointed by Justin Trudeau as special representative for the fight against Islamophobia, has in the past made controversial remarks about Quebec.
In 2021an opinion piece that appeared in the Globe and Mail and written by a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto defended the thesis that French Canadians were, “the largest group to have been victimized by British colonialism, subjugated and incorporated into confederation by force”.
Mme Elghawaby then wrote: “I’m going to vomit” on his Twitter account.
Also in 2021, in a text published on the CTV News website, Mme Elghawaby linked Bill 21 to the murder of four family members from Pakistan in London, Ontario.
In 2019in an opinion piece published in the ottawa citizenAmira Elghawaby and the president of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, Bernie Farber, of Jewish faith, declared that “unfortunately, the majority of Quebecers seem influenced not by the rule of law, but by an anti-Muslim sentiment”.
The authors based themselves on a survey by the firm Léger which found that 88% of Quebecers with a negative perception of Islam were defenders of the Act respecting the secularism of the State.
In 2013at the time of the Charter of Values proposed by Pauline Marois’ Parti Québécois, Ms.me Elghawaby had in a text of Toronto Star quoted the Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul, who explained that the “bourgeois civilizations” of “Western societies” have “gradually slipped into the paranoid fears of the 20e century “. ” Afraid of what ? Fear of loss of purity – of pure blood, pure race, traits and values and pure national ties,” he said.
Following this quote, Mr.me Elghawaby asserted that the writer could “just as well write about the Quebec of today.”
-With the collaboration of Gabriel Côté, QMI Agency