Canada’s axed Islamophobia envoy says Muslims’ need for support from federal government ‘hasn’t gone away’

Then he launched into a profanity-laced tirade, accusing her of dividing Canada. “Go back to where you came from.”

Among several hostile interactions at airports over the years, this one stuck with her.

“I froze,” Elghawaby recalls of the January 2025 interaction at the Ottawa airport. She thought he was going to hit her. The flight attendants eventually took him off the plane, she said.

The incident showed her how much work still remained to reduce anti-Muslim hate.

Special adviser role scrapped by PM

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney pulled the plug and scrapped her role a full year before her four-year term was expected to end. He also eliminated the special envoy on antisemitism position. Both roles will be replaced by a new advisory council, Culture and Identity Minister Marc Miller said.

The new council “will build on the important work” by representatives of both roles, said Hermine Landry, Miller’s press secretary.

Elghawaby’s post as Canada’s first Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia was born out of a need to confront virulent Islamophobia that had manifested in a country with the highest number of targeted killings of Muslims among G7 nations. 

In an exclusive interview with the Star, Elghawaby said she was surprised when she heard of the PMO’s decision. She was informed of it the night before.

“Canadian Muslims desperately needed support from their federal government to ensure their safety and their dignity and their human rights,” she said. “And that need hasn’t gone away.”

Islamophobia, she said, “continues to exist and persist, and it continues to be, among certain quarters, a socially acceptable form of hate and discrimination.”

Elghawaby did not have details about the new advisory council that the Carney government was setting up and did not want to comment on it, she said.

“Details regarding the transition of these roles into the new advisory council, along with the appointment of experts who will serve on the council, will be finalized in the coming weeks,” Landry said.

Elghawaby’s three-year tenure was marked by political controversies, online and real-world harassment and incessant calls for her resignation. Her 2023 appointment immediately kicked up a cloud of controversy.

With the spotlight on Elghawaby, critics resurfaced a 2019 column in the Ottawa Citizen that Elghawaby co-wrote with Bernie Farber, the former CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress. In that column, they cited the findings of an opinion poll to say “The majority of Quebecers appear to be swayed not by the rule of law, but by anti-Muslim sentiment.”

Quebec officials demanded she step down. A week after her appointment was announced, she publicly apologized for having “hurt the people of Quebec.”

Reflecting on the apology during her interview with the Star, she said it was important that she made it, to address “the hurt that the comments and the way that they were being portrayed were impacting Quebecers.” But she says she was “very clear” in the apology that any effort to take away the rights of religious minorities to fully practice their faith threatened to violate their human rights.

Elghawaby’s focus forged after 9/11

Elghawaby had graduated from journalism school at Carleton University and had recently chosen to wear the hijab when 9/11 happened. The racism and rapid othering faced by Muslims in that moment made her realize she couldn’t take her human rights for granted, she said. Many young Muslim Canadians have had a similar realization during the more recent Israel-Palestine crisis, she said.

It is why she decided to publish the “Canadian Guide on Understanding and Combating Islamophobia for a More Inclusive Canada.” She now sees it as the capstone of her tenure.

“We cannot turn the clock back to post-9/11, where Canadian Muslims had to apologize and had to explain and had to constantly respond to a narrative that had nothing to do with their rights,” she said.

It was also the first government guide in Canada to officially name and describe anti-Palestinian racism.

As Special Representative, Elghawaby frequently faced opposition to statements that quickly spiralled into calls for her resignation.

In February 2024, Elghawaby said in a tweet that the temporary blocking of the entrance to Mount Sinai Hospital during a pro-Palestinian protest was a “troubling” disruption to hospital workers’ ability to do their job. She also criticized the “rush to label protesters as antisemitic and/or terrorist sympathizers.”

She immediately faced backlash from a variety of quarters including CIJA, The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, a federal lobby group. 

The most consistent and public opposition to Elghawaby’s role came from a range of groups, from right-wing pro-Israeli groups to Quebec officials to white supremacist groups.

As part of her mandate, the Special Representative commissioned research, including a study on the economic integration and systemic barriers facing Canadian Muslims by the Islamophobia research hub at York University.

The same research hub independently released a report titled “Documenting the Palestine Exception” in the aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023 last year.

A right-wing online organization published an article claiming she had “secretly paid $80,000 for pro-Palestine research.” This was picked up and escalated by other groups in the right-wing ecosystem online, fuelling such a pile-on that Minister Miller called the attacks and threats against her “disgraceful and entirely unacceptable.”

The article was “one of the many examples” of disinformation and misinformation” directed at her office “in an effort to “polarize public opinion against the efforts to counter Islamophobia and to essentially undermine the valuable work that we have been doing” to fulfil the mandate, she said.

“I hope you get charged or jail time or deported,” an anonymous person texted her. “Why are you funding terrorists?” another person commented on her Facebook page.

‘Is that Trudeau’s girl?’

Online hostility against public officials — particularly female — has been well documented in Canada. As a visibly Muslim woman appointed to combat Islamophobia, Elghawaby sat in a very public job at a crucial intersection of identities that marked her out for special ire.

That online hate bleeds into real life. An elderly lady once shoved her while shouting in French; two men came near her and threateningly said “Is that Trudeau’s girl?” After the incident in the airplane last year, she filed a police report with two witness statements, she said. She says police told her they couldn’t take action because the airline refused to share his information with them.

For many, the inability to tackle hate within institutions is exactly why the special representative role was important.

“I know the decision to close this office is going to be met with great disappointment by Canadian Muslims and within the wider society,” Elghawaby said, but added she would do the job with all its challenges “in a heartbeat.”

“It’s been an honour to serve Canada in this way because I deeply believe in the promise of this country.”