Christine Douglass-Williams, a mixed-race woman, is a director on the Canadian Race Relations Forum (CRRF), an independent commission of the Heritage Board of Canada (HBC). Or at least she was.

In June 2017¹, her employer started investigating articles she had been writing in her own time for the blog site Jihad Watch, a site dedicated to highlighting the notion of violent jihad. Douglass-Williams had been submitting articles to the site since 2012, but it was purportedly a May 2017 article that incurred the displeasure of the CCRF and the HBC: ‘Christine Williams: My personal warning to Icelanders‘². According to a spokesman from HBC at the time, Douglass-Williams’ writings were lacking deference to the ideas of diversity and inclusion, and that her “conduct” was at odds with the CCRF’s mission.

Islamic supremacists will smile at you, invite you to their gatherings, make you feel loved and welcome, but they do it to deceive you and to overtake you, your land [Iceland] and your freedoms [Christine Douglass-Williams, Jihad Watch, May 16, 2017]

In December 2017³, Douglass-Williams was fired by Melanie Joly, the Heritage Minister in charge of the HRC. Joly was the minister who brought forward Motion M-103, the so-called ‘Islamophobia’ motion, that could potentially criminalize the criticism of Islam in Canada. With this in mind, the timing of the introduction of this motion (February 2017) and the start of the investigation into Douglass-Williams’ writings (June 2017) do seem connected. Think about it this way: it must have been an embarrassment to the boss of the HBC, Melanie Joly, that one of her commission’s employees was writing articles critical of Islam, while her motion M-103 might potentially do just that. Call it a pre-emptive criminal prosecution if you will, and perhaps the clearest indicator yet that M-103 was always meant to proceed to Constitution-busting ‘hate speech’ legislation. Another indicator is the potential to being back s.13(1) of the Human Rights Act, which was repealed in 2015, which made online ‘hate speech’ a ‘crime’. The stars do seem to be aligning.

From gender theory to global warming, from racism to feminism, the Canadian public sector already has many ‘correct’ opinions that every employee must have, and incorrect opinions that dare not speak their names. This is an ‘informal’ rule of course, but these are the days where federal grant applications contain the need for attestations applicants agree with full-term abortion; no attestation, no money*. So Christine is perhaps simply a beginning; a great purge may rise that will sweep away anyone that does not celebrate the correction opinions, that employment candidates will have to attest to them as a condition of employment, from gender theory to global warming, from racism to feminism. And of course, Islam.

¹ National Post, ‘Federal appointee to race relations board under scrutiny for writings on Islam’
² Jihad Watch, Christine Williams; ‘My personal warning to Icelanders’
³ Huffington Post; ‘Christine Douglass-Williams Fired From Canadian Race Relations Foundation Board’
* National Post, Brian Platt; ‘Hundreds of churches, camps and charities protest abortion clause in Canada Summer Jobs grant application’