[8] Days after her appointment Quebec Premier François Legault called for her resignation,[10] after La Presse reported that Elghawaby had written that Quebeckers seem "influenced by anti-Muslim sentiment," in a 2019 column in the Ottawa Citizen.

[11] The same La Presse article also reported that in May 2021 Elghawaby wrote "I'm going to puke" on Twitter in reaction to an opinion editorial by Joseph Heath, a philosophy teacher of the University of Toronto, who argued that French Canadians were the largest group in Canada to have suffered from British colonialism.

[16] On February 3, 2023, a letter in support of her appointment was published by a group of 30 prominent Québécois, including human rights lawyer Julius Grey, Quebec City Mosque co-founder Boufeldja Benabdallah, and Charles Taylor, professor emeritus at McGill University.

[19] On February 14, speaking at the Senate of Canada former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi raised concerns about Islamophobia and urged parliamentarians to stand up for Elghawaby.

[20] Rania Lawendy CEO of Action for Humanity Canada, said that the letters show "the Canadian political landscape is not a safe place for a visible Muslim woman, and this incident is a perfect example of how discrimination continues to be tolerated by our government leaders.

"[21] On the backdrop of the Oct 7 Israel-Hamas conflict, on February 13, 2024, pro-Palestine demonstrators staged a protest at Mount Sinai Hospital located at downtown Toronto, a Jewish undertaking,[22] raising Palestinian flags and calls of intifada interfering with the operations of the hospital which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denounced it as reprehensible show of antisemitism,[23] Elghawaby came in support of demonstrators by posting "also troubling and wrong is the rush to label protesters as anti-Semitic and/or terrorist sympathisers."