Georgeanne Burke, Islamophobia, and Ties to Conservative Party of Canada

Back in July ARC published a story featuring Georgeanne Burke, a Conservative Party activist, and her ties to Islamophobic groups in Canada. Today Evan Balgord and Steven Zhou have dug even deeper, publishing an article in "Vice Canada" highlighting her continued links to Islamophobic groups in the country as well as her connection to Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer, the Conservative Party, and Rebel Media:

Conservative party leadership advisor helped create anti-Islam organization....
Georganne Burke, the Scheer campaign’s Outreach Chair, was involved in the founding of Canadian Citizens for Charter Rights and Freedoms (C3RF). The group warns that the Liberal government is criminalizing criticism of Islam and opening the door for a Sharia (Islamic) takeover of Canadian law. C3RF plans to hold events across the country to advocate against M103 and the Trudeau government. 

Georganne Burke is one of at least three senior members of Scheer’s campaign team that have now been linked to the so-called alt-right or anti-Islam groups. Scheer’s Campaign Manager, Hamish Marshall, was a director of Rebel Media, an alt-right media outlet that pushes narratives of white genocide and hosts prominent alt-right figures, and worked out of the Rebel offices during the campaign. He has been named as a campaign chair for the 2019 general election.
....
Burke was also a member of several extreme anti-Muslim groups on Facebook, but says she was only in those groups for information purposes. Burke left at least two of these groups following a story by Anti-Racist Canada which named her as a member of groups like the Worldwide Coalition Against Islam, a group which critics say is anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic. Burke hasn’t posted any explicitly anti-Muslim comments on the C3RF Facebook Page, according to a search of posts in the group.

Warren Kinsella has also commented on the story and asks the following questions:

Why – why, why, why – is [Scheer] aligning himself with/associating with people who have links to the extremes? Why is he taking that risk, in a country as diverse and as multicultural as this one?

Good questions and ones I think the Canadian public would be interested in hearing answers to.

I would urge ARC's readers to take a look at Balgord's article in more detail.