The fear is that the answer is Yes. In 2004, Ontario came within a breath of allowing the application of Sharia law in domestic affairs in Ontario . The Liberal Party asserts that the current federal motion is “non-binding”, “not a bill” and will not compromise freedom of speech. Yet it calls for a 240-day study by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage whose recommendations the “government may use to better reflect the enshrined rights and freedoms in the…Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” 

Liberal MP Raj Grewal, during the parliamentary debate of 16 February, 2017, stated, “One of the most important things about the motion that Canadians should understand is that it encourages a committee to collect data and to present that data in a contextualized manner so we, as members of Parliament elected to this chamber, can study it and propose laws.” It would indeed appear that the intent of using a “whole of government approach” in the case of M-103 includes the slippery slope to enabling legislation.