Religious freedoms and the right to worship have been a recognized hallmark of civilized societies for centuries. The preamble of Canada’s constitution says our country is built on the principles that acknowledge the supremacy of God and the rule of law. In defiance of both, almost 600 Canadian places of worship have suffered arson in recent years. Nothing could be more unCanadian.
The stats were revealed by Member of Parliament Marc Dalton following a formal inquiry to the federal government. The response showed 592 arsons had been set on places of worship between 2010 and 2022. they rose from 58 in 2020 to 90 in 2021, then down to 74 in 2022.
The peak coincides with claims made in May of 2021 that the remains of 215 school children had been discovered on the site of the former Kamloops Residential School.
Although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a subsequent wave of church burnings “unacceptable and wrong” he also called their likely motivations “real and fully understandable.” This hardly doused the flames.
These arsons far outnumber those made on Canadian churches in the 1920s by the Ku Klux Klan, which opposed non-Protestants and non-whites. In those years the KKK desecrated Sarnia’s St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. They killed ten people when they set Saint-Boniface College in Winnipeg on fire. They also burned the Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame de Quebec. In 1926, three Klan members were jailed after they blew up St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Barrie, Ont.
The Klan soon fizzled out, seemingly unlike these recent church burnings. The 110-year-old Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Allégresses Catholic church burned down in Trois-Rivières, Quebec last month, but whether arson was involved has not been confirmed.
The presence of bodies underneath the former residential school in Kamloops has not been confirmed either. A 1924 septic field could also account for soil anomalies found there by ground-penetrating radar. Eight million federal tax dollars spent to investigate the site have yielded no remains and details on how the money was spent are sketchy. It’s high time the site was excavated to confirm or rule out the graves and do autopsies on any corpses found there.
Federal funds also fuel the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN), the Orwellian title for a group that fuels resentment against socially conservative organizations with negative characterizations. On August 7, CAHN published “40 Ways To Fight The Far-Right: Tactics for Community Activists in Canada” thanks to $640,000 from Ottawa.
“White boys and men make up the majority of people involved in hate-promoting movements,” the handbook explains. Pro-life and pro-parent groups, CAHN says, are among those “characterized by racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, anti-2SLGBTQ+ views, and pro-colonialist/ anti-Indigenous bigotry.”
CAHN says the Catholic-dominated, pro-life organization Campaign Life Coalition is a “hate movement.” Liberty Coalition Canada, a legal defence organization, and the activist organization Action4Canada are similarly denigrated for their alleged belief that Canada was founded on Christian values and attempts to reassert such values.
Meanwhile, the CAHN guide advocates “antifascist” doxing, including infiltration of right-leaning organizations. getting people fired, and ending friendships.
Dalton’s Bill C-411 the “Anti-Arson Act” would do more to deter hate-motivated crimes than CAHN ever will. The legislation would punish those who set fires and explosions at religious places. A first offence would get a mandatory five-year jail sentence, while subsequent offenses would prompt seven years.
When respect for the supremacy of God and the rule of law fail, rights give way to wrongs. It’s time to stop the fires and the disputable claims that fuel them, and restore respect for people of faith, their right to worship, and their places of worship.
Lee Harding is a Research Associate for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
