A Conservative MP is putting church arsonists on notice.
Conservative MP Marc Dalton introduced a private member’s bill to amend the Criminal Code to include specific arson offences targeting places of worship. He is also seeking a new offence for causing a wildfire.
“This enactment amends the Criminal Code to create an offence for causing a wildfire and an offence for causing damage by fire or explosion to a place of worship,” reads a summary of the proposed legislation.
“It also requires a court to consider as aggravating circumstances, in the context of arson by negligence, the fact that it resulted in a wildfire or the destruction of a place of worship.”
Despite minimal media coverage, dozens of churches have burned down across Canada over the past several years, most recently St. Anne’s Anglican Church earlier this month. A total of 100 churches have been vandalized or burned since True North began tracking church fires across Canada in 2021 after the Kamloops residential school announcement.
Located in Toronto’s Little Portugal neighbourhood, the designated historical site was constructed between 1907 and 1908 and contained the only known religious works of Canada’s most famous artist collective The Group of Seven. Members of the group had painted murals within the church’s interior in 1923.
While the cause of that fire remains under investigation, other recent church fires have led to arrests and charges of arson, as they were deliberately levelled to the ground.
Security footage caught the arsonist at the fire at the Blessed Sacrament Parish in Regina, Sask. in February, leading to 31-year-old Jordan Willet being swiftly apprehended.
The attack at the Regina church was the 46th arson attempt on a church.
Since True North began tracking church attacks in 2021, at least 33 have been completely burned to the ground.
That church fire in Regina prompted Conservative MP Corey Tochor to introduce a motion to condemn the attack, seeking unanimous consent from the House.
However, before he could finish reading his proposed motion, MPs from the Liberal and NDP benches yelled “No!”
Tochor called their response a “shameful” display.
Conservative MP Jamil Jivani lambasted the NDP and Liberals for being unable to condemn church burnings during the standing committee on Justice and Human Rights on Islamophobia earlier this month.
Jivani voiced his confusion about what he viewed as a lack of coverage and outrage from the political establishment over recent attacks on religious communities, particularly Christians in Canada.
“Since 2021, we’ve had over 100 Christian churches burned, vandalized or desecrated in Canada,” Jivani said. “When I see that, I see the lack of media coverage of those attacks on religious freedom, when I see that we cannot even in the House of Commons get every party to agree on condemning those attacks on religious freedom. I think to myself, ‘Yo, dawg, are we like in The Truman Show or something right now?’”
The Truman Show, a 1998 movie starring Jim Carrey, is about a man who lives his entire life unaware that he is actually in a TV show.
“It just seems so frustrating and puzzling how you get to this point,” he said. “Often, I will hear from constituents who are concerned about it, and they’ll express a sense of hopelessness like ‘Well how do you get people to care about this?’ Then I see other communities go through their own ordeals when it comes to attacks on their religious freedom.”