(LifeSiteNews) – Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre not only condemned the recent rash of church burnings taking place in Canada but called out Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for being silent on the matter after around 100 churches to date have been hit with arson attacks.
“There is no justification for burning down a church period,” Poilievre said at a press conference on Monday in West Vancouver, British Columbia.
“Regardless of the other information or justifications that people claim to use, there is never a justification to burn down a church.”
Poilievre then took a shot at Trudeau, accusing him of causing division among Canadians and helping to create more hatred toward Christians in particular.
“Unfortunately, these crimes against religious communities have raged out of control after eight years of Justin Trudeau,” Poilievre told reporters.
“We have more violence directed against religious groups, including Christians, than we have ever seen in Canadian history. This is the result of Justin Trudeau. He is not worth the cost; he is not worth the crime.”
Poilievre said his party supports stronger criminal charges against convicted arsonists and said that churches and other places of worship in Canada need stronger security.
Since the spring of 2021, more than 100 churches, most of them Catholic, have been burned or vandalized across Canada. The attacks on the churches came shortly after the unconfirmed discovery of “unmarked graves” at now-closed residential schools once run by the Church in parts of the country.
Poilievre said that “full resources” should be provided to “allow for full investigation into the potential remains that at residential schools.”
“Canadians deserve to know the truth,” he said.
Poilievre added that conservatives will “always stand in favour of historical accuracy.”
“None of this changes the fact that the residential schools were an appalling abuse of power by the state and by the church at the time,” he said.
In 2021, Trudeau said it was is “unacceptable and wrong” for churches to be burned, but then said the burnings were also “understandable.”
In 2021 and 2022, the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the schools.
Despite the church burnings, the federal government under Trudeau has done nothing substantial to bring those responsible to justice or to stem the root cause of the burnings.
Instead, in the fall of 2023, Liberal and NDP Members of Parliament (MPs) struck down a Conservative Party motion that would have condemned incidents of church burnings and acts of vandalism.
In December 2023, four churches in Alberta, the province Poilievre was born in and grew up in, were the target of arson.
Only days after a Catholic church in Alberta was reduced to ashes before Christmas, another Christian church in the province burned to the ground in what police have confirmed is a case of arson.
Just before Christmas, a Seventh Day Adventist Church in Beiseker, a town about 70 kilometers northeast of Calgary, was “fully engulfed in flames” when fire crews arrived in the early morning hours in a suspected case of arson.
Before this happened, LifeSiteNews reported on two historic Christian churches in Barrhead, Alberta, intentionally set on fire in what police said were suspected acts of arson.
Also in December LifeSiteNews reported on how St. Gabriel Catholic Mission, located in the northern Alberta community of Janvier, was reduced to ashes in a “suspicious” case of suspected arson.
In August 2022, LifeSiteNews reported about the destruction by fire of one of the oldest standing Catholic churches in Alberta. Police at the time said the fire was a “suspicious” incident.