OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) – A Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP urged support from his political opponents for a bill that would give stiffer penalties to arsonists caught burning churches down.
“This is a very serious issue. It is not just an attack on churches as buildings, it’s an attack on communities, on families and an attack on religious freedom in Canada,” CPC MP Jamil Jivani said in an X video post on October 2.
“We need to see action, we need the other political parties to realize that this is a serious problem. We need support behind Bill C -411, and we need to do more to protect churches in Canada.”
In the span of less than one week, as reported by LifeSiteNews, two more Christian churches were reduced to ash piles, one Catholic and the other Anglican.
Jivani called out the fires as attacks on freedom, saying the “pattern of destruction that we have observed of church after church after church being burned to the ground in Canada” must stop.
“Why isn’t the government doing anything about this problem?” he asked. “Well, let me tell you, conservatives have put forward legislation on this issue. Bill C 4-11 would increase the penalty for crimes of arson against churches by adding the targeting of churches as an aggravating factor in sentencing for arson crimes.”
Jivani observed that Conservatives have not seen “other political parties support this Bill C-411.”
“The Liberals, the NDP, the Bloc, all of them continue to be silent on this problem. This pattern of destruction we have not seen the other political party support our legislation, Bill C-411, and they’re not even offering their own legislation,” he said.
“We need support behind Bill C-411, and we need to do more to protect churches in Canada.”
Bill C-411, or “An Act to amend the Criminal Code (arson — wildfires and places of worship)” was introduced by CPC MP Marc Dalton in June.
The law, if passed, would create specific criminal offenses for setting fires to churches and for starting wildfires.
Under the new legislation, arson that directly target churches or other places of worship would be punishable by “imprisonment for a term of not more than 14 years and to a minimum punishment of imprisonment for a term of five years” for the first offense.
“For each subsequent offence, imprisonment for life and to a minimum punishment for a term of seven years,” the legislation stated.
The legislation also outlines consequences for starting wildfires of fines up to $250,000 and life imprisonment.
Since the spring of 2021, 112 churches, most of them Catholic, have been burned to the ground, vandalized or defiled in Canada.
The church burnings started after the mainstream media and the federal government ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the now-closed residential schools in Canada.
LifeSiteNews reported last week that Leah Gazan, backbencher MP from the socialist New Democratic Party (NDP), brought forth a bill that seeks to criminalize the denial of the unproven claim that the residential school system once operating in Canada was a “genocide.”
As reported by LifeSiteNews in August, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet said it will expand a multimillion-dollar fund geared toward documenting thus far unfounded claims that hundreds of young children died and were clandestinely buried at the residential schools.
Canada’s Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations confirmed it spent millions searching for “unmarked graves” at a residential school but turned up no human remains.
Canadian indigenous residential schools were run by the Catholic Church and other Christian churches but were mandated and set up by the federal government. They were open from the late 19th century until the last school closed in 1996.
While there were indeed some Catholics who committed serious abuses against native children, the unproved “mass graves” narrative has led to widespread anti-Catholic sentiment since 2021.