OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) – Canada’s Public Safety Minister admitted that he has yet to meet with anyone from 123 Christian, mostly Catholic, churches that have been either reduced to ashes or seriously vandalized over the past four years.
Speaking recently before a committee to discuss upcoming fall bills, Minister Gary Anandasangaree was grilled by opposition Conservative MPs on a host of issues from public safety and illegal migrants to church arsons.
He said his priorities are getting a new border Bill C-12 passed while tackling illegal immigration but made no specific mention of tackling the rise of Christian hate in Canada.
Asked by Conservative MP Dane Lloyd about whether he met with any of the 123 and counting church congregations, he replied that he has not, but he claimed he has met with “many members of different church and faith groups.”
“You said you met with synagogues and mosques, which I do appreciate,” noted Lloyd, adding, “Those communities need your support, Minister, but Christian communities also need your support.”
“Why have you not met with any of those communities?” he asked.
Anandasangaree said he was “concerned (about) every incidence of hate at any place, including churches,” but stopped short of promising anything.
He was also asked about allegations that a government employee who works on a local military base near Montreal was the one responsible for throwing smoke bombs into a church service this summer.
Anandasangaree said he is “concerned” about these allegations but did not add any other context.
Canadian Conservative pro-life and pro-family MP Leslyn Lewis called out the hypocrisy of a new Liberal “hate” speech bill recently for being silent regarding rising “Christian hate,” because it does not even mention church arson.
Hate-motivated attacks against Christians are on the rise in Canada. 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 Canadian residential schools. The reality is, after four years, there have been no mass graves discovered at residential schools.
However, as the claims went unfounded, since the spring of 2021, over 120 churches, most of them Catholic, many of them on indigenous lands that serve the local population, have been burned to the ground, vandalized, or defiled in Canada.
The Canadian media has been rather silent on the church burnings.
The government-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) went as far as blaming the fact that it has not covered the arson attacks much on “staffing shortage.”
Indeed, the absence of reports about church burnings was uncovered by former CRTC chair Peter Menzies, who could not find any information on the recent arson attack against All Saints Ukrainian Orthodox in Bellis, Alberta.
