OTTAWA, Ontario (LifeSiteNews) — Liberal Member of Parliament John-Paul Danko dismissed attacks on churches in Canada as “conspiracy theories” despite two churches being targeted in his own riding of Hamilton.
“We have heard repeated Conservative conspiracy theories over and over in the House,” he stated during an October 1 session in the House of Commons.
“If we want to talk about real hate crimes, and I am not quoting alt-right so-called alternative news, there are Jewish members in my community who are covering up their Jewish identity in public,” he continued. “That is the hate we are talking about that this bill seeks to address. I am trying to understand what the member opposite’s real objection is to this legislation.”
A Liberal MP accused me of peddling “conspiracy theories” and quoting “alt-right” media for talking about the 120+ churches that have been burned or vandalized on the Liberals’ watch. I will always stand up against real hate and defend free speech. pic.twitter.com/hbX79Qx1oU
— Andrew Lawton (@AndrewLawton) October 4, 2025
Apparently, Danko is unaware of attacks on two churches in his Hamilton riding. St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church was fire-bombed in 2022 and St. John the Baptist Catholic Church was set on fire in 2023.
Danko’s comments were in response to Conservative MP Andrew Lawton’s appeal to provide protections for Canadian churches under attack in the newly proposed Bill C-9.
Lawton cited data from Juno News, which documented over 123 churches that have been vandalized or burned since 2021.
“If the Liberals were serious about real hate crimes, they would be seeking mandatory 10-year prison sentences for these heinous assaults on places of worship,” Lawton argued. “Again, the law should punish bad behaviour and not bad feelings.”
As reported by LifeSiteNews, Bill C-9 has been blasted by constitutional experts as allowing empowered police and the government to go after those it deems have violated a person’s “feelings” in a “hateful” way.
The Liberals have boasted that the bill will make it a crime for people to block the entrance to, or intimidate people from attending, a church or other place of worship, a school, or a community center. The bill would also make it a crime to promote so-called hate symbols and would, in effect, ban the display of certain symbols such as the Nazi flag.
At the same time, as pointed out of various Conservative MPs, the legislation fails to provide protections for Christian or Catholic groups.
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.
Regardless of this, 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 attacks are ongoing. Just over a week ago, an Alberta Christian church was burned to the ground.
