Incoming US Vice President Raises Issue of Church Burnings in Canada

The next U.S. vice president J.D. Vance has waded into the issue of church arsons in Canada, saying they’re the product of “bigotry” against Christians.

Vance made the comment in a post on the social media platform X on Dec. 6, in response to a Canadian media columnist criticizing a video made by Conservative MP Jamil Jivani on protecting the rights of Christians.

“Canada has seen a number of church burnings in recent years thanks to anti-Christian bigotry,” Vance wrote, adding that Christians are the “most persecuted religious group” in the world.

“Jamil is speaking the truth. Shame on journalists who refuse to see what’s obvious,” said Vance, a former Republican senator for Ohio.

Vance and Jivani are good friends and former schoolmates from their time at Yale University’s law school.

Jivani is a former media personality who took over the House of Commons seat previously held by former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole. Jivani won in a landslide in the byelection in Ontario’s Durham riding in March.

In a video posted on social media platform X on Dec. 3, Jivani announced he was launching a petition calling to protect the rights of Christians in Canada, in light of issues like arsons and vandalism targeting churches in recent years, and what he calls “anti-Christian bigotry.”

“We need to defend parental rights of mothers and fathers,” he said. “This is not about forcing other people to live according to Christian values. No, this is about whether Christians in Canada have the freedom to live according to their own traditions and to practice their own faith without corporations and governments engaging in overreach.”

The post by Jivani prompted a response by a columnist from the National Observer, who criticized the modern conservative movement.

“So much of contemporary Conservatism revolves around cultivating and validating a sense of victimhood in groups that aren’t actually victims,” the columnist wrote on Dec. 5.

Canada has seen a spike of fires at churches since May 2021, when the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation of Kamloops announced that ground-penetrating radar had identified possible unmarked graves of children at a former residential school site. The schools were operated by the government in partnership with churches of various Christian denominations.

Separate claims of unmarked graves at former residential schools were also made by other groups in various locations in Canada in recent years. So far, no remains of missing children have been found.

In the weeks following the Kamloops announcement, eleven churches were destroyed by arson in western Canada.

Government data tabled in the House of Commons in September on police-reported incidents of arson at religious institutions show a marked increase in incidents from 2020 to 2021. There were 58 such incidents in 2020 and 90 in 2021, a record high over the past decade. The data includes churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques.

Some of the latest incidences of churches being damaged by fire include the October destruction of the Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Allégresses, located in Trois-Rivières, Que. That fire was deemed to be non-criminal by the fire service.

St. George’s Church in Loon Lake, Sask., was destroyed by a fire in late September, with the RCMP still investigating the cause.

Jennifer Cowan and Matthew Horwood contributed to this report.

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