After hundreds of church arsons with no dedicated parliamentary probe, a Liberal MP is opposing a Tory bill that would force offenders to compensate their victims.
MPs took up second-reading debate on Bill C-255, sponsored by Conservative MP Kelly Block, which would require offenders to compensate property owners for damage to places of worship, including churches, mosques, synagogues and temples.
“This bill provides mandatory compensation to the victim for the first offence and mandatory minimal jail time as well as compensation to the victim for subsequent offences,” Block told the House Monday.
“It should not matter what motivated the attack,” she added. “The impact on the victim is still the same.”
Liberal MP Chris Bittle said he would vote against the bill despite calling its objectives “laudable,” according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
“However, after careful consideration I intend to vote against this bill,” Bittle said.
He argued mandatory compensation is unnecessary because sentencing judges already have the authority to order restitution to victims.
The debate follows years of church burnings across Canada.
Federal data documented 592 police-reported arsons at places of worship between 2010 and 2022, including 423 from 2015 onward.
Despite the hundreds of reported arsons, no parliamentary committee has conducted a dedicated study of the attacks.
Police recorded 90 arsons at places of worship in 2021, the same year the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced potential burial sites detected through ground-penetrating radar near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.
No remains have been recovered at the site.
Conservative MP Marc Dalton introduced Bill C-411 in 2024, proposing mandatory minimum sentences of five years for a first place-of-worship arson offence and seven years for repeat offences. The bill died at first reading when the 44th Parliament ended.
A 2025 Macdonald-Laurier Institute analysis counted 238 arson attacks against churches and other religious buildings between 2021 and 2023 — more than double the annual baseline from 2011 to 2017.
Researchers cited “anti-Christian or anti-religious sentiment” in some cases but said the identities and motives of those responsible for more than 96 per cent of the arsons remain unknown.
Conservative MP Bob Zimmer called the attacks a “modern-day form of religious persecution.”
“We have seen more than 100 churches burned in the last 10 years in Canada alone,” Zimmer told the Commons.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has also accused the Liberal government of a “deafening silence” on church attacks.
“This anti-Christian hate has got to stop,” Poilievre told Juno News last year, calling the destruction of churches “100 terrorist attacks against Canadian places of worship.”
At the time, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree acknowledged he had not met with any Christian congregations targeted by hate-motivated arson, despite 123 churches being burned, vandalized or desecrated over four years.
Liberal MP John-Paul Danko, however, pushed back on Conservative criticism, accusing the party of “repeating conspiracy theories” rather than focusing on what he called “real hate crimes.”
“If we want to talk about real hate crimes, and I’m not quoting, you know, alt-right, so-called alternative news, I’m talking about Jewish members in my community who are covering their Jewish identity in public,” Danko said. “That is the hate that we’re talking about, that this bill seeks to address.”
Bill C-255 has not yet cleared the House. MPs adjourned debate without holding a second-reading vote.
Hundreds of churches burnt or vandalized yet no mention of any culprits caught, let alone charged. With that record, why concern ourselves with mandatory sentencing?