St. Gabriel Catholic Mission in northern Alberta was burned to the ground

Jamil Jivani called church burnings an attack on religious freedom and said Bill C 4-11 would increase the penalty for crimes of arson by adding the targeting of churches as an aggravating factor in sentencing for these acts of destruction.

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.

From the Fraser Institute

There’s a growing consensus among economists that the federal government and several provincial governments over the past decade have not enacted enough policies that encourage economic growth. Consequently, Canadians are getting poorer relative to residents of other countries including the United States. In particular, their ability to purchase essential goods and services such as housing and food—in other words, their standard of living—is declining relative to our neighbours to the south.

In fact, according to our new study, among the 10 provinces and 50 U.S. states, median employment earnings—that is, wages and salaries— in 2022 (the latest year of available data) were lowest in the four Atlantic provinces, followed by Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta. So, the median employment earnings of workers were lower in every Canadian province than in every U.S. state.

Were Canadian provinces always in the basement? Pretty much. In 2010, while only 12 U.S. states reported higher median employment earnings than Alberta, the other nine Canadian provinces ranked among the bottom 10 places. However, the important point is that from 2010 to 2022, Canadian provinces have fallen even further behind as many low-ranking U.S. states substantially improved.

In 2010, the per-worker earnings gap (in 2017 Canadian dollars) between Louisiana, a middle-ranking state, and the nine lowest-ranked Canadian provinces varied from $4,650 (in Saskatchewan) to $15,661 (Prince Edward Island). By 2022, a typical mid-ranking state such as Tennessee was out-earning all provinces by a range of $6,770 (in Alberta) to $16,955 (P.E.I.). In other words, by 2022, not only were workers in all U.S. states out-earning workers in all Canadian provinces, the gap had grown.

Another example—Alberta and Texas are the two largest oil-producing jurisdictions in their respective countries, yet Albertans, who out-earned Texans in 2010, saw their lead of $3,423 per worker become a deficit of $5,254 by 2022.

It’s a similar story for B.C. and Washington, which are geographically proximate and have similar-sized populations. While B.C. experienced strong growth in median employment earnings per worker over this period, it still lost ground relative to Washington—the gap grew from $10,879 in 2010 to $11,311 by 2022.

The change between Ontario and Michigan is even more striking. Again, they are geographic neighbours, have similar-sized populations and share a large auto sector, with Michigan’s lead over Ontario growing from $2,955 per worker in 2010 to $8,661 by 2022. The trends are similar when comparing Saskatchewan to North Dakota or the Atlantic provinces to the New England states; the gaps have only grown larger.

So, why should Canadians care?

Of course, everybody wants to make more money, so Canadians should want to know why workers in Mississippi and Louisiana make more than workers here at home. But there’s also a broader problem—people and capital can move relatively freely across the Canada-U.S. border, meaning this growing divergence in employment earnings has significant ramifications for the Canadian economy.

It could spur the ongoing migration of highly productive individuals, including high-skilled immigrants, who choose to move south. And encourage domestic and foreign firms to invest in the U.S. rather than in Canada. If these trends continue, they will exacerbate the earnings gaps between the two countries and potentially make Canada an economic backwater relative to the U.S. There’s also a significant risk these trends could worsen if the next U.S. administration increases tariffs on Canadian exports to the U.S., effectively abrogating the North American free trade agreement.

Clearly, to mitigate this risk and reverse the ongoing divergence in employment earnings—which largely determine living standards—between Canada and the U.S., the federal and provincial governments should implement bold and sweeping growth-oriented policies to make the Canadian economy more competitive. When Canada is more attractive to business investment, high-skilled workers and entrepreneurs, all workers will reap the rewards.

Authors:

Alex Whalen

Director, Atlantic Canada Prosperity, Fraser Institute

Lawrence Schembri

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

Joel Emes

Senior Economist, Fraser Institute