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Frontier Centre for Public Policy

It’s Time To Stop Church Arsons And What Fuels Them

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

Religious freedoms and the right to worship have been a recognized hallmark of civilized societies for centuries. The preamble of Canada’s constitution says our country is built on the principles that acknowledge the supremacy of God and the rule of law. In defiance of both, almost 600 Canadian places of worship have suffered arson in recent years. Nothing could be more unCanadian.

The stats were revealed by Member of Parliament Marc Dalton following a formal inquiry to the federal government. The response showed 592 arsons had been set on places of worship between 2010 and 2022. they rose from 58 in 2020 to 90 in 2021, then down to 74 in 2022.

The peak coincides with claims made in May of 2021 that the remains of 215 school children had been discovered on the site of the former Kamloops Residential School.

Although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a subsequent wave of church burnings “unacceptable and wrong” he also called their likely motivations “real and fully understandable.” This hardly doused the flames.

These arsons far outnumber those made on Canadian churches in the 1920s by the Ku Klux Klan, which opposed non-Protestants and non-whites. In those years the KKK desecrated Sarnia’s St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. They killed ten people when they set Saint-Boniface College in Winnipeg on fire. They also burned the Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame de Quebec. In 1926, three Klan members were jailed after they blew up St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Barrie, Ont.

The Klan soon fizzled out, seemingly unlike these recent church burnings. The 110-year-old Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Allégresses Catholic church burned down in Trois-Rivières, Quebec last month, but whether arson was involved has not been confirmed.

The presence of bodies underneath the former residential school in Kamloops has not been confirmed either. A 1924 septic field could also account for soil anomalies found there by ground-penetrating radar. Eight million federal tax dollars spent to investigate the site have yielded no remains and details on how the money was spent are sketchy. It’s high time the site was excavated to confirm or rule out the graves and do autopsies on any corpses found there.

Federal funds also fuel the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN), the Orwellian title for a group that fuels resentment against socially conservative organizations with negative characterizations. On August 7, CAHN published “40 Ways To Fight The Far-Right: Tactics for Community Activists in Canada” thanks to $640,000 from Ottawa.

“White boys and men make up the majority of people involved in hate-promoting movements,” the handbook explains. Pro-life and pro-parent groups, CAHN says, are among those “characterized by racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, anti-2SLGBTQ+ views, and pro-colonialist/ anti-Indigenous bigotry.”

CAHN says the Catholic-dominated, pro-life organization Campaign Life Coalition is a “hate movement.” Liberty Coalition Canada, a legal defence organization, and the activist organization Action4Canada are similarly denigrated for their alleged belief that Canada was founded on Christian values and attempts to reassert such values.

Meanwhile, the CAHN guide advocates “antifascist” doxing, including infiltration of right-leaning organizations. getting people fired, and ending friendships.

Dalton’s Bill C-411 the “Anti-Arson Act” would do more to deter hate-motivated crimes than CAHN ever will. The legislation would punish those who set fires and explosions at religious places. A first offence would get a mandatory five-year jail sentence, while subsequent offenses would prompt seven years.

When respect for the supremacy of God and the rule of law fail, rights give way to wrongs. It’s time to stop the fires and the disputable claims that fuel them, and restore respect for people of faith, their right to worship, and their places of worship.

Lee Harding is a Research Associate for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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It Took Trump To Get Canada Serious About Free Trade With Itself

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From the  Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

Trump’s protectionism has jolted Canada into finally beginning to tear down interprovincial trade barriers

The threat of Donald Trump’s tariffs and the potential collapse of North American free trade have prompted Canada to look inward. With international trade under pressure, the country is—at last—taking meaningful steps to improve trade within its borders.

Canada’s Constitution gives provinces control over many key economic levers. While Ottawa manages international trade, the provinces regulate licensing, certification and procurement rules. These fragmented regulations have long acted as internal trade barriers, forcing companies and professionals to navigate duplicate approval processes when operating across provincial lines.

These restrictions increase costs, delay projects and limit job opportunities for businesses and workers. For consumers, they mean higher prices and fewer choices. Economists estimate that these barriers hold back up to $200 billion of Canada’s economy annually, roughly eight per cent of the country’s GDP.

Ironically, it wasn’t until after Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement that it began to address domestic trade restrictions. In 1994, the first ministers signed the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), committing to equal treatment of bidders on provincial and municipal contracts. Subsequent regional agreements, such as Alberta and British Columbia’s Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement in 2007, and the New West Partnership that followed, expanded cooperation to include broader credential recognition and enforceable dispute resolution.

In 2017, the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) replaced the AIT to streamline trade among provinces and territories. While more ambitious in scope, the CFTA’s effectiveness has been limited by a patchwork of exemptions and slow implementation.

Now, however, Trump’s protectionism has reignited momentum to fix the problem. In recent months, provincial and territorial labour market ministers met with their federal counterpart to strengthen the CFTA. Their goal: to remove longstanding barriers and unlock the full potential of Canada’s internal market.

According to a March 5 CFTA press release, five governments have agreed to eliminate 40 exemptions they previously claimed for themselves. A June 1 deadline has been set to produce an action plan for nationwide mutual recognition of professional credentials. Ministers are also working on the mutual recognition of consumer goods, excluding food, so that if a product is approved for sale in one province, it can be sold anywhere in Canada without added red tape.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has signalled that his province won’t wait for consensus. Ontario is dropping all its CFTA exemptions, allowing medical professionals to begin practising while awaiting registration with provincial regulators.

Ontario has partnered with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to implement mutual recognition of goods, services and registered workers. These provinces have also enabled direct-to-consumer alcohol sales, letting individuals purchase alcohol directly from producers for personal consumption.

A joint CFTA statement says other provinces intend to follow suit, except Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.

These developments are long overdue. Confederation happened more than 150 years ago, and prohibition ended more than a century ago, yet Canadians still face barriers when trying to buy a bottle of wine from another province or find work across a provincial line.

Perhaps now, Canada will finally become the economic union it was always meant to be. Few would thank Donald Trump, but without his tariffs, this renewed urgency to break down internal trade barriers might never have emerged.

Lee Harding is a research fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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2025 Federal Election

The Cost of Underselling Canadian Oil and Gas to the USA

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Canadians can now track in real time how much revenue the country is forfeiting to the United States by selling its oil at discounted prices, thanks to a new online tracker from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. The tracker shows the billions in revenue lost due to limited access to distribution for Canadian oil.

At a time of economic troubles and commercial tensions with the United States, selling our oil at a discount to U.S. middlemen who then sell it in the open markets at full price will rob Canada of nearly $19 billion this year, said Marco Navarro-Genie, the VP of Research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Navarro-Genie led the team that designed the counter.

The gap between world market prices and what Canada receives is due to the lack of Canadian infrastructure.

According to a recent analysis by Ian Madsen, senior policy analyst at the Frontier Centre, the lack of international export options forces Canadian producers to accept prices far below the world average. Each day this continues, the country loses hundreds of millions in potential revenue. This is a problem with a straightforward remedy, said David Leis, the Centre’s President. More pipelines need to be approved and built.

While the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) pipeline has helped, more is needed. It commenced commercial operations on May 1, 2024, nearly tripling Canada’s oil export capacity westward from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels daily. This expansion gives Canadian oil producers access to broader global markets, including Asia and the U.S. West Coast, potentially reducing the price discount on Canadian crude.

This is more than an oil story. While our oil price differential has long been recognized, there’s growing urgency around our natural gas exports. The global demand for cleaner energy, including Canadian natural gas, is climbing. Canada exports an average of 12.3 million GJ of gas daily. Yet, we can still not get the full value due to infrastructure bottlenecks, with losses of over $7.3 billion (2024). A dedicated counter reflecting these mounting gas losses underscores how critical this issue is.

“The losses are not theoretical numbers,” said Madsen. “This is real money, and Canadians can now see it slipping away, second by second.”

The Frontier Centre urges policymakers and industry leaders to recognize the economic urgency and ensure that infrastructure projects like TMX are fully supported and efficiently utilized to maximize Canada’s oil export potential. The webpage hosting the counter offers several examples of what the lost revenue could buy for Canadians. A similar counter for gas revenue lost through similarly discounted gas exports will be added in the coming days.

What Could Canada Do With $25.6 Billion a Year?

Without greater pipeline capacity, Canada loses an estimated (2025) $25.6 billion by selling our oil and gas to the U.S. at a steep discount. That money could be used in our communities — funding national defence, hiring nurses, supporting seniors, building schools, and improving infrastructure. Here’s what we’re giving up by underselling these natural resources. 

342,000 Nurses

The average annual salary for a registered nurse in Canada is about $74,958. These funds could address staffing shortages and improve patient care nationwide.
Source

39,000 New Housing Units

At an estimated $472,000 per unit (excluding land costs, based on Toronto averages), $25.6 billion could fund nearly 94,000 affordable housing units.
Source

About the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

The Frontier Centre for Public Policy is an independent Canadian think-tank that researches and analyzes public policy issues, including energy, economics and governance.

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