Author: Clayton DeMaine
Conservative MP Andrew Lawton attempted to call the House of Commons Heritage Committee to study crimes targeting religious institutions, such as church burnings and synagogue shootings, but was blocked by the committee’s Liberal and Bloc MPs.
During the House of Commons Heritage Committee on Thursday, Liberal MP and committee chair Lisa Hepfner declared Lawton’s motion to begin a study on crimes against religious institutions in Canada to be outside the committee’s scope. Her ruling was supported by the Bloc and Liberal MPs, who formed a majority on the committee.
Following the failed motion to begin the study, Lawton put forward another motion to have the committee “recognize that faith and religion are integral to Canadian history, culture, traditions and national identity” and to report their vote to the House of Commons.
The Liberals, however, also moved to block such a vote from reaching the House of Commons for members to review and vote on, including Prime Minister Mark Carney.
“We have, as a committee, been denied the opportunity for a couple of weeks now to actually be able to have a public airing of a lot of the issues that Canadians have expected us to deal with,” Lawton said to the committee on Thursday.
Lawton noted that since 2015, police-reported hate crimes targeting religion have more than doubled from 469 to 1,115 a year, and those targeting Jewish Canadians, who make up only about one per cent of the population, have more than quadrupled from 178 to 788.
He also noted that the government had confirmed in a written question that since 2015, there have been 423 arsons targeting places of worship, with 90 of them occurring in 2021 alone.
“More than 100 churches have been burned or vandalized since 2021, and at least 33 of them were destroyed by fire, with arrests in only nine of those cases. Six worshippers were murdered at the Islamic Cultural Center of Quebec City in 2017,” Lawton said. “Synagogues have been firebombed and shot at, and Hindu temples, Sikh Gurudwaras, and mosques have been repeatedly targeted.”
He also noted the shooting at the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville, Ontario, where a gunman opened fire at a synagogue filled with Jewish congregants celebrating a nighttime Yom Kippur ceremony. And that Carney himself had recognized that Canada was failing Jewish Canadians.
The motion would have invited Culture Minister Marc Miller in for questioning on the rise in religiously targeted crimes, as well as Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree, Justice Minister Sean Fraser, religious leaders, Statistics Canada and various police services and their hate crime units to discuss the issue.
“Hate against faith communities is very real. This has been very close to home in London, where a little over five years ago, the Afzal family was murdered for no other reason than their Muslim faith,” Lawton said. “A despicable act of hate and terror.”
He also noted that crimes targeting religious communities have taken place in many of the members on the committee’s own ridings and referenced Juno News reporting on the over 130 church burnings that have taken place since the reported discovery of “unmarked graves” at the historic site of Kamloops Indian Residential School.
Hepfner, the committee’s Liberal chair, claimed that the motion was outside the committee’s scope because it “relates to the application of the Criminal Code,” even though it did not mention the Criminal Code.
Lawton and other Conservatives argued that it was not out of line, as the scope of the committee’s mandate involves Canadian culture and heritage, and that religion and the freedom to practice it are essential parts of Canada’s heritage, history and culture.
While preventing Lawton from deliberating further on the motion, Hepfner’s ruling was challenged, but all Liberal and Bloc Québécois members of the committee voted in favour of stifling the study on church burnings and other attacks on religious institutions.
“I believe that churches have a very key role in our society and are a part of our Canadian heritage,” Conservative MP Rachael Thomas said about the motion. “So I must vote no to sustaining the chair’s ruling.”
After the committee blocked Lawton’s motion for a study, he put forward another motion to recognize that “faith and religion are integral to Canadian history, culture, traditions, and national identity.”
“Houses of worship and faith-based organizations make significant contributions to communities through charitable work, social services, and the preservation of cultural heritage; historic religious buildings and faith traditions are important parts of Canada’s tangible and intangible heritage and merit preservation for future generations,” he said.
He argued that the House of Commons needs to recognize the importance religion plays in Canada after setting a “dangerous precedent” that the committee does not view religion as relevant to Canadian culture by stifling his earlier attempts for the study.
“I would note that this committee has, in the past, entertained motions, debates, discussions on hate crimes, on matters to do with the criminal code. I have a list of motions that I found just in the last 30 minutes that have been accepted, debated, some adopted from members on both sides dealing with the criminal code,” Lawton said. “When assaults on identity and heritage take place, these are illegal. But we have to underpin that with an acknowledgement of the role that these organizations play.”
Liberal members of the committee acknowledged that religious institutions played an important role in society but wanted to amend the new motion to ensure that the vote they make in committee doesn’t reach the House of Commons for parliamentarians to vote on themselves.
“Recognizing that work is absolutely invaluable. Where I think I will defer to some extent is that there is very clearly a political game afoot here, and we will not be tripped up by political games,” said Liberal MP Fares Al Soud. “The House has a lot of work to get to, and we support this motion on principle and value. I would therefore only propose a slight amendment that we remove, and I quote, ‘that this be reported to the House.’”
After Hepfner, the committee chair acknowledged that the purpose of the motion was to report it to the House for a vote. Conservatives accused the Liberal members of the committee of playing “political games” and trying to nullify Lawton’s motion.