A group called The Democracy Fund (TDF) has launched an independent investigation in Canada to the intensifying and expanding pattern of church and synagogue fires that are now plaguing the country.
According to a CBC broadcast network investigation, from May 2021 through December 2023, there were 24 confirmed church arsons in Canada, but the total number of churches that were destroyed by fire totaled 33.
That may not be the whole of it. The Catholic Register, using data from Statistics Canada, reported that arsons were committed against religious establishments in the country at a rate of 45 in 2011, 44 in 2012, and 36 in 2013. More recently, in 2021, there were 90 such arsons, and another 74 happened in 2022 and 2023. These statistics include churches, synagogues, and other religious buildings.
While there are no confirmed statistics from these sources for 2024 and 2025, it seems that at a minimum, the current rate of church and synagogue arsons is in line with those of recent years and perhaps increasing.
A Church FIRE happening tonight in Saint-Romain, Quebec 🇨🇦 Construction of this church began in 1893
Horrible to see. This is Canada 🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/ZvT6EIqh42
— Melissa 🇨🇦 (@MelissaLMRogers) April 14, 2026
According to the TDF, a certified fire investigator is leading its investigation, “to conduct an expert analysis of the wave of arson attacks and vandalism against churches and synagogues that has swept Canada since 2021.”
TDF says this is the first known independent forensic review of the arsons that have targeted religious organizations, particularly Christian and Jewish ones.
The investigator will work with an ATIP (access to information & privacy) specialist to retrieve approximately 100 investigation reports filed by fire officials regarding the church and synagogue attacks.
The expert will then examine, among other things, whether fires were investigated properly according to professional standards, whether the pattern of destruction indicates an organized or ideologically motivated campaign, and whether Canadian authorities responded according to international standards, TDF said in a statement.
Getting fire insurance on a church in Canada must be impossible… pic.twitter.com/q0ocQwUN5u
— @amuse (@amuse) October 5, 2024
The TDF reports that its findings will inform a “public report” that will be used as a resource for future legal action, public advocacy campaigns, and “formal demands for government accountability.”
Mark Joseph, the TDF’s executive director, said, “Canadians have witnessed a sharp increase in church and synagogue fires and vandalism over the past decade. The overwhelming majority of these attacks are unresolved. Numbering in the hundreds and bearing clear hallmarks of targeted action, the response from the government and authorities has been almost nonexistent. For years, Canadians have watched churches burn and synagogues come under attack while authorities offered little transparency, few answers, and almost no accountability. This investigation is designed to establish what happened, determine whether these incidents were properly investigated, and expose any systemic failures that allowed this crisis to persist.”
Right about here, I’d love to be able to show you a video or a quote from Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney that acknowledges the wave of (literal and physical) incendiary attacks on Christians and Jews, but it appears that’s not a priority for him. He’s not talking about it.
The closest he’s gotten to that was in March, when he condemned two gunfire attacks on Toronto synagogues, which makes sense. Those situations gave Carney the opportunity to talk about gun control and the evils of gun ownership and gun owners. Plus, he could treat that situation as a one-off.
The ongoing and long-term matter of churches going up in flames in Canada doesn’t seem to have an end in sight, and it’s been going on for a very long time now. Carney’s ignoring that.
The TDF has decided to launch its own investigation because it believes Canadian authorities have dropped the ball and failed to properly investigate something that very well could be a coordinated, violent, and destructive campaign of terrorism and intimidation. The organization points to 120 churches throughout Canada that have been “burned, vandalized, or desecrated” since 2021.
The reason the year 2021 is important is that this is when so-called “unmarked graves” were discovered at Canadian Indian residential school sites. That “discovery” appeared to set off a wave of church fires. Initial reports were that 1,000 Canadian Indian children were allegedly buried in these graves, implying that past malicious activity and a cover-up by the church was responsible.
These initial reports didn’t even use the word “allegedly.” They accepted the theory and the calculations on face value. What was lost in the coverage was that these alleged graves were never dug up. The investigators used “ground penetrating radar (GPR) and visual surveys” to search for the gravesites, and it found “unmarked burial features” in some of those locations.
Now, all of these claims are under scrutiny by skeptics, who say that the more they dig into the stories that have become accepted narrative — and which could be at least part of the reason for the wave of church arsons in Canada — just don’t hold up. The more they look into this, the less they believe any of the allegations and assumptions are true.
Related: Vatican Synodal Report Marks Tectonic Shift In Church Framing of Homosexuality
So, how is the left in Canada reacting to the skeptics? As you might expect leftists to react when they are on a roll, accusing Christians of doing bad things while sparking a wave of arson against churches.
Defamation, cancellation, false arrests and even violence are the typical tools that the dimwitted and morally bankrupt leftist activists resort to when faced with people demanding evidence of the alleged children’s burial site in Kamloops. Several years and many millions of… pic.twitter.com/7TukTCwOpL
— Professor Iratus Genium (@PGenium) May 2, 2026
Some lawmakers in Canada even want to criminalize the very questioning of the historical narratives surrounding those residential schools.
COUNTDOWN (20 days until #Kamloops215Deception): “If passed this bill would add to the criminal code the offense of willfully promoting hatred against indigenous peoples by condoning, denying, justifying or downplaying the harm caused by the residential school system in Canada,… pic.twitter.com/6YvpfUEc51
— Frances Widdowson (@FrancesWiddows1) May 8, 2026
In Canada, leftists are doing what leftists do. They are ginning up an outrage machine over the questioning of their claims and allegations. They are not to be questioned. They are doubling down on a “mass graves” narrative that not only has yet to be proven, but appears to be effectively debunked. The skeptics say that, yes, of course, in some of these residential schools, children did die for any number of reasons. And yes, they may have been buried in cemeteries near the schools, as you might expect. But, they contend, this does not mean something nefarious happened. And it certainly doesn’t mean there is proof of any “unmarked mass graves.”
Still, all of this has been used almost as justification for the wave of arson attacks on churches. Canadian authorities do not seem to be looking too hard for the arsonists themselves. Are they people from the Canadian Indian community or their sympathizers? Or, are they from the rapidly expanding Muslim community in Canada, whose more radical members are known to have a special animus against Christians and Jews?
They lied about the Canadian grave sites, the forest fires last year and give little attention to the hundreds of church fires. https://t.co/xgcAml5Y5P
— MACK (@BobertMack) April 28, 2024
It would be good to know who is responsible one way or the other. But it would seem that Canadian authorities would rather not know. This is why the TDF has had to launch its own independent investigation. Stay tuned.
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