A crime data analysis by Ottawa think tank, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, suggests a spike in church fires coincided with First Nations claims of hidden graves at Indian Residential Schools.
“Few Canadians understood the full scope and scale of these attacks,” observed the institute in a report, Scorched Earth: A Quantitative Analysis Of Arson Against Canadian Religious Institutions And Its Threat To Reconciliation, released Thursday, per Blacklock’s Reporter.
“The report reveals a statistically significant association between the surge in arson incidents at religious institutions and the geographic proximity of former Residential Schools that were the subject of announcements made during the 2021 to 2023 period regarding potential unmarked burials,” said the report.
Researchers in the period from 2021 to 2023, the most recent available data on police-reported crimes, counted arson attacks at 238 churches and other religious buildings.
It was “more than double the annual baseline of arsons from 2011 to 2017,” said the report.
The increase coincided with the 2021 claim by the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation of Kamloops, BC, that it had discovered the remains of 215 children buried at an Indian Residential School site.
No remains have ever been recovered, despite $12.1 million in federal funding for field work and DNA testing.
The report attributed fires and vandalism to “anti-Christian or anti-religious sentiment” in the West.
“The identities and motivations of the arsonists responsible for more than 96% percent of arsons remain unknown,” wrote author Edgardo Supelveda, an economist formerly with the Alberta Federation of Labour.
“Western Canada experienced increases in the number of arsons in religious institutions over the 2018 to 2023 period, and in particular over the 2021 to 2023 period, which were not present in either the United States, England or Eastern Canada,” said Scorched Earth.
“This offers evidence that arsons at religious institutions in Canada are not part of any broader international pattern.”
“What could be driving the increase? This clear increase in arsons at religious institutions in Canada, recent and unique, must have an explanation.”
Kimberly Murray, cabinet’s Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves, testified last November 28 at the Senate Indigenous Peoples Committee that she accepted some Canadians were skeptical that graves existed.
“It is one thing to say you don’t believe there are burials,” said Murray.
“That’s your opinion and you can have freedom of speech to say that.”
“But when you say there are no burials, that First Nations people or the Indians are lying because they want you to go burn down churches or they want to take away your cottages, that is inciting hate against indigenous people.”
“That’s the type of speech we need to stop.”
Murray said she was personally convinced there are mass graves at Residential Schools though none have been found.
“Cemeteries were part of the Indian Residential Schools from the very outset,” she said.
“The government planned for the deaths of the children.”
“When the children died, government and church officials did not return the children home for burial. They were buried in cemeteries at the institutions, often in unmarked and mass graves which were sometimes dug by the other children.”