The alarming number of arsons that have defiled or outright destroyed Catholic and Christian houses of worship over the past several years did not garner attention from any of the political parties during the 2025 federal election campaign.

Nevertheless, church burnings — and attacks on synagogues, mosques and temples — remain a clear and present crisis.

Until now, Canadians’ awareness and knowledge about this issue was limited to individual news stories and incident databases compiled by various organizations, such as the Catholic Civil Rights League. Now the Macdonald-Laurier Institute has unveiled Scorched Earth: A quantitative analysis of arson against Canadian religious institutions and its threat to reconciliation.

Academic and economist Edgardo Sepulveda’s paper, released April 24, represents the first empirical investigation of the escalation in these attacks since May 27, 2021. The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced that day 215 suspected unmarked graves had been discovered near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. This claim remains unproven.

After reviewing and calculating Statistics Canada data, Sepulveda uncovered arsons at religious institutions relative to all burnings in Canada nearly doubled from 0.38 per cent from 2011-14 to 0.73 per cent from 2021-23. In hard numbers, 45, 44, 36 and 31 arsons were committed at religious establishments in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 respectively. Comparatively, there were 90 in 2021, and 74 recorded in 2022 and 2023.

The areas where these fires took place coincide with First Nations' communities announcing the discovery of unmarked graves. Fifteen of the 17 high-profile potential unmarked burial announcements emanated from Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia. House of worship arsons on the prairies elevated from 33 between 2011-2014 to 78 from 2021-23. B.C. experienced a spike to 67 from 42.

Arguably the most striking finding is that law enforcement has rendered charges in fewer than four per cent of arson incidents from 2021-23: “the identities and motivations of the arsonists responsible for more than 96 per cent of arsons remain unknown.” This figure is markedly lower than the Canadian average 11-per-cent charge rate for property arson.

“My sense is what happened in 2021, ’22 (and ’23) is that both from a policy perspective, but also a police and fire services perspective, they weren't really prepared to address this surge in arsons,” said Sepulveda. “And the evidence of that is the four-per-cent solve rate.”

While it is too late for policymakers and law enforcement to “anticipate and plan for risk,” said Sepulveda, he said it is important for there to be an acknowledgement of the mistakes to date — “fool me once” — and course correct.

The long-time government, regulatory agency and economic advisor’s prognosis is not promising.

“Unfortunately, I predict that there will be a continuation of this. I'd be surprised that there wasn't.”

Scorched Earth does more than comprehensively outline the problem. It also offers policy responses that could potentially mitigate these fiery attacks on hallowed places of worship. Chiefly, Sepulveda advises the creation of a national or provincial integrated police/fire unit focused specifically on arson at religious institutions.

The inspiration for this proposal was the National Church Arson Task Force (NCATF) established by U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1996 to investigate and prosecute the fires plaguing Black-majority congregations in the American south. Over 200 investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the F.B.I. joined forces and managed a 36-per-cent arrest rate — more than double the U.S. average apprehension frequency of 16 per cent. Additionally, the annual number of incidents declined from 297 in 1996 to 140 in 1999.

Sepulveda also advocates for Indigenous police and fire protection services to be bolstered and for there to be Indigenous participation in the integrated investigative units.

Finally, the report urged that Canada finish building “a comprehensive and timely national and on-reserve database of fire statistics.”

Sepulveda warns “it is crucial for Canadians to consider the arsons over the 2021–23 period as a ‘dry run’ for the potential reaction to the discovery of verified human remains in the future.”

He declared that in addition to the “inherent danger and financial cost” of such carnage, “the path of reconciliation itself may become scorched.” Many non-Indigenous Catholics and Christians have expressed outrage over these incidents, and this feeling of indignation is shared with Indigenous peoples.

 “Indigenous communities have expressed their opposition to such acts of arson, not only due to the significance of these churches to some of their member’s faith but also because of the risk of perpetuating a destructive cycle that could hinder the progress of reconciliation,” wrote Sepulveda.