On December 3, Jamil Jivani, Member of Parliament for Durham, released a video announcing the launch of his new petition at Protect Christians in Canada:
I'm sounding the alarm.
We must protect Christians in Canada from governments and corporations abusing their power in our country, and from anti-Christian bigotry.
I'll present this petition in Ottawa in the new year.
Defend the rights of parents to play a leading role in their children’s education and important decisions involving their children.
Safeguard conscience rights and the freedom of religion for unionized and non-unionized workers, including health care professionals.
Strengthen penalties and increase law enforcement in response to crime targeting churches and places of worship.
Protect the legal status and freedom of expression of Christian charities.
This petition calls for much-needed action — I’ve been covering the ongoing attacks on parental rights in Canada for over a decade, and those attacks have only escalated during the Trudeau years. In fact, Canadian progressives and LGBT activists don’t even recognize parental rights as a valid concept. As federally funded trans activist “Fae” Johnstone, executive director of Queer Momentum, recently stated: “I think in Canada right now, we’re seeing this language around, you know, so-called parental rights, this reference to gender ideology. And so we’re, you know, using these as a distraction.”
Canadian parents should be interested in the fact that this trans activist refers to their “so-called parental rights,” which, according to LGBT activists, ends precisely where their fictitious right to teach their ideology to other people’s children begins.
It was revealing to see the immediate response from Canadian progressives, who mocked Jivan’s assertion that any action is needed. “Those Liberals and their woke identity politics … wait a minute,” MP Nate Erskine-Smith snarked. Erskine-Smith, incidentally, has been vociferous about the need to combat Islamophobia but is characteristically silent about the more than 100 churches that have been attacked or burned down entirely over the past several years. The fact that progressive politicians have been largely silent while Christian places of worship are set ablaze, in fact, is evidence of precisely the problem Jivani is referring to.
Max Fawcett, a columnist for the National Observer, also chimed in. “So much of contemporary Conservatism revolves around cultivating and validating a sense of victimhood in groups that aren’t actually victims,” he said on X. Again, Fawcett failed to explain how he would describe the arson spree targeting Christian churches. Vice President-elect JD Vance, who is a friend of Jivani, quote-tweeted Fawcett to set the record straight: “Canada has seen a number of church burnings in recent years thanks to anti-Christian bigotry. All over the world, Christians are the most persecuted religious group. Jamil is speaking the truth. Shame on journalists who refuse to see what’s obvious.”
Fawcett, who is allegedly a journalist, apparently has not noticed what the incoming American vice president has: that Canada’s culture is growing increasingly hostile to Christians. If the arson attacks on churches aren’t enough for him, perhaps Fawcett could consider the fact that in 2021, there were more police-reported hate crimes against Christians than against Muslims:
Here’s another handy graph that illustrates the trend:
It is manifestly true that if over 100 mosques were attacked or 100 temples or 100 gurdwaras, Erskine-Smith and Fawcett and the rest of Canada’s progressive establishment would be howling bloody murder about it — and rightly so. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would be hosting solemn press conferences in which he would announce that this is “not who we are as Canadians” and express his “zero tolerance for hate” while wearing what he imagines to be his most prime ministerial face. The rise in hate crimes against Christians? Zero mentions.
Which isn’t surprising. Much of the agenda that Jivani is describing is being spearheaded by the prime minister and his ideological fellow-travelers — and that is precisely why Jivani’s call to action is necessary and timely.
