“I want the House to pass my bill to protect places of worship from vandalism. Attacks on churches, mosques, temples, and synagogues have risen sharply over the last ten years. Right now, police must prove an attacker was motivated by hate to get a conviction under the law. My bill removes that requirement, so it is easier to convict vandals. It also forces vandals to pay at least $1,000 to the owner to fix the damage, and it adds mandatory jail time for repeat offenders.”

“moved that Bill C-255, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (mischief—religious property), be read the second time and referred to a committee. She said: Mr. Speaker, having served in this place over numerous Parliaments, I know what an honour it is to have the opportunity not only to introduce a private member’s bill but to have it debated at second reading. I am very pleased to be able to rise today and speak to Bill C-255, the protecting Canada’s places of worship act. Over the past three years, the Holy Rosary Church in Edmonton, Alberta, was the target of three acts of vandalism. On December 23, 2023, a nativity scene in front of the church was set on fire. On September 18, 2024, two individuals spray-painted a church security camera before being startled and running away. On September 20, 2024, a man was filmed spray-painting the church’s statue of Pope John Paul II. Last year, the Ar-Rehman Islamic Centre in Mississauga, Ontario, was vandalized when an individual with a skateboard smashed the front glass doors of the building. In January 2023, the Shri Gauri Shankar Mandir temple in Brampton, Ontario, was defaced when someone spray-painted anti-Hindu messaging on its exterior walls. In April 2025, the Khalsa Diwan Society gurdwara in Vancouver, B.C., was targeted by vandals who spray-painted exterior walls and parking lot perimeters with graffiti. On August 2, 2025, a man wrote anti-Semitic messages on the Congregation Emanu-El synagogue in Victoria, B.C. Sadly, I could go on and on with more examples. In 2015, Statistics Canada reported that there were 66 cases of hate-motivated mischief relating to property used by identifiable groups. In 2025, there were 263. The current peak was in 2024, when there were 274 incidents. This represents a more than 300% increase over the past 10 years. In light of this trend, I introduced Bill C-255, which would amend the Criminal Code as it relates to mischief to religious property. As I began to develop this bill, I discussed with my caucus colleagues and subsequently every stakeholder I met with how my sole purpose in introducing this bill was to provide additional tools to protect faith communities across Canada. I was, and remain, convinced that this is not a partisan issue, and that this bill and the broader issue of protecting places of worship in Canada are things that members of Parliament on both sides of this place can and should support. The freedom of religion and belief is an important fundamental freedom. It is one that the authors of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms understood. All across our nation, places of worship, including synagogues, temples, gurdwaras, mosques, churches and many more, serve as vital centres in our communities. They are gathering places that provide hope and solace, a sense of meaning and a place of belonging for millions of Canadians. Many of us regularly attend a place of worship and gather with our fellow adherents for fellowship, to worship and to practise our faith. Both as a Canadian and as a Christian, it distresses me to see a gurdwara, temple, mosque or synagogue vandalized just as much as it does when a church is vandalized. As a person whose faith is an integral part of who I am, I understand the fear and the feeling of vulnerability that would grip someone whose place of worship has been defaced. Finally, as a parliamentarian, I believe I owe it to Canadians, Canadian families and our communities to defend the protection of our freedom to worship in our own way. By amending the Criminal Code to enhance the protection of places of worship, we send a clear message to faith communities and, indeed, all Canadians that we value this freedom and that vandalizing places of worship is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Let me outline how the protecting Canada’s places of worship act proposes to change the Criminal Code of Canada. First, and I think most consequentially, the bill proposes to eliminate the need for police and prosecutors to prove that a crime of mischief committed against a place of worship was motivated by hate. Section 430 of the Criminal Code addresses crimes of mischief. While subsection 430(4.1) addresses crimes of mischief relating to religious property, educational institutions and other properties, it applies only to the commission of mischief if it is motivated by bias, prejudice or hate. Bill C-255 would not eliminate any of these sections; rather, it would add new subsection 430(4.12) to address mischief relating to places of worship that does not require proof that the vandalism was hate motivated. It is structured this way for two reasons. First, there is no reason or need to remove the crime of hate-motivated mischief directed against religious property. Second, mostly by way of background, I was working with the legislative drafters throughout the summer and early fall of 2025 to develop a bill to address this issue. When Bill C-9 was first introduced in this place on September 19, 2025, it proposed repealing subsections 430(4.1) and (4.101) of the Criminal Code, which I was planning to amend. Therefore, I rescued the definition of a place of worship from subsection 430(4.101) as the drafters and I had every reason to believe it was being eliminated through the government’s bill. As we are all aware, over time, Bill C-9 was amended, and subsections 430(4.1) and (4.101) remained in place. I am glad they did, as I believe they provide much-needed protection to property used by identifiable groups. While there are similarities between what is proposed in this bill and what remains in the Criminal Code after Bill C-9 was eventually adopted, the differences are consequential and clear. Removing the requirement that police and prosecutors prove that a crime of mischief was hate motivated would make it easier for police and prosecutors to obtain convictions. Bias, prejudice or hate can be difficult to prove. A video camera can capture the evidence to prove who did it, but what it cannot capture is motivation. In my opinion, it should not matter what motivated the act. The impact on the victim is still the same. In fact, I would argue that the victims of these crimes would find it more reassuring that someone has been charged and convicted for the offence than they would if they were told the perpetrator was not charged because the police could not prove the suspect’s motivation. The second change this bill proposes to make to the Criminal Code is to implement new penalties for mischief directed at places of worship. Similar to the provision in the Criminal Code that outlines punishments for mischief directed at war memorials, this bill proposes mandatory compensation to the victim for the first offence and mandatory minimal jail time, as well as compensation to the victim, for subsequent offences. I want to state up front that I am aware that the concept of compensation to the property owner, which I am proposing to add, is novel. The Criminal Code includes provisions which mandate fines. However, fines are paid to the Crown, and in cases of mischief committed against places of worship, the Crown is not the victim. The Criminal Code also extends discretion to judges to impose restitution in their sentencing decisions. So as not to conflate a judge’s discretionary restitution with a mandatory requirement, with the assistance of our amazing legislative drafters, I termed the monetary penalty proposed in the bill as compensation to “the property owner”. This is not a duplication but an intentional differentiation. Practically, the process of compensating the property owner would function the same as or similar to the process followed by the courts when a judge imposes a sentence of restitution. I would now like to address how I arrived at the amount of $1,000 for mandatory compensation. First, this amount aligns with the $1,000 fine imposed in subsection 430(4.11) of the Criminal Code, dealing with mischief directed at war memorials. Second, the cost to the victim to professionally remove spray paint or replace broken windows or a door is very likely to be at least $1,000, if not more. It is my belief that a minimum of $1,000 is reasonable and would not be unduly punitive to the perpetrator of the crime. Lastly, the wording in the bill states that compensation is to be “not less than $1,000”, which is again consistent with subsection 430(4.11). This means that a judge would have the discretion to impose a greater amount of compensation to the property owner should it be reasonable, given all of the extenuating circumstances. To wrap up this portion of my remarks addressing the proposed changes within Bill C-255, I would like to highlight the recent coming into force of Bill C-16. Setting aside my personal views and lack of support for that bill, its passage, I believe, has eliminated the need to defend the mandatory minimums as prescribed in Bill C-255. In closing, I hope my fellow parliamentarians from all parties will support Bill C-255. Reports of places of worship being vandalized have become all too frequent. They are so frequent that they have become commonplace. It is critical that we address this issue. Regardless of whether or not we are part of a faith-based community, I believe we should not ignore the increase in cases of mischief directed at places of worship. As parliamentarians, the ability to amend legislation is one of our primary tools to improve the safety, security and, ultimately, lives of Canadians. By passing this bill, we would be signalling to criminals that their actions have real consequences. We would be signalling to victims that we recognize that acts of mischief are deeply hurtful, fear-inducing and costly. We would also be signalling to Canadians that we continue to value our fundamental freedom of religion or belief. Finally, we would be providing law enforcement with a new tool that would make their job of protecting society easier. On that important note, I am pleased to advise my colleagues in this place that the Canadian Police Association, which represents 60,000 frontline civilian and sworn police personnel across Canada, stated in a recent letter that it supports the objectives of Bill C-255. It said Bill C-255 reflects an important principle. Offences involving religious property should be treated seriously. Those responsible should be held meaningfully accountable, and the people and organizations left to repair the damage should not be forgotten. The association particularly welcomes the bill’s emphasis on compensation for the property owners, as well as stronger consequences for repeat offenders. I have met with organizations across the spectrum of faiths in Canada and from different regions, and to date, everyone I have met with has supported this bill. Between now and the second hour of debate, I encourage all members to meet with faith communities in their riding to talk about the measures proposed in this bill. As I mentioned earlier, I believe this issue is not a partisan one. I believe it is a small but important change to the Criminal Code that could make a big difference. I look forward to the debate and to any suggestions about how this bill might be improved upon. I understand that sometimes compromise is necessary to make progress. I thank members for their time and attention, and I look forward to answering any questions my colleagues might have.”

“I want the House to pass my bill. It makes changes to the law that religious groups support, and other bills did not include these changes.”

“Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned in my speech, my private member’s bill was already being drafted when Bill C-9 was first introduced. Without repeating everything I said in my remarks or going through a chronology of the changes that occurred to Bill C-9, I would respectfully submit to the member that Bill C-255 proposes a change to the Criminal Code that was not contemplated in Bill C-9 and does not currently exist. My objective is simply to put forward that the changes proposed in Bill C-255 are important amendments to the Criminal Code that would provide clarity and are supported by faith communities across the country, and I believe this bill should be adopted.”

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“I want the House to pass my bill. It copies the minimum fines we already have for damaging war memorials. It also makes it easier to punish people who damage religious property, because police will not have to prove the crime was motivated by hate.”

“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for the opportunity to expand on the remarks related to mandatory minimum punishment prescribed in Bill C-255. First of all, my bill simply mirrors the mandatory minimum fines that already exist in the Criminal Code in regard to war memorials. I mentioned I was glad that the provisions in the Criminal Code that address hate-motivated crimes still exist, but the changes I am proposing in this bill do not require law enforcement and the courts to prove that hate was a motivating factor when the perpetrator committed the crime.”

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“People have burned over 100 churches in Canada in the last 10 years. Christians are facing more attacks, so everyone should support this bill. I want to know if the Liberals will vote for it.”

“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for such an awesome bill. As we all see, the rise of persecution against the Christian church across Canada has been profound. We have seen more than 100 churches burned in the last 10 years in Canada alone. It is a modern-day form of religious persecution, and it is very troubling. I want to ask the member a question that she alluded to earlier. We are seeing responses from the Liberals across the way. This seems like an obvious bill that everyone can support in this place. Are the Liberals going to support her bill?”

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“I want members to keep an open mind and support this bill. It makes it easier to charge people for damaging religious property by not requiring proof of hate. It also forces offenders to pay victims back for the damage they cause.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is important to note that today is a day of debate, and we will be hearing from a number of our colleagues, both on this side of the House and on the other side of the House. I hope that throughout the debate, they will note the merits of this bill, and that even if they have already made up their minds to oppose it, they will be open-minded to what is shared here today. I want to remind them that this bill seeks to accomplish two things. First, it would broaden the scope of mischief by removing the requirement for the mischief offence to be hate-motivated. That is a huge difference. Law enforcement resources are already stretched. Second, this bill would make monetary compensation to the victim by the perpetrator a mandatory part of any sentence. Those provisions already exist in the Criminal Code in regard to war memorials. I think the members in—”

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“I want the House to send this bill to committee so we can improve it. It protects places of worship from vandalism. Right now, prosecutors must prove that an attacker acted out of hate. Hate is hard to prove, so many attacks are treated as minor crimes. This bill gives special protection to the buildings themselves, no matter why someone damaged them. Churches, mosques, and synagogues host food banks, support groups, and community events. Damaging them hurts everyone.”

“Mr. Speaker, many of us know the quiet satisfaction of spending a weekend puttering around fixing things: repairing a broken window sash, resetting a shifting stone in the garden, repainting a door or securing fresh glass. However, when the paint covers graffiti on a mosque or gurdwara, when the stones being reset are headstones knocked over in a churchyard or when the door being repaired is the one set fire to at a synagogue and the glass has bullet holes in it, there is nothing quiet and nothing satisfying about it. Churches, mosques, synagogues, gurdwaras, mandirs, kingdom halls, shrines, temples and meeting houses, for people of faith, are places to pray, but they are also where our communities go for weddings, funerals, Scouts, craft sales, concerts, recovery groups, community meetings, food banks, pancake breakfasts and commemorations of all kinds. When these places are damaged for any reason, our community lives are interrupted and many people feel a great sense of anxiety and unease. Right now, the Criminal Code has a specific offence for mischief against religious property, but only when the Crown can prove that the mischief was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate. If the police know that somebody smashed the windows of a synagogue or deliberately damaged or disrupted the use of a church but they cannot prove why that person did it, the case generally falls back into the category of ordinary mischief and often escapes prosecution entirely, which is the answer to my hon. colleague’s question about why appeals are not the answer and discretion for judges is not sufficient for this kind of incident. This is the gap. Motive can be very difficult to prove. A person can smash every window in a mosque and say nothing. They can damage a church during a break-in or make a synagogue unusable without leaving a manifesto or shouting a slur. However, it is not ordinary mischief when that place of worship is used for the community writ large. It is extraordinary mischief, and in proposing this bill, my colleague is seeking to close that gap for communities such as mine where there is simply a shortage of places where large crowds can gather. Bill C-255 says that the place itself deserves special protection. If a person deliberately commits mischief against a place of worship, the Crown would not also have to prove that what was going on inside that person’s head was hatred towards the specific group that runs the place, before the special penalty regime proposed by the bill would apply, because the harm to these places is not purely the dollar value of the damage. If someone breaks a $1,500 window in an ordinary commercial building, “ordinary mischief” may describe the outcome perfectly well. However, if somebody breaks the same window in a place of worship on a Saturday night, the congregation cannot hold services Sunday morning, a bake sale cannot happen that afternoon and the AA group cannot meet in the evening. The consequences of damage to these buildings extend well beyond that pane of glass. Bill C-255 would fill the space between ordinary vandalism and a provable hate crime by saying that deliberately attacking a certain kind of building deserves special treatment in the Criminal Code even when prosecutors cannot prove the offender’s motive. Now, listening to my colleagues, despite support from the Canadian Police Association for the objectives of the bill, the government’s answer to all this appears to be that Bill C-255 is redundant. I do not think that is an adequate answer. The various offences passed by the Carney Liberals this session deal inadequately with intimidation and obstruction. Blocking a door is not breaking a window, and intimidating worshippers is not burning down a hall. Bill C-9 created a general hate crime offence, but that offence still requires proof of hate motivation. None of these provisions does what Bill C-255 would do: create a specific property mischief offence for buildings used widely in our communities for so much more than religious services, which would not depend on proving motive. As for the comments by my colleagues about mandatory minimum penalties, the government claims to have removed that issue as an obstacle through its constitutional safety valve in Bill C-16. Since 2014, the Criminal Code has treated mischief against a war memorial, cenotaph or cemetery as its own offence, with penalties that are very similar, identical in fact, to those being proposed by my colleagues. Nobody has to prove that the vandal hated veterans, or the people buried there, if they desecrate a cenotaph. Parliament decided that the character of the property itself justified special treatment. Bill C-255 takes essentially the same approach to buildings used as places of worship. The Liberals’ current approach to stopping damage to these buildings is not working. Churches continue to burn, synagogues continue to be vandalized, and mosques and gurdwaras continue to be defaced, all at an alarming rate. According to Statistics Canada’s March 30 release, police reported that hate crimes targeting religion rose 154% between 2020 and 2023, from 530 incidents to a jaw-dropping 1,345 incidents, and remained essentially unchanged through 2024. Mischief accounted for 59% of them, but those are police-reported hate crime statistics. Cases that are not identified by police as hate-motivated are not captured by those numbers, so the very cases that Bill C-255 is trying to reach, where the damage is obvious but there is no evidence establishing a hate motive, are difficult to see in the statistics. In their speeches today, my colleagues have raised some technical issues with Bill C-255 that deserve to be addressed. Whether compensation floors should apply where the damage is minor is a fair question for committee. So are questions about mandatory penalties and how they would operate across the full range of conduct caught by the offence. However, I would remind the government members that they have argued that Bill C-16’s safety valve addresses this problem. They cannot have it both ways. The member for Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek brought this bill forward because she wants to protect these places for religious and secular Canadians alike. In communities like mine, where places to gather are in short supply, this is a worthy objective. If the government members are truly interested in the collaboration they so often tell the House is necessary at this time, there is an obvious opportunity here for them to work with her to make this bill satisfactory to all parties. I was at a wonderful little community craft market just this weekend in the hall of St. Andrew’s church, run by Volunteer Nanaimo. This craft market is totally secular and provides a terrific benefit to our community. There is a tea vendor and soaps, crafts, knitted baby clothes and tea towels, Halloween and Christmas decorations, kids’ crafts and one business with two budding entrepreneurs selling their 3D-printed wares: a little boy, who is six, overseen by his sister, who is seven. There is even homemade nail polish. Every year, I get my husband a new winter hat from this particular market, and this weekend was no exception. I got him a soft forest green knitted cap that will keep him warm this winter. We should remember who we are protecting when we protect these buildings. Certainly, we are protecting people of faith, their prayers, weddings and funerals, but we are also protecting AA meetings on Tuesday nights and food banks on Wednesday mornings. A mosque may run a youth program or collect food for families who have never set foot in its prayer hall. Gurdwaras feed people regardless of faith. We do not have to believe in what happens at the altar, the bimah or the prayer mat to have an interest in protecting these buildings. When someone deliberately attacks these places, the law should look at what was done and where, not require prosecutors to prove motive before an offence with meaningful consequences applies. The current approach has not filled the gap. We see ample evidence of that on the news on a regular basis, but what we do not see often enough are convictions. That is the reason to examine Bill C-255 seriously, amend what needs amending and see whether Parliament can produce something stronger together for the benefit of all our communities.”