Religious persecution alive in Canada

Canada is no longer a safe haven for religious freedom

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Religious freedom in Canada is under attack—not with bullets or bombs, but with laws, arson and growing public hostility. While persecution abroad makes headlines, Canadians are sleepwalking into their own crisis.

A new report from Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), launched Oct. 21 in Rome, makes it clear: religious oppression is rising worldwide, and the signs in Canada are too serious to ignore. While we’re not seeing the same violence that plagues Christians in Nigeria or Syria, the erosion of liberty here is real—and accelerating.

The ACN report, now in its 25th year, is among the most comprehensive global surveys of religious freedom. It tracks not just violence but the steady pressure placed on people of faith in democracies like ours. In Canada, the signs are subtle but unmistakable: faith is being pushed out of public life.

Nowhere is that pressure more visible than in Quebec. The provincial government is openly proposing to ban public prayer. Premier François Legault has suggested using the notwithstanding clause (a legal tool that allows governments to override parts of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms) to push the ban into law. “Seeing people praying in the streets, in public parks, is not something we want in Quebec,” he said. That’s not neutrality. That’s the state restricting public religious expression.

At the same time, attacks on Christian churches have escalated. Between 2021 and 2024, at least 44 were burned to the ground, 24 confirmed as arson. These acts followed 2021 reports of potential unmarked graves near former Indigenous residential schools—findings that sparked national outrage but remain largely unverified due to a lack of physical evidence at most sites. Church buildings are more than structures; they are centres of life, memory and identity. As ACN Canada director Marie-Claude Lalonde put it, “These are incalculable losses.”

And churches aren’t the only targets. Religiously motivated hate crimes are surging. In 2023, police recorded a 32 per cent increase. According to Statistics Canada, Jewish Canadians were the most targeted group, accounting for 900 of the 1,284 reported religion-related incidents—about 70 per cent. Muslims were the second most targeted group, with 211 incidents, or about 16 per cent. Just 49 incidents, or roughly 3.8 per cent, involved Catholics, the main category under which Christian-targeted incidents are recorded.

These rising incidents point to something deeper than isolated acts: they reflect a growing intolerance in public life. This is where the most dangerous shift is happening: not in fires or threats, but in the mindset that religion is a tolerated nuisance rather than a guaranteed freedom. The principle of laïcité—a strict form of secularism imported from France that seeks to ban religious symbols and practices in public life—is gaining traction in Quebec. It’s being used not to protect pluralism, but to suppress it. That’s a betrayal of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which enshrines freedom of religion in Article 18, a right Canada once proudly defended abroad.

Canada’s approach to medical assistance in dying (MAiD) has also raised concern among faith communities. Since 2016, more than 60,000 people have ended their lives through state-sanctioned euthanasia under the MAiD program, which has steadily expanded to include non-terminal and mental health cases. In 2023, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a rare unanimous statement opposing euthanasia and reaffirming their refusal to allow MAiD in Catholic health institutions. That they had to say this at all speaks volumes. The expansion of state power into moral and spiritual domains should concern all Canadians who value freedom of conscience.

This is not alarmism. It’s a wake-up call. Religious freedom doesn’t vanish overnight. It erodes through legislative cuts, bureaucratic indifference and cultural sneers.

As Pope Francis told ACN leaders during a recent private audience, “This report does more than provide information; it bears witness, gives voice to the voiceless and reveals the hidden suffering of many.” That voice needs to be heard—in Canada, not just abroad.

Canadians must stop pretending our constitutional freedoms are self-sustaining. They’re not. If the government is prepared to suppress public prayer, if churches can be burned without widespread outrage, and if religion is treated as suspect in public discourse, then freedom of religion in Canada is already under siege.

The time to defend it is now—before it disappears under the polite veneer of secularism.

Susan Korah is Ottawa correspondent for The Catholic Register,  a Troy Media Editorial Content Provider Partner.