Former British Columbia MLA Gwen O’Mahony says her vehicle was deliberately set on fire after she participated in a media interview in which she described Canadian church burnings as an “anti-Christian hate crime.”
O’Mahony’s vehicle was set on fire earlier this week after she spoke out against the growing number of church burnings that have occurred since 2021, when a B.C. First Nation said it may have discovered the graves of hundreds of children at a former residential school site.
The former NDP MLA from 2012 to 2013 said the blaze occurred Feb. 11 at approximately 10 p.m., just hours after her interview was promoted online. O’Mahony told The Epoch Times she was at her home when she received a call from the RCMP to inform her officers had just put out a fire in her vehicle.
“I was shocked, because my apartment is at the front of the building, and I don’t even remember hearing the sirens,” said O’Mahony, who ran as a candidate for the B.C. Conservatives in the 2024 election. She lost to the NDP candidate.
O’Mahony said wood was placed underneath her vehicle to ignite the blaze. The fire spread into her backseat and the officers had to smash one of her windows to get inside the car to extinguish it, she said.
A neighbour saw the fire and called police, O’Mahony said.
“It just seemed kind of weird, quite a coincidence, that one of my last interviews was about church arson across Canada,” she said in the phone interview. “I had called it an anti-Christian hate crime ... and then suddenly my car is on fire.”
She said it could have been a very dangerous situation.
“Had that fire made its way into my gas tank, my car would have exploded on a street, on a residential street, right next to a sidewalk where people walk their dogs or head to the grocery store.”
The Epoch Times contacted the RCMP but did not hear back by publication time.
Conservative Party Leader John Rustad said he was “deeply angered” by the incident.
“Thank you for the work you’ve done to highlight hate crimes that occurred against Christians when Churches were burnt down all across BC & Canada,” Rustad
said on social media on Feb. 12.
Canada has seen an increase in church burnings that started after Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation of Kamloops announced in 2021 that ground-penetrating radar had identified possible unmarked graves of children at a former residential school site.
The schools were run as a partnership between churches of various Christian denominations and the government.
Additional claims of unmarked graves at former residential school sites have been made by other groups in different locations across the country. However, no remains of children have been found.
Conservative MP Marc Dalton inquired in 2024 about the numbers of church burnings over the past several years. The
response showed that between 2010 and 2022, there were 592 arsons committed at places of worship. There were 58 in 2020, 90 in 2021, and 74 in 2022.
Dalton also introduced an anti-arson bill in June 2024. The bill would see the criminal code altered for those accused of arson in forests and on places of worship.
“These places of worship are not just buildings; they are sacred spaces where people go to find faith, family, and freedom,” he
said at the time. “Canadians should never find their place of peace destroyed by hateful criminals, sowing fear into their communities.”
It’s an issue that even current U.S. Vice President JD Vance has spoken out about.
“Canada has seen a number of church burnings in recent years thanks to anti-Christian bigotry,” Vance said in a December
post on X.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a comment in July 2021 about the church burnings in response to a reporter’s question. At the time, he said vandalism and arson were “unacceptable and wrong.”
However, Trudeau also said that he understood the anger against institutions like the Catholic Church.
“It is real and it is fully understandable,” he said.
Trudeau went on to say that burning down churches deprived people of a place to go to grieve, mourn, and heal.
Noé Chartier and The Canadian Press contributed to this article.
