Juno News - May 12, 2022


Conservative MP slams security officials for ignoring church burnings in 2021


Episode Stats

Length

6 minutes

Words per Minute

167.12134

Word Count

1,021

Sentence Count

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 thank you mr chair my first question for uh miss soper are you aware that over 30 churches were
00:00:05.200 burned down in canada in 2021 yes i am and can you answer are you is public safety currently
00:00:12.960 investigating the burning of over 30 churches in canada last year
00:00:18.720 public safety does not have an investigative mandate uh to uh that might be better directed
00:00:24.400 towards our cmp but you said in your testimony that you were given a mandate by this government
00:00:30.640 in 2021 to bring imve perpetrators to justice and now you're saying you don't have a mandate to
00:00:36.000 investigate well we are not the police of jurisdiction uh for investigations into imve
00:00:45.040 uh so i might i might defer that question to my my colleagues in on the policing side okay so if
00:00:51.040 you're not doing an investigation are you doing anything about the 30 churches that were burned
00:00:55.040 down in 2021 again i can't i can't speak to what the nature of any investigation might be occurring in
00:01:05.520 relation to those uh horrible uh events but i i would i would defer the question to rcmp who may uh
00:01:13.360 may be police of jurisdiction in relation to some of those uh some of those thank you i'm gonna move
00:01:18.320 on to uh csis uh miss uh chair um i have a copy of your 2021 csis report and you know it lists off a
00:01:28.640 lot of ideologically motivated violent extremist examples but there's not one example of 30 churches
00:01:35.040 being to burn down in canada last year why has that not been included in your csis public report
00:01:42.480 thank you very much for the question however um i my organization is the integrated
00:01:47.840 threat assessment center i think your question is probably more for my colleague mrs anderson
00:01:53.600 okay but you're saying are you saying that it's not a threat that churches 30 churches were burned
00:01:58.560 down in canada last year this isn't under your purview this isn't a terrorist attack
00:02:04.400 so if you if you want me to explain just a little bit uh the mandate of my organization and how we come
00:02:09.680 up with threat assessment so itac is responsible to evaluate the threat and we do that according to a
00:02:16.080 very detailed methodology we look at the intent the opportunities and the capabilities of potential
00:02:22.320 threat actors and we do that don't believe that these 30 church burnings posed a threat
00:02:27.520 so if if i'm if i may sir we uh do our assessment based on collected intelligence by other organizations
00:02:34.880 and so i i when we we provide any intelligence about the 30 church burnings
00:02:42.080 so i really i really think that i am not the best person to answer that question
00:02:47.600 i just find it interesting because you do have extensive stuff in your public report about
00:02:51.680 ideologically motivated extremism religiously motivated extremism politically motivated extremism
00:02:58.000 and yet 30 churches being burned down in canada last year didn't merit a mention i also note on page 30
00:03:03.520 of report that says cesus continues to engage with community leaders members and advocacy groups
00:03:08.720 to offer support and solidarity and to reinforce the government of canada position that there is no
00:03:14.240 place in canada for racial prejudice discrimination and hate can you tell us if cesus has ever reached
00:03:19.520 out to support show support and solidarity with the 30 church communities that were burned down in canada in
00:03:24.720 2021 i would defer to my cc colleague go ahead thank you thank you for the question what i will say is that the
00:03:37.520 service is always extremely concerned with any violent form of extremist activity in this case that had already
00:03:44.880 gone into the criminal realm and so the rcmp may have further comments what we are always doing is trying to get out ahead
00:03:52.720 and see if we can determine where the threat is coming from in advance of those horrendous sorts
00:03:57.600 of activities absolutely the burning but your report sorry your report does talk about a lot of
00:04:02.960 things that happened in the past so clearly you're not just talking about the future you have talked
00:04:07.680 about terrorist attacks happening since 2014 ideologically motivated violent extremism yet in 2021 uh there's
00:04:15.680 not a single mention in your public report about 30 churches being burned down in this country
00:04:19.280 well what we are trying to do is make sure that we understand the underlying threat so that we can
00:04:26.160 try and prevent that sort of activity happening into the future and we definitely are always very
00:04:31.760 concerned about any serious serious acts of violence that can impact the national security of our country
00:04:39.440 so could you tell me yes or no has cesus reached out to show support and solidarity to the 30 church
00:04:45.920 communities that had their churches burned down last year yes or no i can't speak to certain
00:04:52.080 investigations that may be ongoing but what i can do is say that we are definitely concerned with
00:04:58.000 any acts of violence that impact the national security and could threaten can you know if you've
00:05:03.120 reached out to show support and solidarity i can't speak to what may be happening in the operational
00:05:08.880 space in an unclassified environment okay well it would have been nice to have a statement of at least
00:05:13.840 concern for these communities from cesus considering the fact that at 4 a.m in the morning in my town
00:05:20.800 of mournville over 50 people had to be evacuated from their homes because a church was burned down
00:05:26.720 and there was a massive threat that a senior's home apartments were going to be burned to the ground it
00:05:31.360 was only due to the heroism of 50 local volunteer firefighters that this blaze was brought under control
00:05:38.560 this could have been one of the most the highest potential mass casualty terrorist events in on
00:05:45.040 canadian soil in our modern history and yet it doesn't seem to have merited a single mention by
00:05:50.400 our security services so i want to put that on the record thank you mr chair thank you mr lloyd