OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) – One of Canada’s most pro-life and pro-family MPs called out the hypocrisy of a new Liberal “hate” speech bill for being silent regarding rising “Christian hate.”

Speaking to MPs in the House of Commons this week regarding Bill C-9, the Combating Hate Act, Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis said one of her biggest objections to the bill is its lack of mention of persecuted Christians in Canada.

“I find it quite perplexing that Christian hate was not even mentioned in the bill,” she noted to fellow MPs.

Lewis mentioned that in recent years Canada has seen “alarming hate-motivated attacks, including burning and vandalism of churches across Canada.”

“Just last week, a century-old Ukrainian Orthodox church in Edmonton was burned to the ground, Liberal Hate Speech,” Lewis noted.

“As we witness a record number of sacred spaces being destroyed, Christians have noticed the government’s silence. Congregations have been left in fear, and people of faith are feeling abandoned by their government’s lack of enforcement of existing laws.”

As reported by LifeSiteNews, Bill C-9 has been blasted by constitutional experts as allowing empowered police and the government to go after those it deems have violated a person’s “feelings” in a “hateful” way.

Bill C-9 was brought forth in the House of Commons on September 19 by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Justice Minister Sean Fraser.

The Liberals have boasted that the bill will make it a crime for people to block the entrance to, or intimidate people from attending, a church or other place of worship, a school, or a community center. The bill would also make it a crime to promote so-called hate symbols and would, in effect, ban the display of certain symbols such as the Nazi flag.

Hate-motivated attacks against Christians are on the rise in Canada. In 2021 and 2022, the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some Canadian residential schools. The reality is, after four years, there have been no mass graves discovered at residential schools.

However, as the claims went unfounded, since the spring of 2021, over 120 churches, most of them Catholic, many of them on indigenous lands that serve the local population, have been burned to the ground, vandalized, or defiled in Canada.

Lewis: ‘Shocking’ bill does not add new ‘protections’ for Christians

Speaking to MPs, Lewis noted how it is “shocking” that Bill C-9, which is supposed to be about “combating hate,” is “completely silent on the rise of Christian hate.”

“The government’s press release mentions anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and transphobia, yet it makes no mention of the rise of hate crimes toward Christians. This bill does not add new protections for worshippers.

Lewis said that the bill, as warned by constitutional experts, will “expand state powers “by removing the legal safeguards and watering down the definition of hate speech. It paves the path towards politicizing restrictions on speech.”

“It even risks criminalizing dissent to what some would call thought crimes. We must exercise caution. Once such powers are granted to the government, they can be weaponized by any government against its critics,” she noted.

Lewis has warned before that Bill C-9 will open the door for authorities to possibly prosecute Canadians’ speech deemed “hateful.”

According to John Carpay of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, Section 319(6) of Canada’s Criminal Code mandates consent of the nation’s attorney general before a person can be charged with a hate crime. Lewis and Carpay warned that Bill C-9 will eliminate this protection.

“The existing criminal code already covers the most serious offenses. Section 318 makes it a crime to advocate or promote genocide. Section 319 criminalizes public incitement of hatred and willful promotion of hate and speech that would lead to a breach of peace,” she said.

“These provisions already strike a careful balance between protecting Canadians from true hate and safeguarding freedom of expression. Bill C-9 attempts to redefine hatred so vaguely that it risks capturing legitimate debate.”

Carpay also lamented how the bill mentions “rising antisemitism” but says nothing about the arson attacks on Catholic and Christian churches plaguing Canada.

“Anti-Catholic hate is obviously not on the minister’s radar. If it were, he would have mentioned it when introducing the Combating Hate Act,” Carpay wrote.

Since taking power in 2015, the Liberal government has brought forth many new bills that, in effect, censor internet content as well as go after people’s ability to speak their minds.

LifeSiteNews recently reported on another new Canadian bill introduced by the Liberal government, Bill C-8, noting how it has raised privacy concerns as it appears that it would give officials the power to ban anyone deemed a dissident from accessing the internet.