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At the end of last month, the mayor of Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, had a bright idea. Kenny Bell had been appalled by the discoveries – or rediscovered – of hundreds of anonymous graves in former residential schools in Western Canada. He wondered what he could do, as the non-indigenous mayor of an indigenous community, to “help where I can and support indigenous peoples”. Oddly enough, he didn’t decide, as others seem to have, that arson was the obvious answer to his question.

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Instead, he announced his intention to present a motion to city council to remove the property tax exemption enjoyed by churches in Iqaluit, as is the case almost everywhere else in Canada. Bell was quoted by Nunatsqiaq News as saying that “we do not retaliate against [churches]; they literally killed thousands of children.

One cannot help but think that this semicolon may hide a desire, in fact, to retaliate against the churches. But the loss of the property tax exemption would hit some churches that have never been powerful enough to coordinate with the Canadian state in a program of racial assimilation – the city has Baptist and Pentecostal missions, as well as a mosque – and Mayor Bell says he has no intention of discriminating among tax-exempt buildings. The next municipal council will take place on July 13.

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The mayor’s idea may have been a little impulsive

Now, the mayor’s idea may have been a bit impulsive. CBC News had no problem find Iqaluit church volunteers who abhor the idea that churches facing new tax bills lose the ability to provide counseling and addiction services. (Maybe the city could pay more if there weren’t so many tax-exempt buildings around?) Bell rejected the CBC but mentioned that “many Inuit are happy” with the idea behind his motion; Another interviewee, however, said she spoke to older people and their reaction was more or less “Welp, white people are starting over”. Bell admitted in a previous interview that he had not polled his fellow councilors to get an idea of ​​how the vote might go.

This does not sound, on a glimpse of the media coverage, like the ideal way to proceed with what claims to be a gesture of reconciliation. But, again, this is not arson. Since Mayor Bell launched his test balloon, the country has seen an apparent pogrom against Catholic churches, with two Anglicans in British Columbia join in the fun on Canada Day. Most Indigenous spokespersons have spoken out against the upsurge in church fires, but it’s not hard to find white progressives celebrating them on social media. If you try to post something like, “Hey, arson is bad, guys,” you’ll probably kill some of it in seconds.

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So why are we having a thoughtful progressive-led conversation about whether church arson is good and not a thoughtful progressive-led conversation about statutory tax exemptions for churches? Is the answer that destructive measures against the church’s crushing dead hand should be actively preferred over mainstream politics? Would removing the exemptions be an exercise in democracy and thus provide no fuel to the imagination of cosplay pyromaniac revolutionaries? Can changing provincial and municipal laws require a lot of advocacy work, work that can lead to little or nothing, and can it be much easier to commit a heinous or even murderous crime in the middle of the night?

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The radical left has generally not thought of the future that far, and the non-radical left in this country is quite ecclesiastical. It is only atheists per se, regardless of their political stripe, who have already made a lot of noise about the various tax exemptions that churches enjoy because of our deep legal tradition. From the point of view of the militant atheist, it is evident that the old common law status of churches as beneficial in themselves, regardless of their metaphysical good faith, is exactly the same attitude that made possible the creation of churches approved and managed by the church. the residential schools themselves. (These schools sometimes put students to work on lucrative farming operations – a business aspect that has been politely overlooked for the same reasons.)

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Removing the church property tax exemption would in effect create revenue that could be spent explicitly on government programs with a flavor of reconciliation. The idea probably wouldn’t be popular enough to be successful anywhere, any more than it likely will be in Iqaluit. But it should be more popular than a wave of arson attacks that the combined efforts of our political class (and the police) have failed to stop, and left-wing reconciliation enthusiasts might wonder why they don’t support. not Mayor Bell’s idea.

Do they still believe that religion is a force for social good in itself? If this is to remain a functioning principle of our civilization, despite all these unmarked cemeteries, the time to say it would be at a time when sincere Catholic and Anglican believers are terrifyingly awaiting whether their church will be the next to be added to the great fire of joy. As an atheist, I believe churches should be accountable to the law, not excluded from it and subject to random destruction.

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