A clip of a historic church ablaze in Atlantic Canada spread on social media in posts claiming a migrant started the fire to target Canadian Christians. But the allegations -- some of which said the suspect was Palestinian while others pinned blame on an Israeli -- are unfounded; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) charged a 68-year-old local man with arson following the fire in New Brunswick.
"A 68 year old Palestinian Muslim migrant has just been arrested for burning down another church in Canada," claims an August 27, 2026 X post from Sean Feucht, an American Christian nationalist musician who had several Canadian concerts cancelled over safety concerns.
In the attached video, a church is seen in flames for several seconds before the spire collapses on the rest of the building.
Similar claims spread across Facebook, Instagram, Threads and X that a Palestinian migrant started a church fire in Saint-Simon, New Brunswick.
At the same time, other posts across networks claimed the arson was committed by an Israeli man in an "anti Catholic terror attack."
"A 68-year-old Israeli man has been charged with arson after the historic Saint-Simon Catholic Church in New Brunswick, Canada, was completely destroyed by fire," claims the caption of an August 28 Instagram reel.
AFP has repeatedly fact-checked similar claims about "Islamists" and migrants starting church fires in the United Kingdom and Canada.
Local media in Canada reported that the century-old church in Saint-Simon burned down on August 24 and the RCMP swiftly charged a suspect with arson for the conflagration.
But national police reports state that the accused is a local man, not a Palestinian or Israeli newcomer to Canada.
"Early in the investigation, police identified a person of interest, and a 68-year-old man from Saint-Simon was arrested," the August 25 RCMP press release says (archived here). "The same day, 68-year-old Gilles Mallet appeared in Bathurst Provincial Court and was charged with arson."
He remains in custody, following an August 28 bail hearing.
Several Canadian churches have suffered serious damage from fires since 2021 (archived here and here).
Multiple fires were reported following the 2021 revelation that ground-penetrating radar detected possible human remains at the former Kamloops Residential School in British Columbia, one of several Catholic boarding schools set up a century ago in Canada to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children (archived here and here).
A CBC News investigation found 33 churches had burned down between May 2021 and December 2023, with only two ruled accidental. Fourteen of those fires took place on reserves and in First Nations.
Data from Statistics Canada shows a peak of 155 police-reported hate crimes targeting Catholics in 2021, but it does not indicate that Christians have been the main target of such offenses in recent yeas.
In 2025, the government agency reported that about 3 percent of religiously motivated, police-reported hate crimes in Canada targeted Catholics, while 71 percent were directed at Jewish communities and 18 percent at Muslims (archived here).
Read more of AFP's reporting on misinformation in Canada here.