If one politician can order the prosecution of pastors and small businesses, can another politician order those prosecutions to stop? It's October 26th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show. You're fighting for freedom, and you're fighting against lockdowns.
00:01:33.820This is Arthur Pavlovsky. As you know, this was a political arrest.
00:01:38.420Police don't need a dozen police SWAT team-style public takedown on a peaceful
00:01:43.440Christian pastor on the side of a busy highway for a provincial offense. That's really a glorified
00:01:49.460traffic ticket. That was a political decision made by politicians. So were the decisions to put
00:01:55.560him in jail for 49 days. This was the Grace Life Church in Edmonton. 100 police seized it,
00:02:02.700nationalized it really, put latrines right on the front depths of the church. Try that on a mask,
00:02:08.540on a mosque, see how far you get. They set up a little police bunker there. They really
00:02:12.860put a big fence around it. It was like an outpost in Afghanistan or something
00:02:17.340because they opened their doors during the pandemic. Again, not a crime,
00:02:22.160a health infraction like finding mice in a restaurant. That was a political decision made
00:02:27.200by politicians. That was not real policing. Same thing with all of them. You think the jailing
00:02:33.200and arrest of Tamara Leach was not political? The reason I tell you that and show you those
00:02:39.000two Alberta examples of the churches is that the politician who made those atrocious decisions,
00:02:45.420Jason Kenney, is gone in large part because of those atrocious decisions. And you saw last weekend
00:02:51.260that the new premier, Danielle Smith, who ran on an explicitly anti-lockdown platform, you saw that
00:02:57.340she fulfilled the campaign promise already by apologizing to the unvaccinated for their unfair
00:03:02.320treatment. The community that faced the most restrictions on their freedoms in the last
00:03:08.020year were those who made a choice not to be vaccinated. I don't think I've ever experienced
00:03:13.180a situation in my lifetime where a person was fired from their job or not allowed to watch their kids
00:03:20.940play hockey or not allowed to go visit a loved one in long-term care or hospital. We're not allowed
00:03:26.540to go get on a plane to either go across the country to see family or even travel across the
00:03:32.240border. So they have been the most discriminated against group that I've ever witnessed in my
00:03:37.720lifetime. That's a pretty extreme level of discrimination that we have seen. I don't take
00:03:42.420away any of the discrimination that I've seen in those other groups that you mentioned. But this has
00:03:47.480been an extraordinary time in the last year in particular. And I want people to know that I find
00:03:54.440that unacceptable, that we are not going to create a segregated society on the basis of a medical choice.
00:04:00.800She had said similar things before. Here she was a few days earlier in Edmonton talking about adding
00:04:06.580the unvaccinated to the list of people you can't discriminate against under the Human Rights Code.
00:04:11.280So one of the things that we'll be coming through with in the fall as well is a change to the Human
00:04:16.340Rights Code to make it illegal to discriminate against anyone on the basis of their COVID vaccination
00:04:24.800status. Now I recognize that there are still some organizations and some businesses in Alberta that
00:04:32.500is doing that. And I just want to sort of give you fair warning that we are going to be making a serious
00:04:39.380pivot in that regard. And I would just ask if you would work with us to align your policies with the
00:04:45.260direction that we want to go in Alberta, because we want to send the message to the community and to the world
00:04:50.600community and to the investment markets, that this is a place that is open for business, that this is a
00:04:56.100place that believes in freedom. This is a place that believes in free enterprise. And this is a place
00:05:01.440where we are not going to be making arbitrary decisions that are going to disproportionately impact
00:05:07.220the small and medium businesses in this province.
00:05:09.380The most interesting part, I thought, was when our reporter, Selene Gallas, asked Premier Smith if she would stop
00:05:15.720prosecuting those old tickets and charges made under Jason Kenney's regime.
00:05:21.220Selene Gallas with Rebel News. During your campaign, you said that not only would you issue an apology to those
00:05:26.300prosecuted during COVID restrictions, but you would also grant them amnesty. When can we expect those apologies?
00:05:31.740I can apologize right now. I'm deeply sorry for anyone who was inappropriately subjected to discrimination as a result of their vaccine status.
00:05:44.580I'm deeply sorry for any government employee that was fired from their job because of their vaccine status. And I welcome them back if they want to come back.
00:05:53.660As for the amnesty, I have to get some legal advice on that. And so I've already asked my staff to request that advice so I can see how we would be able to proceed on that.
00:06:05.080My view has been that these were political decisions that were made, and so I think that they could be political decisions to offer a reversal.
00:06:12.820But I do want to get some legal advice on that first.
00:06:15.580Would that also have to do with the timeline for the proposed amnesty?
00:06:19.080Interesting. And really, why not? If they were political decisions to start them, as in not legitimate law enforcement priorities, not normal law enforcement tactics,
00:06:38.240why can't the next leader change things back to normal, especially since she campaigned on doing so?
00:06:44.120Well, I don't know if you saw. I mentioned it briefly. Just this week, New York Supreme Court ruled that firing unvaccinated employees was illegal.
00:06:52.360And not only do they get do they all get their jobs back, they get back paid, too.
00:06:57.740Interestingly, the court said the whole justification for vaccine mandates was a lie because vaccines do not stop the transmission of the virus.
00:07:05.520So the claim that you need to do it to protect others wasn't true. Isn't that amazing? New York.
00:07:10.620The pendulum is swinging back. Even Charlie Crist, a lockdown Democrat in Florida, he was campaigning, he was debating against Ron DeSantis,
00:07:18.660and the Democrat was claiming to be an anti-locker downer. Think of this.
00:07:23.740You're the only governor in the history of Florida that's ever shut down our schools. You're the only governor in the history of Florida that shut down our businesses.
00:07:31.900I never did that as governor. You're the one who's the shutdown guy. We need to have somebody who is at the helm that understands it's important to listen to science, to do what's right, utilize common sense.
00:07:44.180You don't just shut down at the outset. And then when it's, you know, politically convenient for you, you want to open back up to store political points.
00:07:52.220Look, everyone has moved on. I showed you that major poll in The New York Times the other day.
00:07:57.180And less than 0.5% of Americans think the coronavirus is a top priority. It's a tiny fringe minority.
00:08:05.660You can see how small that club is just by going out in the public these days.
00:08:09.160There are still some people wearing masks out there, but it's a tiny number.
00:08:14.040Everyone else is living normally again now that the forced masking laws are gone.
00:08:18.300It was madness. It was a madness that lasted two years, but it's over.
00:08:22.140So why is that madness persisting in the government, still prosecuting people like Arthur Pawlowski and hundreds, maybe thousands of others in Alberta alone?
00:08:33.000Well, luckily, I have the largest recipient of Trudeau's newspaper bailout money to explain to me.
00:08:39.300Post Media, which owns the Calgary Herald, they have the Trudeau answer to the question.
00:08:44.380And here's the Calgary Herald story about it.
00:08:46.700Smith's proposal on COVID-19 fine amnesty raises political interference concerns.
00:08:54.120Her language suggests that perhaps her intention is to actually interfere with those that are working their way through the system.
00:09:01.340Oh, really? So it was not political interference to start, but it is political interference to stop.
00:09:08.140Premier Danielle Smith's proposal to grant amnesty to those fined for violating COVID-19 public health orders could amount to political interference in the justice system, a University of Calgary health law expert says.
00:09:20.500Oh, so a health law expert says you can't stop a prosecution.
00:09:24.640Is there anyone more discredited as a class these past years than health law experts published in a Trudeau newspaper?
00:09:31.820On Saturday, Smith told reporters at her United Conservative Party's annual convention, in general meeting, that she's seeking legal advice on forgiveness for those being prosecuted in relation to laws introduced to help stem the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic.
00:09:50.040But a health law expert says she cannot keep that promise.
00:09:54.520Who is this health law expert, by the way?
00:09:56.640What Smith is describing doesn't quite align with the idea of a legal pardon, said Lorian Hardcastle, an associate professor at the U of C's Law and Medicine faculties.
00:10:08.020That's because Smith's comments specify outstanding fines, while pardons would apply to those who have already been convicted.
00:10:38.280But hey, don't let me stop you calling her a health law expert.
00:10:41.620Here's what Lorian Hardcastle said about the obvious way to stop prosecutions, which is just to stop the prosecutions.
00:10:47.560Her language suggests that perhaps her intention is to actually interfere with those that are working their way through the system, she said.
00:10:56.220We, for good reason, generally allow prosecutorial discretion to lay charges and prosecute individuals under validly enacted laws, and we generally frown upon, for good reason, politicians interfering with the process by politicizing it, which is what she seems to be doing.
00:11:09.820Again, we've got someone calling herself a health law expert, but she says they were validly enacted laws, but no, actually, they weren't laws.
00:11:19.980Laws are passed by the legislature after debates and hearings and votes.
00:11:24.980These were extreme public health orders that were issued by bureaucrats who have never been elected or subjected to scrutiny, and these were orders that they wrote.
00:11:45.680I'll give you an answer in a moment that actually a real health law expert would say, but first let me tell you who this health law expert talking to the Trudeau media is.
00:11:54.100I mean, is she a neutral scholarly professor?
00:13:24.880It really is unbelievable that the Trudeau newspaper didn't know who this health law expert was.
00:13:29.660But it's better to call her a health law expert for propaganda reasons than to call her a political activist who hates conservatives and gets a little crazy on Twitter, isn't it?
00:13:39.540But let me give you a little bit of law, which this health law expert didn't do.
00:13:43.480Here's a ruling from a little thing we call the Supreme Court of Canada, something that a health law expert could have found in a moment here.
00:13:50.740It's a leading case called Krieger v. Law Society of Alberta.
00:13:56.420It's a little bit of legalese, but I think you can get it.
00:14:00.020What is common to the various elements of prosecutorial discretion is that they involve the ultimate decisions as to whether a prosecution should be brought, continued, or ceased, and what the prosecution ought to be for.
00:14:12.500Put differently, prosecutorial discretion refers to decisions regarding the nature and extent of the prosecution and the attorney general's participation in it.
00:14:22.280Decisions that do not go to the nature and extent of the prosecution, i.e., the decisions that govern a crown prosecutor's tactics or conduct before the court, do not fall within the scope of prosecutorial discretion.
00:14:32.740Rather, such decisions are governed by the inherent jurisdiction of the court to control its own processes once the attorney general has elected to enter into that form.
00:14:54.480Just the other week, a prosecutor dropped two out of the three charges against Arthur Pawlowski literally the morning of the trial because it wasn't in the public interest to proceed.
00:18:06.500Other than the handful of cases involving firearms, every lockdown prosecution in Alberta has a civil liberties element to it.
00:18:14.200I don't know if you know, Alberta's motto is strong and free.
00:18:16.560It ought to be the freest province in Alberta where you can disagree with the government peacefully.
00:18:22.580Especially, like I say, since these lockdown orders were not even debated or passed by the legislature, they were all issued by these unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, Dina Hinshaw, the Theresa Tam of Alberta.
00:18:34.620The Court of Appeal in Alberta recently sided with Arthur Pawlowski unanimously because of the violations to his civil liberties.
00:18:40.980I am 100% sure that if they try and prosecute Arthur Pawlowski under the eco-terrorism law, that will fail and the law might actually be struck down.
00:18:48.920I don't know, maybe Alberta needs a black eye delivered to them by the Court of Appeal.
00:18:52.880But why don't, why would Danielle Smith and the new government carry Jason Kenney's water?
00:18:58.020Why would she perpetuate these out-of-control prosecutions?
00:19:00.980The SNC-Lavalin prosecution was purely about graft and fraud.
00:19:24.460And any denunciations of their lockdowns as authoritarian, well, they'll take it as an insult.
00:19:28.960It punctures their self-image of being righteous saints.
00:19:33.520It shows that maybe history won't regard them as the heroes they think they are.
00:19:36.400Oh, you're going to hear squawking if these lockdown prosecutions are stopped.
00:19:42.960In Ottawa, we're seeing right now, this whole trucker commission is showing us that when Trudeau invoked martial law, it was purely a political move.
00:20:06.400For many years, police across Canada, including in Alberta, simply declined to charge or prosecute any cases of simple marijuana possession.
00:20:15.500If you had a joint on you, they'd probably throw it on the ground.
00:21:31.720If Rachel Notley and the NDP want to remind people how much they love lockdowns and closing schools and masking children and shutting down mom-and-pop stores and keeping Amazon and Walmart open, shutting down restaurants and gyms, absolutely.
00:23:07.700Well, one of the most important things we've ever done in the nearly eight years Rebel News has been around was covering the trucker convoy.
00:23:14.100We covered it before it even arrived in Ottawa.
00:23:19.480We covered it in other cities, too, down at the Coutts border crossing between Alberta and Montana, at the Windsor Ambassador Bridge between Windsor and Detroit.
00:23:28.440But, of course, the beating heart of the center of that convoy was in our nation's capital of Ottawa, where it was camped out for weeks.
00:23:34.980We had reporters who worked almost a month straight without a day off, covering every inch of it.
00:23:41.060It's really what we were built for, telling the other side of the story, citizen journalism, independent from government funding.
00:23:49.720That's why we were able to tell you the other side of the story.
00:23:53.340Well, we covered that, and I think we helped tip the balance in the court of public opinion.
00:23:58.460Trudeau wanted that trucker convoy to be his January 6th insurrection moment, where he could demonize all his critics as terrorists and violent MAGA supporters, racists, misogynists, transphobes.
00:24:35.720There's a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say, we need to go green as fast as we need to start investing in solar.
00:24:53.740Yeah, the basic dictatorship lets him make decisions really quickly, like he did once he invoked martial law.
00:25:00.120Decision, for example, to deploy riot police.
00:25:03.140A decision to seize the bank accounts of 200 of his political enemies and jail his political opponents, peaceful as they were, like Tamara Leach.
00:25:10.920Well, the martial law provisions of the Emergencies Act.
00:25:40.580Carry with them a sort of, I don't know, a second look moment where a judge must inquire into the circumstances giving rise to the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
00:25:52.800And, by the way, it's not loosey-goosey.
00:25:58.540It has to either be a grave danger to Canadians or a grave danger to the sovereignty of the country itself, the kind of thing that maybe would happen if there was a, God forbid, a nuclear attack or a genuine terrorist uprising.
00:26:12.180And even that is not enough because the Emergencies Act said one of those extremely grave things must happen and, not or, and existing laws are not enough to deal with it.
00:26:25.860Well, for the last two weeks, we have seen that there was no danger to Canadians at all.
00:26:31.500There was no danger to Canadian sovereignty at all, let alone one that needed the Emergencies Act.
00:26:38.100And whatever issues there may have been could easily have been resolved with existing laws.
00:26:45.300And, in fact, that was the testimony of several police departments.
00:26:48.700What's been so fascinating is that the liberals have obviously been trying to shift the conversation.
00:26:54.100They're not even trying to justify this on a legal basis.
00:26:59.620They're now talking about microaggressions and feelings.
00:27:02.900Perhaps the largest disgrace so far was acting police chief Steve Bell saying, no, he didn't see any assaults, but he saw assaultive behavior.
00:28:39.680Tell our viewers about some of the more interesting things coming out of the commission, not just today, but yesterday and earlier in the week.
00:30:06.520And the Ottawa police service decided to ignore that intel multiple times, which is one of the reasons why this whole situation within the OPS was so chaotic.
00:30:15.660They decided to ignore important intel.
00:30:17.920And not only that, the chaos also came from a lack of communication between, actually, an unwillingness to communicate from the federal government, from the political side of things, with the Freedom Convoy organizers.
00:30:35.500We saw them willing to communicate, but the federal government was unwilling to communicate with them.
00:30:41.820Steve Bell said that they were irrational people.
00:30:45.200It might have been Jim Watson, actually.
00:30:46.380Jim Watson, I believe he said those people were irrational people, unwilling to communicate.
00:30:51.680And the evidence shows, otherwise, the evidence shows that Keith Wilson had discussions with the city of Ottawa multiple times to try to move the trucks, try to find ways to negotiate deals between the protesters and the city as well.
00:31:05.900And Tom Morazzo, who's been a consistent guest on our live stream, also said the same thing, that the Freedom Convoy organizers had a willingness to negotiate with the city and with the federal government.
00:31:18.200So it's a lot of lies, a lot of hearsay.
00:31:20.080It's a lot of chaos that we see coming from the political branch and the OPS as well.
00:31:25.760And another thing that was very surprising yesterday, and that's something that really picked my mind a lot, the evidence shows that the truckers had a willingness to engage with the police.
00:31:37.040But yesterday, we saw through an email exchange between people from the OPS and the city or the federal government, I believe it was the people within the OPS and the federal government.
00:31:50.100We saw them talking about how they saw the protesters and even their editorialized view of the protesters was that they were willing to engage.
00:32:02.520So not only does the evidence show that the protesters were rational, were willing to negotiate, were here peacefully, but the editorialized version, the version of events from the eyes of the OPP and the parliament, the politics, the government,
00:32:18.020were also that the protesters were here peacefully and were willing to negotiate.
00:32:23.280So yesterday was a very revealing day.
00:32:25.200And if you want me to talk about today, I can also do that later on as well.
00:32:28.460I just want to unpack what you're saying, negotiate.
00:32:30.760Some of our viewers might be saying, negotiate what?
00:32:32.980Well, it was practical matters like moving the trucks away from residential areas towards the parliament offices, clearing a lane, making sure that there were clear lanes, moving from this area to that area.
00:32:50.420Keith Wilson, the lawyer I mentioned earlier, he was a point person.
00:32:54.360And what's fascinating is every single police or political person who's been asked, I mean, listen, you've been covering it closer than me.
00:33:04.320They've been saying, well, were the truckers negotiating in good faith?
00:33:32.200So that's what they mean by negotiations.
00:33:35.180And the idea that you needed martial law when there wasn't a grave danger to the country or its sovereignty to begin with.
00:33:44.300And again, that's another thing we've heard time and again is that regular police tools were enough.
00:33:49.720And by the way, I don't know if you know this, William, but our current criminal code, going from memory, I think it might be section 129, I'll have to Google it, gives police the power to commandeer tow trucks anyways.
00:34:01.480But one of the things we've learned is that there were plenty of tow trucks willing to tow the trucks.
00:34:04.800I mentioned that because that's the only thing I've heard people say, well, we needed to put the whole country under martial law because we needed some tow trucks.
00:34:21.200William, why don't you throw to some video clips?
00:34:24.240Because one of the things I like about how Rebel News is covering the Trucker Commission is we're not just tweeting about it and having the evening digest about it.
00:34:35.460We're cutting actual raw clips showing testimony.
00:34:39.820You've been following this more closely than me the past few days.
00:34:42.540Why don't you introduce a couple of quick clips and throw to them and we'll show our people the clips.
00:34:46.380Yeah, and just before I do that, I just want to remind everyone, you know, there's so much to unpack for the commission.
00:34:51.180We cannot do that in a simple ELS show.
00:34:53.580So if you want to really make sure that you follow everything extremely closely, you can always watch our evening live streams where me and Sheila and an interesting guest and Alexa Lavoie, we also always discuss the events of the day.
00:35:05.920But if we want to see one clip that came out today, a very powerful clip, it was the cross-examination done by one of the Freedom Convoy lawyers, Bathsheba.
00:35:21.440Bathsheba Vandenberg, I think is her name.
00:35:23.440Yeah, exactly. Bathsheba Vandenberg, she cross-examined Superintendent Bernie from the OPS and she showed a clip that was taken by protesters in February where we see an officer beating down a protester with his rifle.
00:35:39.820And the only single thing the Superintendent Bernie had to say was that the video was unclear and he wasn't capable of actually, you know, making something out of it.
00:35:48.240What did you think the officer was doing? Charlene Snow? Did you think he was talking to a protester? No, he was beating him up with his rifle.
00:35:55.980We can take a look at the clip right now.
00:35:57.480All right, so do you agree that the OPS officer in this video in the back behind the ranks, the line, is using what is actually the muzzle and not the butt of what looks like a 40 millimeter chemical munition launched to beat a protester with?
00:36:25.120Not enough for me to see what exactly is going on.
00:36:29.640But you can see that there is a police officer in the back beating a protester with a rifle.
00:36:35.300There is not enough for me to see what is actually happening behind bodies.
00:36:40.700Can we continue playing the video, please?
00:36:53.620You know, I absolutely believe that that was commonplace.
00:36:57.280Our own reporter, Alexa Lavoie, was shot in the leg with some riot gun.
00:37:02.620We heard that police were taking peaceful protesters, not charging them, just taking them in a vehicle, driving them outside the city and dumping them on the side of the road.
00:37:12.820And by the way, it was minus 20 out there.
00:37:14.560Now, I want to ask you about the arrests.
00:37:17.000With regards to the arrests and processing plans and the POU tactical operational plans, there is nothing that states that after police arrested protesters and told them that they were not being charged, that the police were to drive the protesters outside of the city core in the dead of winter, the biggest snowstorm in a while, as you described today,
00:37:36.520without access to shelter or transportation and telecommunications and leave them in parking lots or other areas, correct?
00:37:51.360The plans that were put in place, which involved the ability to remove protesters who were arrested, detained, to a secondary processing site, there were two that were identified.
00:38:06.280One was approximately less than 10 minutes away from the arrest zone.
00:38:10.680The other one was approximately 15 to 20 minutes away from the arrest zone, where there were a full infrastructure of investigators in order to properly process, run, allow phone calls to lawyers, and where they were advised exactly of the next steps of what was going to take place.
00:38:30.840They were located in close proximity to, and when I say close proximity, maybe 200 meters from public transit, and even restaurants and gas stations, to be able to find their way back to where they need to go.
00:38:48.740That is infuriating, and I think that the police need to be sued.
00:38:52.720We are suing the police for their shooting of Alexa.
00:38:56.260If you want to see the video of that, you can go to standwithalexa.com.
00:40:00.100And I think it also goes to public opinion.
00:40:03.280You know, the people that are watching this, that heard the lies from the police, that heard the lies from mainstream media from the beginning, always believed those lies.
00:40:10.060But now we are seeing those lies being dismantled in front of a commissioner in real time.
00:40:16.620And that's what's important about the commission.
00:40:18.380And I think there will be impacts inside Parliament, inside House of Commons, before we have to table the budget once the commission is ended.
00:43:22.540Did you know that that meeting was at 3.30 p.m. and that it was with cabinet and it was the incident response group of the political executive meeting and that your proposal was provided to them?