If the lockdowns are over, why is Pastor Arthur Pawlowski still in jail? Ezra Levenrant takes you through Jason Kenney's statement, and shows you the facts that Kenney isn t mentioning.
00:10:08.160They were ready to tackle me down. I was there with my wife. I really thought I'm going to be
00:10:14.200arrested, and $1,200 ticket was given to me, and I was told, I was threatened, that if I ever show up
00:10:23.000again, more is coming up to $1 million. Can you imagine?
00:10:28.400Yeah. Rule of law. A Christian pastor gets a $1,000 fine and physically pushed around by some bully
00:10:35.520cops for helping the poor. Rule of law. What are you complaining about? The premier and health minister
00:10:44.060have a boozy party in a private restaurant that only they can go to on the top of their skyscrapers
00:10:50.760called the Sky Palace, and nothing. No arrests, no tickets, no cops pushing anyone around, no SWAT
00:10:57.300style takedown. No prison, that's for sure. But it's as Kenny said, you know, nobody is above the law.
00:11:06.880No politician, no person that calls himself a pastor is above the law. The rule of law applies
00:11:13.220equally to everybody in our system of the rule of law.
00:11:16.160The rule of law sure applies, doesn't it? But that first part where Kenny accuses Pastor Arthur
00:11:22.860of inciting violence, that's when Pastor Arthur Pawlowski went down to Kootz, Alberta, the border
00:11:30.300cross between Alberta and Montana, where there was a blockade. And Pastor Arthur gave a bit of a sermon,
00:11:36.140bit of a pep talk, bit of a political speech to the truckers. Now he himself did not blockade
00:11:42.020anything. He didn't participate in the blockade. He came to preach really. But here's how Kenny
00:11:48.420described it. Let's hear that part again. I would just suggest that going to a very tense
00:11:54.260combustible situation and inciting people to be willing to die and commit acts of violence
00:12:01.960for their cause is very likely to have legal consequences.
00:12:09.840Does that sound like Pastor Arthur Pawlowski to you? You know, I probably listened cumulatively
00:12:18.840to 25 hours of Arthur Pawlowski through the course of my life. That's a lot of Arthur.
00:12:27.240And I have never once heard him counsel violence. Never once. I mean, he raises his voice. That's
00:12:35.380for sure. He can marshal the language and direct words at someone harshly. That's for sure.
00:12:42.600Words. But inciting violence? I've never heard of it. I mean, this is more his style.
00:12:48.620Get out of this property. Immediately get out. Get out of this property. Immediately. Out.
00:12:56.440I don't want to hear anything. Out of this property. Immediately. I don't want to hear a word.
00:13:01.120Out. Out. Out of this property. Immediately until you come back with a warrant. Out. Out.
00:13:10.760Out! Out! Out! Out of this property. Immediately out! Immediately go out and don't come back.
00:13:22.760I don't want to talk to you. Not a word. Out of this property. Immediately out.
00:13:29.760I don't care what you have to say. Out! Out! Out of this property, you Nazis. Out! Out!
00:13:39.760Out! Gestapo is not allowed here. Immediately Gestapo is not allowed. Out!
00:13:50.760Do you understand English? Get out of this property. Go. So go. Go. And then come back without a warrant. Out, Nazi. Out!
00:14:01.760Now that's being angry, but that's not violence. That's just hollering with a bit of a righteousness.
00:14:08.760You heard Kenny go into a very tense, combustible situation and inciting people to be willing to die and commit acts of violence for their cause.
00:14:21.760Did he really do that? Well, I got to tell you, I hadn't actually watched Pastor Arthur's speech to the truckers before.
00:14:30.760So yesterday, after I saw Kenny's comments, you know, his description of it sounded pretty shocking.
00:14:36.760And, you know, I just didn't jive with what I know about Arthur. Seriously, going down there and telling people to die and be killed or get violent?
00:14:53.760Here. Now, it was a 19-minute speech spoken in a restaurant, not even at the blockade itself.
00:14:59.760If you followed our Coots coverage, you'll recognize this restaurant.
00:15:04.760Arthur was basically giving a dinner talk, a pep talk.
00:15:08.760You can find the whole 19-minute speech for yourself on Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky's Facebook page.
00:15:13.760That's where I found it yesterday. But here's a sample of a few of his points.
00:15:18.760Now, I promise I'm not taking anything out of context or leaving out any calls to violence.
00:15:23.760I just want to give you a flavor for the speech.
00:15:26.760In a shipyard in Kdajmsk. And there were groups of people and Lech Wałęsa got everything he wanted.
00:15:36.760And he was ready with a piece of paper coming out saying, we've won, we got it.
00:15:41.760And there were bus drivers outside and the train drivers outside.
00:15:47.760And he said, so you've won your rights. What about our rights?
00:15:51.760And he stopped. Will you? And this is why you have this famous solidarity movement.
00:15:58.760Because when he was stopped, he looked at the people that were outside under the hammer of the boots of the Soviets.
00:16:07.760And he said, yeah, you're right. We got what we wanted. But what about you?
00:16:14.760And here is this lady. This is what she said.
00:16:17.760Will you stand in solidarity with the rest of us?
00:16:22.760Because you guys got what you wanted. But what about us?
00:16:27.760So when I decided to come here, I'm risking to be arrested at every moment, everywhere I go.
00:16:32.760The criminal charges on me, left and right. We lost count of the charges I have right now.
00:16:38.760But I decided to come here because I believe that the eyes of the world are fixed on this place.
00:16:43.760Right here. Just before we are going to get our freedom, I'm telling you, give up.
00:16:50.760Right before thousands of people that are willing to come to support you.
00:16:58.760Now you're going to abandon them? What are you going to say? Oh, we've changed our plans?
00:17:03.760What are you going to say to those today and yesterday?
00:17:07.760Every single minute, I got thousands of messages. Thousands. I mean, this thing never stops.
00:17:14.760People saying we're coming to Kurds. We're coming to the Milk River. We're coming to support. We're bringing in.
00:17:20.760What do you need? What do they need? We're coming. Thousands upon thousands of people are coming.
00:17:26.760They don't have enough RCMP officers to deal with them. They don't have enough army to deal with them.
00:17:33.760Remember, you have the power now. Do not give it away.
00:17:38.760There was an order to shoot the protesters. To kill them.
00:17:42.760But because of the American media, they backed away from doing this because they knew the whole world will see what is happening in the times in 1980.
00:17:54.760Right now, the whole eyes of the entire world are fixed on this little place.
00:17:59.760And you can do the right thing or you can pack and honk around Parliament's legislature fine.
00:18:07.760But I'm telling you, they're honking around Parliament right now for a week.
00:18:12.760How long are we going to be honking? For a month? For two?
00:18:17.760They're not really afraid of our honks. What they're afraid of is this.
00:18:22.760People coming together and paralyzing their system.
00:18:27.760Polish people did it the right way. They said, we shall not cooperate with the villains.
00:18:33.760We do not work for the KJB and Russians.
00:21:50.760I have also received reports in the last hour of people allied with the protestors, assaulting RCMP officers, including in one instance trying to ram members of the RCMP, later leading to a collision with a civilian vehicle in the area.
00:22:10.760This kind of conduct is totally unacceptable.
00:22:13.760It was such a lie that the RCMP themselves felt compelled to refute the lie.
00:22:26.760There was no political motive behind it.
00:22:28.760Here are the cops calling out Kenny's lie.
00:22:32.760There was no physical altercation between RCMP officers and protestors.
00:22:39.760Yesterday, when we had protestors go around and breach the roadblock set up on Highway 4 to the north, there was some public safety concerns there and officer safety concerns that took place.
00:22:54.760There were vehicles traveled through ditches and through fields to get around the roadblock and then onto Highway 4.
00:23:01.760They were traveling southbound on Highway 4 in the northbound lanes.
00:23:05.760And that was happening at the same time.
00:23:07.760We had a few vehicles leaving the protest and traveling northbound in the northbound lanes.
00:23:13.760So we had a traffic meeting head-on on the double lane highway there.
00:23:21.760A head-on collision occurred as a result of all this between a person trying to reach the blockade and a person who was just traveling north on the highway.
00:23:33.760Unfortunately, it was a relatively minor collision, but a confrontation which led to an assault took place as a direct result of that collision.
00:23:45.760And that was an assault on an RCMP officer?
00:24:41.760Those are political instructions issued by the premier to the health minister, which then instructs a special health prosecutor to go after Arthur.
00:25:05.760Well, I thought we would talk to Sid Fezard, our reporter who asked that question to Jason Kenney.
00:25:23.760And you'll remember that Sid, along with Kian K2 Simone, was down there in Coots embedded with the truckers for almost the entire time.
00:25:32.760In fact, I have to check, but it wouldn't surprise me if they were actually at Pastor Arthur's pep talk speech sermon when he was down there.
00:25:41.760Joining us now via Skype from Calgary is Sidney.
00:30:33.760And Jason Kenney even said that twice during that answer, that Arthur Palowski had incited violence or called for people to die on this hill, so to speak, but in a more detrimental way is how Jason Kenney put it.
00:30:45.760Whereas Arthur Palowski, hold the line.
00:31:08.760The Queens Council go first, then the senior lawyers.
00:31:11.760It's sort of—but that's good, because you go last, so you sit and you learn from everyone in front of you.
00:31:17.760I mean, I didn't really like going last, Sid, but if you have to listen to 90 minutes of court before you get on your feet, that's part of your education as a young lawyer.
00:31:26.760So I was there for some minor matter I don't even remember.
00:31:48.760And the reason I tell you that is that Arthur Pawlowski and James Coates, these Christian pastors, none of whom are charged with a crime, the underlying offenses are not crimes.
00:32:00.760These health orders are not criminal law.
00:32:03.760And they have served more time and hard time.
00:32:08.760These are maximum security facilities.
00:32:11.760They're in—in Arthur's case, he's still in solitary confinement.
00:32:16.760I want to tell you they have—and they haven't been convicted of anything yet.
00:32:20.760They have already served more hard time than convicted sexual assaulters in this country.
00:32:29.760Now, part of that goes to how lenient we are with sexual assault.
00:32:32.760But it's shocking that these Christian pastors have spent more time in prison than convicted rapists.
00:32:41.760I mean, even—this reminds me of the—pardon me—the beginning of the so-called pandemic.
00:32:48.760Wherein, especially in the States, we were seeing a lot of sex offenders were just being released for the sake of it, to alleviate the size of those being held in these facilities.
00:32:58.760And now we're seeing Pastor Artur Poloski and other pastors being imprisoned for weeks on end for, as you say, these aren't really crimes that we would expect.
00:33:07.760These are breaches of the public health and safety acts and orders that come into place.
00:33:48.760And every week, as you know, because I think you've covered a lot of them, there's a freedom protest in Calgary, which you would hope for in Canada's most conservative city.
00:34:12.760And when the mayor says and it will put on the screen the series of tweets when the mayor says I'm sick of these people and this isn't a real protest and they don't have a permit.
00:34:41.760I think she wants to get a bit abusive like the Ottawa police.
00:34:45.760And that was her signal to one of the worst police forces in Canada, the Calgary police.
00:34:51.760I'm worried there's going to be violence at the next freedom protest, Sid.
00:34:55.760And it's not going to be from the protesters.
00:34:57.760It's going to be from corrupt cops doing what their political masters say.
00:35:01.760Well, and that may even be the case of what we've seen this past weekend where it was really weird how Calgary police handled the situation.
00:35:09.760At first there was a few individuals counter protesting closer to the freedom rally gathering point.
00:35:15.760And they got pushed out of the way with bicycles.
00:35:17.760And then as they slowly approached the counter protest group, the bulk of them that were blocking the street, the Calgary police basically allowed the freedom rally to be on both sides of the police line.
00:35:29.760Basically, it was the freedom rally, it was the police line, it was another police line, it was counter protest, and then it was the freedom rally again.
00:35:38.760So they really didn't do a good job at handling the situation.
00:35:42.760And I don't know if, like usually the police try and take a tactical style of enforcement where they're trying to do things in a way that is logistically tenable to amending the situation.
00:35:53.760But in this case, they seem to have been doing the opposite.
00:35:56.760So, and it's interesting, though, that Jota, I'm going to mispronounce her name, but the Calgary mayor, it's interesting that she wants more police enforcement.
00:36:04.760I think what happened is she saw that Calgary police were using bicycles against the counter protesters.
00:36:08.760And she thought, hold on, they should be using these bicycles against the freedom rally protesters, which I think is a bit perverted in its own regard.
00:36:15.760But that seems to be the stand she's taking.
00:36:17.760Yeah, it's a lot of bad things are about to happen.
00:36:20.760I tell you, we've had some atrocious policing for two years as police have allowed themselves to run political errands and been turned into mask scolds.
00:36:29.760Maybe they've forgotten how to do regular police work.
00:37:55.760Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?
00:38:00.760Ukraine has biological research facilities which, in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of.
00:38:19.760So we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.
00:38:32.760I'm sure you're aware that the Russian propaganda groups are already putting out there all kinds of information about how they've uncovered a plot by the Ukrainians to release biological weapons in the country and with NATO's coordination.
00:38:44.760If there's a biological or chemical weapon incident or or attack inside of Ukraine, is there any doubt in your mind that 100 percent it would be the Russians that would be behind it?
00:38:53.760There is no doubt in my mind, Senator.
00:38:55.760And it is classic Russian technique to blame on the other guy what they're planning to do themselves.
00:39:05.760And what's come out since I have no idea what is in those biolabs.
00:39:08.760I have no idea if we were outsourcing we if the United States was outsourcing some sort of chemical weapon or bioweapons program to Ukraine.
00:39:18.760I know we've learned from Anthony Fauci's ties to the Wuhan lab that we should be extremely skeptical about these things.
00:39:24.760I don't know what the truth is, but the fact that I heard it confessed to by an undersecretary of state in America tells me there is a lot more looking into we have to do there.
00:39:33.760Wolfgang von Zubez says no violence against civilians.
00:39:39.760However, the Montreal Symphony dropped a Russian pianist, Alexander Maloliev, for just being Russian.
00:39:48.760He denounced the Russian invasion, even though it shouldn't matter if he did.
00:39:52.760But even denouncing the invasion didn't matter.
00:39:55.760So it's okay in Canada to discriminate based on ethnicity.
00:39:59.760Now, it would seem when you say there's no violence you're referring to here in Canada.
00:40:36.760Almost none of it will have any effect on the war itself.
00:40:38.760How does, you know, I saw a college drop a course on a Russian writer named Dostoevsky, who was born and died before the Soviet Union was even a thing.
00:40:49.760You're just not going to learn Russian literature now in the Russian literature department because Putin's invading Ukraine.
00:42:44.760They're scheduled to leave tomorrow morning for Washington, D.C. and protest an end to vaccine mandates.
00:42:49.760Only 70 miles from D.C., the U.S. Trucker Convoy, or the People's Convoy, is setting up camp in Hagerstown, Maryland tonight,
00:42:55.760as they allow smaller convoys to join and as the truckers plan the strategy and logistics of bringing hundreds of giant vehicles to the capital area.
00:43:04.760As the convoy's final trek approaches, I ask truckers and convoy organizers how far they're willing to go to achieve their goals,
00:43:09.760namely the ending of trucker vaccine mandates and the repealing of the Federal Emergency Act,
00:43:13.760which allows the federal government to impose such mandates and dictates without democratic oversight.
00:43:18.760There's a noticeably different tone and philosophy espoused by the truckers compared to that of the organizers.
00:43:23.760While both parties aim for the protest to be peaceful, the organizers' plan is to take a more civil and leveled approach
00:43:28.760involving daily slow rolls around Washington, D.C.'s largest highway, regrouping every night 60 miles west of the city.
00:43:34.760While the truckers that have joined the convoy see themselves engaging in a more civil disobedience-style protest in Washington, D.C.,
00:43:40.760similar to that of the Canadian convoy.
00:43:42.760Co-organizer Brian Brasi explained his plan to me.
00:43:45.760So in the morning we're going to be meeting with all the convoy drivers, the actual people driving in the convoy.
00:43:51.760We're going to be meeting with them and tomorrow the plan is to kind of flex our muscle a little bit,
00:43:55.760let them know that we're here and that we're not going to just sit still in one location.
00:43:59.760So tomorrow we plan on doing two loops around the capitol beltway just to let them know just so they can see how big we are and that we're serious.
00:44:08.760It's time to listen to the people and so we're going to parade around the beltway so they can see just exactly how big and how many vehicles we got.
00:44:16.760Truckers shared how far they believed they'd go to accomplish their aims.
00:44:19.760I'm going to stay until I go to jail or die probably.
00:44:23.760It might end up differently halfway through, something might change, but as far as I'm concerned I'm there for the long haul.
00:44:29.760We have to go there and have some kind of effect.