The curfuge is back in Montreal, and your favourite rebels are here to tell you what s going on. This week, Rebel's Yankee Pollack returns to his home province of Florida to report from the worst lockdown in the Western World. Plus, the latest on Pastor Art Poloski's latest arrest in a controversial SWAT raid on a Calgary city street.
00:05:57.600He was probably going to wait for backup and then all of them were going to ticket everyone.
00:06:02.400Like he was just waiting for more people because he was like scared.
00:06:06.660New year, new you, as they say, except Quebec's premier Francois Legault has resolved to be, I guess, the same old totalitarian that he was back in 2021.
00:06:16.480He's brought in a whole slate of new restrictions, including a curfew, in an attempt to stop the spread of the Omicron variant, which scientists and researchers say is more transmissible than the previous COVID variants, but far less severe.
00:06:30.540During the last curfew, Rebel News reporter and social media guru Yankee Pollack took to the streets nearly every night to document the police harassment of everyday Quebecers just trying to live their lives.
00:06:44.760And he also ended up on the receiving end of that harassment.
00:06:48.080And over the last year, Yankee wisely escaped Canada, not only to warmer climates, but to freer spaces and big Ron DeSantis' free state of Florida.
00:06:59.980But when the curfew came back, so did our friend Yankee.
00:07:03.320He pulled a bit of a reverse AOC and left Florida for a lockdown jurisdiction because he feels compelled to tell the other side of the story.
00:07:11.820So joining me now from Montreal is Yankee Pollack, Yankee first thing, I guess.
00:07:18.180What's the toughest part about being back in Montreal right now?
00:13:36.160Yeah, you can't even protest what the government is doing to you.
00:13:39.880So, I guess, if I'm understanding you correctly, there's been a marked change between how the police treated you before and how the police are treating you now.
00:13:54.760I remember they were trying to ticket you for everything.
00:13:57.340Like you stepped off the curb and they're like jaywalking.
00:14:00.020Tell us how many tickets you had from before and then maybe just tell me if there's any change in how the police are treating you now.
00:20:39.720Well, and I'm glad that you are because apparently you're the only people doing it in any sort of real way outside of a few independent people.
00:20:48.860The mainstream media is completely asleep at the switch, actually.
00:22:09.060Pastor Arthur Pawlowski, who has been arrested twice and faced ongoing harassment by police for daring to open his church throughout COVID-19
00:22:23.400and for daring to continue to serve the poor, along with his brother, David Pawlowski, have reportedly been arrested based on violation of the ridiculous compelled speech and public protest restrictions placed upon them by Justice Adam Germain.
00:22:41.720We're waiting to get the full details and we're going to speak to the Pawlowskis as well as lawyer Sarah Miller, who is being provided at no cost thanks to your generous support at SaveArthur.com for the Pawlowskis.
00:22:52.800But the Pawlowskis' legal fight is still ahead of them.
00:22:55.300We're going to touch base with them as soon as we are able to.
00:22:58.340For now, we're going to jump straight to the footage provided by Nathaniel Pawlowski, Arthur's son, of this troubling arrest.
00:25:16.920New year, new mayor, but some things never change in Calgary.
00:25:22.880And one of the most consistent things in Calgary these days is that a pastor who feeds the homeless nearly compulsively remains public enemy number one.
00:25:31.880Again, it's been that way for, I guess, decades at this point, across multiple mayors and across multiple police chiefs and across multiple premiers.
00:25:40.360Now, over the holiday break, we saw the third SWAT-style takedown of Pastor Art Poloski on the streets of Calgary.
00:25:46.300The first time, he was arrested for opening his church and casting out health inspectors when they came.
00:25:51.120The second time, he was arrested at the airport after coming back to Canada from a U.S. tour.
00:25:57.080And this time, he was on his knees on a frozen city street in the snow for what sounds like praying across the street from the house of the health minister.
00:26:06.220To get clarity about Pastor Art's latest run-in with the law is Calgary-based Rebel reporter Adam Sos, who has been on the case of Pastor Art from very nearly his first day here at Rebel News.
00:26:19.920Please tell us why the cops took Pastor Art down like he was an active shooter this time.
00:26:25.940Yeah, and this is the troubling thing.
00:26:28.520We just had a legal update with Sarah Miller, and it seems very much, and again, I can't necessarily point to the document where someone higher up made this order.
00:26:40.620But it seems as though because they dared approach the house of a politician, shocker, Alberta Health Services, police, AHS, like all these people have been knocking down at the door of the church in the home of Pastor Artur Pawlowski for months and months, if not longer.
00:26:57.920But these people dared to meet outside of Health Minister Jason Copping's house, and that apparently drew the ire of politicians.
00:27:05.760I don't know if Jason Kenney called the captain personally or if this was just an internal thing, but we clearly saw the next day Jason Kenney already commenting on how this is unacceptable.
00:27:17.560The troubling thing here is the fact that the police clearly wanted to find something on Pastor Artur.
00:27:25.720You can see in the footage that they're on the phone trying to figure out how to get them.
00:27:30.560The series of charges that have been laid and retracted, at the beginning, they started with basically being mischievous, riling people up, which is kind of a general police charge, which Pastor Artur, who was sort of apprehensive to attend this event, but he thought he'd attend to ensure that it remained peaceful.
00:27:55.140Reports from CBC stated that there's trespassing charges, I believe.
00:28:00.740That's also what Jason Kenney implied, that people were trespassing.
00:28:03.960I believe one sort of lone rogue individual who was not known to the group walked up and rang the doorbell.
00:28:09.740The entire group basically yelled at him and told him to respect Mr. Copping's privacy and not to step on his property.
00:28:16.260But the allegations out there about what Pastor Artur Pawlewski had done, even after reading him his rights and sitting him in the car, when he wouldn't speak further until he had an opportunity to talk to his lawyer, the police tried to add obstruction of justice charges.
00:28:31.780So they kept piling up all these charges.
00:28:34.360And basically by the bail hearing, virtually none of them had stuck.
00:28:37.500And according to Sarah Miller, the most they could have gotten Pastor Artur Pawlewski on would have been a ticket for not wearing a mask at a protest.
00:28:45.580That was the extent of his rule breaking.
00:28:47.860But Pastor Artur Pawlewski has a medical exemption for masking due to, I believe, a respiratory issue.
00:28:53.100Not that it's anyone's business, but his own.
00:29:06.920This is additionally troubling because of the fact that the Rook order under which these new charges were sort of trumped up, there's already an appeals process because of Sarah Miller of JSS Barrister's victory getting this appeals process going again, thanks to everyone's donations at saveartur.com.
00:29:24.760But because of that, there's already an appeals process going on on this virtually the same sort of charge.
00:29:33.160And they're trying to levy these charges again.
00:30:19.660But the other weird thing with this is, so this protest is taking place.
00:30:23.200And, I mean, people have probably seen this by now.
00:30:25.140But this protest is taking place in this small sort of isolated community.
00:30:29.500And then they set up a police check stop.
00:30:33.100Coincidentally, right as the people are leaving, I don't know how often you guys have seen police check stops leaving small rural sort of areas or basically cul-de-sac type communities.
00:31:17.620And it was actually on the way home about five minutes later that, like, ten or so cop cars, 20 cops came out and arrested them in that ridiculous fashion again.
00:31:26.660The ideological sort of drive here as a parent, you could show up at this guy's house and arrest him.
00:31:35.360He's repeatedly said, I can talk to you, call my lawyer, we can figure something out.
00:31:40.420He says, don't interrupt me during church.
00:31:42.320That's the whole get-out thing was don't interrupt ongoing worship, which is a criminal code violation, but interrupting worship.
00:31:48.720But they could get him at home, but for some reason they choose not to.
00:32:32.520And so what is the new legal jeopardy that Art's under?
00:32:36.200Yeah, so basically it would be breaking some restrictions of the Rook order, which we're still trying to clarify.
00:32:42.600Because per an update from the JCCF, that general Rook blanket order, after the fact, was corrected to not apply to anyone beyond Chris Scott, Glenn Carrot, those original rulings back from when I started.
00:32:59.540But I guess there are new orders in place that don't limit sizes of protests, but suggest potentially under a new recorder or that amended recorder that masks are to be worn.
00:33:09.980So according to Sarah Miller, this is very messy because they've only received a very brief bail package so far with very sort of tenuous details.
00:33:18.980What they don't have is we tried to charge this and we dropped it.
00:33:24.020That's more so from the accounts of the witnesses in the video that we see.
00:33:27.880But from the best of our understanding, according to Sarah Miller, basically what they have him on is not wearing a mask at a protest when he has a medical exemption anyways.
00:33:41.180The other thing, too, is that this is probably going to sum up everything I have to say.
00:33:46.000If there is any doubt as to whether there was some sort of, and this is not Sarah Miller, this is just from an observer witnessing this.
00:33:53.920If there is any doubt as to whether there was some form of malice after one arrest, okay, well, maybe there was some overstepping and whatever.
00:34:01.700The second time when they're waiting for him at an airport and they redirect the private jet that someone flew him in on, they intercept that jet and have it go to a different hangar where cops are waiting.
00:34:14.040Okay, that's like El Chapo style gang takedown stuff.
00:34:18.240Now, the third arrest, this time arrested and thrown in jail for ultimately not wearing a mask when he has a medical exemption anyways.
00:35:04.240When he preaches, he puts on a bit of a different persona to get the message out strongly.
00:35:09.140And he understands some people love that, some people it rubs them the wrong way.
00:35:13.160But the way they're targeting this man based on their personal vendettas, I wish they had an ounce of that further towards some of the real villains out there in society.
00:35:24.560I wish they were this aggressive with the people who actually damage and harm our communities instead of people like Art who do their best to help our communities.