Pastor Arthur Pawlowski was taken down in the middle of the road by a SWAT team style raid in Calgary, Alberta. Why is Canada the only country in the world jailing Christian pastors? Why are we doing it?
00:03:12.340He was our very first client. Now, we have over 1,200. He beat that case. Our first client,
00:03:20.560our first victory. And the lawyer was Sarah Miller of the Calgary firm JSS Barristers. It's been
00:03:27.560lots of work for Sarah since. Arthur's received more tickets. Here's an example.
00:03:33.000The difficulty was they didn't give any of these tickets to Arthur and his brother while
00:03:39.220they were actually handing out food. They showed up at Arthur's house many days later
00:03:44.020to hand him just a pile of tickets. So the tickets are very disconnected from the actual
00:03:51.600incident. That's not necessarily bad faith, but another kind of step of we're showing up
00:03:57.660at your house. We're showing intimidation. We're giving you these tickets. So the two things
00:04:03.460combined really make you think, what is Calgary Police Service doing with Arthur Pawlowski here?
00:04:09.760Sarah's gotten to know Arthur well, probably even better than I know him.
00:04:14.700Well, the whole world has been getting to know Pastor Arthur. Sometimes he's called the Polish
00:04:19.940Pastor because this video went super viral globally.
00:04:24.460Please get out. Get out of this property immediately. Get out. Get out of this property
00:04:32.220immediately. Out. I don't want to hear anything. Out of this property immediately. I don't want
00:04:37.460to hear a word. Out. Out. Out of this property immediately until you come back with a warrant.
00:04:46.080Out. Out. Out. Out. Out. Out. Out of this property immediately out. I don't care what you have to say. Out. Out. Out. Out of this property you Nazis. Out.
00:16:33.960That said, Alberta is also a laboratory of ideas in this country.
00:16:38.960It's a place where conservativism sometimes finds deep roots.
00:16:43.960It's also a place where populism bubbles up.
00:16:46.960And recently, bizarrely in my mind, it's been a place where freedom has been in the deepest retreat.
00:16:53.960The province's motto in Latin means strong and free.
00:16:56.960And yet it has the most punitive lockdowns in the country.
00:17:01.960And so I'm delighted to report that in the last few weeks, we have increased the size of our Alberta team.
00:17:08.960Under the leadership of Sheila Gunn-Reed, our chief reporter and our Alberta bureau chief, we've added to that a reporter in Edmonton named Daniel Day, working for us on a halftime basis.
00:17:20.960A reporter in Calgary named Adam Sose, who's just done outstanding work even in the short weeks he's been with us.
00:17:27.960And our newest recruit, who coincidentally happens to be named Kian, Kian Simone.
00:17:34.960We call him K2 to distinguish him from Kian Bextie.
00:17:37.960So we have a four person team in Alberta.
00:17:40.960And just in the nick of time, the province is overflowing with news.
00:17:45.960And now we go to our Alberta bureau chief, Sheila Gunn-Reed, who is on the scene in central Alberta with some breaking news.
00:17:56.960Hey, Ezra, thanks for having me on the show.
00:17:58.960Yeah, I'm here with some breaking news.
00:17:59.960I'm actually at the ranch of Ty Northcott and the Northcott family and Northcott Rodeo Inc.
00:18:06.960Because he has just received, he and his wife and the company have received summonses to appear in court to answer to the charge of breaking the Public Health Act for holding their protest rodeo rally.
00:18:22.960It would be two weekends ago now in Bowdoin.
00:18:45.960Outdoors work in a rodeo, in a ranch, in a farm, in oil rigs, whatnot.
00:18:49.960So they're not densely packed urban dwellers living, you know, in stuffy high rises, working in stuffy skyscrapers.
00:19:00.960The public health dynamics of people living in the country is very different from those living in the city.
00:19:08.960And yet the decisions in Alberta and indeed in most Western jurisdictions are made in capitals.
00:19:14.960And some grand public health vizier sends out an order and everyone must follow it regardless of the local circumstance.
00:19:21.960That's the first thing that strikes me is the epidemiological differences between rural Alberta and, you know, the bunkers where these health experts so-called are in.
00:19:34.960There's no one more free and independent than a cowboy.
00:19:36.960I mean, they are, you know, the idea of a cowboy and the government, that's like oil and water.
00:19:43.960So the idea that some city slicker bureaucrat like, I don't know, Dina Hinshaw, the health officer in Alberta, is going to issue some, you know, decree.
00:19:52.960And suddenly a cowboy is not going to ride a ride a horse.
00:19:57.960Politically, it sounds like a death wish for any conservative party that depends on rural parts.
00:20:04.960What do you make of what I've just said that what you have here is an urban leftist authoritarian police state ideology being imposed on far away rural independent minded people?
00:20:19.960And if I was a local UCP, United Conservative Party, MLA, I would be deeply worried for my future.
00:20:30.960A lot of the dynamic that and as a lifelong rural person, I feel this deeply every single day.
00:20:37.960It's very much the same dynamic that Western Canada has with Ottawa, where these far off people with different issues than us are making these blanket decisions to control our lives when they don't know what it's like where we are.
00:20:52.960And we have a different set of values. And that's the same dynamic at play right now with a bunch of cubicle dwelling Edmonton decision makers making decisions for cowboys and ranch hands and people who work on drilling rigs.
00:21:08.960It just doesn't make any sense. And that's why Ty Northcott held his rodeo.
00:21:15.960It was a rally to show the government that we still think it's fine to do these sorts of things outside.
00:21:23.960If you can be in a Walmart, you can go to a rodeo.
00:21:26.960And so, you know, you've seen it in Mirror, in Bashaw, in Bowdoin.
00:21:34.960The community has come out in full force to support these guys as they stand up to the decision makers in Edmonton.
00:21:46.960However, those MLAs a few weeks ago who signed that anti-lockdown letter, I think it's about a dozen and a half UCP MLAs signed a letter basically saying they no longer support these ongoing lockdowns.
00:22:05.960So are we seeing sort of that unraveling of the party back to the old PCs that held on to Edmonton and Calgary and then the Wild Rose that represented the rural parts of Alberta?
00:22:20.960I don't know, but it seems as though the broad coalition of the UCP is starting to come apart at the seams.
00:22:27.960Yeah, it's incredible to me. I mean, the Western Standard Magazine, an online publication that actually picked up the reins from the old print magazine that I used to publish more than a decade ago.
00:22:38.960They published a scoop a week or so ago where they say that Jason Kenney told his caucus MLAs that he wants a new party base.
00:22:49.960Base referring to, you know, the most passionate, the most partisan loyalists.
00:22:55.960The UCP base would include rock ribbed conservatives, rural people, Calgarians kind of thing.
00:23:02.960Their growth area would be downtown fancy pants, Edmontonians, things like that.
00:23:07.960So you generally don't do well replacing your base.
00:23:12.960You know, I've heard of parties losing, winning with just their base.
00:23:18.960I've never heard of parties winning without their base.
00:23:23.960And it's so odd because Jason Kenney himself was the one who laboriously combined the progressive conservatives and the Wild Rose Party.
00:23:32.960So it's very odd that he would be so cavalier about it, considering it took him years to put it together.
00:23:39.960Yeah, it's very weird to hear Jason Kenney say that he wants a new base.
00:24:44.960You know, I used to work 25 years ago for Preston Manning.
00:24:49.960And I listened to him because, of course, his father, Ernest Manning, was the premier of Alberta from 1944 on or 1943, 1944, after the death of the social credits founder, Bill Eberhardt.
00:25:02.960So Preston and his father, Ernest, lived grassroots populism, even more than ideological conservatism.
00:27:56.960And maybe Brian Jean wants to get back in the game.
00:27:59.960Do you have any info about that other than his one statement that I think you both, you and I both saw?
00:28:04.960I don't have any inside information quite yet.
00:28:08.960However, I do know that the party base, or I guess the old party base, before Jason Kenney threw them off the lifeboat, they are saber rattling for a leadership review.
00:28:23.960And that sort of has been squashed at the local level by the party itself.
00:28:31.960But there's only one way to move forward with this mess that Jason Kenney has created.
00:28:40.960And I don't know if Brian Jean would be willing to throw his hat back in the ring.
00:28:45.960But if Jason Kenney truly believes that the majority of the party, faithful, the voting members, the donors, the volunteers, if he believes what he's been doing,
00:28:59.960especially these last few months, is in line with what they would like to see for him as the leader of the party,
00:29:07.960then he's got to put it to them to put this to rest and heal the party.
00:29:38.960And again, I find this like a knight of the long knives when the Soviet Union, you know, the dictators would round up all their political opponents all at once.
00:29:48.960I say that analogy because the health orders involved here, they don't actually carry a jail term.
00:29:55.960And when you're scooping up Arthur Pawlowski in Calgary and scooping up Chris Scott in Mira, Alberta, you're using police and handcuffs and jail cells for people who are not actually accused of any crimes.
00:30:08.960It's tantamount to, I mean, the dollar amount on their fines is large, but if it was a parking ticket or an overdue library fine, you know, that's about the same gravity legally as a ticket under these health laws.
00:30:24.960It's just that they're fifteen hundred bucks.
00:30:26.960So, I mean, I haven't looked at the summonses that have been issued in the last week, but my understanding is that none of them carry with them custodial punishment.
00:30:38.960So, to throw a guy in jail preemptively for an alleged offense that doesn't carry with it a jail term seems like political punishment and a political prisoner to me.
00:30:52.960Well, I just checked my phone as we were talking there and we are in constant communication with his lawyer, Chad Williamson, from Williamson line.
00:31:01.960He said his whole firm is mobilized to try to get Chris out on bail.
00:31:05.960And it seems as though that won't happen until tomorrow.
00:31:09.960So, he spent Saturday night in jail all day Sunday.
00:31:13.960Looks like he's going to spend Monday night in jail before they can get a hearing to get him out.
00:31:19.960But what they're doing to Pastor Art and to Chris and potentially Glenn Carrot of United We Roll, because he did attend Chris Scott's protest over the weekend, is very similar to what they did to Pastor James Coates.
00:31:37.960It is not the crime of breaking the public health order, if you can call that, that they're going to jail for.
00:31:47.960Because the province, on Thursday, in secret, went and got an emergency restraining order against Chris Scott, Glenn Carrot, those are the two men named in the order, and Jane Doe's and John Doe's.
00:32:08.960Preventing them and us from organizing, participating in, or even promoting what the government calls an illegal public gathering, which is anything more than five people.
00:32:21.960And it's the Orwellian term the government is using to describe political protest against the laws the government is bringing down on these people.
00:32:31.960Jason Kenney has a restraining order against the charter rights of all Albertans right now, and that's why Chris Scott is in jail.
00:32:37.960Because he held a protest, and the government has a restraining order against his right to do that.
00:32:42.960You know, and I've never heard of such a thing that you get a restraining order against the whole world.
00:33:26.960I've known Jason since I was in college.
00:33:28.960I find this confusing, but we must do what we must do.
00:33:32.960And that is to fight like hell, to cover journalistically what's happening, and to, through our Civil Liberties Project, defend those that no one else will defend.
00:33:42.960And that's why I would encourage people to go to fightthefines.com.
00:33:46.960Sounds like Ty Northcott has his own lawyer, but we're giving the lawyer, we're crowdfunding him for Chris Scott.
00:33:52.960We're crowdfunding the lawyer for Arthur Pawlowski.
00:33:55.960And actually, as of this morning's meeting, I learned that we are now representing 1,200 people across Canada.
00:34:02.960And Sheila, I know you've gotten to know dozens of them.