'Leave this with me': Alberta premier heard on call with COVID-19 protester
'Leave this with me': Alberta premier heard on call with COVID-19 protester
EDMONTON -
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, in a leaked cellphone call, commiserated with a COVID-19 protester about his trial while divulging to him there was an internal dispute over how Crown prosecutors were handling COVID-19 cases.
Smith also promised on the call to intervene as best she could on Artur Pawlowski's behalf and said she was reminding prosecutors "almost weekly" about her concerns over pursuing such cases.
"I'm sorry to hear what they're putting you through," Smith is heard telling Pawlowski in the early January call, recorded on a cellphone videothat was released Wednesday by the Opposition NDP.
"I'm very sympathetic. This is very frustrating to me," the premier said.
"We'll see if we can revisit that this week."
The call was made before the trial of the Calgary pastor in February for criminal mischief and a charge under Alberta's Critical Infrastructure Defence Act. The charges relate to last year's blockade at the Canada-United States border crossing at Coutts., Alta., over COVID-19 health rules.
NDP justice critic Irfan Sabir said the call was leaked to the party over the weekend.
He said it's clear evidence Smith breached what should be a sacrosanct firewall between politics and those who are charged and prosecuted.
"What the premier is admitting here is she has been trying to get these people off in some way, and she has been calling Crown prosecutors. That's her words," said Sabir.
During the 11-minute call, Pawlowski told Smith he believed the prosecutor was seeking to thwart his defence by overwhelming his lawyers and draining his wallet.
"He dumped in our laps over a thousand of pages of documents and hundreds of hours of testimonies to frustrate our defence. The trial is in three weeks," Pawlowski tells Smith.
"We had to hire an entire legal team, which will cost over $150,000 extra, to comb though this massive additional disclosure."
Pawlowski alleged in the call that the move was orchestrated by Justice Minister Tyler Shandro.
On the call, Smith told Pawlowski that she doubted Shandro was involved.
"I doubt very much that this is being driven by the minister," Smith said. "But I have also raised it with his deputy minister and let him know my dissatisfaction with the tactics.
"Can you just leave this with me? And I will make that request one more time."
She added: "There was a case where they did something along the same lines: (a) huge document dump and then they just abandoned the case. They didn't prosecute it the next day.
"I'm watching to see evidence that (prosecutors) are going to come to this judgment that many of these cases are unwinnable and not in the public interest.
"I'm beginning to see some signs (of that). I haven't seen anything in your case yet, but if I can just maybe make that inquiry one more time."
Smith stressed to Pawlowski that she couldn't offer clemency, that prosecutors are independent and that she is restricted to reminding them all cases must be winnable and in the public interest.
She told Pawlowski she would go through Rob Anderson, her principal policy adviser. "Rob Anderson has been doing most of my work with Justice in pushing this along."
Smith told a news conference in February she had spoken to Pawlowski, but it was to advise him she could not grant him amnesty.
Smith issued a statement Wednesday: "At no time have I spoken with anyone from the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service, nor to my knowledge have any of my office's staff. Allegations to the contrary are defamatory and will be dealt with accordingly."
Anderson said in a statement: "At no time have I contacted the Crown Prosecution Service regarding this or any other related matter, and to my knowledge, I do not recall speaking with anyone charged with ongoing COVID related offences.
"The NDP's, and any other party's, direct or insinuated allegations to the contrary are defamatory and will be treated accordingly in the near future," he said.
Pawlowski could not be immediately reached for comment. A judge is set to deliver a verdict in his trial in May.
Smith has long been openly critical of COVID-19 masking, gathering and vaccine mandate rules, questioning if they were needed to fight the pandemic and labelling them intolerable violations of personal freedoms.
In October, after galvanizing party discontent with the federal government and COVID-19 restrictions, she won the leadership of the United Conservative Party to become premier.
Over the last few months, Smith has delivered multiple versions of what she said to justice officials about COVID-19 court cases. The controversy erupted early in the new year when Smith publicly acknowledged she had been taking a direct interest in the prosecutions.
Smith has said she talked to prosecutors directly and did not talk to prosecutors directly. She has said she reminded justice officials of general prosecution guidelines, but at other times reminded them to consider factors unique to COVID-19 cases. She has also suggested the conversations were ongoing but also that they had ended.
In January, she ordered an email search after a CBC story alleged a staffer in her office emailed prosecutors to question decisions and direction on cases related to the Coutts protest.
The Justice Department has said a search of ingoing, outgoing and deleted emails found no evidence of contact and that Smith had no direct contact with prosecutors.
The CBC said it did not see the emails in question but stood by its reporting.
The NDP has called for an independent investigation.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 29, 2023.
A U.S. and a Canadian warship sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Saturday, the U.S. Navy said, in a rare joint mission in the sensitive waterway at a time of heightened tensions between Beijing and Washington over Chinese-claimed Taiwan.
A fishing excursion ended in tragedy on Saturday when four children died in a village in northeastern Quebec, provincial police said. Authorities said they were still searching for a missing man in his 30s who was a member of the fishing party and remained unaccounted for.
The U.S. Ambassador to Canada says America 'absolutely wants to have it both ways' when it comes to fighting climate change while pursuing fossil fuel projects.
New study finds increase in antipsychotic drugs use in long-term care homes across Canada, despite no significant increase in behavioural symptoms – something that may expose a potential area of concern for quality of care, researchers say.
Concerns around civilian safety spiked in Ukraine on Saturday, as officials announced that an inspection had found nearly a quarter of the country's air-raid shelters locked or unusable, just days after a woman in Kyiv allegedly died waiting outside a shuttered shelter during a Russian missile barrage.
Pope Francis warned the Vatican's missionary fundraisers on Saturday not to allow financial corruption to creep into their work, insisting that spirituality and spreading the Gospel must drive their operations, not mere entrepreneurship.
Canada is open to the idea of including a requirement to cut back on the production of plastic in a new global treaty to eliminate plastic pollution, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said Friday.
Post tropical storm Fiona showed how quickly Canadians can be displaced by climate change. W5 looks into whether more people living in vulnerable areas will have to consider moving in the years to come.
Convicted murderer Daniel Jolivet, in prison for the past 30 years, has maintained his innocence since the day he was arrested. W5 reviews the evidence he painstakingly assembled while behind bars.
W5 Producer Shelley Ayres explains how she was in awe to meet what the Guinness Book of World Record's has named the World's Tallest Teenager, a 17-year-old from Quebec who plays for Team Canada.
CTV W5 investigates what authorities knew about plans to smuggle cocaine out of the Dominican Republic on a Toronto-bound Pivot Airlines flight. The airline's crew is demanding justice following their eight-month detention.
Gordie Sampson has written hit songs for some of the biggest names in country music, including Carrie Underwood and Luke Bryan. CTV W5 speaks with the Grammy winner from small-town Nova Scotia about his creative process.
Toronto police say the five suspects involved in a stabbing at Kennedy Station Friday night that left a man in critical condition are between the ages of 12 and 15 years old.
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman says the process to sell the Ottawa Senators is moving forward as "quickly as possible," and the New York-based company overseeing the sale is advising to "expect a very good outcome in the next few weeks."
Just after noon on Feb. 4, Barrie police received a 911 call from staff at a grocery store on Blake Street, where a woman had fled from a man's vehicle after he committed "serious and violent" offences against her.
A day of action held across Ontario saw the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) taking aim at a number of issues impacting community members, such as the cost of living.
Todd Edginton could hardly believe his eyes when he looked out his back door to find a wind turbine on fire. He wasn’t alone, as people stopped just north of Goderich to see the spectacle unfold.
A new immersive experience has opened at 100 Kellogg Ln. in London. Immersive Disney Animation features sights and sounds from a wide range of classic Walt Disney pictures.
People are rallying in cities across the province Saturday as part of the Ontario Federation of Labour’s ‘Enough is Enough Day of Action.' The protests and marches taking aim at the Doug Ford government, with participants looking for solutions to the cost of living crisis.
A fishing excursion ended in tragedy on Saturday when four children died in a village in northeastern Quebec, provincial police said. Authorities said they were still searching for a missing man in his 30s who was a member of the fishing party and remained unaccounted for.
Heavy rain and some military reinforcements arrived to assist efforts on Saturday to quell the wildfires that have destroyed homes and caused the evacuation of thousands of people across Nova Scotia.
It was a historic day in Manitoba. From across Canada, an estimated 4,000 Manitoba Metis Federation (MMF) citizens showed up in person or online for an extraordinary general assembly.
Winnipegger Howie Prociuk was on a father/son trip south of the border to see the Toronto Blue Jays take on the Minnesota Twins in Minneapolis last month, when a funny thought occurred to him.
Experts say 1,500 recently announced job losses at Suncor Energy Inc. are an example of the type of "collateral damage" that can occur when an activist investor comes calling.
Defence Minister Anita Anand says Canada is committed to the support of a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific, and is reinforcing its military presence in the region.
Jenny Kwan has been outspoken against human-rights violations by the Chinese Communist Party and often advocates for the country's Uyghur Muslim minority. The Hong Kong-born member of Parliament said in an interview with The Canadian Press that that's what made her an 'evergreen' target of the Chinese government.
New study finds increase in antipsychotic drugs use in long-term care homes across Canada, despite no significant increase in behavioural symptoms – something that may expose a potential area of concern for quality of care, researchers say.
The number of people in Canada with inflammatory bowel disease is increasing rapidly and is expected to grow to 470,000 by 2035, according to a new report from Crohn's and Colitis Canada.
Racial bias built into a common medical test for lung function is likely leading to fewer Black patients getting care for breathing problems, a study published Thursday suggests.
Twitter's head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, told Reuters on Thursday that she has resigned from the social media company, which has faced criticism for lax protections against harmful content since billionaire Elon Musk acquired it in October.
Deep in an open coal mine in southern Greece, researchers have discovered the antiquities-rich country's oldest archaeological site, which dates to 700,000 years ago and is associated with modern humans' hominin ancestors. The find announced Thursday would drag the dawn of Greek archaeology back by as much as a quarter of a million years, although older hominin sites have been discovered elsewhere in Europe. The oldest, in Spain, dates to more than a million years ago.
In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, director Christopher Nolan offers a guide to his favourite formats, explaining why it matters and even where he likes to sit so that audiences don't feel like they need a film school degree (or one in theoretical physics) before settling on a theatre.
Walt Disney's Pixar Animation Studios has eliminated 75 positions including those of two executives behind box office disappointment 'Lightyear,' sources said on Saturday, the first significant job cuts at the studio in a decade.
Air Canada says travellers should be prepared for further flight disruptions as it works to return service to normal following a technical malfunction Thursday.
Bianca Andreescu was eliminated from the French Open after losing to Ukraine's Lesia Tsurenko in straight sets, 6-1, 6-1, in the third round on Saturday.
Rafael Nadal is expected to need about five months to recover from arthroscopic surgery on his left hip, a timeline that likely would keep him out for the rest of this season.
Max Verstappen stormed his way to pole position at the Spanish Grand Prix on Saturday while his top rivals struggled on the damp track and will start well behind the two-time defending champion.
America apparently needs more car seats. So, when Volkswagen unveiled the ID. Buzz, a retro-styled electric van, last year, it noted that the version for the North American market would be longer and would have three rows of seats.
