It may not be Lake of Fire 2.0, but you wouldn’t think Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s blustering response yesterday to the CBC’s release of a recording of her telling an anti-vaccine pastor facing criminal charges that she was talking to Justice officials “almost weekly” about his case is going to help her election campaign.
Artur Pawlowski, who has made a nuisance of himself with his loud and often offensive sermons on the streets of Calgary for years, faces criminal mischief charges stemming from activities during the Convoy blockade near the Coutts border crossing last year. A verdict in the case is expected in May.
The recording of her 11-minute phone conversation with Pastor Pawlowski, which took place in January not long before his trial, was obtained by the CBC and published Wednesday morning. In it, Smith can be heard telling Pawlowski she had talked to department officials on his behalf and would continue to do so.
She might not have been telling them what to do, but she was clearly indicating what she’d like them to do – which in most places where the rule of law prevails would be called interference with the administration of justice.
Premier Smith also confessed to Pawlowski – you can’t make this stuff up! – that “what we’ve discovered in how our justice system works is we don’t really have the power of clemency the way a U.S. president or a governor in the United States does.
“Once the process is under way, I can ask our prosecutors, ‘Is there a reasonable likelihood of conviction, and is it in the public interest?’ And, I assure you, I have asked them that about weekly, ever since I got started here,” Smith went on to say.
But, she lamented, “there isn’t really a mechanism for me to order them to drop cases. That’s just the way our legal system works, I’m afraid.”
Answering Pawlowski’s complaint about the tactics of the Crown prosecutor in his case, she told him: “I have raised it with the deputy minister and let him know my dissatisfaction with the tactics.”
The premier also told the pastor that “Rob Anderson has been doing most of my work with Justice in pushing this along.” Anderson, a lawyer, is executive director of the Premier’s Office and Smith’s former Wildrose Party House leader.
Smith’s story about what she said to Justice Department officials and Crown Prosecutors about charges arising from the response of some Albertans to COVID-19 mitigation measures in 2020 and 2021 has evolved as criticism of her apparent effort to influence prosecutions became sharper.
If voters were paying attention, though, most of them had stopped.
Her threatening tone in response to the CBC’s report, though, will likely attract attention of a sort the United Conservative Party (UCP) campaign doesn’t need just now, especially in Calgary, where the provincial election expected on May 29 will be won or lost.
After all, it reminds everyone of the original controversy and suggests, as the CBC put it, “that her conversations with top Alberta Justice officials about pandemic-related prosecutions were more frequent and specific than she has admitted publicly.”
It’s hard to imagine her staff, which contains a number of experienced political pros who know their stuff, either advising her to do this or being very happy about it.
“Later today, in an effort to continue their campaign of defamatory attacks against me, my office staff, Alberta Crown Prosecutors, and the Alberta Public Service, the CBC intends to release an article about a conversation I had with an individual named, Artur Pawlowski,” said the statement from the premier emailed to media first thing yesterday morning and posted on social media, presumably in hopes of getting ahead of the CBC’s report.
Claiming her conversation with Pawlowski should surprise no one given her publicly stated concerns about COVID-19 public health measures and firmly denying she has ever spoken to anyone specifically from the Crown Prosecution Service, Premier Smith then threatened the CBC.
“Allegations to the contrary are defamatory and will be dealt with accordingly,” she stated.
As an aside, it’s also probably not a sound legal strategy to threaten to sue someone for defamation for publishing a recording of your own words!
Still, we all understand that it’s a well-established strategy in U.S. right-wing circles to vilify and demonize media to increase distrust in institutions traditionally associated with the functioning of democracy – democracy having the bad habit from time to time of not delivering the “right” outcome in elections.
Smith has obviously concluded that what worked for Donald Trump in 2016 will work for her in Calgary in 2023.
It may indeed work with the Take Back Alberta extremists who now control half the UCP Board and many party constituency associations, but the jury remains out on how well it will work among the general electorate.
The person who arranged the conversation between the premier and the pastor, the CBC reported, was Dennis Modry, former CEO of the separatist Alberta Prosperity Project.
Pawlowski booted as Alberta Independence Party leader
Meanwhile, speaking of Alberta separatists, the day before yesterday, on his 50th birthday, Pastor Pawlowski was booted as leader of the Independence Party of Alberta.
“After serious consideration and deliberation among the provincial board members, it has been decided to part ways with the Leader of the Independence Party of Alberta, Artur Pawlowski,” the party said in a statement on social media.
“The Independence Party has a party platform and policies that reflect the hope of Albertans as an Independent nation,” the statement went on. “Art Pawlowski has not reflected this vision in a way that properly aligns with what the party and our platform need to convey and communicate to Albertans.”
Pawlowski soon responded with an angry riposte on social media.
“For months the board was bombarding me and demanding that I stop talking about God, moral principles and true freedom and independence,” he complained. “I was told multiple times that I cannot talk about grooming of children, drag queen shows, abortion and corruption in our present government. I was told not to talk about Notley, Smith, Trudeau, jabs/jab injuries or anything negative.” Readers will get the picture.
Notwithstanding that the death of Judas Iscariot is recorded in the Gospels as self-inflicted, I expect Pastor Pawlowski’s closing reference to that scripture will be taken by many readers as a threat.
The fact that the man to whom Premier Smith granted a long telephone call and with whom she was strategizing about how to deal with the charges he faces is too radical for a radical separatist party surely says something about the state of right-wing politics in Alberta today.
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