Danielle Smith refuses to talk about phone call with radical street preacher
How did Artur Pawlowski get an 11-minute phone call with the Premier of Alberta?
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tl;dr
If you don’t have time to read today’s column right away, here are some of my main points:
Premier Danielle Smith is using a threat to sue the CBC over a news story from January as a reason to not answer questions about her phone call with radical street preacher Artur Pawlowski about charges he faced for violating COVID-19 rules at the Coutts blockade.
If there is one way to keep a news story alive, it’s by refusing to answer questions about it. Reporters will just keep asking.
Smith denies it but it’s hard to listen to the phone call recording and not believe she was trying to give the impression she had influence over the judicial system.
Smith has been trying to turn the page away from her more controversial positions, but this could remind Albertans about her close connections to groups who opposed COVID-19 public health measures.
Smith must have believed Pawlowski was important enough to share her time with, otherwise the Premier would have presumably had better ways to spend her time.
Today’s column
Danielle Smith refuses to talk about phone call with radical street preacher
How does a radical street preacher under house arrest and facing criminal charges get an 11-minute phone call with the Premier of Alberta?
That’s a question Premier Danielle Smith will not be answering anytime soon, or at least until she gets an apology from the CBC about a news story from Jan. 19, 2023. That CBC story alleged that someone in the Premier’s Office contacted Crown Prosecutors to influence criminal cases related to the anti-COVID-19 measures protests and blockade at the Coutts border crossing.
Smith is using her threat to sue the CBC over that story as a reason to not answer questions about the recording released last week featuring audio of her January phone call with radical street preacher and then-separatist party leader Artur Pawlowski.
In the 11-minute phone call we heard Smith tell Pawlowski that she would look into the charges laid against him related to the Coutts border blockade.
A statement from the Premier’s Office defended Smith and downplayed the call, repeating the familiar claim that she had just used “imprecise language.”
Anyone who knows anything about media relations knows if there is one way to keep a news story like this alive, it’s by refusing to answer questions about it.
Reporters will keep asking about Smith’s phone call with Pawlowski, and so will NDP leader Rachel Notley, who called for a judicial review into Smith’s alleged interference. It will almost certainly be an issue her opponents bring up on the campaign trail.
There are some troubling more technical aspects of this scandal and there are some obvious political implications coming out of this for Smith and her United Conservative Party.
The impression of interference in the justice system
Smith’s office denies it but it's hard to listen to the audio of the phone call and not believe she was, at the very least, trying to give the impression she had the ability to influence the judicial system. Not only did Smith say she was looking into Pawlowski’s case, but she also said she had spoken with justice department officials “weekly” about the prosecutions.
"Once the process is underway I can ask our prosecutors is there a reasonable likelihood of conviction and is it in the public interest, and I can assure I have asked them that almost weekly ever since I got started here,” Smith said in the video recording.
If good government is an issue for voters when they go to the polls on May 29, this might not play well for the UCP.
The difference between Canadian premiers and American governors
The ability to pardon people who were charged with breaking COVID-19 rules was a claim heard during the 2022 UCP leadership race and something Smith said she was seeking legal advice about after she became Premier.
Smith admitted on the phone call that she did not know until she became Premier that Canadian premiers didn’t have the same amnesty powers that governors of American states do.
It would be easy for someone new to politics to make this mistake but Smith is not new to politics. She has been a political commentator for decades, she was leader of the Official Opposition from 2012 to 2014 and an MLA from 2012 to 2015.
It’s very odd that she didn’t know this.
Reminding Albertans about Smith’s connections to COVID-19 protest groups
During the UCP leadership race, Smith was laser focused on two issues that resonated deeply with her supporters: opposition to Justin Trudeau and COVID-19 mitigation measures.
Smith infamously claimed early in her premiership that people who refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19 were some of the most persecuted people in her lifetime. She promised to amend the Human Rights Act to add them as a protected group but that fell off the pre-election legislative agenda.
Despite a bumpy start in the Premier’s Office, Smith has spent the past few months successfully turning the page on some of those more controversial issues. But her phone call with Pawlowski (and her very public refusal to answer questions about it) could remind Albertans about her close connections to groups and activists who protested COVID-19 public health measures, including the politically powerful Take Back Alberta.
Radical street pastor got 11-minute phone call with the Premier
Back to my big unanswered question: How does a radical street preacher under house arrest and facing criminal charges get an 11-minute phone call with the Premier of Alberta?
Smith and her advisors obviously believed Pawlowski was an important enough political figure to share her time with, otherwise the Premier would have presumably had better things to do with her time.
Pawlowski is a well-known social conservative figure in Calgary, an important battleground in the next election. He claimed that the 2013 floods in southern Alberta were caused, in part, by God’s unhappiness over homosexuality, among other controversial statements. And he was also leader of the separatist Independence Party of Alberta at the time of his phone call with Smith (he was removed from that role the day before this story broke but his supporters took back control of the IPA board last weekend).
CBC reported that the apparent arranger of the phone call was Dr. Dennis Modry, a prominent critic of COVID-19 measures and now-former head of the separatist Alberta Prosperity Project.
So if you’re the executive director of a non-profit or community group making a positive impact in your community and are having a hard time getting even a 1 minute phone call with the Premier, you should ask yourself what you’re doing wrong.
You could ask Premier Smith, but she’s not answering questions about that right now.
One more thing…
Alberta MLAs vote to jail Edmonton Journal reporter
This isn't the first time a premier has threatened to sue someone in media.
But one of the more extreme examples of Alberta politicians taking action against a journalist happened in March 1938, when MLAs voted to throw an Edmonton Journal reporter in jail over "scandalous misrepresentation."
The "scandalous misrepresentation" was a report by Journal reporter Don. C. Brown that claimed Medicine Hat MLA John Robinson, a chiropractor and member of the governing Social Credit Party, had opposed including chiropractors in the provisions for treatment under the Workmen's Compensation Act.
Robinson felt so strongly that his position had been misrepresented that he pushed the Committee on Elections and Privileges to find Brown guilty of writing two paragraphs declared to be "scandalous misrepresentation."
This may seem like an overreaction, which it absolutely was, but relations between the Social Credit government and the media were at an all-time low after the failure of the Accurate News and Information Act in 1937.
The committee brought its report to the Legislature and, after a heated debate, a majority of MLAs voted to find Brown guilty. Speaker Peter Dawson was directed by the MLAs to issue a warrant for the Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest Brown and deliver him to the Lethbridge jail where he would remain "during the pleasure of this assembly."
Thankfully for Brown, the Speaker didn’t have time to issue the warrant of arrest before MLAs changed their minds and voted for another motion the next day releasing him from custody.
As far as I am aware, this remains the only time the Alberta Legislature has voted to arrest someone. Alberta politics in the 1930s was a wild time.
Everyone can see and hear the same thing and individually come to a different conclusion . After listening to the entire phone conversation, with Dr. Muldrey in on the conversation as well . I came to a different conclusion than you .