Braid: Premier’s videotaped call to discuss pastor’s COVID charges crossed the line
Pawlowski #Pawlowski
It no longer matters so much whether Premier Danielle Smith directly tried to influence Crown prosecutors over COVID protest charges.
Her video call with pastor Artur Pawlowski, released Wednesday by the CBC and the NDP, steps over so many other boundaries that the initial uproar seems almost quaint.
What on earth is the premier of Alberta doing engaging in a long conversation with a man facing serious charges, during which the accused pressures her to get his charges dropped?
We knew the conversation happened earlier this year. Smith has acknowledged as much. But it’s one thing to be aware that they spoke, and quite another to hear what they said.
It makes for a breathtaking 11 minutes. Pawlowski even hints at annoyance with the premier for not getting him off the hook for his activities at the Coutts border crossing.
One issue is Smith’s extreme favouritism toward people who were facing charges brought by her own prosecution service. Others accused all over the province would be thrilled by such consideration from their premier.
Smith said she’s “frustrated” because she can’t drop charges. As a leadership candidate she promised amnesty. But, gosh darn, when she became premier she found out that’s an American thing, not Canadian.
“I thought we had the same powers of amnesty they had in the U.S. I’m not a lawyer by training,” Smith said.
You don’t have to be a lawyer to understand this. Nearly everybody in political life knows it. When did a premier ever pardon anybody?
This promise was either utter cluelessness or a cynical leadership promise she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep. Neither option is attractive.
On the whole issue of COVID-era charges, Smith said it was a “political decision” to lay them in the first place.
And so “it should be a political decision to end it . . . that’s what I’m finding very frustrating about the whole thing.”
Smith is a new premier but she leads the same UCP government under which all those charges were laid. They stemmed from official pandemic rules that were endorsed by several of her cabinet ministers and most of her caucus.
Now she accuses her own government of breaking prosecution independence for political reasons, and then suggests doing it herself in retribution.
Who is she campaigning against — the NDP or the UCP?
At one point in the talk, Pawlowski accuses a prosecutor by name — and even the justice minister — of trying to hurt his case by piling on last-minute filings.
“Obviously, Minister of Justice Tyler Shandro is playing a game here, trying to cause us more harm and more grief, and (the prosecutor) is just following his directive,” the pastor says.
Astonishingly, Smith did not directly contradict him.
“Let me check on that because I don’t think it would be from the minister. I think the issue is, once the ball is rolling, these Crown prosecutors seem to be very independent.
“I doubt very much this is being driven by the minister. But I have also raised this with the deputy minister and let him know my dissatisfaction with the tactic. So leave this with me and I will make that request one more time.”
The premier worked very hard not to offend Pawlowski, who said he was under “house arrest” and facing more than 10 years of prison time.
The premier’s office pre-emptively put out a statement before the recording emerged, noting that Smith has said she talked to the pastor and spoke to justice officials, but never to individual prosecutors. A search of government emails found no evidence of such direct communication.
But she sure had communication with the pastor. This was a stunningly inappropriate call for a premier to get involved in.
But maybe it’s also a precedent.
At any given moment, hundreds of Albertans are under prosecution. I guarantee you that a great number are absolutely convinced it isn’t fair.
They should all be allowed to call the premier and get her promise to “check on that.”
Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald
Twitter: @DonBraid