(LifeSiteNews) – The pro-freedom group Action4Canada has launched a petition asking that Alberta government officials drop an upcoming sentencing hearing against Calgary pastor Artur Pawlowski, who in May was found guilty of mischief and breaching a release order after he gave a sermon to truckers in 2022.
Titled “Withdraw Crown’s Incarceration Sentencing of Pastor Artur Pawlowski,” the petition asks that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, provincial Minister of Justice Mickey Amery, and Crown Prosecutor Steven Johnston stop its sentencing hearing against the pastor. The petition has nearly 6,000 signatures at the time of writing.
Pawlowski will hear his sentencing verdict on August 9 at 11 a.m. local time at the Court of King’s Bench, in Lethbridge, Alberta. According to Pawlowski, he faces up to 10 years of jail time total if found guilty.
In a recent interview with Action4Canada founder Tanya Gaw, Pawlowski told her, “That’s a scary thing because now we’ve lost any ability for anyone to be able to fight and defend themselves.”
“What is scary about this judgment is that if I go down, if they can get away with this, if they can muzzle and charge with such a ridiculous charge inciting mischief, a clergy, you’re next,” he said.
“Because if I go down, Canada will cease to have freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and freedom of association.”
In his interview with Gaw, Pawlowski made several allegations against Smith and her government. However, he did not provide any evidence to back up his rather large claims.
In May, a judge found Pawlowski guilty of two charges linked to a sermon he gave during a Freedom Convoy-related border protest blockade in In February 2022 in Coutts, Alberta.
“I am satisfied Mr. Pawlowski intended to incite the audience to continue the blockade intended to incite protesters to commit mischief,” Court of King’s Bench of Alberta Justice Gordon Krinke ruled.
Krinke found Pawlowski guilty of mischief and breaching a release order.
Pawlowski is the first Albertan to be charged for violating Alberta’s Critical Infrastructure Defence Act (CIDA), which was put in place in 2020 under then-premier Jason Kenney.
Pawlowski’s conviction stems from a sermon he gave in Coutts on February 3, 2022, to a group of truckers and protesters blocking entrance into the U.S. state of Montana.
He told the large crowd of protesters who had gathered in support of the trucker strike to peacefully “hold the line.”
Days later, on February 8, Pawlowski was arrested – for the fifth time – by an undercover SWAT team just before he was slated to speak again to the Coutts protesters.
He was subsequently jailed for nearly three months, which he has said was for speaking out against COVID mandates, the subject of all the Freedom Convoy-related protests.
The CIDA, however, was not put in place due to COVID mandates but rather after anti-pipeline protesters blockaded key infrastructure points such as railway lines in Alberta a few years ago.
He faces severe penalties for each charge, which will come about when sentencing is announced, but this will not occur until after the CIDA constitutionality case has been decided.
Pawlowski and his brother Dawid made international headlines after they were arrested in a highway takedown in May 2021 for holding worship services contrary to Alberta’s COVID rules affecting church service capacity limits.
Both spent a total of three nights in solitary confinement.
Pawlowski’s credibility from some supporters in question after his failed 2023 election run
During the past year, Pawlowski entered the Alberta political fray by becoming a leader of a small party.
He was fired as leader of the Independence Party of Alberta earlier in the year before the 2023 election campaign, which he said was due to the party’s corrupted board not liking his speaking the “truth.”
He then ran as a candidate in the 2023 Alberta provincial election under his newly created Solidarity Party and quickly became a thorn in the side of Smith, whose UCP won the election with a majority but paid a price by losing many seats. The Solidarity Party managed to get only a few hundred votes.
Last year, shortly after Smith became premier by winning the leadership of the UCP, she agreed to speak with Pawlowski about his ordeal. The private conversation was leaked to the media, which quickly accused Smith of interfering in Alberta’s justice system. Smith denied the claims and was later absolved of them by an independent review.
She then came under fire by the CBC regarding her conversation, who claimed it had inside information that she did try and interfere in the justice system. However, just last week, CBC retracted its story regarding Smith.
Smith rebuked the claims that she was trying to use her position of premier to help Pawlowski get off.
Pawlowski later blasted Smith as a traitor for not getting him a pardon and said she was just like Kenney, her predecessor whom he regularly attacked.
During the election campaign in May, Pawlowski went off the rails in a hastily formed press conference that he interestingly asked mainstream media to attend despite him having called them liars, and, with no evidence, accused Smith and her government through a third party of bribery in trying to get him to not speak of their conversation.
He then called Smith a “bloody murderer” and a “communist.”
This last attempt at gaining attention was seen by many of Pawlowski’s supporters as going too far, and many of them swore him off as a result and blamed him for trying to split the vote in Alberta to help get the NDP re-elected.
“I’ve got an (obvious) soft spot for insurgent, small conservative parties, but they should be dedicated to providing a rational, principled alternative to the mainstream conservative parties when such a break is necessary,” commented Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard in an opinion piece regarding Pawlowski’s disastrous press conference.
“But Pawlowski’s party seems quite explicitly to be dedicated to getting personal revenge against Danielle Smith for not violating the law herself in getting him off the hook.”
Fildebrandt noted that Smith did “Pawlowski the undeserved courtesy of a personal phone call to hear him out, and explain the situation to him,” but instead he “directed his anger not at those responsible, but at the woman who tried to help him, however much she probably does not like him personally.”
“He surreptitiously recorded the phone call, (which) leaked its way to the press. Premier Smith has since paid a political price for trying to help him,” he noted.
Commented one former supporter of Pawlowski about Fildebrandt’s column, “I found Arthur’s role in the early stages of the Plandemic important. Standing against the state and its AHS henchmen needed to be done, and needed to be seen. Bravo to him for that.”
“However, over the last year or so his motives and actions are questionable. A victim of his own recent popularity perhaps. In any case, the person I saw as one of integrity early in the Plandemic has since acted in ways to discredit himself and his cause.”
Smith never denied that she spoke with Pawlowski or others jailed under draconian COVID rules.
However, in January, Smith said she had asked her senior justice minister to reflect if it is in the “public interest” to uphold charges against people who violated COVID-19 regulations.
Smith made headlines last October after promising to look at pardoning Christian pastors who were jailed for violating so-called COVID policies while Kenney was premier, and for those who did not get the COVID shots.
“I can apologize right now. I am deeply sorry for anyone who was inappropriately subjected to discrimination as a result of their vaccine status,” Smith said.
Smith was not premier when Pawlowski was charged, and Smith won the leadership of the United Conservative Party (UCP) on a platform that was against COVID mandates after Kenney stepped down due to poor approval ratings.
In December, COVID-related charges levied against Pawlowski in 2020 for feeding the homeless and attending a pro-freedom rally were stayed by Crown prosecutors.