Calgary pastor Artur Pawlowski guilty in Coutts border protest

Calgary pastor Artur Pawlowski has been found guilty in relation to the Coutts border protest.

The judge laid down a conviction for mischief for his role in protests against COVID-19 public health measures.

Justice Gordon Krinke has also found Pawlowski guilty of breaching a release order following a trial in a Lethbridge courtroom.

The protests blocked Alberta’s main border crossing into the U.S. for about two weeks in early 2022.

Crown prosecutors said Pawlowski’s impassioned speech to the truckers in Coutts fanned the flames of unrest and convinced them to stay at the border crossing for another two weeks.

United Conservative Party leader Danielle Smith has faced controversy surrounding her relationship to the case after a phone call between her and Pawlowski was made public.

In the leaked video, Smith is heard saying that she had spoken to prosecutors “almost weekly” about the COVID-19 charges the pastor was facing.

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• Alberta premier offers new version of Pawlowski conversation; NDP renews call for investigation

The leader said publicly that the conversation shouldn’t come as a “shock,” saying she spent lots of time before and after her leadership “talking to hundreds of Albertans about COVID-related public-health orders.”

Even before the official start of the election, the conversation became an election issue.

However, Smith has said she would not discuss the issue further as it is being reviewed by the province’s ethics commissioner.

The Alberta NDP has been calling on Justice Minister Tyler Shandro to condemn the call made, while continuing to press for an independent investigation into the matter.

“Pawlowski put the lives of police officers in danger, and then Danielle Smith tried to derail the Crown’s prosecution of his crimes,” NDP justice critic Irfan Sabir said in a response to the news Tuesday.

Separately, several people were also charged after RCMP found a cache of guns, body armour and ammunition in three trailers during the blockade, with four men facing counts of conspiracy to commit murder.

The UCP leader was door knocking for her campaign today and had no media availabilities where she’d be asked about the court case.

-With files from Alejandro Melgar and Courtney Theriault