Ezra Levante’s show defends hosting banned environmentalist Dr. Patrick Moore’s speech in Regina, where 1,500 attendees—despite COVID-19 restrictions—sold out tickets (8,500) without refunds, making it Saskatchewan’s largest post-pandemic event. Guest Sheila Gunn-Reed contrasts this with Alberta’s punitive lockdowns, citing Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky’s 24-day prison sentence for defying court orders, including one barring church gatherings, while his church had no COVID outbreaks unlike Alberta’s jail. Gunn-Reed frames the crackdown as modern "martial law," comparing it to historical persecutions, and urges support for Pavlovsky’s legal fees via savearcher.com, echoing his defiant stance: "Be not afraid." The episode underscores a clash between free speech and government overreach amid pandemic-era restrictions. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, 1,500 people gather in Regina, Saskatchewan to hear a banned speech.
Well, we're unbanning it.
It's September 14th, and this is the Ezra Levance Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you don't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Hello, my friends.
Behind me is the Connexus Arts Center.
They're doing a little bit of renovations or construction or landscaping, something.
I'm not quite sure.
I don't know if you can make it out, but there's an orange construction fence around the building.
When I first came here this afternoon, I thought, is the place being locked down?
Is that a barrier to stop people from coming in?
And I was only half joking because I should tell you, about two years ago, Dr. Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace, was invited by the city of Regina itself, by the government, to take part in a conference.
The conference was on renewables or green this or that.
I'm not sure exactly what, but Dr. Moore was a great guest.
He was, of course, the co-founder of Greenpeace and has been a thoughtful environmentalist ever since.
In fact, he parted ways with Greenpeace after several years when he found they were becoming too political and too strident and not scientific enough.
The Greenpeacers don't like him, but I think common sense environmentalists do.
Anyways, they invited Dr. Moore as part of literally more than a dozen speakers, but the cancel culture mob got whipped up.
And I have to tell you, Regina and Saskatchewan, and frankly, most Canadians are not really into cancel culture other than, you know, the wokest universities.
Like, it's just not, I think, an endemic problem in Regina.
But it was whipped up by the so-called intellectuals.
In fact, I have to say, the media itself were the worst.
And after a few days of a confected campaign, the city, very poor manners, rescinded their invitation to Dr. Moore to speak.
That's like inviting someone to your house for a Christmas party.
He accepts, and then someone else says, I'm not coming if he's coming.
And so you cancel the first guy.
Bad manners.
Not very neighborly, very un-Saskatchewan.
Well, I called up Dr. Moore almost immediately.
I said, don't you cancel that plane ticket.
We will re-platform you.
They de-platformed you.
We will re-platform you.
Same night.
Let them have their tiny teeny conference with, I don't know, 250 people.
Let's get the biggest venue in town.
And as you can see behind me, the Connexus Art Center, their main theater holds about 2,200 people.
We put it up for sale.
It started selling like hotcakes.
It was amazing.
It shamed the city and the cancelers.
And it proved that Saskatchewan does not believe in silencing people.
That's why I joked that when I came here and I saw that fence, I thought it was to the city's vengeance.
Alas, what the deplatformers couldn't stop, COVID did for more than a year.
In fact, we took the Saskatchewan government to court for banning gatherings.
They had such a strict and unmalleable rule.
We took them to court, but before we could get to trial, they lifted the lockdown.
And so here we are, about a year and a half after we first planned on having it.
People are already trickling in, even though it doesn't start for an hour.
Of the, I can't remember the total number of people who bought tickets until it was postponed, but it's amazing to me that we still have 1,500 people who have kept their ticket.
They didn't ask for a refund.
They were patiently waiting.
And I think it's actually going to be the largest gathering in Saskatchewan, with the possible exception of professional sports since the pandemic begins.
Certainly the largest political event.
And I'm very proud that it's Rebel who's sponsoring it.
I had lunch with Dr. Moore today.
He's in fine fettle.
And we'll have some excerpts for you in tomorrow's show from the event tonight.
I've had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Moore speak several times.
And I always learn something.
And I always gain a deeper respect for the man.
So we'll have more from tonight's event.
Just wanted to explain what I'm doing in lovely Regina.
The weather is so beautiful.
It's a nice fall day.
I'm going to take a short break, and then I'm going to come back with Sheila Gunreed, who's in town along with other rebels.
You know, who's here?
I tell you, we've got Mocha Bazirgan in town.
We've got Alexa Lavoie, who came in from Quebec.
She wanted to hang out in Western Canada.
So we got lots of rebels here tonight, and there's lots of fun merch, too.
So we're going to have more rebel events.
In fact, we've got one coming up in Calgary in a couple of weeks that I'll let you know the details about soon.
But I'll take a break now and we'll come back with Sheila Gunn-Reed.
Well, Adam, joining us now here in the Queen City of Regina with a bit of a beaver dam or lake or some, there's some water critters behind us, is my friend Sheila Gunn-Reed, our chief reporter.
who trekked in from the Edmonton area to be here tonight for our great big event with Dr. Patrick Moore.
Great to be here.
Thanks very much for coming.
I wouldn't miss it for the world.
I'm so happy to just return to normal.
Well, yeah, this is the first time I've been to an event of this size in Canada since the pandemic.
The last event of any size I was at was actually the church, the Grace Life Church in Edmonton, and they were cracked down on by cops.
Yeah, I mean, it's been a strange but refreshing experience to be in Saskatchewan because, as you know, Alberta has had suddenly lost its mind and gone back to masks.
Nobody's wearing masks here, not anybody, not in a store, not in a restaurant.
Everybody is perfectly normal.
It's like COVID didn't happen here.
Yeah, I'm very excited.
Judge Rules on Pastor Contempt00:08:42
I mean, we're here a couple hours early, but people are already coming.
That's the rebel way.
People have driven in from far away.
Some people even coming in from other provinces.
I think at first people were coming to spite the cancelers, the deplatformers.
And now I think people are coming, as you say, as a return to normalcy to live our life like we did in the before times.
But I want to ask you about something you did on your way over here in the car.
You were listening.
And it's interesting, one of the things that COVID has done is it's allowed us access electronically to courts, for example, that wouldn't have been the way before the lockdown.
So you were listening to the hearing today of the government of Alberta under the ministry of Tyler Chandrow, the health minister, asking a judge to put Arthur Pavlovsky and his brother David back in prison.
Give us a summary of what happened.
Sure.
Yeah, today was the second day of the submissions for penalties for Pastor Art and his brother David because they have been found guilty of contempt of not one, but two court orders.
And for people who may not have been following along as closely as everybody else, the first court order gave the government the ability to basically search and inspect his church during services, literally all day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., whenever they felt like for COVID compliance.
Pastor Art said, no way, get out.
And so they found him in contempt of that judge's court order.
And the second court order that he was found in contempt of, and that's the one where we see the SWAT style takedown on a Calgary busy city street, that was a court order that Alberta Health Services got in secret, ex parte, as they say.
They went without notifying Pastor Art's lawyer, whom they know, Sarah Miller from JSS Barristers.
They went and got a court order that restrained illegal public gatherings.
And in Alberta at the time, that meant church services and protests against the lockdown.
It was absolutely insane.
Pastor Art spent three days in jail and that's not enough for this government.
Over the course of the last two days, I listened to lawyers for Alberta Health Services make the case for imprisoning Pastor Art for 21 more days, so 24 in total.
His brother David for 10 more days, so 13 days in total.
They also want him to pay court costs to the government, and they've inflated those at two and a half times their time.
And just out of curiosity, why would they, what's their excuse for just doubling plus the amount that they want him to pay?
Was there any reason just as a rub it in your face kind of thing?
Well, that was the thing.
Sarah Miller said, you can't ask for those sorts of things because we have not inconvenienced the court.
We haven't artificially delayed anything that's happening here.
It seems as though Alberta Health Services bureaucrats are slightly annoyed that Sarah examined them at least five times to make them show their work and explain themselves.
So that's what that's all about.
So they want $16,000 in court costs.
They are also looking at fines and they want 21 days of his life taken from him.
You know, I think I told you before that when I was a baby lawyer in Edmonton, one of the things we did as student lawyers was we sat through what was called docket court and we would just be the last ones to stand and speak.
So we would spend all day in court, which was in education.
And it was there that I saw, because I had never believed it possible had I not seen it, that someone who sexually assaulted a minor had a 30-day sentence.
And I'm thinking that Arthur Pavlovsky, a pastor, for having his church open for just over an hour in defiance of an order, is going to be put in jail for three plus 21.
That's 24 days, and the three was before he was even charged or convicted.
So you get credit for it.
So that's basically the exact same amount of time as this convicted rapist that I saw my first day attending criminal court as a student at law.
It's just atrocious to me.
Now, I saw following your Twitter feed, and I'd like to encourage everyone to go through that if they're interested.
You said that the judge, Justice Adam Germain, who used to be a liberal MLA, if I recall, he said something about how Arthur is so rich that money's no deterrent to him, implying that he has to go to prison, can't just pay a fine.
Now, I've met Arthur Pavlovsky.
He's not rich.
I wouldn't say he's destitute, but he's definitely low income.
He spends his time and effort feeding the hungry.
Can you explain this comment by Justice Germaine, at least as you heard it?
Sure.
So it actually stems from an argument that the lawyer for Alberta Health Services was making to justify imprisoning Pastor Art.
Because Sarah Miller says there are a whole host of things that we should be looking at before we get to jail.
Jail should really be the last resort here.
And the lawyer for Alberta Health Services said something akin to, well, he's got the ability to pay a fine.
And so that's not going to work here, implying that Pastor Art has supporters who would help him out if the court issued a fine.
And then today, Justice Adam Germain, in discussing that concept with the lawyers, he said, you know, when we are examining the financial penalties that people have to pay, a billionaire would have to pay something a lot higher than an indigent man.
And he said, we're looking at something closer to a billionaire here.
So basically punishing Pastor Art because he has people out there who love him, believe in his cause, and support him.
The court would go easier on him if he were alone in this fight.
Instead, they're punishing him because the people of Alberta, but really the people around the world, can't believe what they're seeing and want to help.
Yeah, I just, that's incredible.
I look forward to seeing the transcript of the exact words and the exact context.
That almost strikes me as something that could lead to an appeal of the whole case.
For a judge to say you're closer to a billionaire than to a poor man, that is simply factually not true.
Listen, I wasn't listening to the whole case like you are, but I highly doubt any evidence to that effect was brought before the court.
I think that that shows the heart and the mind of this judge.
I think that they're going to throw him in jail again, and I do not want that to happen.
Sarah Miller, as you have observed with your own eyes, is doing an excellent job.
I think she has done as well as could be done.
Sure.
Like she's doing everything that can be done.
And she has had, at different points in this journey, up to three other lawyers helping her.
And there's an implication there that the crowdfunding is going to Arthur Pavlovsky.
And let me just clarify, and you know this, but I want to say this to our viewers.
No people who ask for our help at fightthefines.com get any money.
It's called fight the fines, not pay the fines.
We pay lawyers.
We don't give any, we have not given one penny to Arthur Pavlovsky.
What we have done is made sure he's got the best lawyer that we could find, and I think we found a good one.
And what this judge is saying, if I'm interpreting it correctly, is that he should have had a crappy lawyer, a legal aid lawyer, maybe a student like I was 20 years ago.
He should have had a crappy lawyer, and then I wouldn't throw him in jail.
But because he has an excellent lawyer, I'm going to put him in jail.
That's really what I'm hearing.
Arthur Pavlovsky is not a billionaire.
He is not a millionaire.
I'd be surprised if he's 100,000 there.
And for the judge to say that, I find deeply disturbing.
Anyways, we'll have to follow this thing.
Give us an update of when the judge will rule.
Do we have the information on that yet?
I believe it's October 13th is when we'll get our decision.
Later on this week, we have the same judge, Adam Germain, hearing the Chris Scott whistle-stop contempt hearing.
I hear he's a trillionaire.
He's a gabillionaire.
And so he's reserving his decision on the sanctions for everybody until he hears that and it all comes out on the same day.
But I mean, the implication for Chris Scott is that he will probably be facing much of the same prejudice from Alberta Health Services lawyers.
The flip side of this is that prison is only for poor people.
You know, that we have paupers prisons in Canada, and where's the left on that issue?
Redone Martyrdom00:08:21
It's a great point.
And you know, I saw following your Twitter comments that there is an outbreak of COVID-19 in the jail.
Yeah, seven cases.
Seven cases.
So that's the definition of an outbreak in an institution.
So there was never a single case that we know of, let an outbreak, let alone an outbreak, in Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky's church.
But the government, in the quote, name of health, is going to take him and take him to a place where there's an outbreak.
And I'm told that the response from the Alberta government lawyers is, well, get vaccinated then if you don't like it.
Yeah, that's the same thing they did, though, to the pastor at Grace Life Church when they imprisoned him for 35 days.
They took a healthy man out of a healthy church and a healthy family and stuck him into a facility where they have released upwards of 400 prisoners, medium and low-risk offenders.
And, you know, the pastor there completely nonviolent.
All he did was open his church.
They took him and stuffed him into a facility that had multiple outbreaks.
And yet, they're doing it all in the name of public health and protecting the public health where they could send him to get infected.
You know, I'm thinking of that Pastor James Coates from Grace Life, who you're referring to, and I've met him a few times.
He's got a great sense of humor.
always makes a little bit of fun of me when I see him.
I like it so much.
And he's very gentle in his style and his fellow pastor in Calgary, Tim Stevens, I think is his name, is cut from the similar cloth, very modest, humble.
They don't speak too loudly.
They're scholarly.
They're not firing brimstone.
They wouldn't say, ouch!
Gestapo, out!
They wouldn't do that like Arthur did.
You know, what's the New Testament?
Be gentle like doves.
And Pastor James Coat 30 plus days in prison.
So it's not that Arthur Pavlovsky is stubborn, though he is.
It's that the government has a deep hatred for those who would defy its official religion of lockdownism and the high priestess of lockdownism in Alberta, a chief health officer named Dina Hinshaw.
And if you dare to follow another pastor besides Priestess Hinshaw, you will be put to prison whether you're loud or whether you're quiet.
Yeah, that issue came up in court today when they cited the case of Pastor Henry Hildebrandt in Aylmer, Ontario, and I believe it's Trinity Bible Chapel in Waterloo, where they received enormous fines, but they could not get those men to close their churches.
And that was one of the reasons Alberta Health Services said, well, this is why prison is necessary.
Look at these men of God.
We couldn't get them to bow before the golden calf of government.
Maybe jail will do it here.
You know, it really is like sometimes you see a Shakespeare play redone in a modern setting, in a different setting, and you say, okay, I get it, but I prefer the old setting.
This is like the tale of the early Christians and Rome.
It's just redone in a modern setting.
They had trials back then.
You know, would you want him let go of Barabbas?
They had trials.
They had juries.
They had laws.
The Romans were very good about laws.
They had prosecutors.
I think that's a Latin word.
It's just like seeing an old Shakespeare, you know, Romeo and Juliet redone in like a biker bar.
It's like watching the tale of the early Christians and their persecution redone in a postmodern, rotting, luxurious, capitalist, once liberal democracy that's under a form of martial law and no one's woken up to it yet.
It's got that kind of a historical echo to it.
It's very troubling.
Well, listen, Sheila, I'm really glad you're on the case.
We are doing everything that is possible to do to help him.
I truly believe that Sarah Miller, I've met her, spoken to her many times, emailed with her almost daily sometimes.
And just to point out the caliber of lawyer Sarah Miller is, she's already gotten four of Archer's tickets thrown out of court, the tickets he received for feeding the homeless.
So she's been his lawyer all along.
She works like a lion for him.
And she mentioned in court, maybe this is the government's way of getting him for that because you couldn't get him for that, so you're going to get him here.
I want to say one last thing, and we've gone on quite some time, but I'm familiar with Arthur for a while.
I remember even doing a story about him back at Sun News Network almost 10 years ago.
I've met him in Calgary.
I've met him in Ontario.
He's an interesting character.
He's not to everyone's taste.
He's a turbulent priest, as they would say.
But he once said to me that he was taken to court by the Calgary police or by law officers 100 times.
Now, I thought that's hyperbole.
That's exaggeration.
He probably means 10 times, and it just felt like 100.
No, the court OF Appeal and other courts.
He has been to court 100 times.
They have a hatred for him that is biblical in its relentlessness, and I am absolutely sure that their lust to imprison him for 21 days comes from 10 years of persecution.
And you know what they met, the wrong poll.
He comes from Poland, and Poland resisted the Nazis.
Poland resisted the communists.
If you go back to 1683, it was the Poles who smashed the siege of Vienna.
And the Poles are a stiff-necked people.
They're stubborn.
And if Tyler Chandrow and the government of Alberta and this liberal justice, Adam Germain, think they're going to break this poll.
And I mention poll because they have centuries of resistance and martyrdom.
And you might say martyrdom, that's a bit much.
Is it now?
Is it now?
And I say again, it's like those Shakespeare redos, you know, in a modern setting.
This is what it was like 2,000 years ago.
Last word to you, Sheila.
Well, I heard Pastor Art say today that they are not going to break him.
In his statement to the court, which he hasn't really spoken to the court before, this was his chance to make his case.
He said, I will not apologize for opening my church, feeding the helpless and the homeless.
And then he said, you know, so help me, God.
And he said that he would serve time in jail with Jason Kenney, who should be prosecuted for breaking his own rules up there in the Sky Palace.
And if people want to support Pastor Art and his ballooning legal fees, they can go to savearcher.com.
That's A-R-T-U-R, the Polish spelling.com.
And you can see my live tweets there in case we missed something here because there's a lot happening there.
But you can also see Pastor Art's statement to the court because he sent us a copy of that to publish after he got out of court because it's so moving and so compelling and it lays out the case from the Bible to his time in Poland to his time in Alberta, why he's doing exactly what he's doing.
I'm reminded of the Polish Pope Karol Waitilla, also known as Pope John Paul II.
St. John Paul II when he landed in Warsaw to conduct a mass of over a million Poles under Soviet domination.
And he had three words.
I don't know them in Polish, but I know them in English.
And it was, be not afraid.
And you're supposed to be afraid.
We live in the age of fear.
You're supposed to be afraid of a virus.
You're supposed to be afraid of your neighbor.
You're supposed to be afraid of your own family.
You're afraid of your own children.
Afraid of teachers, afraid of students, students, afraid of teachers, customers of shopkeepers, shopkeepers, other customers.
Everyone's supposed to be afraid.
And we're all supposed to be afraid of the government.
And you have found a man who is not afraid.
And we'll see what breaks first.
We'll see what breaks first.
That's our show for today from the banks of the Creek.
I think that's what this is.
I think this is Watson Creek here in Regina, the capital city of Saskatchewan, where we are on location, because we've got a great event with Dr. Patrick Moore.
Be Not Afraid00:00:09
For the 1,500 people who have registered for tonight, it's great to have you out here.
And we hope to have more events again to you at home.