Ezra Levant and Pastor Artur Pawlowski expose Canada’s alleged descent into tyranny, comparing his Easter weekend arrest—a SWAT-style takedown with tasers—to Nazi/Soviet persecution, despite never seeing the ex parte court order. Pawlowski, distributing $1M+ in food to Native reserves, faces a travel ban and public self-denunciations from Judge Adam Germain, later suspended by an appeals court. Both highlight media bias, institutional silence, and hypocritical enforcement, like churches targeted while Walmart and marijuana stores remain open. Pawlowski’s defiance, backed by Rebel News and lawyer Sarah Miller, frames his fight as a stand against ideological control, urging supporters to resist at saveartur.com. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, the newsmaker of the year, Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky.
It's December 29th and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the 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 is government.
But why?
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
Immediately, Gestapo is not allowed.
had to send an officer to a church this easter weekend where the leader of the gathering reportedly shouted at the health inspector yes we're being destroyed People are being destroyed and they are seeking help.
They're coming to a place where they think that there is some answers.
This is not event.
This is not a cure for shutting it down and arresting people for simply being humans and trying to do harm.
The doors are open.
Anyone welcome is welcome to come in.
And our government right now is with Satan.
Our government has given the soul to the demons to save.
Amen.
For a ball of soup, for comfort.
I don't know what they're...
I can say okay, take them, or I can resist.
I've chosen to resist.
I've received confirmation that Pastor Archer Polovsky was pulled over on his way home and arrested.
A pastor in Alberta for the second time has been arrested simply for preaching.
No, I do not, you stile!
No, don't taser me, kill me!
That's unacceptable.
That's unacceptable any standards.
And I always say to people, you don't have to like me.
Just look what is going on.
They dragged me, they put me like a piece of meat behind a police vehicle.
And I don't think they've done it legally.
I think this was unlawful arrest.
We had never a chance to examine the court order.
Look what's going on.
Open your eyes.
Open your ears and see what's really going on here.
Someone set our property on fire.
Someone wants us dead.
And I'm thinking, my God, how evil you have to become.
After returning from a long speaking engagement, authorities closed in and took him into custody before he could even say hello to his family.
We have footage of that troubling arrest here for you now.
Shut up.
Shut up.
How wicked in your heart that you would send someone to rot in jail for the rest of my life on this side of eternity for feeding the poor and for opening a church.
That's not just a job, that's a lifestyle.
As a pastor, as a shepherd, I have to be with my people.
I have to be with the people that are coming, the people that are trusting me, the people that have been depressed, suicidal, and now their hope is being restored and they need a leader.
They need their shepherds to be with them.
That's where I belong.
Every pastor belongs with his people.
There you have it, part of a documentary video prepared by our rebel news journalists about Arthur Pavlovsky.
Pastor's Duty00:10:00
I'm going to call Arthur the newsmaker of the year, and he joins us now for a special in-depth interview.
Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky, pleasure to talk to you.
It has been not just a year, but I'd say a year and a half of such terrible and horrible, but also wonderful times in terms of human spirit resisting.
I never thought I would live through such an age.
How about you?
You're Polish.
Maybe you did think you would live through such an age.
You know, the reason we escaped Poland, the reason we decided to leave everything behind, and you gotta remember my parents lost everything.
When they made a decision that it's time to take their children, me and my brother David, to another country, they had to leave everything behind, the whole life, everything they worked for, for a hope, for a better tomorrow, for a notion that maybe one day we will be living in a country that has sanity.
We escaped communism to come to Greece.
And I will never forget that meeting I had in the embassy with my parents and my brother David when we were told, come to Canada, sell everything.
We used to have a very prosperous business in Greece.
Sell everything you have, come to Canada.
Canada is the freest nation on earth.
And I was told in Canada, no one will ever persecute you for your faith.
So here we are today.
I would never imagine I'll have to relive history.
And that's exactly what we're witnessing.
We are repeating, or they are repeating history in front of our very own eyes.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I mentioned that you're Polish by heritage.
People can probably tell from your name and your accent.
But I think that goes to your understanding of freedom and tyranny, including the restriction of religious freedom.
You mentioned the communists and before them the Nazis that occupied Poland.
But there were great Polish heroes, including, I would put Pope John Paul II in there, who deliberately went to Poland when it was under Soviet domination to resist the tyranny.
And he lit a flame that, of course, went on to free the whole, you know, Soviet bloc, the Warsaw Pact, as it was called.
So I think maybe the fact that you're from Poland and that if not you yourself, even your parents have a memory of that subjugation.
I think that my theory as an outsider is that probably influences your thinking on this.
Am I right?
Oh, 100%.
I mean, when you grew up in hell and communism and socialism is hell on earth, it's a godless society where the government, where the state is your new God that you are to worship at every corner, everywhere you go, either in universities, schools, media, or a political or court system.
Everywhere you go, you can see the God that you are commanded to worship.
So when you grow up in hell and you finally come out of hell, the last thing you want to see is the hell coming close to you or your children.
That's why I'm so much on fire against this new tyranny that I'm willing to lay down my life to fight this injustice.
If not for myself, I mean, we're getting older as Rabbi, you know, every day closer to the departure, I would say.
But I have three children and I'm looking at their eyes.
I'm looking at them.
What kind of a future, what kind of a nation am I willing to leave behind?
What is going to be Arthur Paulowski's legacy or Ezra's Levance of Today legacy?
What kind of a nation are we going to give it to the next generation?
Tyranny, communist, socialist, fascism, hybrid, or freedom.
Freedom for the people to be able to choose, to be humans, to have that ability.
Because you see, we're not dogs.
We're not white-tails in the bushes.
We're humans, and we should be left with that choice to pick, to choose our future ourselves, not the government or unelected officials like we're seeing right now.
You know, you and I had met before this pandemic crisis.
We had met several times, and I know that you had been harassed by police in Calgary for your on-the-street charity work.
They're not used to that, I guess.
They should be used to it.
You've been doing it for decades.
Let me say it again.
They don't like that.
They don't like the fact that you're on the streets of Calgary giving food.
And I think maybe the real reason they don't like you is the Christian aspect.
So I was aware of you, and we had met and spoken a few times, and back at Sun News Network also.
But I want to show you the video that really flipped the switch for me.
And this was, I think, in March or April of 2020.
The pandemic lockdown was very new.
I would say normally I would give the police the benefit of the doubt that they didn't know what the laws really meant, that they didn't know how to enforce them.
But all these cops know you because they've been harassing you literally for decades.
The pandemic lockdowns just gave them new tools.
So they ticketed you about a thousand bucks for feeding the homeless, calling it an illegal gathering.
That's bad enough, but when they physically pushed you around and said, stay away from me, and they pushed you and pushed you, they were so abusive.
I want to show you that videotape because this is the moment something changed for me.
Here's your video of the day where you got one of the first pandemic lockdown tickets in Canada.
Take a look.
This is not an event.
This is not your picnic in the neighborhood for the fun of it.
We are providing necessities of life to those that you and your bosses refuse to provide.
You've got all kinds of events happening right now.
And yet the Calvinist finest are not bothering them.
This is the hypocrisy of this city.
This is the hypocrisy of our wonderful, fearless leaders.
Where is Nahat Namshi?
The mayor of this city.
Can you guys hear how I respect themselves?
This is the last time.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Stand back.
Or why?
Step back and threaten.
Step f ⁇ ing abuse me.
Hey, guys.
Do not tell us.
Six feet away for everybody.
That's for everybody.
Pastor Arthur, I saw that, and I had this one moment where I thought it's not enough for us to tell the story journalistically.
We can't just be passive or voyeuristic.
We have to fix this.
It's not enough just to say, hey, guys, look what happened.
I was so mad when I saw that.
I thought the police were so abusive.
I remember when we reached out and we said, well, let's crowdfund a lawyer.
And that was, you were the very first case for our Fight the Fines project.
Now we have 2,100 cases.
But that moment was when I thought things are out of control and they're going to get bad.
Did you think in that moment that something was changing?
Or was that just another day in your life for you?
No, for sure.
I had that sense that we have entered a new era and that scared me, telling you the truth.
You know, people look at Arto Pulaski and they see me roaring left and right and attending rallies and giving speeches, but you know, I am no different than you and them.
I'm just one guy, a human being, a husband, a father of three children.
I want to live my life in peace.
I'm not looking for this craziness.
I'm not looking for a fight.
Actually, believe it or not, I am a man of peace.
I love to feed the poor, to save as many lives as possible, go home and watch a movie with my wife, eat dinner together.
Believe it or not, I spend most of my time in the office or at home.
We're not going out.
We are a very house-oriented people, family-oriented people.
But when they sent me, the city hall sent me a letter in March of 2020 telling me I have to stop feeding the poor because we are in the middle of the greatest pandemic of all times.
Something just didn't look right.
I mean, if we truly are in the middle of this crisis, as you say, I replied, then our services are needed more than ever.
If you're shutting down shelters, if you're kicking those people out, and now they're forced to live under the bridges in the bushes, then we are needed more than ever, soup kitchens.
So I said, it's just your narration of the story.
It's just, I'm not buying it.
So I appealed it to the Premier Jason Kenny.
I appealed it to the Minister of Justice and every other minister I could find.
And of course, they did not even care to reply to me.
Instead, you saw the police officers with health inspectors and the bylaw officers coming and brutally cracking on us.
For what?
There was more of the police than of the homeless people.
It was a very extremely cold day.
People were coming, grabbing the soup, a sandwich, and off they go.
There was no crowds.
There was no big lineups that day.
And that showed me, okay, behold, they have just found a new way to implement tyranny.
Invisible Enemy Threatens00:10:37
That's how they're going to do it.
They have brought an invisible enemy.
Because if the Chinese would attack us, if the Russians would attack us, you know who you're fighting with.
But how do you fight an invisible enemy that they say exists, but you cannot really prove it?
And if you have the proof, they will not allow you to bring that proof because the mainstream media propaganda machinery is completely shut off to anyone that dares to preach or speak the truth.
And I knew we have entered a very dangerous era, a repetition of history.
That's how they're going to try to implement slavery globally.
And that scared me.
And I decided that said, if I'm not going to rise up and fight all the way through, we're done.
I noticed from the very beginning, I mean, in the first few weeks, no one really knew what was going on, but they said two weeks to flatten the curve.
And two weeks went by and nothing was overwhelmed.
I remember in the United States, Donald Trump sailed two giant Navy hospital ships, one to Los Angeles, one to New York.
They were going to take all the overflow from the hospitals that were filling up.
They never even took a patient.
I remember in America, the Army Engineer Corps was turning convention centers into hospitals.
They were never used.
So after two weeks, I thought, oh, okay, we dodged that bullet, thank goodness.
But things didn't stop.
They only ratcheted up.
And I quickly noticed that, for example, Walmart didn't have to lock down.
Costco didn't have to lock down.
Liquor stores.
And I don't know about casinos, but liquor stores didn't have to lock down.
marijuana stores, of which there are plenty out here at least, didn't lock down.
But your church had to lock down.
I could never square the fact that giant big box stores with hundreds or possibly thousands of people were fine to stay open, but mom and pop shops and churches had to close.
I never understood that.
And you know, the same here.
I remember I took my son, he needed a new bed, and so we went to, in the middle of the craziness, where all the lockdowns were down to IKEA.
And I remember, I'll never forget that I actually did a video and at the entrance of IKEA, it said only 480 people allowed.
And I'm thinking, my God, I can bring here my entire church and half of the neighborhood.
And we are perfectly safe and okay.
And the health inspectors are okay with that.
But I cannot have my brother for dinner because if I dare to do that, the police will come and arrest us and give us, like I was told many times, we're going to give you a million dollar ticket and you will be arrested.
So I started to speak loudly about this hypocrisy because of course, if this pandemic was real, shut us down for two weeks.
And you know what, Ezra?
I would be okay with that.
If we are in the middle of the flu pandemic, like the Spanish flu or black plague or whatever, I would be okay.
And I would encourage people, okay, if this is just for two weeks, let's just do it, do it together.
Yes, it's going to be hard, but we can do this.
But very early, very quickly, we have found out that there is one law for me and one law for thee, that we can do whatever we want because we're big stores and we are billionaires and trillionaires, but you, you're nobody.
What we are witnessing right now is the greatest destruction, if you will, of small and medium-sized businesses.
What they're doing, they're eliminating opposition.
In order to take over a country, you have to eliminate opposition.
And I watched that, of course, unfolding in history after the Soviets took over Poland in 1945.
Elimination of intelligentsia, elimination of businesses.
Everything had to be controlled by the state.
State was the God, and he was the provider.
He was the one that would tell you what's really going on.
Of course, the pravda that we have been fed, pravda in Russian means the truth.
That was the mainstream propaganda newspaper.
You were only allowed to read that one, and everything from outside was prohibited by law.
So I knew what we are witnessing is government trying to subdue the nation.
And the only way they can do that is by eliminating opposition.
So destroying the middle class, if you will, those that can fight them, hire lawyers and take them to court, to create a society of extremely powerful and rich, just like during the Soviet era.
Remember, 50,000 communists were ruling over 36 million Poles during my childhood, and then extremely poor that have nothing to say.
They cannot fight.
They are barely working two jobs just to provide bread.
And we are witnessing this continuation of what the government has planned to this day.
Yeah.
You mentioned that IKEA allowed 480 people.
You probably could have taken your whole church in there.
Police never, that I know of, police have never shut down a Walmart, IKEA, Costco, in Canada, not one of them.
I don't even know if they even count the number of people in there.
But they kept coming back to your church again and again.
And we showed a clip of that.
We'll show one more time.
This was a moment that the entire world took notice of.
I think it was the combination of you staring down uniformed officers, including a cop with a gun.
I think it was that it was so obviously they were coming into a church and you were telling them to get out just through the power of your words.
I think it was the fact that you compared them to Poland's historical enemies, the Gestapo and the Nazis.
There was something about the moment.
This video went super viral across Canada, but around the world.
Just a reminder, take a look at this.
Ouch!
Out of this property!
Immediately until you come back with a warrant.
Out!
Ouch!
Ouch!
Immediately go out and don't come back.
I don't want to talk to you.
Not a word.
Out of this pro.
Out of this property, immediately out.
I don't care what you have to say.
Ouch!
Ouch!
Out of this property, you Nazis!
Out!
Ouch!
Gestapo is not allowed here.
Immediately, Gestapo is not allowed!
Out!
Do you understand English?
Get out of this property!
Go!
So go!
Go!
And don't come back without the warrant!
Out, Nazi!
Out!
Well, I think that video got the world's attention, and I think it rallied people to let them know they weren't alone, but I think it also got the attention of the authorities at Alberta Health Services, at the Calgary Police, and even judges and prosecutors.
And they said, this is, to use an analogy, the Lech Walenza of 2021.
If they could have taken it, Lach Walenza, being the leader of the Polish solidarity movement, the trade union in Gdańsk, that actually was a real union, not a controlled union by the communists, that started the ball rolling.
And they said, if we can take out this guy at the top, if we can take out this noisy pastor, then we can take out anyone and we'll demoralize people.
I think that video was a call to arms for your allies, but it was also when the government said, we're going to take this guy out no matter the cost.
That's what I think.
What do you think?
100%.
I mean, if you would tell me, Ezra, that this video is going to be watched over a billion times and it was the number one plate video during the Passover.
You know, there are a number of combinations that happened during that day.
It was our holiest time of the year for us Christians and for the Jewish people.
It was Passover.
That's where our Lord Jesus Christ got crucified and rose from the dead.
And we prepared for a month with fasting and prayers.
And we had Lord's Supper during that time.
So that was a holy time of the year.
And they dared to walk into our church like it was some kind of a restaurant.
Even though I've told them many times, do not trespass.
You're not welcome here.
You're not allowed to come.
If you want to inspect the facility, call me.
I will arrange that for you.
But do not dare doing this in the middle of our service or before the service.
Well, they didn't care because that's what those people do.
They are lawless.
They don't care about the law of the country.
The Criminal Code of Canada, Section 176, 1, 2, and 3, that prohibits them and anyone else from interfering.
You know, a church service or any service, and it prohibits them from interfering with the clergyman while he is on his way during or coming from his, you know, officiating his duties as a clergyman.
They didn't care about that.
They didn't care about the Church of Rights and Freedoms.
And they just walked in and I did what I believe every pastor, every rabbi, every priest, every restaurant owner, every father, every son, every brother should do, kick the wolves out of the facility, those hyenas.
So that's what I did.
It just came out of me.
And I have a habit right now.
When I talk to the authorities, I record the conversation or I have someone with me that would record it because, as you know, they have been lying about me so many times, left and right.
So I have a habit of recording it.
So in my left, I had the telephone recording it, and then I told them to get out.
It took me over 30 times to tell them to get out.
Finally, they go only to find a crooked judge, David Gates.
Recording Conversations00:02:40
That, of course, ex parte, he gave them even more power, a carte blanche, if you will, to come to our church anytime they want, any day of the week, with whomever they want to come.
So they've decided to use corrupted judges in the province of Alberta to destroy me.
And I believe you're absolutely right.
The people, for them, for the millions, for the millions of people around the world, this video gave them a glimpse of hope.
But for the enemy, it gave them fear.
Because if this nobody, this pastor, this clergyman, this man without money and without political power, can do that with his voice.
And if people will catch that power, that wait a second, there's more of us than of them, that we have the power, we have the real power.
If this goes viral, if this goes like a wildfire, it's over for the tyrants and it scared them.
So they came back.
You know, I want to explain something that you said there just for our viewers who are not as intimately familiar with the facts.
When you first got pushed around in that snowy day in Calgary feeding the homeless, we crowdfunded the lawyer.
That was the very first fight the fines case we ever did.
And the lawyer's name is Sarah Miller.
She's a young lawyer in Calgary.
And frankly, I don't think she knew what she was getting into.
Neither did any of us.
And she fought that ticket for you and she continued to fight tickets for you again and again.
And we sort of joked that you were our number one customer for tickets, but it was a pleasure.
And Sarah got to know you and you got to know her.
But here's the important point: the police and the prosecutors knew you had a lawyer who was attentive to these facts.
And she's been your lawyer, courtesy of the Fight the Fines program and the Democracy Fund.
She's been your lawyer for more than a year and a half now.
And everyone in authority knew it.
They knew you had a lawyer.
And that's important because when they came to your church with no notice, when they tried to serve you legal documents personally by like throwing it on you, when they had that secret court hearing, an ex parte court hearing to use the legal phrase that you were not invited to, that was all despite the fact that you had an excellent lawyer, they were trying to treat you like they treated you before, a pastor they could push around because you didn't have a lawyer.
And when you got a great lawyer, they hid from the lawyer.
They sneaked to court without letting your lawyer know.
No Notice, Secret Court Hearing00:04:55
They didn't deal like when you say they came to your church in the middle of a service, that's atrocious.
But they shouldn't be coming at all.
They should be writing to your lawyer.
And I may be sounding legalistic on this point, but it shows the bad faith of the government, that they don't respect the law themselves, that they're not complying with their own rules.
And I think that shows the meanness here.
There's nothing about public health here.
It's all about vengeance and their feud with you.
And I think it's fair to say there's an anti-Christian bias because I haven't seen this towards religiously neutral Walmart, Costco, IKEA.
I haven't seen other institutions, I just haven't seen it.
I think they hated you because of the reasons you just outlined.
And I think their behavior was atrocious.
I just wanted to explain that for our viewers what it meant that there was a secret hearing that you weren't invited to.
It's hard to believe, but it's true.
Pastor, I want to show you a video.
This is the worst video of all.
The one where you drive out the officers I thought was stirring and wonderful.
But the thing is about police is at the end of the day, if they want to act like an armed gang, they can, because they have a monopoly on violence.
I want to show people again what it was like when they arrested you on the road, pulled you out of a car, dragged you not to the side of the road, but into the middle of the street, made you lie down on your knees, kneel down rather, while cars still sped by.
I want to show what I've described as like a drug kingpin SWAT style takedown for a Christian pastor.
Take a look at this.
Don't taser me, kill me!
There's so many things about that video that are atrocious.
The fact that they seek to humiliate you in public, the fact that they endangered you by pulling you into the middle of the road, the fact that they wanted to bring out the whole SWAT team.
And most importantly, like I said, they know you, where you live, where your church is.
They know your lawyer.
They could have said, hey, call Arthur and we want to charge him, arrest him.
Like they could phone your lawyer in a second, but they wanted to have that shock and awe moment to humiliate you and as a warning to others.
That's my theory.
What do you think?
100%.
This was, we used to call them when I was growing up in Poland show trials.
And this was a show arrest.
What I mean by this is that if the government wanted to crack on someone and make an example of that someone, they would create a scenario of a high-profile arrest, just like this one in the middle of the highway.
And then afterwards, a show trial to send a message to the rest of the society.
Hey, if we can do this to him, we can do it to anyone.
It doesn't matter the merits of the case mean nothing.
The law, the constitution means nothing.
The judges are corrupted.
This is a political trial.
And that's exactly what happened to me and my brother David.
And what's shocking about this is even more, not that they treated me like a piece of garbage and I had to travel for over an hour upside down with my head on the floor and my feet on the roof.
And I had the bruises and a scar on my wrist for over a month.
And they didn't allow me to sleep and my brother for three days and two nights.
And they didn't allow me to contact our lawyers for the money.
They took you to prison.
They took you to a maximum security facility, didn't they?
Yes, they did.
And they stripped naked us, and they put chains on our legs.
I was shoved on the wall.
I was threatened.
Personal belongings were taken and in front of me thrown into a garbage bin just to show, hey, we can do whatever we want with you.
The law and justice has nothing to do with this case.
We are using you as an example and we will finish you off.
But all of this was bad, but you know what is the most shocking thing for me?
That I have been charged with my brother David for inciting people to come to church, officiating a church service, and participating in illegal gathering based on the Rooks court order that has never been given to me.
I never had an opportunity to read that order, to examine that order.
I never had an opportunity to call my lawyers and say, hey, what do you think?
Should I obey?
Is this legit?
Obeying the Order?00:14:58
Is this real?
No.
They opened the door of the church while I was already at the pulpit preaching.
They dropped something on the ground and they left.
And they left.
And the people went home.
I started driving home and then we were stopping in the middle of the highway.
We never had an opportunity to read the court order that we have been charged with.
And then ultimately, we have been found guilty on a court order that was never given to us.
It never had our names on it.
It was done ex parte without our knowledge, without the knowledge of our lawyers.
It was never electronically or any other ways sent to us.
I mean, that's lawlessness.
And that's exactly what I observe growing up behind the Iron Curtain.
You know how I call Canada right now?
I call my beloved nation right now Chinada because we are ESRA truly living behind the Iron Curtain right now.
And the Americans should be aware that their greatest ally, their neighbor, is already taken by the Chinese ideology.
Yeah.
You know, over the course of time, I was just trying to remember, I think seven different rebel journalists have followed your story.
The very first one was by a former reporter we had named Kian Bexti.
We call him K1.
We have another reporter, Kian Simone.
We call him K2.
Adam Sos, Sheila Gunrid, Mocha Bazirgan, Sidney Fazard.
I myself have covered the story.
That's seven.
There may be more that I'm forgetting.
There's other people behind the scenes.
So we've really feel like this is an important story, but we are a small media outlet in the scheme of things.
We're not a startup anymore, but we're pretty small.
We're independent compared to the Calgary Herald, the Calgary Sun, the CBC, CTV, Global News, etc., all the radio stations.
And I have not seen, here's my question to you about the media.
I mean, I'm sympathetic to you, and we've been friendly for a number of years.
But put aside the personal connection.
Just news is news.
Whether someone agrees with you and the conduct of the government, surely a SWAT team-style takedown in the middle of the road is shocking.
I have not seen any other media that are sympathetic to you or, more importantly, critical of the government.
Have you, have I missed it?
Have the media who are supposed to be a watchdog on the government, are there any other media or civil liberties activists blowing the whistle here?
See, they're not only not sympathetic, contrary, they are very biased against what we're standing for.
I remember the mainstream media propaganda machinery, that's how I call them, the gables media of today, they would call us terrorists.
I'm not kidding.
I am a white supremacist, racist, and you know, and your reporters have been following us and have been on the streets and in the church.
Half of our parishioners are colored people, Asians, natives, blacks, you name it.
And then half of the people we are actually feeding for the past 22 years are natives.
So colored people.
We have all kinds of, I don't care where you came from.
In my faith, God has created you and he has created me in his image.
And I am commanded to love everyone regardless of the color of their skin or background or even sexual ideology or whatever.
I will preach the truth, but I love and feed everyone.
I have never turned anyone away based on their preferences or color of their skin.
But I am very well known by the mainstream media.
That's how they portrayed me as a racist, xenophob.
Can you imagine?
They call me a xenophob and I'm an emigrant.
Xenophob is in a Greek word, xenophob, which means outsider or emigrant, someone that came from outside.
And I am a white supremacist.
Why?
Excuse me?
And I terrorize my neighborhood.
Why?
Excuse me?
Because I dared to open the church for a dying, desperate, suicidal people that have lost hope, lost hope in the educational system, in mainstream media and government.
So the mainstream propaganda machinery is painting a picture here.
They want to vilify anyone, just like during the Nazi era, just like during the Soviet era.
They're vilifying anyone that dares to oppose tyranny.
So anyone that dares to stand up for himself, anyone that dares to fight for our rights and freedoms that Canada should stand for, and the politicians for sure should protect citizens and fight against tyranny.
No, anyone that dares to speak or defy tyranny becomes the villain.
So I am a lawbreaker according to them.
I am a troublemaker.
I am this big villain according to the mainstream media.
And excuse me, why?
Because I dare to feed thousands of people every single week, because I have halfway housing.
I take those people off the streets, because I have given over a million dollars worth of food last year to the four different native reserves when they were at the lockdowns that no one could go in and go out.
That's why, because I opened a church in the middle of the greatest crisis in our lifetime.
That's why, you see, those people not only, if they would just cover the story, because I used to think, I know I'm naive, but I used to think that a reporter, his job is to report.
They're not cooks.
They're not supposed to cook the story, invent the story, spin the story.
They are simply to report on what's really going on, giving both sides of the story.
But do you know the mainstream media would almost never, in two years of this craziness, contact me and ask my side of the story?
No, it's always, Artopalaski is this great villain.
He's the bad guy.
Why he, oh, he's a, he is a dangerous, like the judge, Adam, the wannabe judge, political activist Adam Germain said, I am extremely dangerous man.
And that's exactly following what the mainstream media has been saying.
I'm a bloody murderer.
I murder people, apparently, and I terrorize my neighborhoods.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I believe it.
I've seen that.
And it's not just the media.
Where are the civil liberties organizations?
Where are fellow churches?
I've seen churches put up press releases denouncing you, but I haven't seen churches supporting you.
Where are law professors who might at least be able to separate the individual person from the principles at hand?
I find it depressing, but I think the worst part of it all was when you were found in contempt of this order that, like you say, was never served on you.
You never read it.
The order does not have your name on it.
The order was cooked up at a secret hearing to which you and your lawyer were not invited.
This contempt of court sentence was handed out by a judge named Adam Germain.
And by the way, we have a petition called firethejudge.com.
Well, over 20,000 people have signed that.
Not because the judge is wrong.
Judges are allowed to get it wrong.
But this judge was so clearly biased and bigoted.
It goes beyond him just getting the law wrong or the facts wrong.
In his sentence against you, he condemned you for doing a speaking tour in the United States.
What's that got to do with you having a gathering at your church or not?
He condemned you for taking a selfie with a politician.
What's that got to do with it?
He banned you from traveling on a speaking tour.
What's that got to do with you keeping your church open or not?
And finally, and most gravely, this judge, Adam Jermaine, said that any time you gave a sermon, a speech, a Facebook post, a radio interview, TV interview, because he hated the facts you went on Fox, he put that in his ruling too, that you had to read a little paragraph that he himself wrote out.
So if you ever criticize the government, you have to then immediately denounce yourself and say, well, most people think I'm wrong, and here's what they say.
I've never seen such a thing outside of Soviet, you know, struggle sessions in communist China.
I mean, it's like you have a gun to your head, read this false confession.
I've never seen anything like that before.
What was it like in court when some judge said, I hate the fact that you have a different opinion.
I hate the fact you're criticizing the government.
You're not allowed to go on speaking tours, and I'm going to make it impossible for you even to talk without sounding like a fool, because I'm going to order you to denounce yourself whenever you speak.
That must have been straight out of Soviet times for you.
Well, I'm telling you, that was the most horrifying thing for me, because you know me, Ezra.
I think you covered my first story when I was arrested as the first Canadian to publicly dare to read the Bible in a public park in 2006.
So going to jail is one thing.
But this was the most terrifying thing that I heard this judge ordered me to do, which is you're not allowed to preach the truth anymore.
You have to preach the lie.
I am commanding you to preach the lie or else.
And I remember when I heard that, I looked to Adam Saws, one of your reporters, and I said, that's it.
I'm done.
It's finished.
It's over.
I'm going to prison.
Because I understood if I will ever obey order like this As a clergyman, as a Christian, as a man, it's over for me.
It's done deal.
So I grabbed the microphone.
There was a big protest outside of the court when I heard the sentencing and I said, I will never obey this order.
Take me now, arrest me, shackle me, strip me naked again, throw me in prison, but I will never ever obey an order like this.
If I was to obey an order like this, my life is over, so shoot me now.
Because how can you live in a free and democratic society in court that you're not allowed to travel, you're not allowed to express yourself, you're not allowed to publish anything, you cannot communicate your heart with your fellow citizens because of a crooked judge straight from the Soviet Russia or North Korea telling you, if you do that, I will make sure you're done for.
When I was with my brother David three days later, without sleep, two nights, and we were treated like garbage in that facility.
I remember my brother came to me when we were locked in a cell after we were taken to the courts and they brought us back and they still refused to let us go.
Seven hours it took finally for them to kick us out.
And I remember when he came to me and says, Art, what are you going to do?
Because he knows I always strategize and I think of what can be done at this moment.
I said to him, David, I just don't know.
Maybe I need to go to the United States and tell, share that story, what is happening on the other side of the border, because the mainstream media is not going to tell, they're not going to.
They refuse to tell the public what's really going on.
And we're doomed.
We're doomed.
I have to go there and maybe get some allies over there.
That's why this judge and the politicians were so terrified because I was, Ezra, loved in the United States.
I was speaking to sometimes 10,000 people.
I have been on the biggest media outlets sharing my story.
I was invited by governors, congress people, state senators, U.S. senators.
I was invited to people, the closest people of Donald Trump, including his son, Eric Trump.
I was speaking at the same platforms, at the same events, the same conferences with those people.
I was able to hang around with them and tell my story.
And that's what I did.
I just shared my story and warned Americans that this is what's coming their way if they will not be vigilant and if they will not rise up.
And that scared the corrupted Canadian politicians so much that they, I believe, I can't prove that, of course, but I believe that they talked to Adam Germain and they said, listen, you have to do everything in your power to stop this man from going outside of Canada, telling his story.
Here in Canada, we control the narrative, we control the media.
Over there, he is unhinged in his ability to tell the truth to the world, to the whole world.
And that's why I believe he said what he said.
Another shocking thing with this order was that he and the government doesn't acknowledge that what we're doing is in fact community service.
As you remember, I am ordered with my brother David to do 120 hours of community service because this judge says what we're doing is not a real deal, that this is not a real church.
We're not actually saving lives.
We have to do it in the government-approved facility.
And I think when I talked to Sarah Miller, our lawyer, I think that this judge set us up for failure because I, of course, as you know, I have been assigned a probation officer.
And that lady for a month refused to allow us to do our community service within the organizations that actually do not require passports.
They do not segregate people based on medical.
They do not require this discrimination.
And she said, no, I'm not allowing you.
And then another shocking thing with the probation officer is that she said, when you do your community hours, you're not allowed to talk about street church.
You're not.
I'm forbidding you to talk about your ministry.
Like, excuse me, lady, who do you think you are?
I didn't know about that.
That's absurd.
Court Appeal Signal00:06:03
I think that should be appealed to.
It has nothing to do with the so-called health order that shut you down in the first place.
It's clearly an attempt at political re-education of you.
And you're right.
It's absurd that this judge, who's probably not done a single hour of community service in his life, is telling you.
I mean, it's a laugh to sentence you to community service when that's basically all you do anyways.
But he's saying, no, you can't feed the hungry.
We're going to cook up some social justice project for you, I bet.
Well, listen, we're almost out of time, but I want to end on a positive note.
We talked about that appalling sentence, the travel ban, the self-denunciation.
I didn't know about your parole officer.
We'll have to talk about that.
But I am pleased to say that when Sarah Miller, your lawyer for a year and a half now, got in front of the Court of Appeal, that the Court of Appeal very quickly suspended those aspects of the sentence against you that banned you from traveling and required you to denounce yourself.
Now, there'll be a full Court of Appeal hearing on the sentence in June.
But until then, the sentence is suspended, which I think is a sign that the Court of Appeal, a more senior, sober-minded court than this bigot, Adam Germain, I think it's a sign that the Court of Appeal thinks maybe things have gone too far.
And even if you are irritating to the authorities, that's no excuse for them to violate your freedom.
So I'm hopeful.
And it's taken a lot of endurance from you.
I mean, it'll be more than two years from your first pandemic arrest by the time you get to the Court of Appeal.
But I'm optimistic.
I mean, maybe I'm a fool for being optimistic, but I think you've got a great lawyer.
You had an atrocious judge.
You have a signal from the Court of Appeal that things are out of hand.
I think you might actually win this thing.
What do you think?
I believe that we will.
In the end, truth wins every single time.
It's just we have to endure.
We have to be dedicated.
We have to be willing to suffer.
And I think that's a problem with Canadians as a whole.
We have never really here faced such a tyranny.
So people are not used to suffering.
Everything has been given to them since their childhood.
It's such a contrast to where Polish people and others that emigrated to Canada.
We had to endure hardships since we were born.
So I do believe that there is a light in a tunnel.
It's very fascinating to see how everything is unfolding.
In the Bible, it says the truth will set you free.
The truth will set the captives free.
And you, I am very grateful to you, to the rebel news network, that you are actually covering the story and exposing the lie.
Because the more people will see what's really going on, the freer in the end they will become.
The truth will set them free.
So I think, I believe that a combination of things are happening.
People are raising up.
They see what this whole thing is all about.
You're covering the story, exposing the lie and bringing the truth.
And then we have amazing lawyers, thanks to you and your viewers.
So I want to thank you, Rebel News, and all of those thousands of people that have supported this fight, because I would not be able to do this without the exposure, without the legal team that is fantastic, amazing.
They're really, really knowledgeable and good, fiery people that actually believe in freedom, a team of lawyers.
We would not be able to do what we're doing right now.
So a combination of things put together, I believe that we have a chance to win this.
I believe we are going to win this, but we cannot give up.
We have the saying in our ministry at Street Church, winners never quit, quitters never win.
If you want to win, and I was a fighter, as you know, I used to teach people how to fight black belt and I was a boxer before.
And we cannot throw a towel.
We got to stay in a ring.
You gotta keep fighting because if you quit, you're done.
If you keep fighting, if you keep standing, remember the story of David.
David had no political powers.
He didn't have great lawyers, but he had something that God provided him, was a stone.
He gave him a little stone.
He used whatever God gave it to him.
He used that.
And in the end, he used the enemy's own weapons.
So we have to use their own weapons to chop that tyrannical heads off and then chase the enemies away.
This is, after all, Canada, an amazing, beautiful country, our country, who those people think they are.
This is our land, not just in Trudeau's land, not just the Kennies or Hinches or Tunnes land.
This is our home.
This is our inheritance.
This is our land.
This is Canada.
Well, that's a wonderful and hopeful way to end an interesting conversation.
For those who want to chip into the Legal Defense Fund to pay Sarah Miller's legal fee, she's an excellent lawyer.
I've gotten to know her well over the last year and a half.
And there's other lawyers, at least two other lawyers are typically on the file.
Please go to saveartur.com and you'll actually get a charitable tax receipt from the Democracy Fund.
None of those funds go to Rebel News or to Arthur himself.
It just goes to the Democracy Fund's legal defense, which has fought, as you heard, fought like lions for the last year and a half.
Arthur, great to talk with you.
Thank you very much.
And I wish you all good things for you and your family and your church in the new year.