Western Canada: Did Premier Danielle Smith speak directly to Crown prosecutors? Video reignites question

Good morning, Mark Iype in Edmonton today.

The Alberta legislature isn’t sitting and we’re still a few months away from the expected May election, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a busy week in provincial politics.

On Wednesday, the question around whether Premier Danielle Smith did or did not speak directly to Crown prosecutors over health-related charges reared its head again.

As you may recall, after campaigning last fall for premier, saying she would seek amnesty for people facing charges related to COVID-19 public-health rules, Ms. Smith said she raised such cases with prosecutors. But on Jan. 13, the premier denied speaking directly to Crown attorneys, instead saying that she used “imprecise” language and was actually referring to Justice Ministry officials.

Ms. Smith’s January denial came after the CBC reported that emails were allegedly sent by a staff member in her office to the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service. The Premier did order a review of government emails that came up empty, however, the scope of the search remains unknown and the time frame was limited.

And then, well, the story seemed to have been put to bed.

But this week a video emerged of Ms. Smith telling a controversial street preacher facing charges related to the Alberta-Montana border blockade at Coutts and COVID-19 infractions that she asked prosecutors “almost weekly” about such cases, according to a recording of a telephone call posted online.

The video, which captured the call earlier this year between Ms. Smith and Artur Pawlowski, a vocal critic of public-health measures related to COVID, renewed allegations that the Premier and her office attempted to interfere with pandemic-related prosecutions.

The Premier’s office offered the same explanation for the video, which is no longer publicly accessible.

“At no time have I spoken with anyone from the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service, nor to my knowledge, have any of my office’s staff,” Ms. Smith said in her statement Wednesday.

In the recording, Mr. Pawlowski raised concerns about his trial, which he said was three weeks away. He expressed frustration that Ms. Smith had not yet fulfilled her leadership-campaign promise to drop charges related to COVID-19 violations. In the recording, Ms. Smith replied that she had since learned that premiers do not have the power of clemency.

“Once the process is under way, I can ask our prosecutors: ‘Is there a reasonable likelihood of conviction and if it is in the public interest.’ And I assure you, I have asked them that almost weekly ever since I got started here,” Ms. Smith said.

A verdict has yet to be delivered in Mr. Pawlowski’s case.

We’ll have to wait and see if this story has legs.

This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.