Public Health Charges Stayed Against Pastor Arrested for Feeding Homeless, Holding Outdoor Church Services

Artur Pawlowski’s Street Church service provides food for the poor at Olympic Plaza in Calgary, Alberta, on March 2021. Courtesy of Artur Pawlowski

Charges laid against pastor Artur Pawlowski for failing to comply with an order under the Public Health Act were stayed by the Crown on Dec. 16.

Pawlowski, of Calgary’s Street Church, was charged for attending an outdoor Walk for Freedom protest in Calgary on Dec. 13, and for feeding the homeless with his church on the same day, allegedly in breach of then-Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) Dr. Deena Hinshaw’s orders that “private social gatherings” were prohibited.

The December 2021 CMOH Order 41-2020 was one of dozens that came into place during COVID-19. The orders prohibited a number of everyday activities, such as having company or visitors to a private residence, banned all indoor and outdoor social gatherings, restricted weddings and funerals to 10 guests, and made masks mandatory across the province.

Pawlowski’s lawyer, Sarah Miller, who represents the pastor on behalf of The Democracy Fund (TDF), a charity that provides free legal defence of constitutional freedoms, told The Epoch Times the pastor faced a fine of up to $100,000 if convicted.

The charges have been outstanding and unresolved for 23 months, with multiple court dates adjourned and a total of five trial days already devoted to the matter.

‘Private Social Gatherings’

The charges stem from December 2020, when new public health orders were released by Hinshaw.

“The language in that order says, essentially, that private social gatherings were prohibited. So this was the year that none of us were supposed to get together at Christmas, with anybody outside of our family or outside of our household, because private social gatherings were prohibited,” said Miller.

Artur Pawlowski speaks at a “freedom rally” in Edmonton on March 20, 2021. Courtesy of Artur Pawlowski

“A public protest, like the Walk for Freedom, is not private, and is not a private social gathering. It is a public and perhaps political, gathering, but it is not a social gathering,” stated the lawyer, who added she was looking forward to making those arguments in court.

She said a church having an outdoor service and feeding the homeless is also not a “private social gathering” in the wording of the CMOH order, in her legal opinion.

“The orders were poorly drafted,” she said, attributing legal ambiguity in many of the public health orders as one reason Pawlowski was arrested multiple times and faced multiple charges.

That opinion was voiced by other legal experts. The University of Calgary Faculty of Law blog, on Sept. 20, 2021, criticized the CMOH orders as “messy iterations of these rules,” and said definitions used in the public health orders had “problematic uncertainties” and suffered “imperfect legal drafting.”

Since the beginning of COVID-19, Pawlowski was issued multiple tickets under CMOH orders, all of which were stayed or withdrawn within the first six months of being laid.

Miller said Pawlowski was an easy target. “He is prolific in posting on social media,” she said. “He is loud, not at all subtle, vocal and criticized law enforcement through COVID.”

She said “a lot of hysteria, high levels of emotion and fear” during COVID led people to repeatedly report the pastor to Alberta Health Services.

Eventually, says Miller, a summons was issued to Pawlowski, covering multiple events on five or six alleged dates, which the crown eventually narrowed to two different events. This summons has been slowly proceeding through court for nearly two years.

The Dec. 16 stay happened after the Crown told court on the fourth day of trial that a key witness, a police officer who was apparently at one of the church events, was dealing with medical concerns and the case could no longer proceed to a trial.

This came as a surprise to Pawlowski’s lawyer, who said the witness had not been disclosed until May 2022, even after the case was going to proceed to trial on two previous dates and was then adjourned.

The charges that arose will most likely not be resurrected, said Miller. “It’s been over two years, they haven’t proceeded in a timely fashion. If they tried to bring it back to life, we would probably apply to have the charges struck,” she said.

Charges Outstanding

Pawlowski made international headlines after a video of the pastor and his brother Dawid Pawlowski was shared on social media, showing the two men being arrested at the side of Deerfoot Trail, a busy, three-lane freeway in Calgary. They were arrested under an injunction that applied specifically to individuals associated with the Whistle Stop Cafe.

Miller says the injunction order did not apply to her clients, and was later amended after a number of high-profile arrests of individuals who were not associated with the cafe including pastor Tim Stephens of Calgary’s Fairview Baptist Church.

Pawlowski’s long battle with the legal system is not over. He has two charges outstanding for travelling to Coutts, Alberta, during the border protest earlier this year and giving a 20-minute speech.

He was arrested and charged with criminal mischief over $5,000 and inciting people to interfere with a highway using the Critical Infrastructure Defence Act, an act the Alberta government introduced on June 17, 2020, during COVID-19.

At the time Pawlowski gave a speech, says Miller, the pastor didn’t incite anyone to interfere with a highway. Protesters had already been at the land border for 12 days. His lawyers argued in court that Pawlowski did not tell protesters to block roads, “he told them to remain and protest.”

The Act came under criticism for its potential to violate various Charter freedoms by interfering with peaceful protests, and was criticized for allegedly targeting Indigenous people, having been brought in after First Nations protests at rail lines in support of Wet’suwet'en opposition to a pipeline through northern B.C.

On Sept. 28, 2021, Alberta announced it would expand the reach of the Critical Infrastructure Defence Act to include hospitals and other health facilities, following protests outside hospitals against government policy that made COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for health care workers.

It is not known if Pawlowski is the first individual to be charged under the act. The pastor has entered a not guilty plea and is scheduled to be in court for a trial on Feb 2 and 3 in Lethbridge.