This pre-election flashback may be important context for things to come, but it’s actually quite recent in some ways. Most of the details are laid out in the report of the Ethics Commissioner, Marguerite Trussler.

The story starts, in some ways, last October, in the waning days of the UCP leadership race, when Danielle Smith said that she wanted to ‘pardon’ people charged in connection with COVID-19 restrictions.

This announcement, which put the ‘arrests of pastors’ front and center, was made October 22, 2022, the day after Church in the Vine lost its appeal of conviction and sentencing under the Public Health Act.

The responses to it ranged from mocking to a very serious statement by NDP Justice Critic Irfan Sabir. And that’s the last we heard of it for a while – though, evidently, not the last thing that happened.

The public narrative went something like this: Smith would occasionally tell her supporters that she was leaning on prosecutors to try to get COVID/Convoy-related charges dropped. In late December, the Rebel published an interview where she said that she had spoken to prosecutors. On January 12, 2023, she publicly repeated that claim, saying that she’d repeatedly spoken to prosecutors. Then, shortly afterward, she walked back that claim, saying that her language was “imprecise” and that she’d only spoken to the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General about it.

‘Whether or not Smith spoke to prosecutors’ became a tempest the following weak when CBC, relying on anonymous sources, reported that someone from Smith’s office had, in fact, been directly in touch with prosecutors. Smith denies it, and has threatened to sue CBC, though as of yet has not commenced legal action. A rapid review of internal emails apparently failed to corroborate CBC’s claim, and the Ethics Commissioner’s eventual investigation didn’t turn up anything corroborating either.

Artur Pawlowski, a street pastor charged in connection with the Coutts blockade, later released a recording from early January where she had told him, as others, that she had spoken to prosecutors on his behalf. The Ethics Commissioner concluded that at least some of Smith’s efforts on his behalf broke the law – specifically by violating the Conflict of Interest Act.

With the benefit of the Ethics Commissioner’s report, we can now fill in much of the timeline:

The Timeline

In October 2022, Smith met Ezra Levant at an event, who said that he had some ideas about how to deal with COVID charges. Levant is the principal of Rebel Media, and formerly a lawyer, though he resigned his license. At Smith’s invitation, Levant reached out to her Chief of Staff. As Trussler put it:

“On October 25, 2022, Marshall Smith received the email directly from Ezra Levant which surprisingly, from someone legally trained, advocated direct interference by the Premier by having her order a stay in prosecutions.”

The memo was circulated to the Justice Minister (Tyler Shandro), the Deputy Minister, the Assistant Deputy Minister in charge of the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service (“ACPS”), and others. (The ‘Deputy Minister’ is the top non-political role in the civil service.)

On November 1, 2022, Smith’s office sent a memo to Shandro, including the following:

“Following up on prior discussions between our offices, I would like you to provide me with a proposal on proceeding with some form of amnesty or clemency for individuals who have been charged with various COVID-19 related offences.

“In preparing this proposal, I would like you to delineate between individuals charged with criminal code offences that include violence, are weapons related or are for contempt of court, from those involving alleged mischief, violations of provincial health orders or other minor offences.

If possible, I would like you to provide my office with this proposal by the end of next week, so we can plan implementation and communications surrounding this initiative by the end of the year.”

In November, the Deputy Minister of Justice had a PowerPoint presentation put together for the Premier, to guide her about the role of the Attorney General – specifically, that while the AG was involved in policy decisions, the AG’s office should not be involved in prosecutorial decisions on specific cases, as that job fell to the ACPS. Smith’s Executive Director, Rob Anderson, took her through it, and told her that she could only inquire about whether there’s a ‘reasonable prospect of conviction’ and whether prosecution is in the ‘public interest’. (However, this is the normal test for charge screening applied by prosecutors. If prosecutors have not already decided to dismiss a charge, implicitly their answer to these questions should always be ‘yes’.)

Through December, Smith’s Executive Director, Rob Anderson, repeatedly followed up with Shandro and his office for legislative amnesty options. Shandro never delivered.

On January 5, 2023, Dr. Dennis Modry, former CEO of the Alberta Prosperity Project, texted Smith to ask for a call with Artur Pawlowski, on the premise that he could “help you against Notley.”