In an exchange of emails seen by The Epoch Times on Aug. 22, Edmonton Crown Prosecutor Karen Thorsrud states she has “received and reviewed” the earlier court decision and does not intend to call any further evidence in the case of the pastor.
Ms. Thorsrud, who did not return requests for comment by press time, said in an Aug. 22 email to government lawyers and counsel for Pastor Coates that she would “invite an acquittal from the court” and would be writing to the court advising of the Crown’s intention. Ms. Thorsrud said she would be seeking direction on whether the matter could be dealt with in docket court on Aug. 30, or proceed in a non-docket courtroom.
Court Decision
Pastor Coates’s lawyer, Leighton Grey, said that his client has agreed to the acquittal proposal. Mr. Grey told The Epoch Times in an interview that the earlier July 31 court decision, in which he was involved as well, is “going to expose the Alberta government to substantial civil liability.”
A spokesman for Alberta Justice Minister Mickey Amery told The Epoch Times, “The Alberta Crown Prosecution Service operates independently, and we respect their autonomy to make decisions.”
“That is a fundamental recognition of the rule of law, and that is what has been missing from Canadian jurisprudence for three years,” said Mr. Grey. This decision tells government: “your powers have limits. This is the first time that government overreach has been checked.”
The July 31 ruling was made by Justice Barbara Romaine. It invalidated all public health orders issued by the province’s Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) from March 2020 up until September 2021—on the basis that they were enacted outside of the powers of the Public Health Act, and were made by cabinet, not then-chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw.
Church
However, long before this court decision, during the height of COVID, Pastor Coates and his church were charged with violating the Public Health Act for holding normal church services on Sunday, after first trying online worship during the initial weeks of lockdown restrictions. At the time, the provincial government had promised lockdowns and school and business closures would last just 14 days, to “flatten the curve.” Those two weeks turned into many more months.Pastor Coates and his congregation decided to go back to in-person worship. As a result of holding church services, Pastor Coates was jailed for one month and six days in 2021, charged with violating public health orders in place at the time restricting church attendance, not having congregants wear masks, and not enforcing government mandates on social distancing.
Pastor Coates was then denied bail following his refusal to sign an undertaking to stop pastoring his church and congregation as a condition of release. At the time, Pastor Coates said he would not promise to stop exercising his Charter freedoms of conscience, religion, freedom of assembly, speech, and association.
He told the court that his religious beliefs required him to fulfill his duty as a minister and lead his congregation in worship.
Pressure
Pastor Coates’s case received international attention. His story was featured on the Tucker Carlson show, with the pastor’s wife Erin Coates providing an interview while her husband was in jail. Dozens of protests were held demanding the pastor’s release, outside both Alberta government buildings and Grace Life Church.Even while their pastor was jailed, and after his release, the determined Grace Life Church congregation met for months at secret underground locations, inside barns and buildings on private rural land, unwilling to give up their constitutional rights to freely worship as a group, as their beliefs dictated.
The church membership grew by more than double once the pastor was imprisoned. Congregants said that people would drive for hours to come to the church, hurting from months of lockdowns, isolation, and lack of support.
“The threat to Alberta is not COVID-19,” Pastor Coates said in one interview after he was arrested. The threat to the province, he said, was Alberta Health Services and the lockdown measures.
Pastor Coates said the church had at one point met for 37 Sundays without a single COVID case. During his hearings, the government didn’t argue there was actual harm, only that the pastor wasn’t following government mandates on masks, social distancing, and capacity limits.
At his first sermon following his release from jail, held on April 11, 2021, in a secret location, Pastor Coates said to raucous cheering and applause from the church crowd, “They can take our facility, but we'll just find another one.”
In spring of 2021, following months of protests, intense pressure, and media attention, Alberta prosecutors decided to withdraw all but one of the Public Health Act charges still levied against Pastor Coates and his church. Criminal charges of breach of condition were also withdrawn.
At the time, Pastor Coates and his lawyer Mr. Grey would not agree to have all charges dropped as they wanted the matter heard at trial and intended to challenge the constitutionality of health orders.
