WESTLOCK – The Westlock DJ who faces 10 Public Health Act tickets for organizing “freedom rallies”, outdoor church services and so-called COVID-19 information sessions across northern Alberta earlier this year during the height of the pandemic has received a fifth adjournment.
In Westlock Provincial Court July 28, Judge Vaughn Myers denied a request from Benita Pedersen to set her next court appearance for the end of September and instead selected Sept. 8 as the day she’ll have to set a trial date. Pedersen faces 10 PHA 73(1) tickets for contravening an order of the Medical Officer of Health, specifically in relation to mass gatherings. Each ticket carries a specified fine of $1,000, plus a 20 per cent victim fine surcharge.
“That’s way longer than we would give anybody,” said Judge Myers, who informed Pedersen when she entered the courtroom that she needed to put on a mask. “I appreciate the reasons you’ve given, so let’s do this, I’m going to ask you to do the very best to get the disclosure and do everything (you need to do) by Sept. 8. That still gives you eight or nine weeks.
“You obviously want to get this thing to trial as fast as everybody else does.”
Specialized prosecutions office prosecutor Craig Kallal told Judge Myers they had sent Pedersen her disclosure, but she claimed she had not received it. Kallal went on to note that she was scheduled to pick up disclosure directly from him and that if the case does go to trial it could last five to eight days.
“My understanding is that the disclosure is quite an extensive package with lots of video and documents and so I would like an adequate time to review it and pour over it, but I also have other responsibilities in August, so I was hoping to have until September,” she told the judge.
Pedersen is representing herself after her lawyer asked to be removed from the record June 2, citing a breakdown of the relationship. Previously Rebel News Alberta Bureau chief Sheila Gunn Reid had stated that the website had offered to help Pedersen contest her tickets via its Fight The Fines project.
“(Yuav) Niv represented me some, but there was some miscommunication and then he stepped down from representing me, so I want it known that I didn’t fire him,” said Pedersen.
Background
Pedersen, who previously stated on social media she has “zero intention of paying any of these (fines)” and claims she hasn’t broken any laws, hosted two anti-COVID-19 measures rallies in Westlock Feb. 11 and Feb. 25 and a series of others across the region in Athabasca, Barrhead, Bonnyville and Lac La Biche.
During an April 8 webcast dubbed The Thursday Fastball With Crusty Canuck, Pedersen said then she had received eight tickets totaling $9,600 and “was going to wallpaper my room with them but they’re mismatched in colours — I’ve got yellow ones and white ones and now I have a pink one, so they’re all mismatched so I don’t think I’m going to use them as wallpaper.” Meanwhile at Pedersen’s Lac La Biche event April 16, she proudly told the crowd she had nine tickets that added up to $10,800 in fines.
“I have a message to all the authorities right now, I am not afraid of you, I am not scared. I will take another ticket. If you want to put me in jail, go ahead. I’d rather not go to jail, but I’m in a sense prepared to if that’s what this is going to come to,” Pedersen said during the April 8 webcast. “I’m fighting for all Canadians and I want a complete restoration of the freedoms and rights of all Canadians, that’s my goal. And I’m in this for the next year, the next decade, the next two decades if that’s what it takes. And if that costs me my time, my energy, my money, my freedom, my life, so be it.”
According to a published CTV report, 576 tickets were issued under the PHA between March 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021 in Alberta and just 12 per cent resulted in a conviction.
