Alberta Pastor Charged Over COVID-19 Restrictions Returns to Pulpit After 35 Days in Jail

Pastor James Coates of GraceLife Church, located west of Edmonton in Parkland County, Alberta, was at the centre of a dispute over provincial COVID-19 health restrictions. According to a CBC report, the church held services in defiance of those orders. Provincial regulations limit in-person church attendance to 15 per cent capacity and call for physical distancing and masks. A closure order issued by Alberta Health Services in January was repeatedly ignored, and police fined the church $1,200 in December.

Coates was twice charged in February with violating the Public Health Act and with violating a promise. Police said he was arrested the following week after the church continued holding services that they said breached restrictions on attendance, masking and physical distancing. The RCMP said Coates was held in custody after he refused to agree to bail conditions.

Coates’s case was addressed in Stony Plain court on a Wednesday morning, but he did not attend. He is scheduled to be tried before Stony Plain provincial court judge Charles Gardner for three days beginning May 3. John Carpay of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms said that lawyer James Kitchen planned to seek Coates’s release until the trial begins through the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench. The charges remain allegations that have not been tried, and no conviction had been reported at the time of these reports.

Coates was released from jail on March 22. The CBC reported that he had spent 35 days in incarceration, and that those days were counted as credit to fully offset a $1,500 fine. The reports do not indicate what the $1,500 fine related to, and they do not state whether any further proceedings were pending in the case beyond the scheduled trial.

On the Sunday that followed, Coates addressed GraceLife Church in person, his first time speaking to the congregation since his release. The CBC reported that the church had defied the orders since December, with hundreds attending services despite the January closure order. Alberta Health Services said public health team members were on site that Sunday but were not allowed inside. The agency urged the church to comply with public health and court orders to reduce the potential spread of COVID-19.

The scheduled trial is the forum in which the charges against Coates will be examined on the evidence, a step that bears on truth and fairness (Proverbs 18:17).