Pastor James Coates to be released from jail as Crown withdraws charges

This post is from a news release by the Justice Centre

EDMONTON: The Justice Centre today announced that Crown Prosecutors have agreed to withdraw all but one of the Public Health Act offences that Pastor James Coates has been charged with. The Justice Centre expects Pastor Coates will be released from jail in the coming days, without any conditions, pending his May 3-5 trial in Provincial Court.

The Justice Centre will defend Pastor Coates on one remaining charge of violating an Order of the Chief Medical Officer of Health by challenging the lawfulness of the public health order that he is charged with violating.

The Pastor of Grace Life Church near Edmonton has been incarcerated in the Edmonton Remand Centre for a month, since February 16. It is expected that Pastor Coates could be released from jail as early as Friday, March 19.

Grace Life is a church of nearly 400 congregants who have exercised their Charter rights and freedoms normally since July of 2020, including their freedoms of assembly, association, expression, religion and conscience. Not one congregant has been lost to Covid, but, sadly, a congregant was lost to the Alberta Government lockdown in the first week of February when he died prematurely because he couldn’t get the cancer treatment he needed due to government lockdown restrictions.

Pastor Coates and Grace Life Church are represented by the Justice Centre in respect of tickets and court summons. The Pastor and his church have been taken to court by Alberta Health Services (AHS) and ordered to close by AHS for holding regular church services and refusing to turn congregants away.

The Justice Centre sent a letter to Premier Jason Kenney on February 17, 2021, challenging him to assume responsibility for protecting the Charter rights and freedoms of Albertans, and to cease allowing an unelected health official, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, to violate rights and freedoms with health orders that are not reviewed by, or approved by, the elected Members of the Legislative Assembly.

Pastor Coates has been jailed in the Edmonton Remand Centre since February 16, after he refused to sign a bail condition that required him to effectively promise to stop exercising his Charter freedoms of conscience, religion, expression, association and peaceful assembly.

On Sunday, February 7, after the morning worship service, two RCMP officers met with Pastor Coates and a few others in his office at the Church and told Pastor Coates that he was under arrest.

The officers imposed a condition on the Pastor that he only hold church if he followed all the public health restrictions, such as permitting only 15% of his congregants to attend a Sunday morning worship service. Pastor Coates explained to the officers that he could not agree to abide by Charter-violating public health orders that prevent him from fulfilling his duty as a minister to lead his congregation in worship. As Pastor Coates did not agree to the condition imposed on him, RCMP should have taken him before a Justice of the Peace, but they did not and, instead, left the church.

Pastor Coates again held church on Sunday February 14. On Monday, February 15, the RCMP asked Pastor Coates to attend at the RCMP station. When Pastor Coates arrived, the RCMP charged him with multiple Public Health Act offences and a criminal offence related to the bail condition imposed on February 7.

A bail hearing took place on Tuesday, February 16. Crown Prosecutor Karen Thorsrud asked the court to keep Pastor Coates in jail until he could appear for trial. A Justice of the Peace ordered Pastor Coates released on bail on the condition that he only hold church if he followed all the public health restrictions. Pastor Coates could not, in good conscience, agree to such a Charterrights-violating condition of release and was therefore detained at the Edmonton Remand Centre.

Crown prosecutors have now agreed that Pastor Coates can be released without conditions and will withdraw all but one of the Public Health Act charges against him. Prosecutors have also agreed to withdraw the criminal charge in connection with the condition imposed by RCMP on February 7, and instead have charged Pastor Coates $100 for breaching the condition, which Pastor Coates has agreed to pay.

The single charge remaining has not been withdrawn, as the Justice Centre and Pastor Coates want the matter heard at trial, to determine the constitutionality of the public health order that churches only hold worship services at 15% capacity, and to compel the government to produce scientific evidence that might support these violations of Charter freedoms. The trial is scheduled to take place beginning on May 3, 2021.

“The condition that Pastor Coates effectively stop doing his job as a pastor by adhering to unscientific and unconstitutional public health restrictions should never have been imposed on him by the RCMP, or by the Court. We are hopeful that he will finally be released from jail without conditions, and can resume pastoring Grace Life church,” states Justice Centre president John Carpay.

“We look forward appearing in court in May and demanding the government provide evidence that public health restrictions that violate the freedoms of religion, peaceful assembly, expression and association are scientific and are justifiable in a free and democratic country,” concludes Carpay.

Related Topics:#CoatesReleasedFromJail #GraceLifeChurch #PastorJamesCoates feature

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Alberta takes big step towards shorter wait times and higher quality health care

Published on April 9, 2025

Todayville Content Team

From the Fraser Institute

By Nadeem Esmail

On Monday, the Smith government announced that beginning next year it will change the way it funds surgeries in Alberta. This is a big step towards unlocking the ability of Alberta’s health-care system to provide more, better and faster services for the same or possibly fewer dollars.

To understand the significance of this change, you must understand the consequences of the current (and outdated) approach.

Currently, the Alberta government pays a lump sum of money to hospitals each year. Consequently, hospitals perceive patients as a drain on their budgets. From the hospital’s perspective, there’s little financial incentive to serve more patients, operate more efficiently and provide superior quality services.

Consider what would happen if your local grocery store received a giant bag of money each year to feed people. The number of items would quickly decline to whatever was most convenient for the store to provide. (Have a favourite cereal? Too bad.) Store hours would become less convenient for customers, alongside a general decline in overall service. This type of grocery store, like an Alberta hospital, is actually financially better off (that is, it saves money) if you go elsewhere.

The Smith government plans to flip this entire system on its head, to the benefit of patients and taxpayers. Instead of handing out bags of money each year to providers, the new system—known as “activity-based funding”—will pay health-care providers for each patient they treat, based on the patient’s particular condition and important factors that may add complexity or cost to their care.

This turns patients from a drain on budgets into a source of additional revenue. The result, as has been demonstrated in other universal health-care systems worldwide, is more services delivered using existing health-care infrastructure, lower wait times, improved quality of care, improved access to medical technologies, and less waste.

In other words, Albertans will receive far better value from their health-care system, which is currently among the most expensive in the world. And relief can’t come soon enough—for example, last year in Alberta the median wait time for orthopedic surgeries including hip and knee replacements was 66.8 weeks.

The naysayers argue this approach will undermine the province’s universal system and hurt patients. But by allowing a spectrum of providers to compete for the delivery of quality care, Alberta will follow the lead of other more successful universal health-care systems in countries such as Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland and create greater accountability for hospitals and other health-care providers. Taxpayers will get a much better picture of what they’re paying for and how much they pay.

Again, Alberta is not exploring an untested policy. Almost every other developed country with universal health care uses some form of “activity-based funding” for hospital and surgical care. And remember, we already spend more on health care than our counterparts in nearly all of these countries yet endure longer wait times and poorer access to services generally, in part because of how we pay for surgical care.

While the devil is always in the details, and while it’s still possible for the Alberta government to get this wrong, Monday’s announcement is a big step in the right direction. A funding model that puts patients first will get Albertans more of the high-quality health care they already pay for in a timelier fashion. And provide to other provinces an example of bold health-care reform.

Nadeem Esmail

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

Alberta

Alberta’s embrace of activity-based funding is great news for patients

Published on April 9, 2025

Todayville

From the Montreal Economic Institute

Alberta’s move to fund acute care services through activity-based funding follows best practices internationally, points out an MEI researcher following an announcement made by Premier Danielle Smith earlier today.

“For too long, the way hospitals were funded in Alberta incentivized treating fewer patients, contributing to our long wait times,” explains Krystle Wittevrongel, director of research at the MEI. “International experience has shown that, with the proper funding models in place, health systems become more efficient to the benefit of patients.”

Currently, Alberta’s hospitals are financed under a system called “global budgeting.” This involves allocating a pre-set amount of funding to pay for a specific number of services based on previous years’ budgets.

Under the government’s newly proposed funding system, hospitals receive a fixed payment for each treatment delivered.

An Economic Note published by the MEI last year showed that Quebec’s gradual adoption of activity-based funding led to higher productivity and lower costs in the province’s health system.

Notably, the province observed that the per-procedure cost of MRIs fell by four per cent as the number of procedures performed increased by 22 per cent.

In the radiology and oncology sector, it observed productivity increases of 26 per cent while procedure costs decreased by seven per cent.

“Being able to perform more surgeries, at lower costs, and within shorter timelines is exactly what Alberta’s patients need, and Premier Smith understands that,” continued Mrs. Wittevrongel. “Today’s announcement is a good first step, and we look forward to seeing a successful roll-out once appropriate funding levels per procedure are set.”

The governments expects to roll-out this new funding model for select procedures starting in 2026.

* * *

The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.