Premier Danielle Smith is walking back comments she made on Thursday about regularly checking with Crown prosecutors about COVID breach cases.
“Of course, I never called a Crown Prosecutor. You’re not allowed to do that as a politician,” Smith said on 630 CHED’s Saturday morning show Your province, your premier. “Everyone knows that.”
During a news conference on Thursday, Smith said she regularly asks prosecutors whether convictions are likely for those facing charges of COVID violations, and said her line of questioning is in the best interest of the public. Was.
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“I may have used some foul language, but my communication with the Department of Justice has always been through the appropriate channels,” he said Saturday.
He said that he has only spoken to the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General.
Smith said she sought legal advice when she was first elected UCP leader, and later became premier in the fall, about whether there was something she could address.
“The advice I was given was that a Crown prosecutor can only consider whether there is a reasonable prospect of punishment and whether it is in the public interest,” he said on Saturday.
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The Justice Department confirmed to The Canadian Press on Friday that Smith has never spoken to a Crown prosecutor.
She said that whatever she says is always under scrutiny and hence she has to go through the right path. However, this is not the first time in his short tenure that Smith has walked back comments made during addresses and new conventions.
After taking the oath of office, Smith said that non-vaccinated people were the most discriminated against group he had ever seen in his lifetime, a statement he later said was misunderstood after receiving much backlash. .
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