After Police Constable Gabriel Proulx’s defence for a recent disciplinary action by his employer invoked the Sovereign Citizen ideology, the officer appeared on an American QAnon web show known for sharing antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Peter Smith
Canadian Anti-Hate Network
Despite facing disciplinary proceedings for discreditable conduct, Police Constable Gabriel Proulx has appeared on multiple live streams with prominent pushers of both QAnon beliefs and Sovereign Citizenship, a pseudo-legal strategy that, among other things, denies the ability of the police to enforce the law.
A current member of the Ontario Provincial Police, Proulx is facing disciplinary procedures for an incident that occurred in a public park on April 17, 2021, in Belleville, ON.
When a public works employee asked a group of parents to disperse from the park to comply with COVID measures at the time, an off-duty officer in the area reports observing “numerous persons” surrounding the employee, according to an internal OPP document posted online by Christopher James Pritchard, the host of the Sovereign Citizen livestream A Warrior Calls. Pritchard is a Sovereign Citizen influencer who has been documented giving legal advice to adherents of the COVID-19 conspiracy movement.
When police arrived, according to the document, a group of men including Proulx, confirmed they had spoken to the city employee, and “challenged the government’s authority to close the park.”
Besides Proulx, another officer, Police Constable Elijah McCaughen were reportedly visiting the park with their families.
“[Proulx] and other males of the group made it very clear that the group would not cooperate if arrested and attempted to intimidate BPS officers into leaving the park,” the document continues.
Proulx and Pritchard appeared on the live stream of an American QAnon influencer in mid-September.
Patriot Streetfighter, the stream hosted by Dallas-based Scott McKay, has nearly 185,000 followers on Telegram. McKay is known for selling merchandise through QAnon-affiliated websites and touring the US on a custom-painted bus he calls the “War Machine.”
Recently, McKay appeared at the same QAnon-affiliated conference with Michael Flynn and Canadian hate preacher Artur Pawlowski. McKay was also photographed with American Proud Boys in August, months after Canada designated them a terrorist entity, stating he “stands with them.”
On Telegram, McKay posts about “the bankers,” as well as underground tunnels and other QAnon-connected conspiracies. Since the onset of the pandemic, however, McKay has focused largely on disseminating medical disinformation.
Talking to Proulx and Prichard on his live stream on September 14, McKay said he was impressed by Canada and activists like Chris Sky -- who has a history of Holocaust denial and racism. The OPP officer says that it was an appearance on McKay’s program that led him to find Prichard and A Warrior Calls.
“It’s an honour to be able to meet you here today,” McKay tells him, after telling his audience the Obama Administration turned the United States against the police. “You’re one of those people I’ve been trying to call up to the front lines here and start protecting fellow man [sic].”
With Proulx nodding along, McKay explains that the legal system -- “not the law system” -- answers “to a different power that are under the movement to enslave humanity, to lock you down.”
It’s also during this diatribe that McKay mentions the “criminal Khazarian cabal,” a slight, but common, addendum to the QAnon conspiracy’s central villains: the elite pedophilic cannibals that run most of the world and plot to overthrow (usually American) democracy. The reference to Khazars is rooted in the arcane antisemitic conspiracy that most of the world’s Jewish population are not decended from Israelites, rather a collapsed empire whose refugees converted. While many QAnon adherents deny the antisemitic connection, this belief casts an overwhelming portion of modern followers of Judaism as “fake Jews'' whose intent is to destroy the world.
Later in the show, McKay makes explicit references to QAnon, talking about how “there is a plan,” of which only a handful of people know, and how Q clearance works.
Proulx is direct about his beliefs regarding the pandemic, telling McKay and Pritchard, “You [law enforcement] have to think twice now. You’re enforcing something which is a complete lie.”
The Canadian Anti-Hate Network has reached out to McKay for comment and will update accordingly.
On his own live stream with Proulx, Pritchard laid out the defence he had crafted for the officer and air force veteran in more detail. Rooted in a disparate and loosely connected legal concoction often referred to as the Sovereign Citizen movement, sovereigns share a belief that the legal system does not apply to individuals who have not chosen to “opt-in.”
The specifics of Sovereign Citizen belief can vary from individual to individual, but many including Pritchard choose to believe that since they did not agree to a contract with the Government of Canada, which he calls a “service corporation,” they are not bound by laws written by men. Participation in the system, starting as early as the issuing of birth certificates, serve as documents that bind individuals to the state. The Sovereign Citizen ideology is prevalent within the COVID-19 conspiracy movement, as well as the general “patriot” movement, with a marked uptick in the days of the Yellow Vests.
“A Sovereign Citizen is an oxymoron,” Pritchard wrote in response to a request for comment. “Sovereign applies to we the people given dominion over the earth from our creator.
“A Citizen is a legal term/slave created by service corporations (Such as Ontario or Canada, ect) based on Maritime/Admiralty Law (law of sea). That is why it is called citizenSHIP [sic]. Once you understand the depths of the constructive fraud occurring against us all when born (not birthed which is a shipping term).”
Much of the language and phrases often associated with the Sovereign movement are contained within Proux’s defence, which is titled “Notice: Trespass.” Both the officer and Pritchard’s names use altered versions of their full names (i.e. Gabriel Gilles of the Proulx family) in the document. Other Sovereigns sometimes will use a colon or refuse to capitalize their names, believing these subtle alterations circumvent the state and court’s power over them.
Both men also chose to stamp the document with a bloody fingerprint, another hallmark of the ideology.
Proulx, a former AA hockey player with the Long Beach Ice Dogs, also appeared with Pritchard on an allied show called the “STG Report.” In it, Proulx gives a more detailed version of his view of the event that saw him disciplined.
Casting himself in a crowd of “about five or six of us standing in front” talking with the officers, the interaction appears to have ended when the Belleville Police backed down.
“After an argument for probably 20 minutes, 30 minutes it was clear that we told the officer we were going to stay that day at the park to play with our kids. That was the end of that, they finally decided they were going to back off from what they were trying to do there.”
A couple of weeks later, Proulx says he was informed that an investigation had been launched into his participation in the incident along with the other officer, Elijah McCaughen.
“They requested a report. I didn’t do the report because I was currently on medical leave, so I didn’t want anything to do with that. [McCaughen] filed a report and was kinda harassed after that to produce more evidence or whatever they wanted,” Proulx explains. “It kind of died off after that.”
Weeks later he received paperwork saying he was being charged for discreditable conduct.
Documents posted that purport to be from the OPP say that Proulx is facing a 40-hour suspension of pay for refusing to comply with the officers. A spokesperson also confirmed a separate investigation is ongoing, but would not provide any details.
Proulx did not respond to a request for comment.
Despite Proulx facing the penalty, his current beliefs and defence have been largely crafted by Pritchard. Referred to as his "council" in the Trespass Notice, Pritchard is also credited by Proulx as one of the people who taught him about the Sovereign ideology.
“When I found your website and everything else, that’s when my jaw kinda dropped because I had no idea about the service corporation. That the Government of Canada is a national service corporation,” Proulx said, drawing a distinguishing line between things that are “legal” and “lawful.”
This is a reference to Pritchard’s belief, common among Sovereigns, that “legal” applies to when the “person” is created with the issuing of a birth certificate. Lawful refers to the actual physical individuals, based on what they believe to be “common law” or the “laws of the land” -- far superior to the laws of the sea enacted on us by the corporation of Canada.
“They don’t claim your property, you don’t have a contract with them on the private side, you don’t have a contract with them in whatever other capacity they might act in this world,” Pritchard said during his stream. “Then nothing that man or woman in front of you applies to you, regardless of the theatre you’ve been told.”
Beyond the claims of “trespass” against the OPP officer, Pritchard tells his viewers the familiar line that COVID-19 and the pandemic is a lie, claiming that it has failed to be isolated in a laboratory, despite this being patently false.
Other declarations include the invalidity of all major legal institutions, COVID-19 vaccinations being a form of genocide, and a slew of spurious pronouncements based on his dubious legal research.
“In this moment you have a very clear choice to be on the right side of history now with foundational truths,” the document submitted by Pritchard and Proulx reads above their bloody fingerprints. “We all have been lied to on Covid 19 Sars 2 and a Justice System founded on massive constructive fraud; Millions of people are waking with truth and it requires all in law enforcement now join and fight this evil; This is our moment. This is our time in history to stop the genocide now occurring with one simple truth.”
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