Documents reveal deliberations that led to Christian nationalist Sean Feucht performing at the Alberta Legislature
Emails obtained through ATI show internal "red flags" raised about the performer's application to perform, as well as involvement of the Premier's Office and Municipal Affairs minister.
This story was originally published at the Progress Report.
Major concerns were raised within Alberta Infrastructure about granting a permit for American Christian nationalist preacher and musician Sean Feucht to perform at the Legislature bandshell in August 2025, and a staffer from at least one other ministry intervened early in an effort to ensure the concert proceeded, documents obtained through Alberta’s access to information (ATI) system reveal.
The Premier’s Office was also involved in discussions with Alberta Infrastructure about the public backlash to Feucht’s performance, but those correspondences are largely redacted.
Last summer, Feucht saw the vast majority of permits for shows on his Canadian Revive ‘25 tour revoked, but not in Edmonton or Saskatoon.
Feucht’s performance at the Legislature bandshell in Edmonton proceeded as planned on Aug. 22 – the first day of the Edmonton Pride Festival. Protestors gathered to demonstrate against the performer, who has called Pride a “demonic agenda seeking to destroy our culture and pervert our children.”
Fecht received a late-night guided tour of the Legislature from UCP cabinet minister Searle Turton afterwards, which Turton admitted was “not usual procedure.”
As previously reported by the Progress Report, in addition to his support for U.S. President Donald Trump and opposition to 2SLGBT+ rights and pandemic restrictions, Feucht has close ties to far-right figures. He’s organized events with Calgary street preacher and convicted criminal Artur Pawlowski and has included members of the Proud Boys, which has been designated a terrorist entity in Canada, in his security detail.
Feucht has also been accused by former followers of “serious moral, ethical, financial, organizational and governance failures” in the multiple non-profit organizations that he operates, including allegedly pressuring a former bandmate to smuggle thousands of dollars of merchandise across the Canadian border undeclared.
While Feucht’s initial application to Alberta Infrastructure was rejected, a ministry spokesperson told the Edmonton Journal that it was “taking steps to help organizers submit a complete application.” Internally, serious questions were raised about the Feucht performance proceeding.
“This situation is starting to raise a few red flags at this point,” wrote legislature grounds event coordinator Melissa Kooznetsoff in an email to her colleagues on the morning of July 23.
The previous day, the first two dates of Feucht’s tour were cancelled by authorities at the last minute, citing public safety considerations.
Parks Canada revoked his permit to kick off his tour at the York Redoubt national historical site in Halifax on July 23, which was followed shortly by the City of Charlottetown revoking his permit to perform at Confederation Landing Park scheduled for the following day.
Later in the afternoon of July 23, the City of Moncton canceled Feucht’s show at Riverfront Park, which was scheduled for the same day as the Charlottetown performance, and Quebec City revoked the permit for his slated July 25 performance at the municipally owned and operated venue ExpoCité.
In a social media video responding to the first show’s cancellation, Feucht blamed “anti-Christian bigots.”
Why the initial application was rejected
The application for the Sean Feucht show was originally submitted by Spruce Grove Community Church in mid-April 2025, according to a May 26 email to Kooznetsoff from Samuel Basden, a ministerial assistant to Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams and former assistant for Sherwood Park-Fort Saskatchewan Conservative MP Garnett Genuis – both staunch social conservatives.
“I am writing to inquire about approval for an event this summer that is under review,” wrote Basden. “Do you know roughly when [the church] can expect confirmation? If I can provide any support in this review process, please let me know. Feel free to call.”
Basden’s email and digital signature are both redacted from this email, but the response from Alberta Infrastructure facilities manager Erin M. Harding includes his email.
Harding told Basden that the application was “returned to the organizers, and it is now up to the organizer to work with our Event Coordinator to provide the necessary details and paperwork for their event to proceed.”
On July 23, Kooznetsoff forwarded Harding’s response to Basden to assistant deputy minister of the Technical Corporate Division of Alberta Infrastructure Dale Beesley, describing Basden’s initial inquiry as an “email from the Minister’s office.”
“I have also included the emails from concerned Albertans regarding this events [sic] performer,” Kooznetsoff added.
According to the booking criteria for the Alberta Legislature grounds, only non-profits, “registered Alberta charities,” and the provincial government can book the grounds.
The event was ultimately sponsored by Feucht’s non-profit, Burn 24/7 Canada Ministries Worship Society, according to the completed event application form included in the ATI package. The form describes the event as a “family friendly [sic] Christian worship live music event for all ages.”
The form states that non-profits are required to provide proof of registration in Alberta under the Societies Act, but Burn 24/7 doesn’t appear in Alberta’s online non-profit listing.
There are two completed event application forms included in the ATI documents; the second has the applicant organization’s name redacted, but both list the same non-profit number.
The Report phoned Spruce Grove Community Church for comment and spoke to a man who refused to provide his identity, except noting that he is one of the church’s pastors.
The pastor said that a congregant had initially approached the church’s leadership to “sponsor” what he said would be a “worship event.”
The congregant was under the impression that Feucht needed a local charity to apply on his behalf to perform at the Legislature grounds, not realizing that this would require the church to pay for the event’s insurance, the pastor explained.
“We were not going to be doing insurance for a group that’s not us,” he said.
The ATI package includes a certificate of liability insurance for a “faith based [sic] concert” on Aug. 22, but all other details, such as the cost and who is paying for it, are redacted.
The pastor’s account is corroborated by a July 23 email from Kooznetsoff to the church, which noted that “since it was verified that the Church is only assisting in a volunteer capacity for the event and that the Church does not agree to accept liability for said event, the application has been deemed invalid.”
The following morning, Kooznetsoff sent an email to her colleagues, with the subject line, “Repeated behaviour from Let Us Worship Organizers.”
“Please see the below information from a news article that demonstrates that the organizers have been withholding information from other venues as well,” Kooznetsoff wrote.
She quoted, but doesn’t appear to have provided a link, to a CBC News story on the cancellation of Feucht’s Quebec City appearance, in which a city spokesperson says: “The presence of a controversial artist was not mentioned in the contract between ExpoCité and the promoter of the concert.”
The Report provided the ATI documents to Michael DeMoor, a political scientist at the King’s University in Edmonton, who observed that the email correspondences reveal an “intersection” between the “fraught” culture war politics represented by Feucht and “basic administrative criteria.”
“This is, on the one hand, a purely administrative question: ‘Does this fit the legitimate criteria?’ But it’s colliding with bigger issues that can’t be solved administratively,” he said.
Premier’s Office involved
The bulk of the ATI documents obtained by the Progress Report consist of dozens of complaints to Infrastructure Minister Martin Long from members of the public about Feucht’s scheduled performance, which cited his far-right political views and allegations from former followers, in addition to questions about how Feucht meets the criteria for booking the Legislature bandshell.
There were two emails to Alberta Infrastructure from supporters of Feucht.
The first, submitted on July 26, encouraged the provincial government to “go against the tide of politically correct insanity back east.”
“Let the paying public court of opinion decide what and who it wants to listen to,” the supporter wrote of the free concert.
Another email criticized the UCP government for not being sufficiently forthright in its defence of the performer.
“All we hear is crickets from you! DISGRACEFUL!” reads the July 27 complaint from a member of the public.
While Premier Danielle Smith was publicly silent about Feucht’s performance, the ATI documents reveal that her office did correspond with Infrastructure Alberta about the Feucht performance.
A July 28 email to Alberta Infrastructure divisional operations manager Kate Davidson from a sender whose email and digital signature are redacted provided “an update on emails we are seeing [emphasis added]” about Feucht’s “expected appearance at the Legislature grounds.”
The sender notes that the Premier’s Office inbox received nearly 100 emails “calling on government to cancel the concert booking” over five days. ”Infrastructure will be preparing a response,” Davidson replied.
Sam Blackett, the premier’s press secretary, sent a July 28 email to his counterpart at Alberta Infrastructure, Michael Kwas, with a “few more questions for you.” These questions are redacted entirely under section 29(1) of the ATI Act, which pertains to advice from officials and policy deliberation.
When Premier Smith replaced the old Freedom of Information and Privacy Act with the ATI Act, one of the most significant changes was the exemption of emails between political staffers and Cabinet ministers, and among political staffers, from ATI requests.
Ten minutes after Blackett’s email, Alberta Infrastructure communications advisor Karen Johnsrud emailed the ministry’s manager of strategy and integration Ana Castellanos and senior operations and correspondence advisor Shannon O’Reilly with the subject line: “Follow up questions from PO [Premier’s Office] - highest priority on responses please (within the hour).” Her message is also redacted under section 29(1).
DeMoor noted that while it’s impossible to know precisely what issues representatives of her office were raising, it would be in Smith’s political interest to ensure the concert proceeded while not being publicly associated with it by the broader electorate.
Given the key role evangelical conservatives play in the UCP coalition, the government “allowing their evangelical supporters to see something that symbolizes their important presence” would be advantageous.
“That the province allows this to happen on the Legislative grounds is symbolically important to folks who want to reclaim Alberta for Jesus,” he said.
The Progress Report also provided Chris Berthelot, a former Edmonton Journal reporter who helped organize the protest against Feucht in Edmonton, with the ATI documents.
He expressed frustration with the volume of redactions. “It’s interesting that they were clearly concerned about what was going on, getting all this email feedback, but we can’t see what they’re saying,” said Berthelot, who acknowledged that privacy is an important part of the ATI system.
“They’re able to share our feedback and our concerns, but we’re not able to get a look into their thought process or why they were OK with this. I don’t know. The whole thing stinks.”
Protestors treated as security threat
The question of dealing with potential counter-protestors was raised by the Sheriffs Operational Communications Centre in an email to Beesley on the morning of July 29 with the subject line: “FW: Protest of Sean Feucht’s concert.”
In an email to Alberta Infrastructure communications director Brendan Proce, Beesley explained that the sheriffs routinely monitor social media for indications of protests at the Legislature, but that his ministry hadn’t received any formal requests for protests.
“They only thought about security concerns when a counter-protest was happening. It wasn’t that they had any security concerns when a bunch of citizens were reaching out to them, saying, ‘Hey, this guy is an extremist,’” Chris Bertholt told the Report.
Bertholt estimates that there were about 100 protestors at the concert, compared to 2,000 to 3,000 concert attendees.
“Obviously, we were loud,” he said. “We really tried to put a voice out there, but it wasn’t us that was trying to incite any violence or conflict.”
The protestors “encountered a lot of hostility” from concert attendees, Bertholt added, some of whom attempted to cross the police blockade separating both sides and “started trying to actually get physical with people.”
“A lot of people were coming at us. Not everyone was violent, of course. There were people there trying to pray at us. But if there is any aggression, it came from that side of the fence,” he said, referring to the concertgoers.
None of the Premier’s Office, Alberta Infrastructure nor Municipal Affairs acknowledged inquiries for this story.