The man behind a Canadian far-right political party has been arrested for impersonating a police officer.
Travis Patron, a fringe far-right figure in Canada who founded an antisemitic political party, was arrested earlier this week in connection to two incidents of approaching women while pretending to be law enforcement. Saskatoon police say on July 29 Patron approached a woman who was out for a walk with her child in the city’s downtown, said he was a peace officer, and accused the woman of abducting the child.
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“The woman entered a hotel with her child to seek assistance while the man followed her inside causing a disturbance; bystanders quickly intervened and the man fled the area on foot,” reads their press release.
Two days later, police allege Patron then approached a woman near the University of Saskatchewan and “identified himself as a peace officer, and offered to escort her through the area; the woman declined and the man left.”
A police spokesman told VICE they do not believe Patron was dressed in a law enforcement outfit at the time of the incident.
Saskatoon Police did not release Patron’s name, citing policy, but they confirmed the suspect was a 32-year-old man from Redvers, Saskatchewan, and the Saskatoon Courthouse confirmed to VICE News his name was Travis Patron.
Earlier this week, the University of Saskatchewan’s Saskatoon campus issued a memo warning its population that Patron was trespassing on the campus and impersonating staff. The memo included a photo of Patron and advised that anyone who sees him should call campus services.
This is hardly Patron’s first brush with the law. In 2022, he was convicted of wilful promotion of hatred for a video he made where he called for Jewish people to be removed from Canada. He was also convicted of assault after attacking two women in Regina in 2019 who refused to accept a ride home from him.
Patron had been a figure in the Canadian far-right for years. Most notably, he founded the Canadian Nationalist Party, or CNP, in 2019 and ran, alongside two other candidates, on a far-right and antisemitic platform in the federal election. Patron was roundly mocked after accidentally releasing the names of all his financial backers because he didn’t understand election law.
In the end, Patron received a grand total of 168 votes and accidentally outed all the party members much to their howls of foul play. The CNP was deregistered as a party in 2022 for not having at least 250 members.
Kurt Phillips, a board member of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, told VICE News Patron’s impact has tapered off in recent years after his convictions.
“Since his time in jail and after his release Patron hasn’t been a factor in the Canadian far-right,” said Phillips. “One of the candidates who ran for the CNP in 2019 took over the leadership and rebranded it as an overtly neo-Nazi movement and has been active in protesting drag story time events in Ontario.”
The North American right wing is currently in the midst of a moral panic involving child trafficking, which began with the QAnon movement and recently accelerated thanks to the surprising success of the movie Sound of Freedom. Just this week, QAnon influencer and former United States Army lieutenant general Micheal Flynn announced a “child trafficking training” seminar in Florida. The anti-LGBTQ movement has latched onto this moral panic where they’ve been attacking trans people as groomers.
In 2019, Patron was involved in a disturbingly situation. In November of that year, Patron met two women in a Regina bar and at the end of the night offered to drive them home. According to court testimony, Patron followed them to a friend’s house and approached them to offer a ride home. After they repeatedly refused he hit one of the women in the head and slapped the other women in the face. He slapped the woman with such force she fell to the ground and broke her wrist. The other woman sustained a concussion. Patron fled the scene but was later arrested, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for the assaults, but because of time served as he awaited trial, he was released upon sentencing.
The Saskatoon StarPhoenix reports that he will next appear in court for the impersonation charges next Wednesday.
