Man convicted for hate speech charged with impersonating police in Saskatoon

The former leader of the Canadian Nationalist Party, who was previously convicted for hate speech, has been charged with twice impersonating a police officer in Saskatoon.

Travis Patron, who is 32, was arrested Wednesday and faces additional charges of criminal harassment and failing to comply with court-imposed conditions.

Police say officers were called to a hotel last week after reports a man approached a woman and her child, identified himself as police and accused her of abduction.

The woman went into the hotel with her child and bystanders intervened before he fled.

A few days later, police received another report of a man approaching a woman and identified himself as a peace officer, offering to escort her through the area.

The woman declined and the man left.

Patron appeared in provincial court Thursday and is scheduled to return next week.

Patron founded the now-defunct Canadian Nationalist Party and led it into the 2019 federal election.

He ran as a candidate in the Saskatchewan of Souris-Moose Mountain, earning less than one per cent of the vote.

He was handed a one-year sentence in October for the hate speech charge after he called for the genocide of Jewish people in 2019.