The continuing scandals and abuses by the Trudeau-Singh government present a grave problem. It will not be enough to vote the rascals out of government at the next opportunity—assuming there will still eventually be an opportunity. It also seems necessary to exact some greater punishment, for some protection against similar actions by future governments, and to restore public trust. The people must not be in fear of the government.
Yet any possible action looks just about as risky to democracy. If leaders face prosecution on leaving office, this becomes an incentive to refuse to leave office.
Appointing Tamara Lich and other leaders of the Freedom convoy to Lieutenant-Governorships and the Senate might help. It would at least make a statement. Putting up statues of Tamara Lich and of the aboriginal woman trampled by police horses during the February protests might also have symbolic value.
But here’s another, more substantive, idea.
NATO looks on the verge of admitting Finland and Sweden. At its recent summit, it also invited delegations from Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. If all these countries joined, NATO would come close to being an alliance of all the stable liberal democracies. This could be exceptionally useful, for purposes other than mutual defense; for purposes of protecting and preserving liberal democracy everywhere. There is much the United Nations cannot be trusted to do, in terms of human rights, because the bad actors are themselves full members.
NATO could also be appealed to a neutral outside party, in Cases like Canada’s, to prosecute violations of human rights or democratic principles by government bodies within member countries. Should any internal group try to seize or subvert the democratic government, or the democratic process, the alliance could combine against it just as they would an external threat.
This should be an important incentive for governments to join: so long as they are honest, it protects their regime and e3nsures they are not shot in their beds.
Perhaps it would be too intrusive to allow soldiers from Fort Drum to cross the border now; but a subsequent government could refer prosecution of a previous government to NATO as a neutral body, so that it would not be, and would not appear to be, a political show trial; and so that those leaving office could have some expectation of fair treatment. Indeed, the current government might, in all honour, pass prosecution of Tamara Lich and the other convoy leaders, and the investigation of the invocation of the Emergency Act, to such an outside tribunal as well. We could constitute a jury of peers: elected representatives from twelve sister democracies.
The same mechanism could be available to the USA to justly sort out January 6th and Trump’s possible guilt; and the legality of the 2020 federal election. It would no longer be partisan.
The US might well resist, always sensitive to losing any sovereignty to untrustworthy foreigners. Even so, a formal condemnation by a NATO panel might still be of great moral force.