The Trial of Stephen Joseph Harper

I imagine the day, probably within twenty years, when Stephen Harper, former prime minister of Canada, will sit in the prisoner's dock to stand trial.

Harper and his co-defendants will be tried for crimes against humanity and treason.   He will be tried for his instrumental role in subverting action to arrest global warming both within Canada and internationally and causing the otherwise avoidable deaths of thousands, perhaps millions, of innocents.

I know this all sounds ridiculously fanciful - today.   Harper on trial?  Over climate change?  Preposterous.   Sure, today.   But twenty years from now we may well see his actions much differently.   Indeed we may be living with the exceedingly unpleasant and even dangerous consequences of his perfidy.

Law students are taught the doctrine of retroactivity in criminal law.  You cannot convict someone of a crime that wasn't a criminal offence at the time it was committed.   Yet, as with all legal doctrines, there is much grey area.  And within that, I propose this.

As the consequences of inaction are potentially so catastrophic for our children and grandchildren and, as they have no current voice politically, and as those deciding their fate are those in power today, let us subscribe to and circulate a petition, placing these people on unequivocal notice, that they shall be held responsible, civilly and criminally, in future for the actions and decisions they take today that could be foreseeably hazardous to our future generations.

It's not as though we're asking them to take stabs in the dark.   The science exists, the consensus is patent.   What conceivable right have they to ignore it in pursuit of their very passing, short-term interests?

I need to find some organization capable of undertaking this sort of online petition.   We and our children and our grandchildren, need to fix responsibility for their future through the balance of this century on the decision makers of today.   They need to be held to account and, for the life of me, I cannot and have not thought of a better way to do it.

If Harper & Co. and their New Dem and Liberal successors knew they would face having to answer for their callous and self-serving neglect, they would damn well think twice on it.  Iron bars and forfeiture are the only way to control this sort of political excess.

We must make this gang of petro-pimps, whether Conservative, Liberal or NDP, once again fear us, the Canadian public.   We have too long lived in fear of them.

And to make this idea go down just a little easier, try this: