Published in the Western Standard, January 3, 2005, p. 18. (Also available in a pdf scan.)

 

Prosecuting the Chrétien Regime
by
Pierre Lemieux

 

I wouldn’t want to defend Augusto Pinochet more than I intend to single out Jean Chrétien as the only local candidate for criminal prosecution. Even if he was certainly a lesser evil than Salvator Allende and, in the end, probably contributed to Chilean liberty and prosperity, Pinochet covered many crimes, and he did it less legally than “the legislator” or “the regulator” usually does. Chrétien robbed, oppressed and killed only indirectly and aseptically, as part of a blind Leviathan. Both Pinochet and Chrétien were the subjects of news items in the same issue of the National Post in early December. The former head of the National Parole Board accused then prime minister Chrétien of exerting political pressures in favour of his adoptive son, a habitué of the court and jail system. As for old and ailing Pinochet, a Chilean court lifted his immunity from prosecution in the murder of a general and his wife three decades ago; and as we are going to press, he has just been indicted in a different case. It is a fair bet that Pinochet never thought, when he was at the pinnacle of the state, that he would ever be arrested, as he was in London a few years ago, let alone face the justice of his own country. Most people cannot imagine that any actual democratic ruler will, one day, be criminally prosecuted for acts accomplished under his state’s legality. If Jean Chrétien can perhaps conceive, in his worst nightmares, that he could one day be prosecuted for traffic of influence or some other minor abuse of power, he probably cannot imagine that he could be prosecuted for acts that were legal under his democratic tyranny, but which may later be recognized for what they were: crimes against individuals. Chrétien and statocrats like Allan Rock did commit many of these crimes, even if not defined as such in their laws. Let me give a few examples. To give the benefit of the doubt to the future defendants, assume that the gun controls adopted by governments led by Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien over the past 40 years have saved lives, on balance. In fact, there is much statistical evidence that gun controls actually cost net lives as they impose higher risks and costs to honest citizens defending themselves than to the criminals attacking them. But let us assume that gun controls save net statistical lives—say, they will prevent the death of three gang members or innocent bystanders, at the expense of the life an old couple killed by burglars who had rightly assumed that the homeowners were not armed. The politicos and high-level bureaucrats who coercively prevented a victim to exert his right of self-defence are accessory to murder, even assuming that their laws saved a larger number of statistical anonymous lives. What about, say, Jeff Shannon, a New Brunswicker assassinated after he had been disarmed by the "law" because of a minor marijuana offence (according to CBC New Brunswick and a family source)? What about Jack Gentle, who, on June 19, 2003, committed suicide in New Westminster, B.C., while the RCMP was seizing his gun collection, destroying the only passion of his life (The Province, July 28, 2003)? Moreover, laws against victimless crimes—consumption of tobacco, alcohol, and drugs—generate criminal activities where many participants and some bystanders get killed. The state saves some individuals from drugs, against their will, and kills others in the process. And what about the middle-aged smokers who have been rendered impotent by Health Canada’s obscene propaganda on their packs of cigarettes? What about taxpayers pushed into depression by the taxman? How many victims of the state? Sure, there is a difference between Chrétien or Rock, on one hand, and Pinochet on the other, but it is a difference of degree, not a difference in nature. (Moreover, Chrétien and Rock were unable to think of a good economic policy.) As unconceivable as it may now seem, couldn’t the same happen to Chrétien or Rock as is now happening to Pinochet? OK, I may be too optimistic. The criminal prosecution of Chrétien and Rock may be the product of a mere political vengeance under a powerful state. In that case, the culprits would simply get a taste of the state they worked so hard to impose on the rest of us.