Call it frontier justice.

The former mayor of Chetwynd, Evan Saugstad, has written a column recommending public executions for mass shootings and the killing of law-enforcement officers.

He's also a provincially appointed board member and former long-time chair of the Northern Development Initiative Trust.

"And when I mean public, I mean done in full view of the public, with the public doing the job," Saugstad wrote in the Alaska Highway News. "Remember the movies that had stockades in the town square? Remember the people lining up to throw stones while the criminal sat with hands and feat [sic] bound?

"It may have taken a lot of squealing, but never took too long."

He also thinks it's a good idea for social media to show "all the details" to send a message to anyone thinking of becoming a mass shooter.

"If they could watch how horrible a slow death can be as the aggrieved victims extract their pound of flesh, would they really want to be subject to the same?" he asked in the column. "In the world that goes round and round, we are too civilized."

With Saugstad on the board, the Northern Development Initiative Trust has stimulated economic growth by investing more than $200 million in community-led projects.