The People’s World
October marks 50 years since Canada’s “October Crisis” of 1970, during which Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (father of the current PM) invoked the War Measures Act, suspended civil and democratic rights across Canada and sent thousands of troops to occupy Quebec. The government’s real purpose for this unprecedented act during peacetime was to suppress the struggle for national self-determination in Quebec, and to intimidate the working-class and democratic forces in Quebec and across Canada.
Trudeau cited as the government’s justification, “a state of apprehended insurrection” in Quebec. But there was no insurrection in Quebec, only the criminal actions of a small sect of fewer than 30 people, self-proclaimed “revolutionaries” whose terrorist acts had escalated from mailbox bombings during the 1960s to kidnapping British Trade Commissioner James Cross and Minister of Employment Pierre Laporte in 1970. The government was in the middle of negotiations with the FLQ (Front de libération du Québec) when Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act. Pierre Laporte was murdered one day later.
Public opinion across Canada showed that 85% of those polled in both English-speaking Canada and Quebec were appalled and repulsed by the murder. Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau’s assertion that Quebec citizens were preparing for an FLQ “revolutionary dictatorship” was completely baseless. There was no support for the FLQ’s terrorist acts and no “apprehended insurrection” in Quebec.
As Tommy Douglas, leader of the social democratic NDP (New Democratic Party), put it at the time, the government used “a sledgehammer to crack a peanut.” The War Measures Act was not required to deal with the FLQ—it was invoked to terrorize the growing movement for sovereignty and equality in Quebec, and for expanded labor, democratic, and equality rights across Canada.
