CKNW Editorial
for October 18, 2001

More, forgive me, on the proposed terrorism legislation.
Whenever I mention the War Measures Act of 1970 I can count on a handful of letters from people who were in Montreal at the time, supporting the government move, saying that I wasn’t there so I can’t possibly understand the terror that was in the hearts of Quebeckers. Yes I can and I do. But that’s scarcely the point. Nor is it the point that the then mayor of Vancouver used the martial law to throw hippies in jail for perhaps smoking pot.

What is the point is that if these terrorized people had been told the truth by the federal government there would have been no need to be frightened out of their wits.

The sequence of events in Quebec was roughly this. In the 1950s and 60s, a small group of rag-a-tag separatists, the FLQ, had taken to bombing mail boxes. In 1970 the British High Commissioner in Montreal, James Cross, and the Quebec Minister of Labour, Pierre Laporte, were kidnapped, the ransom demanded being the release of some criminals from jail and money. The premier of Quebec, the much beleaguered Robert Bourassa and the Mayor of Montreal asked the federal government for help, the response being the War Measures Act being invoked with about five hundred Quebeckers thrown in jail and held incommunicado for up to two weeks. Out of this there were a couple of convictions that amounted to nothing – the vast majority of those scooped were separatists but scarcely violent revolutionaries. Many weren’t even separatists. The War Measures Act didn’t just apply to Quebec – that would have been bad politics for the Liberals – but threw the entire country under martial law.

It’s interesting to re-read Prime Minister Trudeau’s words which I, as a 38 year old lawyer, listened to at the time. After talking about the two kidnappings and the ransom deal demanded, Mr Trudeau went on to talk about the "cancer of an armed, revolutionary movement bent on destroying the very basis of our freedom." He went on to say "the criminal law as it stands is simply not adequate to deal with systematic terror." Sounds pretty terrible doesn’t it?

Several things emerge from this.

Mr Trudeau knew that the two kidnappings were not enough justification of there draconian moves so he talked, in the present tense of this armed revolutionary movement about to destroy our freedoms. Canadians were entitled to believe that there was such an immediate threat.

The matter didn’t end there. The justice minister John Turner told the people of Canada that he could not at that point give any details of this threat of revolution but that he would at the earliest possible time.

There we were asked to trust the government that there was a real, legitimate apprehension of an armed revolution and to accept that they had sufficient evidence of this to put the nation under martial law. Now you will have noted that neither Mr Trudeau nor Mr Turner talked about there "perhaps" being such a threat, or that they needed these extraordinary powers to check the situation out. No, the threat was here and now.

It turned out to be utter nonsense. There was no armed revolutionary group. There was no threat whatever of any armed insurrection. None. There were a handful of screwballs involved that could have been and indeed were dealt with by the ordinary work of ordinary policemen. In typical Canadian fashion they went through the justice system and were either exiled, pardoned after a bit of jail time or both.

What should also be noted is that scarcely had the ink dried on the War Measures Act proclamation than Pierre Laporte was killed. One might legitimately ask whether or not he might be alive today had this gross over-reaction not occurred.

Of considerable importance is the fact that neither John Turner nor the government ever kept their promise to the Canadian people to give them the details. When he was Prime Minister and later Leader of the Opposition I asked Mr Turner point blank what the reasons were and he refused to answer.

What happened in Quebec was terrible and it did terrify many people. The fact remains that there was not a scrap of evidence before the Prime Minister or his Justice Minister that there was any apprehended insurrection at all, much less one requiring the placement of the entire country under martial law and the imprisonment, incommunicado, of 500 plus innocent people.

Why go back to this?

Because the government, of which Jean Chretien was a cabinet minister, asked parliament and the country to trust them. They were clearly proved untrustworthy.

The Liberal government of today once more asks us to trust them.

If there was reason to believe two things, I would unhesitatingly support the new terrorist legislation at least in principle. If there was evidence that there was one or more terrorist rings in Canada which threatened out national security, AND that they could not be dealt with by normal police procedures including undercover work and legal wiretapping and surveillance the government would have my support though I might still question some aspects of the proposed legislation.

Of course there are terrorists in this country as there are drug conspiracies, bike gangs and other criminal organizations. Of that I have no doubt.

The question that the government must answer is whether or not the threat of terrorism is so great as to require draconian powers either because of its extent or impossible shortcomings in the laws as they exist.

There is a way out of this dilemma and it’s one that has been employed by the United Kingdom with success and at least was, if it still isn’t, used to supervise CSIS. Name three Privy Councilors – John Fraser, Robert Stanfield and Ed Broadbent come quickly to mind – and place the evidence of the need for these draconian measures before them. If, on hearing the evidence (and remember that these men have taken the permanent oath of one of her Majesty’s Privy Councilors) they then tell the Canadian people that in their view these measures are either justified or justified if amended I believe the people of Canada would trust their judgment.

What I don’t believe is that this government should be trusted on this matter any more than their predecessors almost 31 years ago to the day should have been trusted.