Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in this chamber.
We have been saying it over and over all day, but I think that some still do not understand. In the middle of the night on October 16, hundreds of Quebeckers were arrested unfairly, arbitrarily and sometimes violently. I am going to name some of them: Zav Levinson, Gaston Lorrain, Jean Lorrain, Raymonde Lorrain, Serge Loyer, André Maheu, René Mailloux, Denis Mailloux, Félix Maltais, Michel Maltais, Francis Marin, Normand Marion, Emery Marleau, Claude Martel, Denis Martel, Mathieu Martin, Jacques Massé, Colette Mataigne, Pierre Melançon, François Mercier, Pierre Mercille, Réal Michon, Gaston Miron, Roger Monette, Serge Mongeau, Paul Morel, Gilles Morin, Guy Morin, Joo Raymond Morin, Marcel Morin, Maurice Morin, Michel Morin, Pierre Morin—that is an entire dynasty—Robert Murphy, Pierre Nadeau, Serge Nadeau, Suzanne Nadeau and there are more. There were 497 people arrested.
In October 1970, Pauline Julien was arrested. I feel the need to say it again. She was an author, composer and actor. She is an icon of Quebec music who is known in Canada and Europe and was the wife of a minister as well. My colleague just mentioned Jocelyne Robert, but there is somethine he did not say. She was pregnant and gave birth to a daughter who has a problem with her sight linked to this arrest.
In October 1970, Michel Chartrand, a well-known labour leader, and Robert Lemieux, a Quebec lawyer and civil rights activist, were arrested. That is strange. There was also Nick Auf der Maur, who was just mentioned and who was a journalist and a city councillor, another politician. The police also arrested Gaston Miron, our national poet, whose voice resonates still. They arrested Denise Boucher, a writer and poet, and many others. Such a thing was unprecedented in a western nation. These were young people, nationalists and separatists. What a shame, they were separatists. They were intellectuals, labour activists, lawyers, artists, writers, teachers, poets, and plain old activists.
Regardless of which party these people supported—at the time, it was the Parti Québécois—nothing justifies those actions. These people were freethinkers, men and women who played an important role in post-Quiet Revolution progress. People of strength and conviction, they cared deeply about Quebec, about their nation's future.
The War Measures Act was already archaic, dating back to August 12, 1914. It was used three times, namely during the First World War, the Second World War and the third war, the one declared by the federal government against the sovereignists. The purpose of the legislation was to give the government every power imaginable when under the threat of war or during an invasion or insurrection. None of those three things have anything to do with Quebec.
This legislation set aside for an indeterminate period the rights and freedoms of Quebeckers and allowed the government to respond quickly. That is one of the main reasons for using this legislation. It was enacted quickly, behind closed doors, and we know what happened next. In the end, the federal government trampled individual liberties as no other government had done before. That same Liberal government struck down, here in this chamber, parliamentary freedoms not so long ago, but that is another topic.
In all, 497 arrests were made under the act. On top of that, 30,000 people were raided and others were detained by law enforcement. People were imprisoned and interrogated and suffered physical and psychological harm; this has been proven over and over. People were beaten in prison. They were beaten for having certain convictions.
As my colleague mentioned, people were made to believe that they would be executed. Some had a gun pointed at their head or their chest when they were arrested. People were arrested and stayed in their homes with a gun pointed at them for hours before being taken to the police station. We are talking about people believing that they would be executed. I cannot get over it. That was just 50 years ago.
People were incarcerated around the clock and had no access to a common room, showers, books, pencils to write with, the right to a visit and, above all, access to a lawyer. I will repeat that they had no access to a lawyer. That is the foundation of our legal system which is supposed to be so democratic.
We were reminded on every street corner, especially in Montreal, by an army of 18,000 soldiers deployed in Quebec that Canada was at war. I lived on the outskirts and was very young. I will tell you about it later. When you see tanks, armed men and so many soldiers, it is hard to understand. Eighteen thousand soldiers were needed for this operation, which I would say was an outright act of political terrorism. Political terrorism is a strong term. That is what I think.
I just want to point out that 18,000 soldiers is 15 times the number of soldiers Quebec managed to get in the middle of a pandemic, while people were dying in our long-term care homes. That is 15 times the number of soldiers. Quebec had to fight to get soldiers in our long-term care homes. I repeat, that was 15 times the number of soldiers.
Politicians used the pretext of an apprehended insurrection to justify their excessive response. History has made all of this abundantly clear. My colleagues in the House are saying that we will see what history has to say. Fifty years later, history is here, and there is every reason to support what the Bloc Québécois is saying today.
The federal government's goal was to quash the rise of the sovereignist movement in Quebec. I remind members that the Parti Québécois had just gotten its first representatives elected. As my colleague said, the Mouvement souveraineté-association and RIN, the Rassemblement pour l'indépendance nationale, had just merged. The sovereignist movement was strong, and that was scary. There was definitely fear.
Although the 1960s brought about a lot of change, and many countries in Europe, America and Central America had some tumultuous times, none of these civilized countries invoked such a barbaric law. Many people, including Robert Stanfield, said it was absurd.
I would like to add something that I hope will speak to my colleagues.
I remember those 497 arrests and the 30,000 searches mainly because I was and am part of the collateral damage. I remember the collateral damage. I experienced it when I was 12 years old. With all of my 12 years, I remember the search that was done of my own home one morning. I remember my mother standing in the door frame telling me not to be frightened. It was just enough to scare me. She had two RCMP officers on either side of her, one of whom was making sure that his long gun was plainly visible under his jacket. I was told to get up and I did. I was in my underpants. I, as a 12-year-old boy, was then searched, and so were my brothers and my sister. This was all simply because my father was a photojournalist. He worked in a newsroom, and newsrooms were frightening at the time. The people there were armed with a pencil. That is why my father was on the list, and I find that deplorable, of course. He was well-known, listened to, respected, and he was one of the people who had to be silenced at the time. That is why we were searched. I will always remember that. Consider these 30,000 searches and multiply that by four or five. That will show the collateral damage caused to these people, their children, their fathers, their mothers and their spouses. It was appalling.
That is why we are asking for an apology. I have a feeling the questions will come later. We do not want an apology for the death of Pierre Laporte. No one condones that criminal act. We want an apology for the application of a completely senseless law, the War Measures Act.
