Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his remarks.
I remember the events of 1970 like it was yesterday. At the time, I was working as a reporter in Montreal.
It is clear that, after the War Measures Act was declared, those arrested in the police sweeps were merely highly vocal critics of the governments of Montreal and of Quebec. They were Quebec nationalists; I had friends among them.
At the same time, and given that many historians today recognize the realities on the ground in Quebec at the time did not justify the War Measures Act, the Prime Minister of the day, Pierre Trudeau, had little choice when he received the panicked request from Mayor Drapeau and Premier Robert Bourassa for the Government of Canada to act. They believed there was much more going on than the reality on the ground, which was a number of thuggish murderers.
Does my colleague recognize the fact that, were a similar request made today, the Government of Canada, lacking the facts on the ground, would have to act in a similar way?