Debates of Oct. 29th, 2020

Opposition Motion—Prime Minister's Official Apology

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Salaberry—Suroît, QC]

Madam Speaker, there are history buffs in the House who have quoted many people.

However, since our Conservative friends and colleagues are listening, I would like to point out that the then Conservative leader, Robert Lorne Stanfield, called the invocation of the War Measures Act spectacular and cruel, based on assertions that were never proven by facts. He said that invoking the act had been an injustice to hundreds of Canadians. It has been, and probably still is, endorsed by the vast majority of Canadians who consider themselves to be freedom-loving people.

Could my dear colleague from Lac-Saint-Jean tell me what he thinks of this opinion and why our Conservative friends did not emphasize it in their speeches?

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, I think that this opinion borders on perfection.

I would invite my colleagues in the Conservative Party to read it again and again. Perhaps it will help them right their thinking.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Gatineau.

This anniversary takes us back half a century. It was a completely different world. That's kind of the point of anniversaries. They make us reflect on our past. They lead us to better understand the context of past events, without which we cannot really understand history. Anniversaries sometimes make us think about the motives behind our past actions. Historians continue to analyze the events and testimonies of before and during the October crisis, the reason for the decisions that were made and the consequences of those decisions.

The 50th anniversary resonates with us and invites us to look in the rear-view mirror again. I would like to mention in passing the excellent series of articles that have appeared in various magazines in recent weeks, including the CBC website. Articles that look at many aspects of the October crisis and its origins. I myself have learned some details, especially about the attacks by small groups—as has been said—often very disorganized, prior to the October crisis. It is important to paint a picture of that time, especially for those who did not experience it, either because they were too young or not yet born, or because they were not residents of Canada.

The October crisis left its mark on me, much like everyone else at the time. I was barely 13 years old. When we are very young, certain events awaken us, get inside our heads and make us pay more attention to what is going on around us. I am thinking of the John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King assassinations. Those events get inside our heads. They make people grow up fast and develop a new-found maturity. I was born at the dawn of the Quiet Revolution, at the tail end of the Duplessis era, when rays of sunshine like Pierre Laporte began to pierce the great darkness. I will return to Pierre Laporte in a moment.

I mentioned context. The October crisis was not at all an isolated event. Some people may have the impression that the October crisis happened all of a sudden, without warning, and that the entire weight of the federal government came crashing down on a peaceful society. That is not at all what I experienced. The seven years prior to the kidnapping of James Cross and Pierre Laporte were turbulent, violent and troubling, in particular in Montreal. If you told young people today about what happened in the 1960s in Montreal, they would not believe you. This difficult and troubling time started in 1963 with a few Molotov cocktails, which, fortunately, did not injure anyone. They were followed by a bomb placed on a section of railway between Montreal and Quebec City, more specifically in the town of Lemieux. Fortunately, there was no damage. Then, a bomb exploded in the ventilation system at the federal Department of National Revenue. No one was injured. Still in 1963, a bomb exploded at the Canadian Forces recruiting centre in Montreal. One person died: William Vincent O'Neil, age 65. In 1964, there was an armed robbery in a gun shop in downtown Montreal. Now we come to 1969. One evening, a bomb exploded during class hours in the Bryon Building of Loyola College in Montreal, now part of Concordia University.

My father taught evenings in the Bryon Building. Fortunately, he was not there that evening, and none of the 500 people who were there were injured.

All in all, 200 bombs were detonated in the seven-year period leading up to the October crisis.

Now, to get back to Pierre Laporte and his legacy.

Pierre Laporte was a lawyer who became a journalist and great defender of the French language and democracy in Quebec. He was a friendly person, with considerable integrity and courage: unfailing courage. It took courage to stand up to the mighty Maurice Duplessis and his machine to expose the flaws and corruption in the Union Nationale government. Duplessis had ostracized Pierre Laporte as a member of the press gallery in Quebec City. In some ways, Pierre Laporte was the only one taking on Maurice Duplessis.

Remember that, in addition to being a politician and a great defender of the French fact and democracy in Quebec, Pierre Laporte was first and foremost a father, an uncle and a husband. My colleagues in the House might be interested in reading a recent article by Thomas Laporte Aust entitled “Pierre Laporte était mon grand-père”.

Today, he and his family, as well as his legacy and everything he did for Quebec, are in our thoughts.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech.

There has been a lot of talk about the tragic death of Mr. Laporte. I would like to reiterate our sincere condolences and best wishes for his loved ones and the loved ones of all victims of this event. That said, the issue today is not the horrific death of Mr. Laporte. Rather, it is government's responsibility to apologize for the horrors perpetrated upon the individual freedoms of people who did nothing wrong except have separatist leanings at some time in their lives. Mostly, they were artists and free citizens.

In his speech, my colleague spoke about the context of the events in 1970. When people were imprisoned in Canada during the First World War and Second World War, there was also a context. That context, however, did not justify the atrocious imprisonments that occurred at the time. It is the same thing for the October crisis.

Why is the government refusing to recognize the suffering experienced by the population at the time?

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Madam Speaker, I recognize the suffering.

I spoke about context because context is important. The member for Louis-Saint-Laurent said that the War Measures Act was enforced by the Sûreté du Québec at the request of the Government of Quebec and the mayor of Montreal, whose home was bombed, I should point out. I think there are distinctions to be made, and context is very important.

I lived through that period. People were afraid. The member for New Westminster—Burnaby talked about how he was scared by the pictures he saw on television. There was a list of people the FLQ wanted to kidnap. These were mothers and fathers.

The context is important. People suffered. The act was enforced. There was abuse, and there still is. Just look at Chicago mayor Richard Daley, who used a crisis to advance his agenda at the 1968 Democratic Party convention.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

He used the word “courage” in speaking about the courage to stand up. I want to build on that.

What does the member think about the courage of the then leader of the NDP, Tommy Douglas, who stood up against all of the criticism? He thought that suspending civil rights and fundamental freedoms was not something that should be done lightly. He did not think that invoking the War Measures Act was what our democracy or Parliament needed. What happened was serious. It had consequences for thousands of people.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Madam Speaker, not all courageous actions are the same. There are many. In fact, taking a stand is always a courageous action.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his excellent speech.

He was talking about context. Could he tell us a little more about the context of the time? In his answer to a previous question, he mentioned that Premier Bourassa had asked Ottawa for assistance and that the mayor of Montreal had also asked it to intervene. Fifty years later, it is suggested that Ottawa should not have intervened, despite receiving requests to do so from the premier and from the mayor of a major city.

When should the federal government deny the requests of a provincial leader and a mayor in a crisis situation?

Can he explain how he sees that context?

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Madam Speaker, we must recognize that, at the time, security forces like the RCMP did not have the tools they have now to distinguish between rumours and real threats. So I feel that great attention must be paid to that, and that historians should study it. Was the government really afraid? It depends on the facts.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement]

Madam Speaker, I thank all those who have spoken today, including my esteemed colleague from Lac-Saint-Louis, the chair of our caucus. I thank him very much for his comments. As the member for Gatineau, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the motion put forward by the Bloc Québécois.

We are in the midst of a unique pandemic. For months, our government, our businesses, our essential front-line workers and our families have worked tirelessly to address the health and economic challenges caused by COVID-19. We have seen an unprecedented engagement of our governments, the health sector, our research community and the private sector. In responding to this crisis, Canadians have taken up this issue with a single-minded focus, understanding that we cannot afford to be distracted by the usual political jousting.

On this side of the House, we remain concerned about what Canadians are experiencing, and we continue our efforts. Our government remains focused on supporting Canadians and Quebeckers during these difficult times. That is why we on this side of the House—and obviously this seems to be the case for some opposition members as well—are finding it difficult to understand why the Bloc is using one of its rare opposition days, not to propose concrete solutions, whether for Quebec or for all of Canada, to fight the pandemic, to help our seniors, our families and the most vulnerable, or to get us out of this crisis, but rather to offer Quebeckers a truncated and sanitized vision of our history; to show only a small part of history, a version that seems to forget the victims of the October crisis, a version that is their own and that forgets the real victims.

It is important to remember our history, but it is also important to do so comprehensively, without forgetting parts of it and always keeping in mind the goal of uniting Quebeckers rather than dividing them.

My colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent has put us back into the context of the time a little, as did my colleague from Lac-Saint-Louis. The memory of the October crisis is extremely difficult for a number of Quebec families, especially the family of Pierre Laporte. But also for the family of Jeanne d'Arc Saint-Germain, from Vanier, who was killed by a bomb at the Department of Defence. Let me quote from the afternoon edition of Le Droit, the Saint-Jean-Baptise Day edition, June 24, 1970. The headline on the front page is “Bomb explodes in Ottawa”. Here is how it reads:

Mme Jeanne-d'Arc St-Germain was sitting at her desk in the Department of Defence communications centre on Lisgar Street. She expected to finish her shift at 7:30 this morning. But Mme St-Germain did not have the opportunity to finish her shift. At 6:26, she was killed by the explosion of a powerful bomb that had been placed in the southeast corner of the temporary building.

First responders found the lifeless body of the 51-year-old widow near her desk. Shards of glass had severed her jugular vein. Mme St-Germain, of 321 Shakespeare Street, Vanier, had been a communications clerk at the Department of Defence for about 15 years. Two members of the military, who were in the communications centre when the explosion took place, were slightly wounded by shards of glass.

That also gives us a context, as my fellow residents of Gatineau, and of the entire national capital region, would understand full well.

It is because of that, and because of many other attacks and many other bombs, that politicians of all stripes, the premier of Quebec and the mayor of Montreal, asked the Government of Canada to provide emergency powers in Quebec and the authority needed to arrest and detain people.

That obviously resulted in many victims, and the Bloc Québécois has named a few of them. We can easily see that over 500 people were detained, most of them without cause, for an average period of about a week, as my colleague said.

That is a stain on our history, but it was also the product of the context of fear, of the climate of terror at the time that made our fellow citizens, our friends and our neighbours live in fear.

I am now going to project 50 years into the future. We are gathered in the House of Commons on this sad anniversary of the October crisis, but we cannot talk about collective duty, let alone responsibility for our seniors, without talking about our duty to manage the pandemic and protect the most vulnerable.

We are facing the greatest health crisis of our time. This is our October crisis. Canadians and Quebeckers are worried about how we will get through the crisis. They are worried about their safety and the safety of their loved ones. They are worried about paying their bills and about the safety of the personal protective equipment of our guardian angels. They are worried because they do not know if they will be able to see their family at Christmas or if their child will catch the virus at school.

As the member for Gatineau and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement, I have the enormous privilege and responsibility to work with my government colleagues to get the equipment we need, including the future vaccine. The same thing goes for treatments, equipment and ventilators.

I cannot ignore my disappointment with the Bloc Québécois. Last week, it voted in favour of a motion that is dangerous for Canadians' health. I am not the one saying this, it is people involved in research, people in the manufacturing sector and from our small businesses. The Bloc Québécois will have to be judged by future generations. In 50 years, people may be talking about the sad anniversary of the October 2020 crisis, that is, the pandemic.

Their opposition jeopardizes our current and future capacity to negotiate contracts for PPE, ventilators and vaccines. What I can say is that all of Quebec has answered the call in terms of procurement. For example, the famed company Bauer is making face shields for our health professionals. Others who come to mind are Joseph Ribkoff, Logistik Unicorp and Yoga Jeans, in Montreal, Beauce and Dorval, who are adapting their factories to produce millions of hospital scrubs, much like Calko Group in Montreal. ADM Medicom, based in Pointe-Claire, has signed an agreement to produce millions of masks. We are also thinking of bioMérieux in Saint-Laurent, which has agreed to deliver thousands of diagnostic tests to ensure the safety of Quebeckers and all Canadians. Lastly, we are thinking of Precision ADM, which will be making swabs in my riding, Gatineau.

That is what we should have been talking about today, but sadly the Bloc Québécois chose another subject for debate on opposition day. However, I would like to reassure those who are watching that the Government of Canada is aiming for the right thing, the right October crisis, in today's deliberations.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Madam Speaker, I must admit that I am particularly disappointed with the speech by my colleague across the way. I am not surprised, but disappointed. I am especially disappointed to hear him say that we should not have talked about the October crisis.

Fifty years ago, more than 500 people were imprisoned, and the War Measures Act was invoked by the federal government. According to him, we should not talk about it. I am trying to understand the logic behind it, but it is difficult. Is it because it is a black mark on Canada's history, or is it because the government is basically a little ashamed and does not want to admit it?

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Madam Speaker, this opposition motion today contains a rigged and sanitized version of the story from 50 years ago, the Bloc Québécois version. It does not talk about the bombings or victims like Mrs. Saint-Germain, who I mentioned in my speech. It does not talk about any of that.

In particular, it does not address the current day-to-day concerns of Canadians—the Government of Canada's management of the pandemic crisis. I am disappointed and ashamed that we are not debating here the measures that could be taken to help our constituents.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Madam Speaker, I agree with the hon. colleague that the Bloc motion is unfortunately somewhat truncated regarding the history of that time. However, I disagree with his challenge of the Bloc's right to bring this important topic to the floor of the House of Commons 50 years after a great Canadian tragedy. It is important to remember both Mr. Cross, who was thankfully rescued and released after his months of captivity, and that we express sympathy on this 50th anniversary to the family and friends of Mr. Laporte.

History has shown us, based on the realities on the ground at the time, that the War Measures Act was quite possibly not warranted. The federal government responded to a panicked response from the mayor of Montreal and the premier of Quebec. However, with the Liberal government so freely giving apologies over the years, I wonder if there cannot be a more formal acknowledgement that a historic mistake was made albeit on the basis of the lack of security intelligence.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Madam Speaker, I know the hon. member was a broadcaster. I do not know if he was a broadcaster during that period, but I remember his interventions very well on a number of events that have marked Canada's history. I welcome his reflections on this one, however, I must disagree.

As I have illustrated, victims from elsewhere in the province and Canada's national capital were part of the context of the age, and the Government of Quebec made a very clear request. If the members of the Bloc Québécois were in the House in 1970, doing, as they state, the bidding of the government and the National Assembly of Quebec, I can only wonder if they would have unified their voice to that of other Quebeckers at the time and also stood with the request to send the military into Quebec.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, the member speaks about it not being important to recognize something so vital and important that happened 50 years ago. While we have an awful lot of work to do in the House around COVID-19, I do not understand why, if the government claims it represents human rights, it will not apologize for this attack on human rights?

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Madam Speaker, the most fundamental human right is life. I have, as have my other colleagues in the House, laid out the context of the period, where dozens of human lives were taken, dozens of human lives were affected and thousands of human lives were terrorized by—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Repentigny.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Madam Chair, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for La Pointe-de-l'Île.

For the Government of Canada, the 50th anniversary of the October crisis represents an opportunity, one that I suspect is going to be missed, to apologize for imposing war measures and for fabricating an insurrection plot that it said was intended to overthrow the Government of Quebec. Good heavens, how far from the truth that was.

In 1970, Pierre Elliott Trudeau's Canada sent in the army. It allowed the RCMP to infiltrate and destabilize democratic and militant organizations in Quebec, continuing long after the tragic events that followed. Canada did not do this to put an end to an insurrection, but because it wanted to suppress the sovereignist movement. That was its fundamental reasoning.

At the time, Marc Lalonde, who was Pierre Elliott Trudeau's chief of staff at the time, summoned Peter Newman, the editor-in-chief of the Toronto Star, and told him: “We believe that a group of prominent Quebeckers is plotting to replace the province's duly elected government. ...The leaders include René Lévesque, Jacques Parizeau, Marcel Pepin and Claude Ryan. This attempt to establish a parallel government must be stopped.”

Just imagine. These four great names included three great premiers of Quebec and one great union leader. They were hardly likely to want to overturn the government. That story was just a pretext to justify suspending basic rights in Quebec.

Need I remind hon. members that the War Measures Act was passed in 1914 during the First World War? It would be invoked only three times in history: during the two world wars and during the October crisis.

In the days preceding October 15, the RCMP security service collaborated with the Sûreté du Québec on preparing a list of suspects. Originally, there were 56 names, to which the RCMP added another hundred or so. They ended up handing over a list of 158 names to Prime Minister Trudeau. According to the records, people whose names were on the list had taken part in violent demonstrations, had incited violence or were suspected of terrorist activities.

Once the arrests began, there would be many more, completely without cause. At four in the morning on October 16, 1970, the War Measures Act was invoked. It would led to the largest military intervention in peacetime in Canada. During that one night alone, more than 450 people were arrested and thrown in jail.

A decade after these sweeping arrests, former minister Jean Marchand, who later became Speaker of the Senate, went as far as to say that invoking the War Measures Act had been like using a cannon to kill a fly. However, then prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau never expressed remorse. Even in 1993, he was still saying that “society must take every means at its disposal to defend itself against the emergence of a parallel power which defies the elected power.”

I myself was very young at the time of the October crisis. I was starting at university to become a teacher. One morning, when I was going to class, I saw soldiers, the army, guns and all of that. I used to walk across Lafontaine Park to get to class, and I must admit that I was worried. Come to think of it, I must have been terrified. When I got to school, I could not open the door, because the university was also closed.

As soon as the Canadian Bill of Rights was suspended, even though the anti-terrorism experts of all three police forces, namely municipal, provincial and federal, had only a handful of suspects at most, 500 people were arrested and jailed without a warrant. Of those 500, 90 were released without being charged. The others were charged, but 95% of them were eventually acquitted or had their charges dropped.

These people were not criminals. Most were separatists, but some were not. Among those who were arrested or jailed were poets, singers, journalists, union members, lawyers, ordinary activists, students and separatists.

They included Pierre Côté, another Pierre Côté, Ginette Courcelles, Martin Courcy, Jean-Guy Couture, Jean-Marcel Cusson, Daniel Cyr, Micheline Cyr, Jean-Marie Da Silva, Blaise Daignault, Dominique Damant, Paul Danvoye, Michèle Danvoye-Raymond, Djahangir Dardachti, Mario Darin, Brenda Dash, Victor Daudelin, Benoit-André Davignon, Bruno De Gregorio, Claire Demers, François Demers, Jean-Pierre Deschêsne, Pierre Desfosses, Hélène Desjardins, Marcel Desjardins, Louise Désormeaux, Richard Desrosiers, Jean Désy, Jean-Pierre Dionne, Thomas Gordon Dolan, Gaëtan Dostie, Laura Maud Dottin, Ginette Doucet, Jacques Dubé, Michel Dubé, Robert Dubeau, Bernard Dubois, Claude-André Ducharme, Albert Dufour, Claire Duguay, Claude Dulac, Michel Dumont, Bernard Dupéré, Claire Dupond, Pierre Dupont, another Pierre Dupont, Réjeanne Dupont, Danielle Dupont, Daniel Dupuis, Myriann Farkas, Andrée Ferreti, Mireille Filion, Lise Filion, Yvon Forget, Guy Fortin, Joseph Fortin, Pierre Fournier, M. Fréchette.

In the aftermath of the events of October 1970, my brother Michel Pauzé was also arrested and interrogated for more than four hours. It was not fun like question period, because I only found out about it years later. He never spoke about it. It was a shock for me to learn that my brother, who at the time was just a member of a student association at the Cégep du Vieux Montréal, had been arrested like that for no reason.

I am also not ready to forget when the police came to our family home, where I was living with my grandmother and my mother. The police came in and searched the entire house. Ours was not an isolated case, because the police carried out 31,700 searches, of which 4,600 resulted in seizures during that time. In many cases, these searches were violent. That is what I call terrorism. That is what I call seeking to terrorize people. I still remember when they entered our home.

I would like to see the federal government condemn this violence today, but despite our repeated calls, the government has remained silent. However, the Canadian government has apologized for three other interventions. In 1988, it apologized to victims of Japanese origin who were displaced and interned during the Second World War. In 1990, it apologized to victims of Italian origin who were interned during the Second World War. In 2006, it apologized to victims of Ukrainian origin who were interned during the First World War. Nothing for Quebeckers, however. In the first two cases, the government financially compensated victims or associations so they could organize educational and commemorative activities. For Italian Canadians, the government promised to do the same in June 2019.

In closing, I will repeat the following question: Where is the federal government's apology for the victims of the October crisis?

Many Quebeckers are still scarred by this crisis. The government must not only acknowledge it, but also accept its share of responsibility. Today, we are demanding an official apology from the Prime Minister on behalf of the Government of Canada for the enactment, on October 16, 1970, of the War Measures Act and the use of the army against Quebec's civilian population to arbitrarily arrest, detain without charge and intimidate nearly 500 innocent Quebeckers.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Madam Speaker, once again, my hon. colleague failed to name the real victims of the terrorist acts that went on for more than 10 years. Not to age myself, but I remember the events of the 1970 crisis very clearly. I remember them because they had repercussions even back home in New Brunswick. There were extremist elements, and Molotov cocktails were thrown at federal buildings.

We have heard many of our Bloc Québécois colleagues say that the government's actions suppressed democracy. Would my hon. colleague agree that the ensuing calm clearly demonstrated that democracy was quite intact, as evidenced by the election of the Bloc Québécois on so many occasions as well as the multiple referendums that were held, which in no way affected Quebec's peaceful democracy?

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question.

I sometimes wonder whether the government and its elected members are pretending not to understand what the issue is really about. We are talking about the War Measures Act. We are talking about people who were imprisoned. We are talking about the people who showed up at my house and terrorized my grandmother, my mother and me to search the house, looking for weapons. That is what we are talking about.

That is not peace. That is violence. That is terrorism. I am tempted to say that the government was committing acts of terrorism at the time. I would like the government members to focus on the objective of our motion, which is the War Measures Act, which the government has invoked three times: twice during the two world wars and once during the October crisis. The federal government has never apologized and will not say a word on the matter.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to know if my colleague acknowledges that, between 1963 and 1970, the FLQ committed terrorist acts in Quebec.

At least 200 terrorist acts, including the murder of Pierre Laporte, were committed. Does my colleague recognize that Quebec was in the midst of a terrorist crisis at the time and that it made sense to request support from the Canadian Armed Forces because police forces were overwhelmed?

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Madam Speaker, I must say that I am a bit disappointed by my colleague's question. I thought it was only the government that did not understand that our motion is about the War Measures Act and nothing else.

I would just like to remind my colleague that Ottawa has a crime-fighting tool, the Criminal Code, and that Canada is the only democratic country that has ever declared war on its people in order to fight crime.

Since my colleague talked about the years before 1970, I would like to remind the House that, in 1970, there was an average of 290 bombings per month in the United States, yet the American president never invoked martial law. I would also point out that the situation was similar in Paris, France, under its president, General Charles de Gaulle.

How interesting. Those democracies did not have to use their armies against their civilian populations and then tell the people that they are able to live in peace because they have been punished enough.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I have a question for my colleague from Repentigny.

I think Quebeckers were not the only ones who had bad experiences during the crisis.

This apology the Bloc Québécois requests is to the people of Quebec. I just wanted to put on the record that suspending civil liberties applied across Canada. In the city of Vancouver, the police used it as an excuse to ride mounted on horseback with batons flailing, to clear out the park of people they decided were undesirables.

It is quite significant that the War Measures Act no longer exists. In 1985, this Parliament got rid of it and replaced it with the Emergencies Act that deals with an emergency like COVID, called a public welfare emergency, and deals with an emergency like insurrection through a public order emergency, neither of which has a national effect of suspending civil liberties. Would my hon. colleague comment on that?

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands.

I would simply like to say that the law was replaced, thank God, and I hope that they will never use it against the civilian population again in any way. The law was replaced and that is for the better.

That said, we are still calling for an apology with respect to the law that existed in 1970, an apology that we never received.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Madam Speaker, personally, I support non-violence. I am greatly inspired by Martin Luther King and Gandhi. As Louis Fournier, the author and expert on the October crisis, wrote in his book, I am convinced that we cannot afford to be complacent about the FLQ's violence. Louis Fournier also stated that the FLQ extremism was a response to the extremism of power. The government of Ottawa took advantage of the opportunity to unleash a vast operation of repression. The unjustified violence of a state against its innocent citizens is no better than the violence of a group of individuals like the FLQ.

I was 10 years old at the time of the October crisis. I vaguely remember it. I remember seeing a soldier with a machine gun in front of the office of a municipal councillor. I think that the repression was so extensive that almost everyone who lived through those times has not forgotten it. In a single night, October 16, 1970, more than 450 people were unfairly imprisoned without a warrant and without a valid reason.

Why did it happen at night? Undoubtedly to create psychological shock. That is along the lines of what the Duchaîne report stated. People were woken up at night with machine guns in their face. That is rather incredible. Of the approximately 500 people who were arrested, 90% were released without being charged, and 95% of those who were charged were acquitted or had the charges dropped.

Here are some of those people, whom I feel we have a duty to remember: Gilles Gagliardi, Jean-Pierre Gagné, Théo Gagné, Armand Gagnon, Charles Gagnon, Michel Gagnon, Paul Gagnon—often whole families were arrested—Nicolas Galipeau, 15 years old and the son of Pauline Julien, Pascale Galipeau, the daughter of Pauline Julien, Michel Garneau, Juvencio Garza, Ms. Garza, Claude Gaudreau, Annie Gauthier, Jacinthe Gauthier, Maurice Gauthier, Gilles Gauvin, Étienne Gazaille, Claude Gendron, Paul-Émile Giguère, Claude Girard, Jean-Pierre Girard, Pierre Girard, Rosaire Girard, Pierre Girardin, Gérald Godin, Madeleine Barbara Goldstein, Rock Gosselin, Jean Goulet, André Goyer, André Gravel, Pierre Graveline, Stanley Gray, André Grenier, Pierre Grenier, Roger Grenier, Yves Guindon, Yvon Guindon, Marek Gutowski, Louis Hains, Lise Walser Hains, Daniel Hardy, Jacques Hébert, Robert Hébert, Gloria Horowitz, Denis Huard, Solange Hudon, Richard Hudson, Maurice Jean, Pierre Jobin, Réal Jodoin, Jeannine Ouellette Jodoin, André Joffre, Pierre Joncas, Guy Joron, who later became a Parti Québécois MNA, Michel Joyal, Fabienne Julien.

These people were not criminals. They included poets, singers, journalists, union members, lawyers and activists. I could also mention Pauline Julien, whose children I spoke of earlier, Gérald Godin, Michel Garneau, Gaston Miron, Denise Boucher, union leader Michel Chartrand, André Paradis, who I believe spent 51 days in jail, Gaétan Dostie, and the list goes on.

They were all thrown in jail. What they had in common was that they were separatists or opponents of the government of the day.

In his book Diary of a Prisoner of War, Gérald Godin recounts the first hours of his arrest. He writes:

On that first day, my main emotion was a feeling of being uprooted. Of floating in total uncertainty. Why am I here? If someone would at least interrogate me, I might know what I was dealing with. ...If I knew that, I could get my feet back on the ground. At the moment, it is a void.

It was a very traumatic experience for all of these people. The point was to intimidate them. We do not know all of the names, because the federal government has refused to give a list. Furthermore, according to the Duchaîne report, there were more than 30,000 warrantless searches. This was all possible because of the invocation of the War Measures Act, which allows for rights and freedoms to be suspended in the event of apprehended insurrection.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party of Canada said that opposition leader René Lévesque had supported the War Measures Act. That is not true. First of all, René Lévesque was not the opposition leader. He was not even a member of the Quebec National Assembly at that time. Second of all, René Lévesque was against the FLQ violence but against the use of the War Measures Act as well.

Here is an excerpt from what René Lévesque wrote in the Journal de Montréal on October 30, 1970: “Conflating these military reinforcements with the abhorrent War Measures Act, which is something else altogether, is yet more of the shrewd demagoguery that Mr. Trudeau and his entourage so masterfully and regularly demonstrate.”

There were three commissions of inquiry, and two of them concluded that the use of the War Measures Act was unjustified. These two were the Duchaîne commission and the Macdonald commission, which was created by the federal government. The Keable commission did not issue a ruling because it was focused on the events after the October crisis. Some very worrisome revelations later came from a number of stakeholders.

For example, Don Jamieson, the transport minister at the time, wrote in his memoirs that there had not been substantial grounds to think that there had been apprehended insurrection. He believed that a number of ministers in Trudeau's cabinet from Quebec, including Jean Marchand, Gérard Pelletier, Bryce MacKasey and Trudeau's principal secretary, Marc Lalonde, were using the act to take on their political adversaries in Quebec, whether they were federalist, like Claude Ryan, or sovereignist, like René Lévesque.

Eric Kierans, the communications minister at the time, devoted whole pages of his memoirs to this massive injustice, as he called it. After in-depth research, Professor Reg Whitaker, the great expert on security matters, wrote in 1993, “the RCMP never asked for the War Measures Act, were not consulted as to its usefulness, and would have opposed it if they had been asked for their opinion.”

Peter C. Newman, the editor-in-chief of the Toronto Star at the time, has debunked the provisional government story. It was said that the apprehended insurrection was because a provisional government, opposing the elected one, was going to be put into place under the leadership of René Lévesque, Claude Ryan and Louis Labelle, of the FTQ. “That scenario was a meticulously concocted lie” floated by Prime Minister Trudeau and his principal secretary, Marc Lalonde.“They both lied to me about why the War Measures Act was imposed.”

As Bernard Landry said on the 40th anniversary of the October crisis, we have a duty to remember those who were the victims of an injustice that was, and still remains, Canada's shame.

We are asking for apologies, because, as the Macdonald Commission recommended, there should be compensation for those whose rights were violated, for no valid reason, when the War Measures Act was invoked. The compensation should be not only for the loss of their property but also for the affront to their freedom. Apologies are necessary because such an affront to democracy must never be repeated in different circumstances. Freedom is fragile.