Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères.
If the threat of a coup was hanging over Quebec, surely Canada's intelligence services should have been aware of it. They should have been the first to say that the War Measures Act needed to be invoked. However, the RCMP commissioner indicated at the time that investigations were moving along nicely, that the police forces were collaborating and that measures such as those set out in the War Measures Act, including mass arrests, would slow down the investigation of October's events.
The commissioner later stated under oath that Ottawa had not consulted the RCMP about the existence of an apprehended insurrection in Quebec or about the proclamation of the War Measures Act. Jean-François Duchaîne's report on the events of October 1970, which was submitted in 1980, indicates that the idea of calling in the Canadian army came from the law enforcement community, but that the idea of using the powers set out in the War Measures Act did not come from the RCMP. In other words, according to the RCMP, the situation could have been fully managed under ordinary laws without suspending the basic rights of Quebeckers.
Two ministers from the Trudeau government subsequently confirmed that no evidence was ever submitted that would have led cabinet to apprehend an insurrection. At the time, however, there was public talk of a conspiracy involving 3,000 terrorists armed with machine guns and dynamite. They were supposedly infiltrating both levels of government, no less. Ottawa went as far as to make up a story about a plot aimed at forming a transitional government. This plot allegedly involved René Lévesque, Jacques Parizeau, Marcel Pepin and Claude Ryan, a well-known federalist who became the leader of the Quebec Liberal Party and one of the joint leaders of the “no” side during the 1980 referendum. The very idea is preposterous, but that did not prevent Marc Lalonde, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, from making such a far-fetched statement to the editor-in-chief of the Toronto Star. It was pure delusion. The government was fearmongering in order to justify an excessive and essentially political response that was an affront to liberty.
Ottawa wanted to crush the independence movement that was growing in Quebec. Ottawa must apologize, nation to nation. It is a question of dignity. The War Measures Act was invoked twice before the October Crisis, as I said earlier. After each occurrence, Canada apologized to the victims of this overreach and sometimes even offered compensation. In 1988, Canada apologized to victims of Japanese origin who were displaced and interned during the Second World War. In 1990, Canada apologized to victims of Italian origin interned during the Second World War. In 2006, it apologized to victims of Ukrainian origin interned during the First World War.
Will the Quebec nation get the same consideration? The list of innocent people to arrest was drawn up by Ottawa. The police even asked Trudeau, Marchand and Pelletier, the so-called three doves, since Gilles Vigneault said that our three doves were just our frogs from an earlier time, to play with the list, that is, to remove and add names. What a democracy. This is straight out of a banana republic. René Lévesque said that the Trudeau government behaved like a totalitarian government in peacetime, and he was quite right.
The tragedy of October 1970 must not go unchallenged. The deafening silence from Ottawa today, more than 50 years later, is absolutely reprehensible. In 2004, the government imposed the name of Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport on our Montreal airport. That not only adds insult to injury, but it also shows the consequences of not being the master of our own house. Pierre Elliot Trudeau claimed to be the champion of rights and freedoms, but he will never be that champion for the Quebec nation, nor will he ever be the person Canada tries to convince us he was. He never showed any remorse for the state crime for which he was the key culprit. He was always even proud of his decisions. He was nothing more than a destroyer of a people.
Tomorrow we will mark the 25th anniversary of the stolen referendum of 1995. When Quebec democratically and peacefully chooses independence, one of the first decisions that we will make is to change the name of the Montreal airport. Until then, an official apology—