The introduction of Bill C-51 has garnered some of the fiercest debates over individual rights and government powers in recent Canadian history. While its supporters point to its purpose in defending Canada from the threat of terrorism, many of its critics reject its necessity as a means of protecting Canadians. Some have alluded to another time in Canadian history when individual rights were compromised in the name of the greater good, the 1970 October Crisis. Today we examine this comparison and consider whether there are any lessons from government reaction to the FLQ that can be applied to the debate over C-51 in 2015.

First, we should write that it’s abundantly clear that C-51 is a different sort of situation than the enactment of the War Measures Act (WMA) by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1970. We are entirely convinced by the legal examination and concerns of C-51 presented by Kent Roach and Craig Forcese, which you can find in a five part series that deconstructs the exact legal problems with the law as it is written. Their criticisms are reasonable, logical, and most importantly, grounded in a non-partisan perspective of problems with how the proposed law would be implemented (rather than more amorphous discussions of its “impact”). While we are examining a political historical comparison here today, our contemporary position is rooted in the legal problems with the bill, rather than the political ones.

Critics of the bill have often compared it unfavourably to the government overreach during the October Crisis of 1970, when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau enacted the War Measures Act in order to respond to the threat of the Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ). As NDP MPs have noted, it was a drastic violation of civil liberties oversold to Canadians as necessary, and as Chantal Hébert wrote, fostered an atmosphere of distrust and fear against the country’s French Canadian minority. Such comparisons highlight the tenuous justification and uncertain impact of C-51, but fail to appreciate the chaotic insecurity of October 1970.

The FLQ Crisis should be an event that most Canadians remember from history class. The Front de Liberation de Quebec was a nominally Marxist organization that was inspired by other decolonization movements from around the world. In places like Algeria, Vietnam, Cuba and in Latin America, peoples were violently resisting their former oppressors, usually European nations. In Quebec, some believed that French Canadians had similarly suffered and it was now their time to throw off the shackles of English Canadian domination. The FLQ had begun a bombing campaign in 1963 that rose and fell in intensity as various cells were caught and arrested. From 1963 to 1972, the FLQ committed 166 violent acts in the name of their campaign to free Quebec.

After this campaign of bombings, all levels of government from Montreal, to Quebec, to Ottawa, were aware of the dangers of the FLQ by 1970. They were aware that cells of the FLQ could be planning some sort of kidnapping since they had arrested two (alleged) members of the FLQ who were attempting to kidnap the Israeli consul in Montréal that February. Their plan had been part of a strategy of political kidnapping in order to radicalize the masses. In April, in a report from Director-General Security and Intelligence John Starnes, RCMP Assistant-Commissioner J.E.M. Barrette noted that “unsubstantiated information” suggested that the FLQ intended to kidnap the premier of Québec and murder hostages if their demands were not met, storing the bodies in abandoned stolen cars. Which is exactly what did end up happening to Pierre Laporte. Other investigations prior to October 1970 (stretching back to FLQ formation in 1963) repeatedly emphasized the unity, cohesion, and danger of the FLQ. The provincial and federal governments believed that there was a wide-ranging and well-financed network of political radicals whose sole aim was to destabilize the government and induce revolutionary action. It was this fear of an “apprehended insurrection” that led Trudeau to enact the War Measures Act on 16 October.