The Use of the War Measures Act during the October Crisis

October Crisis

Introduction

The October Crisis is significant in Canadian history because it was the first and only time the War Measures Act was invoked by a Prime Minister during peace time. Not everyone agreed with the measure. Some conservative critics viewed the step as an abuse of authority, particularly considering that too little was known of the forces of the Front de liberation du Quebec (FLQ) responsible for the kidnapping of the Deputy Premier and a British diplomat (Bouthillier & Cloutier, 2010). The controversial step by the Prime Minister did indeed alter the way Canada monitors and polices terrorist threats. This paper will examine how the October Crisis led to a more significant and longer-lasting impact on Canadian policy with respect to monitoring and responding to threats of terrorism.

The October Crisis

The FLQ was a group of separatists in Quebec. Members of the group kidnapped and killed Quebec lawmaker Pierre Laporte and kidnapped British Trade Commissioner James Cross in October of 1970. The FLQ had been bombing sites for half a dozen years prior to the brazen kidnapping plot (Ha, 2016). Like the IRA in Ireland, the FLQ was not formally structured; it consisted instead of cells and individuals who shared the same ideals as those promoted by the organization. Because it was not a formally structured terror organization, it was difficult for authorities to monitor and police the entity. No one really knew who its members were or where they were. Symbols of federal power were often targeted in bombing attacks but prior the Canadian government had little to go on in terms of eradicating the organization, particularly because the scale and scope of anti-terror powers was limited.

Some members, such as Pierre-Paul Geoffroy, were known to police. Geoffroy had been vocal about his distrust in the electoral process. After one bombing in 1968 he was arrested and pled guilty to more than 30 bombings. He was convicted and given 124 back-to-back life sentences; it seemed justice had been served, but in reality by focusing on Geoffroy and serving him up to the public as a scapegoat the Canadian government had allowed the rest of the FLQ accomplices to get away (Ha, 2016). That only paved the way for the more brazen attack of October 1970.

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau refused to hem and haw; he promptly called the FLQ’s bluff and initiated the War Measures Act, giving his government sweeping powers reserved for war-time—such as the power to arrest without bail. With habeas corpus effectively suspended, more than 400 individuals were quickly detained. Fewer than 100 of them would be charged with a crime when all was said and done; and only 18 of them would be convicted (Ha, 2016). But the sweeping nature of the response and the push for reforms that followed were sufficient to show the populace that terror threats in the future would be met with a much more totalitarian response.

The Need for Reform

Before the October Crisis, but during the bombing campaign of the FLQ, lawmakers routinely called for hard-line amendments (Hewitt, 1994). However, the bombings themselves—even of the Montreal Stock Exchange in 1969—lacked the moral force and public indignation to bring about real or lasting changes in the way the government monitored and policed terrorism. The ongoing hostage situation and negotiation allowed for the dramatic crisis to play out over a number of weeks, which added to the seriousness of the event and allowed for numerous lawmakers to justify hard-line rhetoric that prior bombings had been unable to bring about.

Yet even as the situation played out into November, other politicians saw the seriousness of the affair as rather questionable (Hewitt, 1994). They viewed the situation as a sad but logical outcome of social circumstances in Quebec. Total reform of the way the government responded to terrorism was not, they believed, justified by the FLQ or its actions. Progressive Conservatives, for instance, were very concerned about the suppression of civil liberties that would come about as a result of the PM’s usage of the War Measures Act (Hewitt, 1994). Some called the response of the PM “excessive, hysterical and unacceptable” (Hewitt, 1994, p. 13). Others, of course, viewed the October Crisis as justification for reform. Their voice was heard loudest and their calls responded to.

Following the October Crisis, terrorism became the policy concern of four principal federal ministries: External Affairs, Department of Justice, Transport Canada, and the Solicitor General of Canada (SolGen). However, each of these was a large bureaucracy of its own and specific divisions were given the task and mission of monitoring and policing terrorism: “More specifically, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)-Criminal Division, and the National Security Policy Directorate of the former SolGen were the most involved with monitoring and responding to terrorism” (Ross, 2011, p. 5). Many subunits existed and still exist within these divisions to this day. Still, the overall responsibility of monitoring and policing terrorism was and would remain the role of law enforcement and intelligence. Military aid, like that used by PM Trudeau, would be available—as would sweeping legislative powers.

Macro and micro policies were not really in place at the time of the October Crisis, as “policy-related research in each government ministry was done on an ad-hoc basis” (Ross, 2011, p. 7). There was no over anti-terror department in the federal government when PM Trudeau acted. Thus, part of the reason for his response was simply that there were few available options at the time: if the PM did declare war on the FLQ in the way he did, it was primarily because no department had been formed that would take the reins.

The reality of the War Measures Act, however, was not as great as it seemed. For instance, under this Act “anyone suspected of being a member of a terrorist organization could be arrested and held incommunicado for 48 hours”—but that was all (Ross, 2011, p. 1). That did not mean people were not detained for months on end—some indeed were (Ha, 2016). But it did not give the PM the kind of powers that would later come into being. To increase the power of the state to monitor and police terror organizations in Canada, more legislation would be needed. The PM did not have the ability to snap his fingers and bring these policing and monitoring powers into being. All the War Measures Act could do was given him temporary military control of the situation. It did bring about the long-lasting changes that the PM and others believed were required to face the new menace of terror that the FLQ was supposed to have revealed. To address this lack of governmental power on the specific matter of monitoring and policing terrorism, legislative changes had to be made. After the October Crisis, SolGen created the Security Planning and Research Group (SPARG), which was meant to give support to the Solicitor General for evaluating the relevance of security intelligence reports from the RCMP (Ross, 2011).

Yet, even after the October Crisis, public perception of terrorist organizations as a real threat remained muted. Thus, the total overhaul of the government’s macro and micro approach to combating terrorism did not happen all at once. Several other terror incidents played a part in that evolution throughout the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st. But the October Crisis did bring about that necessary first step of raising the alarm bells and bringing about the engine of change.

Changes Made

SolGen was established in 1978 as the ministry responsible for negotiating hostage situations in direct response to the reports made in light of the government’s response to the October Crisis (Ross, 2011). However, it was not until after the assassination of Turkish diplomats in Canada that the government a national counter-terrorism program. The program brought under one umbrella the various activities of diverse departments and agencies throughout the Canadian federal government (Ross, 2011).

In 1984, following the McDonald Commissions’ reporting, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was created. CSIS would be the Canadian version of both the FBI and the CIA in the US (Ross, 2011). The CSIS would have enormous powers to conduct intelligence work, espionage, covert and clandestine operations, collect information on suspects, and work with law enforcement. Before its creation, security intelligence had been the job of the RCMP. The McDonald Commission had investigated reports of illegal activities by the RCMP’s security intelligence department, and that investigation is what led, formally, to the creation of the CSIS. The October Crisis only indirectly contributed to this development. However, had the October Crisis not occurred in 1970, it is possible that attention on the RCMP would not have increased in the decade of the 1970s. The Commission recommended that security intelligence work be separated from law enforcement and that civilian intelligence agents be in charge of a new intelligence agency. CSIS initially focused only on foreign intelligence agencies; however, in time it began to look more and more at protecting Canadian security and its citizens from terrorist organizations.

By 1986 additional changes were made: one was the creation of the Special Emergency Response Team (SERT), an elite task-force within the RCMP that received specialized training in addressing hostage negotiation situations, barricade and rescue actions, and other terror-related situations (Ross, 2011). In the mid-1990s, however, SERT was abolished and a new organization was created—one that would have much more clandestine powers, deemed necessary in the fast-growing war on terror, which would reach epic levels in the 21st century. That clandestine organization was Joint Task Force Two (JTF2).

Another big change that did directly stem from the October Crisis was the transformation of the Canadian Forces. Priority One of the Canadian forces would be, as PM Trudeau pointed out, to protect internal security (Desmond, 1999). Indeed, by the late 1970s, the Canadian Forces changed into an internal security force with little focus on fighting conventional wars (Desmond, 1999).

As Valpy (2010) notes, however, the biggest changes to the way Canada monitored and policed terror organizations could be felt by the average citizen in the way his or her civil liberties now seemed to hang by a thread, to be suspended at a moment’s notice in the name of swift police action protecting national security. According to Valpy (2010), the steps taken then by PM Trudeau in 1970 “remain a symbol of the country’s fragile attachment to civil liberties and human rights, with echoes along the road from anti-terror legislation in the wake of 9/11 and the policing of the streets of Toronto during the G20 summit.” Even today as people struggle with the lockdowns implemented by Canada’s government to stem the spread of coronavirus, the same measures and the excuses used to implement them are given: it is for the protection of the citizens that they are treated as prisoners in their own homes, in their own communities, in their states and in their own nation.

The monitoring and policing of terror organizations in Canada took on a more totalitarian character after the October Crisis—but it was a change that took time to develop, legislatively speaking. The CSIS did not spring up overnight. It would be more than a decade and a half before it would be created. Yet, PM Trudeau essentially gave birth to its concept when he scuttled civil liberties in October 1970 by implementing the War Measures Act and when he subsequently altered the nature of the Canadian Forces to reflect the sense that the nation was under an internal threat from terrorism—even though many felt the threat was exaggerated.

Nonetheless, various Acts would come along to strengthen police authority. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 increased the police’s authority to arrest, further encroaching on civil rights. The Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act enacted in 2001 pushed it still further with pre-emptive detention becoming lawful. Security and surveillance powers of the state were also increased.

The totalitarian push for the ability to control the populace and monitor its every movement did not arrive immediately the October Crisis ended. Rather, the October Crisis and the response of the PM laid the stage for the next several decades, in which it would be a steady roll-out of expanding powers and laws designed to strengthen the state’s ability to combat terrorism by way of covert and clandestine operations, national security legislation, and the erection of the surveillance state.

The October Crisis was the first step in all that: it was “followed by public inquiries into the security actions, which had led to significant alterations to the security apparatus and recommendations for the future of security planning” (Burke, 2012, p. 27). The October Crisis allowed for a reconfiguration of the security apparatus of Canada. These changes were not a direct response to the Crisis but were essentially made possible because of PM Trudeau’s response to the Crisis.

The outcome of the Crisis was such that it heralded in a much larger discussion about the role of the state in monitoring and policing terrorism. That discussion went on for years—throughout the rest of the 20th century in fact and well into the 21st century. The October Crisis was just one of several terror-related incidents that helped to spur on the discussion. Each new terror-related incident ratcheted up the stakes in the discussion and justified further expansion of state powers in terms of surveillance and focusing on internal security.

The military was deployed in the October Crisis, but it was not prepared to handle police actions. The integration of military might and police law enforcement would be completed over the following decades as police militarization would become normalized. But it was on October 16, 1970, that Canada became the first Western state to use emergency powers during peace time (Burke, 2012). The Act was seen as severe by some and not severe enough by others. Essentially it was this: “Under the Act, any action that was seen as supporting an insurrection or the FLQ was subject to five year’s imprisonment and anyone—supporter or not—could be detained and jailed for up to three weeks without charge” (Burke, 2012, p. 88). Regardless, the Duchaîne Report, commissioned by the Parti Québecois Government in 1976, found that the War Measures Act and the dispatching of the military against Canadian citizens were “used as tactics to intimidate separatists and leftists and to repress overall dissent” (Burke, 2012, p. 94). It could be argued that the development of the CSIS in the 1980s was a further attempt to stifle dissent.