PM told British 'no conspiracy' behind October Crisis: newly declassified files
Bruce Wallace
The Ottawa Citizen
LONDON -- Canada's federal government confided to the British government during the 1970 October Crisis it had "no evidence of an extensive and co-ordinated FLQ conspiracy," despite public declarations at home that the extraordinary police powers of the War Measures Act were necessary to fight an "apprehended insurrection."
The blunt assessment is contained in notes of a meeting in London on Nov. 26, 1970, between then-external affairs minister Mitchell Sharp and Sir Alec Douglas-Home, his British counterpart. They were unsealed this week, along with thousands of other British government documents, after a legally required interim of 30 years.
Mr. Sharp is recorded as saying "the War Measures Act was clearly too broad in its effect," which was why Canada was then in the process of introducing a less draconian public-order law. The minutes of the meeting also show Mr. Sharp expressing surprise and frustration at the inability of police to find and free kidnapped British trade commissioner James Cross.
"Canada needed a more sophisticated police force to cope with the new kind of political threat," he reportedly told Sir Alec and other senior officials from the two countries in a late-afternoon meeting in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Mr. Sharp said his government had been "startled to find after the kidnapping that the RCMP had no adequate list of FLQ suspects."
The problem facing the government and police, he said, is that "individual operations had been well-planned and disciplined and security within the small cells was tight, which made counter-action the more difficult."
But Mr. Sharp also expressed a firm opinion that Mr. Cross was still alive, arguing the FLQ kidnappers were aware they had made a political miscalculation in killing Quebec justice minister Pierre Laporte, their second kidnap victim.
He speculated that Mr. Laporte's murder was not premeditated but rather the result of panic, a fight, or a miscalculation brought on by drug use by the kidnappers.
"Politically it made no sense," Mr. Sharp is quoted as saying, proceeding to outline another, more dire scenario for the authorities. "If they had killed Mr. Cross and then threatened the life of Mr. Laporte, the provincial government might well have sought to give way," he said.
Mr. Sharp, 89, is currently an unpaid adviser to and close friend of Prime Minister Jean Chretien. He recently re-married and is living in Ottawa.
The newly released British documents suggest that from the beginning, Canada's prevailing view was that the FLQ remained a small band of thugs -- certainly at least until Mr. Laporte was snatched from his South Shore Montreal home on Oct. 10. In a telephone conversation with Mr. Sharp the day before, Sir Alec asked whether the Cross kidnappers were "a particularly tough lot."
"They were very tough, and very young and irresponsible," Mr. Sharp is quoted as answering. But, he added, "there was no big organization involved, just a collection of young toughs."
The documents show that Mr. Cross himself formed the same opinion during his 59-day ordeal -- that the FLQ hardly represented a coherent threat. In his de-briefing to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office also released this week, he said his abductors "had no expectation that their activities would lead to an independent Quebec within 50 years."
They were merely thrilled to be thumbing their noses at the powers of the state, Mr. Cross said, describing his captors as always hard up for money. He described their radical politics as "ill-informed" with only a "superficial understanding of Marxism."
The question of whether there was evidence to justify imposing the War Measures Act has been one of the most controversial and hotly debated points of modern Canadian history. The Canadian, Quebec and Montreal civic governments all insisted at the time that they had evidence of a conspiracy by the FLQ to overthrow elected governments, without revealing exactly the basis of that belief.
Quebec premier Robert Bourassa, in his Oct. 16, 1970 letter to prime minister Pierre Trudeau asking the federal government to grant police extraordinary powers, declared his government was "facing a concerted effort to intimidate and overthrow the government and the democratic institutions of this province through planned and systematic illegal action, including insurrection."
Montreal police chief Michel St. Pierre also wrote Mr. Trudeau arguing that the kidnappings of Mr. Cross and Mr. Laporte on Oct. 10 represented "the launching by this movement of their seditious projects and acts leading directly to the overthrow of the state."
Critics of the Trudeau government's use of the War Measures Act have always alleged no such evidence existed, and that the three levels of government overstated the threat posed by the FLQ.
Bruce Wallace
The Ottawa Citizen
LONDON -- Canada's federal government confided to the British government during the 1970 October Crisis it had "no evidence of an extensive and co-ordinated FLQ conspiracy," despite public declarations at home that the extraordinary police powers of the War Measures Act were necessary to fight an "apprehended insurrection."
The blunt assessment is contained in notes of a meeting in London on Nov. 26, 1970, between then-external affairs minister Mitchell Sharp and Sir Alec Douglas-Home, his British counterpart. They were unsealed this week, along with thousands of other British government documents, after a legally required interim of 30 years.
Mr. Sharp is recorded as saying "the War Measures Act was clearly too broad in its effect," which was why Canada was then in the process of introducing a less draconian public-order law. The minutes of the meeting also show Mr. Sharp expressing surprise and frustration at the inability of police to find and free kidnapped British trade commissioner James Cross.
"Canada needed a more sophisticated police force to cope with the new kind of political threat," he reportedly told Sir Alec and other senior officials from the two countries in a late-afternoon meeting in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Mr. Sharp said his government had been "startled to find after the kidnapping that the RCMP had no adequate list of FLQ suspects."
The problem facing the government and police, he said, is that "individual operations had been well-planned and disciplined and security within the small cells was tight, which made counter-action the more difficult."
But Mr. Sharp also expressed a firm opinion that Mr. Cross was still alive, arguing the FLQ kidnappers were aware they had made a political miscalculation in killing Quebec justice minister Pierre Laporte, their second kidnap victim.
He speculated that Mr. Laporte's murder was not premeditated but rather the result of panic, a fight, or a miscalculation brought on by drug use by the kidnappers.
"Politically it made no sense," Mr. Sharp is quoted as saying, proceeding to outline another, more dire scenario for the authorities. "If they had killed Mr. Cross and then threatened the life of Mr. Laporte, the provincial government might well have sought to give way," he said.
Mr. Sharp, 89, is currently an unpaid adviser to and close friend of Prime Minister Jean Chretien. He recently re-married and is living in Ottawa.
The newly released British documents suggest that from the beginning, Canada's prevailing view was that the FLQ remained a small band of thugs -- certainly at least until Mr. Laporte was snatched from his South Shore Montreal home on Oct. 10. In a telephone conversation with Mr. Sharp the day before, Sir Alec asked whether the Cross kidnappers were "a particularly tough lot."
"They were very tough, and very young and irresponsible," Mr. Sharp is quoted as answering. But, he added, "there was no big organization involved, just a collection of young toughs."
The documents show that Mr. Cross himself formed the same opinion during his 59-day ordeal -- that the FLQ hardly represented a coherent threat. In his de-briefing to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office also released this week, he said his abductors "had no expectation that their activities would lead to an independent Quebec within 50 years."
They were merely thrilled to be thumbing their noses at the powers of the state, Mr. Cross said, describing his captors as always hard up for money. He described their radical politics as "ill-informed" with only a "superficial understanding of Marxism."
The question of whether there was evidence to justify imposing the War Measures Act has been one of the most controversial and hotly debated points of modern Canadian history. The Canadian, Quebec and Montreal civic governments all insisted at the time that they had evidence of a conspiracy by the FLQ to overthrow elected governments, without revealing exactly the basis of that belief.
Quebec premier Robert Bourassa, in his Oct. 16, 1970 letter to prime minister Pierre Trudeau asking the federal government to grant police extraordinary powers, declared his government was "facing a concerted effort to intimidate and overthrow the government and the democratic institutions of this province through planned and systematic illegal action, including insurrection."
Montreal police chief Michel St. Pierre also wrote Mr. Trudeau arguing that the kidnappings of Mr. Cross and Mr. Laporte on Oct. 10 represented "the launching by this movement of their seditious projects and acts leading directly to the overthrow of the state."
Critics of the Trudeau government's use of the War Measures Act have always alleged no such evidence existed, and that the three levels of government overstated the threat posed by the FLQ.
iece o'crap Sanctus, sorry;
