NCJ Number
73893
Journal
Criminologie Volume: 13 Issue: 2 Dated: (1980) Pages: 47-78
Date Published
1980
Length
32 pages
Annotation
This article examines the Canadian Army's intervention in the Quebec crisis of October 1970 and its justification under the War Measures Act as assistance to the local police in dealing with Quebec Liberation Front (FLQ) terrorist activities.
Abstract
At the height of the 1970 terrorist campaign waged by FLQ separatists in Quebec, which culminated in the kidnapping of a British Commercial Attache and a Canadian Minister (the latter subsequently assassinated), the Canadian Government implemented the War Measures Act, designed to meet a threat of apprehended insurrection. One of the emergency measures included in that act was to call in the army. This article argues that the army, which in the past has been repeatedly called upon to intervene in internal conflicts, should not perform functions extraneous to its mission -- that of defending the country in case of war. The Canadian Government should have created a national constabulary, with mixed military and civilian functions, to deal with threats to public order and safety instead of calling upon the army for such tasks. The army is usually ordered to intervene in the four following types of emergency: riots during political elections, prison riots, social unrest beyond local police control, and natural disasters. The 1970 intervention in Quebec lasted 3 months and was the most expensive in Canadian history, but it did not accomplish anything that the Quebec police could not have done even better if their infiltration of FLQ cells had been followed through with arrests of the most dangerous militants in the movement. Strangely enough, the police did nothing beyond issuing alarming bulletins through the mass media, so that the army had to be called in to reassure the Quebec population. The reactions of the members of the Canadian armed forces to performing duties irrelevant to the mission of a modern army in a democratic country are not known. One is reminded that in such European countries as Belgium and France -- which, incidentally, still have the draft -military personnel is never called upon to conduct police operations. Chronological tables of Canadian army interventions in internal conflicts are appended.