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The hardline approach of Canada's current Prime Minister, then a junior cabinet minister, is one of the fascinating glimpses behind the scenes in the crisis revealed in long-secret cabinet documents obtained by CBC television for a two-hour documentary, Black October, to be broadcast at 8 p.m. tomorrow. Chrétien, then aged 36, was minister of Indian affairs and northern development in the late prime minister Pierre Trudeau's cabinet. He had been an MP for seven years and a cabinet minister for only three. Judging by the cabinet minutes obtained through the Access to Information Act, covering the key period of Oct. 6, 1970 to Dec. 23, 1970, Chrétien's Oct. 15 endorsement of the lightning pre-dawn strike by police less than 24 hours later, leading to more than 450 arrests and close to 4,000 raids on homes, was one of his few personal interventions. The documents show Trudeau juggling the often conflicting advice of such cabinet heavies as Mitchell Sharp and John Turner while Quebec colleagues such as the late Jean Marchand and Bryce Mackasey rocked the cabinet with predictions of serial bombings, street uprisings and civil war. Chrétien spoke at a crucial Oct. 15 cabinet meeting only minutes after Trudeau, usually prudent about the actual strength of the clandestine Front de Libération du Quebec (FLQ), reported that the RCMP estimated its "hard core . . . could vary from 200 to 1,000" terrorists and referred to a possible "insurrection." James Cross, British trade commissioner, had been held by the FLQ kidnappers for 10 days and Quebec labour minister Pierre Laporte had been held captive by a different FLQ cell for five days. Laporte died, strangled apparently while trying to escape, on Oct. 17, the day after the police raids, army deployment and declaration of the War Measures Act. Chrétien's intervention came after Jean Marchand, then minister of regional economic expansion, said that "people in Quebec are becoming frightened" and then revenue minister Herb Gray voiced approval of the police action. "The minister of Indian affairs and northern development (Chrétien) agreed to that, adding that, if the threat was serious, the government should not give previous warning of its action, but act and explain things later," the document said. The documents show the cabinet divided on the advisability of the radical police and military action but eventually rallying behind Trudeau. Turner, then justice minister, is cited as warning that "in interfering with civil liberties and admitting that insurrection was apprehended, the government might `overkill' and, if it had not got Parliament and the people behind it, the government might well receive a black eye." Then solicitor general George McIlraith "objected to the legislation being directed against persons and organizations rather than against crime." The minutes, excised of only short passages in the access-to-information process, are remarkable by what is absent as much as by what is revealed. With one or two exceptions such as a clear appeal by Sharp to consider parole for 23 FLQ sympathizers serving jail terms - one of the kidnappers' demands - in order to "save the lives of Mr. Cross and Mr. Laporte," there is much more discussion of how to justify the government's actions later and how to use the events to promote national unity. Discussions of the political situation in Quebec at the time make no mention of the separatist Parti Québécois, led by René Lévesque, who later became Quebec premier. The party took 24 per cent of the votes in the April, 1970, provincial election and held seven seats in the Quebec National Assembly.
Cabinet hoped unity would be a positive result of the FLQ crisisThere is discussion of the alleged danger of then premier Robert Bourassa's Liberal government "falling apart . . . on the brink of disaster" but no specific mention of the threat of a so-called "parallel government" taking over - one of the explanations leaked to the media at the time to justify the use of the War Measures Act. The FLQ manifesto read on television as one of the major concessions to the kidnappers - 30 years ago this weekend - is referred to by Sharp, then minister for external affairs, as "the separatist manifesto." The role of the late Jean Marchand, a former Quebec union leader, in dramatizing the crisis is confirmed. Marchand talks of "losing Quebec" and tells the cabinet that 1,200 arrests may be necessary. In fact, police never obtained more than a score of convictions, some of them for minor offences. Laporte's kidnappers drew long prison sentences but those who held Cross and finally released him escaped with relatively short sentences after negotiating their exile to Cuba. Marchand told the cabinet the FLQ had become "a state within a state," that it was heavily armed and preparing to blow up two tonnes of dynamite in Montreal. The documents confirm that Marchand and the late Gérard Pelletier were assigned by the cabinet to vet the list of potential insurrectionists targeted for arrest. The role played by the two men - Marchand, former president of the Confederation of National Trade Unions, and Pelletier, former editor of the union's newspaper and later of La Presse - is often cited in Quebec as one of the most painful episodes of the October crisis. Many on the list, such as labour firebrand Michel Chartrand, who was imprisoned, poet and later MNA Gérald Godin and singer Pauline Julien, also detained, were former friends and colleagues. A preoccupation with image, promotion of national unity and future political fall-out is omnipresent in the documents. "The Quebec situation and the death of Mr. Laporte should be used to weld the country together and strengthen Canadian unity," the minutes of an Oct. 18 cabinet meeting, the day the murdered minister's body was found in the trunk of a car, conclude. "Should the funeral of Mr. Laporte become a national affair, it would be a rare occasion to crystalize the feelings of Canadians on the current events," a summary of cabinet discussions says. The documents call for the funeral to be carefully stage-managed. But some cabinet ministers balked at overly obvious exploitation of the tragedy. In the cabinet report of Trudeau's meetings with others on the subject of the War Measures Act, his sense of humour comes through clearly. The late Tory prime minister John Diefenbaker, then sitting as an MP, was among those consulted and "it appeared that he was mainly objecting to the army wearing helmets in the federal capital," Trudeau was reported as saying. "The Prime Minister (Trudeau) suggested that perhaps they wear something else, at least in sight of Mr. Diefenbaker."
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