Word: trudeau
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau imposed martial law on Canada last Oct. 16, following the kidnappings of Laporte and British Trade Commissioner James R. Cross by two separate cells of the FLQ. The law declared illegal membership in the secessionist group or support for its activities or goals...
During the week, Trudeau's government repeatedly cited three reasons for its tough action, and each seemed to have at least some validity. First, Ottawa felt it had to counter what one official called "an erosion of public opinion" in Quebec, whose French-Canadian population might have embraced the separatist creed more warmly than ever had the government wavered in the face of the F.L.Q. challenge; that fear was heightened by the fact that Montreal is holding municipal elections this week. Second, Ottawa wanted to reassert the principle of federalism as strongly as possible. Finally, there was the F.L.Q. itself...
...indicates that today's urban guerrillas merely bring new techniques to old battles?atavistic tribal struggles that would hardly be noticed except in a world shrunken by communications satellites and other electronic marvels. Quebec's F.L.Q. dates only from 1962, but French-Canadian nationalism goes back two centuries. Pierre Trudeau himself was close to Quebec radical movements in the 1950s, but he later decided that what separatism really meant was simply a long step back to Quebec's feudal past. In a tough 1964 essay, Trudeau let the Quebec separatists have it. "The truth is," he wrote, "that...
Compared to some of these foreign countermeasures against urban guerrillas, the U.S. is still proceeding mildly, all the loose talk about "repression" notwithstanding. Certainly, given the present political climate in the U.S., no American President could have invoked wartime powers as easily as Trudeau did to summarily outlaw a group of militant dissidents. In the U.S., officials can move strongly against an urban guerrilla threat under the recently enacted Organized Crime Control Law; among other things
Canada and Uruguay have moved decisively, but within constitutional limits, knowing full well that to scrap the constitution à la Brazil would only play into the terrorists' hands by inviting real disorders. In Ottawa, Trudeau's Cabinet is already drawing up new laws to replace the War Measures Act, so as to permit more effective action against civil disorders. With its May 1968 upheaval in mind, France has beefed up its police force, and enacted a tough new anti-demonstration measure known as the "anti-wrecker's law." Under the law, police can arrest anyone standing in sight...