Word: trudeau
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...watch me," Trudeau snapped back at newsmen who cornered him on Ottawa's Parliament Hill. "There are a lot of bleeding hearts who don't like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is go on and bleed. But it is more important to keep law and order in the society than to be worried about weak-kneed people...
There was no other rational explanation for Trudeau's surprise move. The FLQ was known to be merely a tiny fringe of terrorists whose numbers probably did not exceed 150. Not only that: they were incapable of launching any sort of effective mass action by themselves because they worked through small, completely separate cells. The Liberation cell had kidnapped Cross, the Chernier cell was holding Laporte. There was every indication that the two groups had acted independently of each other, and there was no reason to believe that larger assaults would follow...
...then, one ought to give Trudeau some credit for being a competent political thinker as well as an out-and-out cad. The invocation of the War Measures Act, announced in the tense early morning hours of October 16, outlawed the FLQ and subjected its members to five-year prison terms. But it also placed in similar jeopardy anyone who "advocates or promotes the unlawful acts, aims, principles or policies...
...destroy the basis of our democratic governmental system on which the enjoyment of our human rights and fundamental freedoms is founded"; the law's invocation would merely "insure the continued protection of those rights and freedoms in Canada." But buried beneath the platitudes was the distinct likelihood that Trudeau would use the crisis legislation to throw in jail those who posed the greatest legitimate threat to the government of his ruling Liberal party...
...WHAT TRUDEAU challenged, in effect, was a separatist movement in Quebec that had begun in the early '60's and was rapidly gaining strength and respectability in electoral circles as well as in terrorist cliques. One of the early groups, the Parti Quebecois, had attracted a significant province-wide following and won nearly 25 per cent of the popular vote in Quebec's elections last April. Another party, the two-year-old Front d'Action Politique, had been threatening to topple the administration of Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau in the municipal elections last Sunday...