Canadian democracy is increasingly weakened by government bad behaviour and their toleration of violence as a political weapon. That bad behaviour began with the Province of Quebec and the Federal government’s despicable behaviour in not clamping down hard on Front de liberation du Quebec (FLQ) violence when it began. The rationale of the FLQ was that they were the considered the “# of the North” by the English and were therefore fighting Anglo-Saxon imperalism to establish a socialist and independent Quebec.
Bombs in letterboxes, the bombing of the Montreal Stock exchange and other destructive rampages went on for years while the authorities dithered. The FLQ thugs even dared to attack Prime Minister Trudeau during a speech in Quebec on Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day in 1968. Yet top Quebec politicians and high profile media types while decrying the violence often added the all too ubiquitous platitude, “I deplore the FLQ violence but I can understand their motivation.”
Weak-kneed leadership and a leftist mass media
Such weak-kneed leadership and a leftist mass media gave license to the FLQ’s violent activities that reached their climax in October 1970 with the kidnapping and murder of Pierre Laporte, Vice Premier of Quebec and Minister of Labour and the kidnapping of James Cross, the British Trade Commissioner. It was the inevitable result of the toleration of violent citizen behaviour. The toll over the years from some 160 violent incidents resulted in 8 deaths and numerous tragic injuries.
Trudeau finally invoked the War Measures Act and declared martial law while the search for the kidnappers was going on but not until the FLQ anarchists threatened to march on the Montreal city centre and set fire to federal government buildings on the way. Armed Canadian soldiers were suddenly on the streets of Montreal and the arrest of suspected FLQ sympathizers began. Across Canada large numbers of politicians, the mass media and the public screamed to high heaven that their civil liberties were being destroyed.
Does it not now sound shockingly akin to the cries of our crowd of today’s G20 anti-government protesters? Their violence and vandalism self-justified by the actions of the claimed brutal response of the police and their consequent mass arrests. “Our civil liberties were taken away,” they cried (for all of a few days). All of which they could have avoided had they stayed out of downtown Toronto as they were asked to do for many weeks prior to the G20 meetings. Again, in an open and free democracy the citizen has many peaceful ways to effect change and avoid bloodshed or injury. A lesson yet to be learned by so many and taught by our leadership and educational establishment.
So what was the Quebec public’s and their politician’s final attitude towards the FLQ murderers then and now? Quite simply, after a negotiated ten-year or less holiday in communist Cuba (to which the murderers were exiled) they returned to Canada as neo-heroes and some were even given jobs and responsibilities in the civil service of that province. That set the tone for permissive anarchy. Violent civil disobedience to the law, even murder will be tolerated and rewarded in Canada.
Trudeau did what was necessary, however he set no example to the young and impressionable by publicly chumming with dictator Castro of Cuba and lauding the Communists in Russia; even going so far as to declare how impressed he was by the Russian development of Siberia and that Canada had a lot to learn from Russia.
If the Communists in Cuba with their hundreds of abused political prisoners and the Gulag settlements of Siberia where millions died at slave labour impressed Trudeau, no wonder our youth are confused. Is it any mystery why many might want to emulate revolutionaries like Stalin, Castro and his much loved revolutionary partner Che Guevara – all heroes of their charismatic Prime Minister?
A long journey along the path of bad example
On the way to today’s world and our G20 violent anarchistic emulators and their willing dupes with their digital cameras, we ought to perhaps touch on the bad civic behaviour tolerated through the 1970’s and the leniency shown by our various and sundry governments. Bear in mind that the few incidents mentioned in this article cannot do more that touch upon the total array of incidents that occurred. This is not a history; this is a capsule social comment on Canada’s misinformed and sadly misguided younger adults and their “ought to know better” facilitators.
Those youth of the 70’s are today’s 50 and 60 year-olds. Most of our present protesters are the empathetic emulators of that 1970’s Trudeauesque cohort. That generation were known for their “ban the bomb, kill your parents and don’t trust anyone over 40” philosophy. They spent their time smoking pot, spending their parent’s money, group commune living and sexual self-indulgence. Oh yes, they also became experts at writing up proposals for multitudinous government grants that were doled out on the slightest pretext by spendthrift Liberal governments. The money went straight down the drain, no audits and no accounting required. Our national debt skyrocketed.
A building on Bloor Street in Toronto known as “Rochdale”
Rochdale was a high rise building of about eighteen floors. Originally intended as a student co-operative, it was quickly turned into an out-of-control drug infested and no-go zone for our police. Partying and living a rule-free life was their way of living. There were serious students there as well but for most it soon became too dangerous a place to stay. There were muggings, rapes, suicides and thugs that controlled access to some of the upper floors. Believe it or not the student directors wound up inviting a biker’s gang to live in the building in return for providing security. Soon the building became the biker’s headquarters for their illegal operations.
Many derelicts and homeless made the stairways their home and turned them into sleeping pads and bathrooms. The place was soon unhealthy and stank. Police all over North America named it as the largest Hash, Pot and LSD distributing center in North America. The “student” directors called the place a university and issued phony degrees for a small fee, all designed to obtain grants and tax benefits. It was a youth counter-culture icon that attracted hundreds of people from all across Canada and the USA. In effect, it became a festering anarchical boil on the rear-end of a society of overt permissiveness.
Did the authorities halt the anarchy?
What did the University of Toronto, the tax authorities, the local government, the provincial government, the RCMP or the police do to clamp down on the anarchy? The answer was, very little. It took many years of equivocation before the place was cleared out. In the meantime the owners suffered massive damages to the building and great financial loss in unpaid rents. All the impressionable across Canada and elsewhere were given a lesson in the joys of anarchy and the ineptness of the establishment.
Finally, the authorities screwed up enough common sense and the place was closed down. Orders were given to evacuate. Those who refused were forcibly removed. The building was abandoned for years but finally repurchased and turned into an upscale private resident condominium. .
It is a simple fact that when there are no hard and fast rules and laws that are enforced, there are many that will resort to violent or criminal activities. An eighteen year old youth was thrown out of an 18th floor window. No one ever found out if it was murder or suicide, yet participants in anarchical behaviour will cry foul and call the police immediately (or demand public inquiries) when they or their friends get burned.
Premier Mike Harris – the Conservative Election of 1995 – Ontario
This election was won by Mike Harris fair and square. His Common Sense Revolution booklet set out all aspects of his Party’s intentions many months in advance of the election. The election was peaceful. The population voted freely providing the Conservatives with a large majority; defeating the NDP government and the Ontario Liberal Party.
The anarchists, the Marxists; the Ontario Poverty Action Coalition; the Iranian-Canadian Communist Party (if you can believe it); the Mohawk Warriors, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Teacher’s Union plus others all combined to declare: “We will make it impossible for Harris to govern!” They marched on the Legislature within days and tried to break into the building. The media covered the anarchy but as usual ignored the peaceful minority present that supported the Harris government.
None one of the protesting groups acknowledged that the Chrétien Government in Ottawa (Mr. Paul Martin the Finance Minister) had just a month or two earlier begun to balance their massive deficit and humongous debt by reducing transfer payments to the provinces. The reduction to Ontario was a hefty 2.4 billion dollars. The CBC refused to listen or interview the conservative counter-protesters in the crowd who tried to be heard and explain the grim effects that would result from the massive federal cutback. However, they made sure to record the anarchy for that night’s newscast – par for the course for the mass leftist media. The anarchists had won again.
Next the same coalition of leftists decided to prevent the MPPs, our elected representatives, from entering the Legislature to do the public’s business. Instead of arresting them immediately and charging them with civil insurrection, the powers that be “negotiated” with the anarchists and came to an agreement that they would only detain the MPPs for 15 minutes and “allow” them to enter after badgering them and plying them with leaflets. That insult to our law abiding public was allowed to continue for weeks.
The left wing groups then mounted a “Days of Rage” protest whereby all the public service and other union groups were to withdraw their services for a period of time. Even money from the United Way found its way into the pockets of the supporters of the protest. When challenged, the head of the United Way said, “Well she is a nice person and does a lot of good work” (to the tune of $400,000 per year over the preceding four years). Charitable donations abused. Some of that money even found its way to the revolutionary group FARC in Bolivia, South America. The lesson – anarchy pays..
There were other so-called peaceful rallies. One rally attacked the downtown Bay Street stock exchange and another again the legislature buildings. In the first a police horse was struck by a board with nails in the end of it and in the second a leader of the poverty group gave the order to the crowd to violently charge the police. He was arrested and stood trial many months later, naturally he was exonerated. Again, the authorities and the courts set an example that violence will be tolerated.
This recurrent failure on the part of authorities to insist that civil conduct a democratic state must be upheld is a national a disgrace. That it has progressively worsened all across the globe in all free societies is no excuse. Canada must return to the rule of law.
Vancouver and APEC
The pepper spray incident that took place in Vancouver when the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation APEC organization met was again a sad lesson in anarchical behaviour. Sometimes protesters think they have a right to harass foreign guests to Canada but by law and precedent hosting countries are required to protect their guests from physical harm and gross insult. In this case the protesters seemed such a threat to our guests that the RCMP used pepper spray to control the mob.
Not a pleasant weapon but the offset was Chretien’s humorous comment in response to a question about the police using pepper spray by referring to his own career as a protesting youth. He famously joked in his imitable French accent and butchered English, “This technique did not exist in those days; for me I put it on my plate.”
Debatable of not it was another bad example set by the protesters for the society’s civil health even if their protest was directed at the Indonesian dictator Suharto. The correct way would have been to march peaceably elsewhere and stay away from the venue or hotels where the guests may be staying. Of course the mob knows that the mass media would ignore a truly peaceful protest. There is another greater problem in that crowd psychology has its own manifestation and can have unintended consequences, such as the start of WW1 caused by a grenade thrower in Sarajevo who was hidden in the otherwise peaceful crowd. Over ten millions died as a consequence.
Human Rights Tribunals
Perhaps the worst malfeasance of the political class of Canada has been the attempted by our governments to control the language and peaceful behaviour of ordinary citizens through the establishment of so-called human rights tribunals (better known as Kangaroo courts) all across Canada. Our citizen’s can no longer express their opinion peaceably concerning various sensitive issues, particularly when visible minorities are concerned or incompatible religious practices. Peaceable language is now penalized.
It has gone so far as to now deem it a punishable offense under our human rights dictatorship regime to insult anyone belonging to specific groups of “disadvantaged” minorities for merely “hurting their feelings.” Such idiocy by our political leaders leaves respect for our heritage of the rule of law in the gutter.
We must make the necessary changes now
It is obvious our leadership over the years has let us down and needs to begin to lead by example. There are signs that it is now prepared to do so. We need to encourage them.
Most important is that all members of any civil society of the free world must use our hard won freedoms to make use of every peaceful avenue of change available through our many levels of government. Sometimes change is very slow but in a free democracy the majority has the right to have its views prevail. The minority are protected by the rule of law. It takes time and patience. The amazing pay-off however, is that instead of armed insurrection or anarchy we marvelously change things without bloodshed.
Our educational institutions need to begin instilling these peaceful principles of a free and democratic world into our new future adults belief system and make sure that all our new citizens from elsewhere know that anarchistic behaviour to make political change will not be tolerated anywhere in Canada by anyone.
