The Decision

The Controversy

Prime Minister at the time,
Pierre Elliot Trudeau

Pierre Trudeau was one of the greatest Prime Ministers of all time, and most of his decisions were handled with confidence from the public.  But one of his most controversial decisions was to invoke the War Measures Act in during the October Crisis.  It had been used during the of WW1, WW2, and the Korean War, and there have been many stories of abuse from the armymen, towards innocent people.  Yet, it had never been used during peace time.  Some say that there was misuse in this Act, but I think otherwise, as liberationists were storming the streets causing riots and the police could not control them.  The liberationists that were sentenced to jail claimed they had done nothing wrong and that, by invoking the War Measures Act, Pierre Trudeau was stripping these people of their basic rights of free speech and their rights of freedom.  They claimed they were just supporting their causes and the army threw them in jail.  Being a big supporter of rights to freedom, and freedom of speech, I don't think that this was the intent of PM Trudeau, to strip these innocent peopl of these rights. He stated in an interview(found here - http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/politics/civil-unrest/the-october-crisis-civil-liberties-suspended/just-watch-me.html), "...it's more important to keep law and order in this society than to be worried about week-kneed people that don't like the looks of[people wearing helmets and carrying guns]..."  He is clearly responding to the claim that the people of Montréal are afraid to leave their homes because of these soldiers outside and that they risk being sent to jail.  Even if they were sent to jail, no matter what the crime is, during the time of the War Measures Act, the maximum jail sentence is 21 days.  The night after this Act was invoked, Pierre Laporte was found dead by strangulation, in the trunk of his own car.  This was clearly a response to Trudeau invoking the Act.  But after that, the FLQ lost some of its minor supporters considering it was the first political assassination in Canada in 102 years, and that these type of things started wars, and minor liberationists do not like to be a part of something like that.  For example, during the Iranian revolution ten years later, 52 hostages were captured and detained for 444, but none of them were killed, because it would have started an Iran-American war.  Also, the War Measures Act did its job, by ushering liberationists away from the streets and stopping all of the riots that the FLQ lawyer started up.  In conclusion, I think that it was a good decision to invoke the War Measures Act because it was a very good tool in extreme situations such as this one, and it did what it was supposed to do.