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October 20, 2010 - No. 175 40th Anniversary of War Measures Act Police Power Above Civil Power:
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 Police assault CPC(M-L) supporter selling Party literature in Toronto, November 1970. More than 2,500 arrests of Party supporters took place with the aim of suppressing progressive and revolutionary activities including the sale of People's Canada Daily News and other literature. |
Even without special powers, in Canada the right to conscience is routinely violated. Far from being a departure from the norm, the persecution, arrest and jailing of the militants of the communist and workers' movement are features of what is called the Canadian democracy.
In the period after the Second World War, despite the
fact that the existence of the Communist Party and membership in it
were not considered offenses under the criminal code, Anglo-American
democracy declared communism to be the enemy of democracy. This was the
basis for the RCMP lists of thousands
of communists and communist sympathizers it slated for indefinite
detention. Apart from the arrests carried out during the War
Measures Act, more than 2,500 arrests of members and supporters of
the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) took place in the
1970s in an all-out effort by the Canadian
state to smash the new party which had come into being. None of those
arrests were carried out by invoking any special powers. Instead they
were part of the RCMP's dirty tricks to portray the members of CPC(M-L)
as petty criminals and destroy the organization. The RCMP carried out a
campaign to frame and
deport the founder and leader of CPC(M-L), Comrade Hardial Bains, and
deprive him of citizenship for 30 years. The persecution of other Party
comrades carries on to date.
 Police raid on one of CPC(M-L)'s Montreal bookstores in 1970. |
All of it shows that so-called safeguards known as civil liberties which we are led to believe protect us against impunity on the part of police agencies have always been subjected to "reasonable limits." Besides the persecution of progressive people, workers are legislated back to work, etc. On top of this, under some conditions, "exceptional circumstances" are declared to justify the use of instruments like the War Measures Act as took place against the communist and workers' movement in both the First and Second World Wars, and for purposes of expropriating fishing fleets and houses of the Japanese using the pretext of internment, as well as in October, 1970.
All of it reveals the class nature of the democratic
institutions this debate seeks to hide and that so long as sovereignty
is vested in the prerogative of the crown which represents the
monopolies and defends their interests, not in the people on a modern
basis, this problem will only get worse. The fact that government
ministers did not even know about the PROFUNC program shows the
contempt in which the "civil power" is held. Both Warren Allmand and
Robert Kaplan, solicitors general in Trudeau governments, admit
to this when they point out they knew nothing about PROFUNC.
What the declaration of the War Measures Act
in 1970 and PROFUNC actually show is not that the police were above the
civil power in the past but that what is called the civil power is a
form of police rule to protect the rule of the monopolies and their
interests at home and abroad. The rulers portray
these interests in a manner which claims that the role of the state is
to defend the public good and that the state is neutral in the clash
of class interests.
Damage to Progressive Books & Periodicals located at 721 Gerrard St. E. in Toronto during a December 1, 1970
raid by the Metro Toronto and Ontario Provincial Police, led by the RCMP. Besides ransacking the bookstore,
police also attempted to start a fire using the hot water heater.
Due to all the wrong-doings of the RCMP, in 1983 legislation creating the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to take over security and intelligence from the RCMP was introduced in Parliament. CSIS came into being in 1984. But far from changing the essence of the Canadian democracy in which the police are above the civil power, this never ceased but in fact increased. Since the creation of the CSIS both the CSIS and other police agencies act above the civil power as clearly revealed by the Maher Arar and other cases in which Canada has been involved in torture, rendition to torture and other crimes against humanity. In the case of the Afghan detainees handed over to the Americans and to torture shortly after Canada's involvement in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, even the Prime Minister was informed one week after the fact. A memo came to light about secret deals between Canadian and American special forces which specified that they must be kept secret from even the Prime Minister.
In this regard, while the CBC and Radio-Canada
"revealed" all kinds of things about the PROFUNC plan, they failed to
point to the current integration of Canadian and U.S. police,
intelligence and armed forces, let alone the handing over of
information about Canadians to U.S. spy agencies to be placed on no-fly
lists, terror suspect lists, rendered to torture, etc. All of it shows
that the PROFUNC phenomenon is a thing of the present, not the past.
This is a problem which comes under the heading state terrorism, not
democracy.
The Essence of the Canadian Democracy
The sacrificing of civil rights in the service of the monopolies, security, national interest and values is not a departure from but the very essence of the Canadian democracy.
Today, civil liberties have all become collateral damage because of the so-called war on terror. Governments are arrogantly trumping public right and declaring that the monopolies have unfettered access to Canada's resources and labour.
In the name of national security, national interest and values, the rule of the monopolies acting with impunity and the all-out militarization and fascization of life are carried out. During the G8/20 protests, Toronto was militarized, more than $1 billion spent on "security" and more than 1100 people were arrested. The Supreme Court recently ruled that Canadians have no right to have a lawyer present when they are interrogated by the police. Miranda rights are an American, not Canadian arrangement, the courts pointed out. In the U.S. other excuses are found to circumvent Miranda rights. In another case, the Supreme Court declared that Omar Khadr's rights were indeed violated when he was tortured. Evidence gathered under torture is not permitted because torture is illegal under all conditions. But the Prime Minister's prerogative powers permit him to keep everything secret to protect national security and on the basis of the secret evidence, the Prime Minister must do what he thinks is best.
All of this is to permit the rule of impunity and the modus
operandi is the same as was used in the past: the state above the
civil power is working hard to create hysteria over wanton "anarchists"
or "terrorists" in order to criminalize dissent. Political opposition
to neo-liberal globalization and its institutions
such as the G8 and G20 or to imperialist war, militarization and
aggression and the anti-social offensive are met with tear gas, rubber
bullets, kettling of protesters, declaring protest "legal" only within
protest pens and mass arrests. Recently, one protestor was told that if
he refused to sign and abide by bail conditions
which violate civil rights, he was "free" to do so but would be kept in
solitary confinement indefinitely. All of this is par for the course in
a police state, not a democracy worthy of the name.
Cross-Canada protests against the G20 and the criminalization of dissent this past June-July.
On another occasion a stateless person of Roma origin who the government wanted to deport was told that if he did not voluntarily agree to be deported (a requirement under international law because the person is officially stateless) he would be kept in jail for the rest of his life. Indefinite detention is illegal under international law but in Canada there is nothing to stop it.
In Canada, the RCMP, CSIS, police agencies and courts
engage in "dirty tricks." Spying, state-organized terrorism and acting
with impunity are all par for the course. With the police above the
civil power, Muslims are being pressured to declare their "loyalty" in
a manner reminiscent of McCarthy era "loyalty oaths"
in the United States. This is going so far as to say that if they do
not declare support for the illegal war against Afghanistan, they are
disloyal. Opposition to Zionism and to Israeli war crimes and
aggression and to the Canadian government's policy of materially and
morally supporting collective punishment of the
people of Gaza, are being criminalized. Whether it is the use of
security certificates, the "anti-terrorism" legislation, the attacks on
Tamil refugees who are branded as "terrorists," the new normal is the
attempt to get Canadians to accept the conception of a "rule of law"
based on a permanent state of exception where 
the police agencies and
special forces are in charge and the civil
power is without power.
The standing army and police forces play such a role wherever the sovereign power does not rest in the hands of the people.
It must not pass! Canadians need a government which will
defend their rights. Canadians need a new and modern democracy. It is
up to workers and their allies to build a strong Workers' Opposition
which can bring such a government into being.
A Failed Attempt to Smash the Organization,
Desire for
Change and Spirit of Rebellion
of the Quebec Working Class and People
 Demonstration of Murray Hill bus drivers, Montreal, 1969. |
Each effort in disinformation must take events out of
their context. In the final analysis, in each case, it is not so much
what is said that is important, but what is not said. It is impossible
to talk about the application of the War
Measures
Act in October 1970
without taking into account the overall context which
prevailed in Quebec and Canada at the time. As far as the State
television and certain monopolized media are concerned, their version
consists of simply repeating that the context of the time was that of
incidents of terrorist bombings and kidnappings, even though it has
been revealed quite
conclusively that behind this state of affairs
was the State, the RCMP, its agents provocateurs,
informers and undercover agents. What is not raised is the vigour of
the working class movement and the birth of a Party which was to assert
the essential role of this class in the transformation of society. The
spirit which CPC(M-L) embodied
came from the very experience during the
sixties of its precursor organization, the Internationalists, that it
was just to rebel against a social order based on
national and international exploitation and oppression. This spirit was
not a dogma invented by the Party, but was based on the national
conditions in Quebec at the time and the tradition of the Quebec
working class and people
which was to fight for change against Anglo-Canadian colonialism and
the defiance of institutions of the
privileged, whether monarchs, monopolies, church or political
representatives who spoke in their names.
The years that followed the implementation of these War
Measures clearly show that this attempt by Trudeau and others to smash
the organization, desire for change and spirit of rebellion of the
working class and people did not succeed. First of all, the
state-organized attacks did not stop against the Party following
its founding in March, 1970. The seventies were years of active
resistance against state-organized attacks as more than 2,500 Party
members
and activists were arrested and some 21 deported. Many times, these
arrests were aimed at stopping public sales of the Party's newspaper, People's
Canada Daily
News. The spirit of resistance of the Party was essential not only
for its survival but for the task of social transformation which was
that of the class in the years to come. Also, the people and the class
expressed this spirit in numerous strikes and workers' actions which
were raging prior to the declaration of
war measures and throughout the seventies. The Common Front of Quebec's
main unions was organized shortly after the "October Crisis" scenario
while across the country workers fought against being made to pay for
the crisis of the post-war economic system and political arrangements.
The media disinformation asserts certain facts by ignoring many other relevant ones. More often that not, the facts that are not raised -- such as the ongoing negation of the rights of the workers and people and their heroic resistance -- are the only ones that can set things straight.
Another thing that is never raised is that at this time CPC(M-L) and the Internationalists before it, were defining the role of the working class in the movement for the affirmation of the Quebec nation. This is why many sovereigntists joined CPC(M-L) and denounced the monopolies and the negative role they were playing in Quebec and sided with the working class. The Party resolved this question of the link between the movement for the emancipation of the working class and the emancipation of the nation. This link was to eventually express itself in this way: that the working class must constitute itself the nation and vest sovereignty in the people.
When we say that the times insist that we must start all over again, this is part of what it means. We must as a people and, above all, as a class, pursue our work in the spirit of profound changes, of defiance towards all those who have usurped power by force, with their medieval conceptions of rights and governance, who take up the simplistic theses of terrorist threats to suspend and suppress fundamental human rights at home and abroad -- be they called Charest, Harper or go by any other name. The institutions which were and continue to be instruments for the marginalization and negation of human rights are not democratic in any modern sense. The main right they oppose is the right to rebel against the Old and to bring into being the New, to replace old, worn-out notions with modern definitions which are alive and transforming and which actually enable the people to sort out the problems of the real world.
PROFUNC -- Canada's Secret Plan
for Indefinite Detention
The CBC's The Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada's Enquête programs have exposed a plan which it is claimed existed in the past to indefinitely detain thousands of Canadians believed to be communists or communist sympathizers in the event of a "national emergency." PROFUNC, which stands for PROminent FUNCtionaries of the Communist Party, was a top-secret plan first devised in 1950 by RCMP Commissioner Stuart Taylor Wood. It listed 16,000 suspected communists and 50,000 sympathizers to be spied on and possibly indefinitely interned. The CBC program describes PROFUNC as one of the most draconian national security programs in Canada's peacetime history. It says that those on the list could be detained indefinitely, subject to "severe discipline" and shot if they tried to escape.
The lists included prominent Canadian public personalities and ordinary people -- men and women, and their children -- whose identities were kept hidden in sealed envelopes kept at RCMP detachments across the country. An arrest document known as a C-215 form was created for each potential internee. Files included personal details such as age, physical description, photos, vehicle information, and housing, and even the location of doors to be used in potential escapes, according to the CBC. The lists of targets included the children of the men and women to be detained. The information was regularly updated, apparently from 1950 when the program was created until 1983 when it is claimed it was disbanded.
PROFUNC called for the RCMP to begin a massive roundup they referred to as M-Day, or Mobilization Day. Police commanders were secretly briefed on preparations for the day. The plan included special teams to be deployed in residential neighbourhoods, taking up tactical positions and rounding up the "targets" who would then be transported to temporary "reception centres" and later to permanent prisons or detention camps. In Toronto, Casa Loma was to be used, in Port Arthur Ontario, a country club and in Regina the Grandstand Exhibition Grounds. Men would be kept at camps across the country, women would be sent to one of two facilities in the Niagara Peninsula or Kelowna, BC. Children would either be sent to relatives or interned with parents.
The CBC reports that internees also faced harsh punishment if they broke the strict rules of the camps, such as the following: "No internee shall converse with any person, other than an officer guard or staff member, unless he is permitted to do so under these regulations or is given special permission to do so by an officer."
Information gathered under the PROFUNC program was used when the War Measures Act was declared in 1970. Trudeau had declared an "apprehended insurrection" but according to retired Lt. Julien Giguère, head of Montreal police's anti-terrorism squad at the time, they had a list of only 60 names of people deemed to be FLQ sympathizers. This list was considered too short in light of the claim of an "apprehended insurrection." So, according to Giguère, both the Sureté du Québec (SQ, provincial police) and the RCMP provided more names, leading to almost 4,000 raids and 500 arrests.
The plan was kept secret even from the Solicitor General who was responsible for the RCMP. The CBC/Radio Canada program interviewed Robert Kaplan, who was Solicitor General of Canada from 1980 to 1984. Kaplan apparently inadvertently brought an end to the program in 1983 when he ordered the RCMP to stop whatever actions were responsible for elderly Canadians being barred from entering the United States. Kaplan stated that he heard about the program only now when informed about it by the Fifth Estate. He told the CBC that he was appalled to hear that the Canadian government had been involved in such a plan: "I just can't believe it had any government authorization behind it," Kaplan said.
If this does not mean that in Canada the police are above the civil power, what does it mean?
For Your Information
PROFUNC "Reception Centres" and Internment Camps
While the plan changed over the years, a 1951 document
listed the following reception centres and internment camps to be set
up across the country.
"Reception centres":
Halifax: Canadian Immigration Detention Headquarters
Montreal: Department of Labour Hostel
Toronto: Casa Loma
Winnipeg: Normal School
Port Arthur, Ont.: Port Arthur Country Club
Regina: Grandstand Exhibition Grounds
Edmonton: Canadian Immigration Quarters
Calgary: Northern Electric Building
Vancouver: Canadian Immigration Building
Internment camps:
Kelowna, BC: A female-only facility housing 400 BC and
Prairie internees.
Chilliwack, BC: A male-only camp for 400 British
Columbians.
Lethbridge, Alta.: A facility accommodating 400 male
internees from the three Prairie provinces.
Neys, Ont.: A camp for 400 men from Ontario.
North Bay, Ont.: A male-only facility for 400 Ontarians.
Niagara Peninsula (St. Thomas or London area), Ont.: A
facility for 400 women from Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes.
St. Gabriel de Brandon, Que.: 400 men from Quebec and
Maritimes.
Parry Sound, Ont.: A co-ed camp, numbers not specified.
From the Party Press
The Line of "Two Extremes"
The Liberal Party of Canada has once again raised the
issue of opposing what it calls the "two extremes" so as to affirm what
it calls the "core Canadian value of tolerance." But this propaganda is
merely eyewash to fool the gullible. It seeks to cover up that it is
the bourgeoisie and its state which are intolerant
of anything and anyone which opposes them and that they are the real
source of terrorism and political violence.
Who Are the Terrorists and Who Is Carrying Out Acts of Political Violence in Canada? The answer to this question has been provided by the bourgeoisie itself, as the revelations of the McDonald Commission into RCMP Wrongdoing and countless other admissions clearly show. The McDonald Commission openly admitted the fact that the bourgeoisie and its RCMP and other police forces and spies, as well as the fascist gangs set up by them, have been the source of terrorism, barn-burnings, kidnappings, torture and blackmail in the recruitment of informants, of racist and fascist hate messages on telephones and violent attacks against the national minority communities, workers' struggles and against the progressive and democratic forces, especially the Marxist-Leninists, attempted assassinations, and so on.
 Police protect "Western Guard" during their attempt to publicly celebrate Mussolini's birthday in Toronto, 1973. |
The report also admitted that the police and government authorities have fully cooperated with the American spy agencies and police forces in bringing spies to Canada to sabotage CPC(M-L), and the struggle of the Native people and other groups in Canada. Significantly, some sections of the McDonald Commission Report, such as the section on "Operation Checkmate," which deal specifically with how CPC(M-L) and its leader, Comrade Hardial Bains, were made the targets of such terrorist attacks, were never released for publication. This too serves the tactic of the bourgeoisie of declaring that the problem is "the two extremes."
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, they slandered the Marxist-Leninists as the source of crime and violence by comparing them to the fascists and terrorists, while in fact remaining silent about their true activities and progressive stands and hiding the fact that they were the ones behind acts of violence and terror. The McDonald Commission report also served to justify the fascization of the state and to strengthen the apparatus of repression, including the creation of the civilian spy agency, the CSIS. This was justified under the guise that it is necessary to make the illegal activities of the state legal in the name of the interests of national security.
***
The experience of the Canadian and world's people is that it is imperialism, the bourgeoisie and all reaction and their police forces and spies and fascist gangs who are the terrorists and commit acts of political violence, and that the bourgeoisie has one law for itself and one law for the working class and the progressive and democratic forces. The law forbids the working people to defend their sovereignty and fight for their rights, to eliminate the danger of imperialist war and fascism and transform capitalist society to socialist society and the bourgeoisie has simply given itself the final mandate to rule simply by the "grace of god." There is not and cannot be any other justification.
The encouragement of fascist terror constitutes the most
savage attack and ugly form of the state of the monopoly bourgeoisie in
the conditions of the grave all-sided economic and political-social
crisis which is disintegrating the capitalist society. It represents
the unbridled efforts of the bourgeoisie to intimidate
the working class and people, especially the youth. It is not a sign of
its strength, but of its weakness and provides evidence of the
disintegration of capitalist society.
In the current conditions of the crisis, the bourgeoisie is once again throwing aside its democratic mask and humanitarian disguises. It is ruling by decree in order to impose its anti-social offensive. To disorient the people and divide their ranks so that they pose no united front against the anti-social offensive, it promotes fascist gangs and racism. The facts of life show that under the conditions of bourgeois democracy these gangs are allowed to flourish. The state protects them, instigates and organizes them. It apologizes for their actions such as the declaration that the caretaker at the Surrey Sikh temple was "in the wrong place at the wrong time." The bourgeoisie itself has admitted how it infiltrated the FLQ and how its agents were the source of the major terrorist actions, kidnappings, terrorist communiques and instigation of terrorism in Quebec. They were also operating in the fascist "Western Guard" in Toronto, going so far as to perpetrate hate telephone messages and other activities themselves and propose and participate in various fascist actions committed by these organizations against the national minority communities and against the Marxist-Leninists.
The bourgeoisie's promotion and defence of the KKK was
without comparison. They had no difficulty accepting fascist hooligans
into Canada such as the KKK, the Guardian Angels and the Jewish Defence
League, just as today, a large amount of propaganda is carried about an
individual promoting racist causes
on the Internet in Hope, BC. When it comes to progressive individuals
coming to Canada, however, they are not admitted. Many Chilean
anti-fascists escaping the fascist terror of the junta were refused
entry and so are many others associated with progressive causes. More
than 25 members and supporters of CPC(M-L)
were deported after laying trumped-up charges against them, as well as,
in some cases, using the pretext that they posed a threat to national
security. In the same way, the bourgeoisie harboured thousands of nazi
war criminals after the Second World War, provided them with new
identities, jobs and protection from
the justice of the anti-fascist fighters, while it was known to
maintain
dossiers on some 800,000 Canadians who are considered to be "security
risks." This included many members of the Norwegian and European
anti-fascist underground whose status in Canada was kept in limbo. In
the same way, the bourgeoisie defends
fascist organizations such as the "Western Guard," the Anti-Soviet
Action Committee, and others today.
Demonstration against a police-protected "Keep Canada White" meeting of the Western Guard in Toronto, 1972.
The police attacked and arrested many Party activists at this demonstration.
In fact, there is a working relationship between the
government policy and the activities of these fascist organizations.
For instance, the "Western Guard" organized racist and fascist violence
on the basis of the nazi slogan "Keep Canada White" and then the same
line appeared in the federal government's "Green
Paper on Immigration" in the name of Canada's limited "absorptive
capacity" of people with "novel and distinctive features" later called
"visible minorities." In the same way, while the bourgeoisie's official
warmongering position in support of NATO is based on the imperialist
theory of "Peace Through Strength"
and "Might Makes Right," it is under the same slogan that fascist
elements who were also connected with the "Western Guard," the KKK and
other nazi groups constituted themselves as the Anti-Soviet Action
Committee.
Not only does the state protect the fascist groups, but ceaseless measures are taken to strengthen the oppressive police apparatus. This is a powerful instrument of the bourgeoisie for the maintenance of its rule. The police forces are set in motion to attack the strike struggles of the workers, to harass the youth, the Native peoples, the national minorities, the progressive and revolutionary forces -- all those who are fighting against exploitation and oppression and for their rights. Even in the 1970s all the facts showed that while the bourgeoisie was massively cutting back on social spending, demanding wage concessions from the public sector workers, cutting back their jobs, etc., there was no dearth of funds when it came to increasing the spending on the repressive apparatus. Overall, the number of police, prison guards and so on numbered 128,700 in 1981, an increase of 20 per cent from 1975. Over that period, the number of Canadian people to be "policed" grew by only 6 per cent. Large numbers of special police squads, such as so-called ethnic police, youth squads, anti-terrorist squads, etc. were established, and a large amount of money was spent on propaganda about "high profile policing" and to establish police programmes such as "Neighbourhood Watch," "Block Parent Communities," etc. The number of prisons was also increased and security tightened. Today, the cutbacks do not stop monies being spent to strengthen the "Young Offenders Act," criminalize the youth and establish boot camps while when it comes to education and recreational facilities for youth, it is said there are no funds.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the Parliament and legislatures were increasingly used to further fascize life as is also the case today. The legislation to create the CSIS, the so-called civilian security agency, was a further step in the fascization of the state within the framework of the so-called parliamentary process and through "constitutional means." It poses a real threat to the lives and liberties of the people to this day. When the CSIS was created, the federal Justice Minister declared that constitutionally, criminal law enforcement had always been a provincial responsibility but that under the law to create the CSIS, the federal government can intervene, to the point of blocking or halting any murder investigation, if "national security" is involved. Besides this, the legislation creating the CSIS provided all its operatives with total immunity, to the point that it is a criminal offence if anyone reveals the identity of an operative or a crime committed by an operative. So much for the rights and freedoms of the people which this agency is allegedly set up to defend.
***
Similarly on the world scale, the big powers engage in state terrorism and work out their strategy for world domination through the crimes of political violence and banditry they carry out against the peoples of the world. Their navies and fleets prowl the oceans and seas threatening the peoples everywhere. They have established their military bases and troops on all the continents, as well as deployed their weapons of mass destruction and annihilation throughout the world. They manipulate the arms race to blackmail the peoples, threaten their sovereignty and demand that the five nuclear powers maintain a nuclear monopoly so as to "safeguard peace." Their spy agencies operate worldwide. They stage coups d'etat and instigate subversion and counter-revolution, communal violence, internecine war and anarchy in countless countries, for purposes of establishing reactionary regimes in the service of the monopolies and multinationals of the imperialist powers concerned. They are behind the hotbeds of tension and instability which exist all over the world such as in the Balkans, in Africa, in the Middle East, or the Asian continent, etc.
Even though it is the financial oligarchy and international reaction who are the terrorists and carry out acts of political terror and violence against the peoples of the world every second of the day, they seek to identify the revolutionary struggle with terrorism. They attribute terrorism to the Marxist-Leninists or to fundamentalists and the patriotic and revolutionary forces. They blame them for terrorism at a time when the working class and its allies and the genuine Marxist-Leninists, the patriotic and revolutionary forces are engaged in the struggle for the social and national rights of the people. The genuine revolutionaries, however, are against terrorism and anarchy, not only in theory, but in practice as well. Not only as a method of struggle, but as a tactical and strategic aim, terrorism is diametrically opposed to the Marxist-Leninist strategy and tactics, which are aimed at uniting the working class and people to defend their rights and on this basis usher in a society which is fit for human beings.
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Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca