The Prevailing Economic and Political Conditions on the Eve of the October Crisis of 1970 |
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"The economic crisis is caused by U.S. imperialism. Through massive capital investments, sinister market manipulations and collaboration with the federal and provincial governments, the U.S. monopolies are destroying small farmers, small milk producers, small landlords and businesses. High U.S. investment and the plunder of Quebec's natural resources by the monopolies has created thousands of unemployed throughout the nation. U.S. monopolies with ties to 'Kentucky Fried Chicken' have destroyed the small poultry farms in the Saguenay Lac-St. Jean area and have built huge monopoly farms for the Montreal market. In Sherbrooke, Carnation Milk Company has liquidated the small regional dairy farmers in the same manner, greatly contributing to the fighting anti-imperialist sentiment throughout the whole region. Recently, U.S. investment in the pulp and paper industry has liquidated over 100 small mills per year and production has been taken over by large, mechanized monopolies which hire only a small percentage of the workers thrown out of their jobs. In iron ore mines and asbestos extraction the same situation exists.
"Today, faced with economic crisis at home, the U.S. imperialists have not renewed contracts with monopoly firms situated in Quebec, preferring to give them to their own faltering factories in the U.S. As a result, over 9,000 workers are being laid off in Montreal alone from Canadair, United Aircraft, Marconi and Northern Electric.
"U.S. imperialist economic plunder and control of Quebec has resulted in untold hardships and misery. Over 15 per cent of the work force is unemployed. In some regions such as Trois Rivieres, St. Jean and St. Jerôme, the unemployment has reached 40-50 per cent of the working people. In Montreal's working class neighbourhoods such as St. Henri and St. Jacques, unemployment has reached close to 50 per cent."[1]
Montreal, 1968
In June 1968, Pierre Elliott Trudeau became the Prime Minister of Canada. He had Parliament adopt a series of measures and laws which had the purpose and effect of facilitating the expansion of U.S. capital and suppressing the resistance of the workers and youth.
The newspaper Mass Line reported: "It is a desperate attempt to end inflation, soaring prices, unemployment, the national liberation struggle in Quebec, the awakening of the national minority groups and the Native peoples and the new awakening of the Canadian working class and people against U.S. imperialism and Anglo-Canadian reaction."[2]
Between June 1968 and October 1970, Trudeau's government passed:
(1) labour legislation to reorganize unions and restrict their action;
(2) "security" legislation to use immigration and citizenship departments to facilitate the entry of Nazis and fascists into Canada, and encourage political servility for immigrants (introducing a points system to assess immigrants);
(3) other incentives for the investment of U.S. capital in Canada through economic policies that facilitate the plunder of Canada's resources by U.S. imperialist monopolies;
(4) arbitrary wage controls; and
(5) increased spending for the police and increased police powers to suppress progressive people and enlist the youth in the militia in a systematic plan to train troops to be used against Quebec and Canadian peoples.
These measures were accompanied by:
(6) the coming into force on September 7, 1969 of Bill C-120, which declared that English and French were the official languages of Canada. Trudeau's politics of bilingualism and biculturalism relegated other languages and cultures to an inferior status and promoted chauvinist divisions on the basis of a eurocentric outlook.
Regarding the just demands of the people of Quebec and farmers in Alberta, Mass Line reports:
"To the increasing demand of the Quebec people to be independent, equal and prosperous under the system of their own choice, Trudeau offered further and more vicious repression. To the prairie farmers, Trudeau replied with further elimination of small farms and the strengthening of the U.S. imperialist monopoly farms' hold on them based on increasing their systematic control of market and subsidies."[3]
As for the First Nations, Trudeau adopted policies of exploitation and repression, including the presence of the police on reserves, and issued a White Paper to ostensibly eliminate the Indian Act but its true aim was to extinguish hereditary rights and it was broadly condemned by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people alike.
In the late 1960s, there were strikes by workers fighting for their rights, against the foreign monopoly Murray Hill Limousine Service, Domtar, Sicar and Ford, among others. Newspaper reports bear witness to the fact that not a day went by without a struggle breaking out. College and university students were active on many issues, including opposition to the reactionary content of education, for the sovereignty of Quebec and its nation-building project, against the Vietnam War and in support of the Palestinian people.[4]
Mass rally outside the
U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, April 18, 1970 against the war in Indochina.
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On the eve of October 16 when the army was deployed in the streets, thousands of youth and students rose to their feet at the Paul Sauvé arena in Montreal and at assemblies at the University of Montreal to salute the fighting spirit of the Quebec patriots and to denounce the unprecedented repression.
"Down with fascism!" and "We are all from the FLQ -- come and get us!" were shouted, among other slogans. Other gatherings took place in Quebec City, Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivières and elsewhere. Across Canada, demonstrations in support of the struggle of the people of Quebec for sovereignty took place in Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and elsewhere. There was vigorous opposition to repressive terrorist activities and arrests of activists, progressive people including activists of CPC(M-L) which had been founded in Montreal in March 1970.
These working and living conditions aroused the anger and opposition of the people who aspired to advance their nation-building project, for a modern independent Quebec which is not under the rule of an Anglo-Canadian state, of U.S. imperialism and its war agenda. The people of Quebec saw the need to conquer political and economic power and to build the nation of Quebec on every front, so that Quebeckers would cease to be, in the words of the national poet of the Quebec nation Félix Leclerc, "drawers of water, hewers of wood, tenants and unemployed in our own country."
All in all, it can be said that revolutionary conditions prevailed in Quebec and Canada at that time in which communist ideas were rapidly gaining ground in the consciousness of the workers and youth. The newspapers of the time all attest to the fact that the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), its precursor organizations and its youth wings were at the heart of the actions, intervening in an active and organized manner to advance the struggle of the people of Quebec for their right to decide their own affairs.
It was to crush the struggle of the people which was developing on all fronts and to pursue the agenda of subjugating them to the needs of the expansion of U.S. imperialism that the Trudeau government promulgated the War Measures Act on October 16, 1970. It was also proof of the submission of the Canadian state to the U.S. imperialist and NATO intelligence agencies which pursued Operation Chaos whose objective was infiltration of and even the creation of different organizations through which they themselves participated in terrorist activities to then blame the people to justify the repression.
The activities of the FLQ were used to justify the proclamation of the most draconian war measures ever imposed during peacetime. The aim was to break the organized movement of workers and people who demanded justice and decent working and living conditions. And Trudeau did not act alone but in tandem with the CIA's worldwide "Operation Chaos" which included, among other things, state-organized terrorist attacks, coups d'état, assassinations, disappearances and rabid anti-communist propaganda, along with other dastardly operations. The Canadian government acted under the pressures and orders of the U.S. imperialists.
Notes
1. "Nothing Will Save the Reactionaries from Economic and Political Disaster," People's Canada Daily News, Vol. 1 No. 37, November 20, 1970.
2. "The Rising Revolutionary Initiative of the People Will Certainly Smash the Bluster of the Anglo-Canadian Reactionaries! -- The National Executive of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) issues statement on the 'War Measures Act' -- 'Public Order Act,' the situation in Canada and Quebec and the tasks of the Party," Mass Line, Vol. 2 No. 37, December 10, 1970.
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 38 - October 10, 2020
Article Link:
The Prevailing Economic and Political Conditions on the Eve of the October Crisis of 1970
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca