Police Power Above the Civil Power: True Nature of Canadian Democracy
Demonstration outside
Tanguay prison in Montreal, January 1971, calls for the release of
political prisoners detained under the War Measures Act.
Media disinformation about the invocation of the War Measures Act in
1970 tends to focus only on some events which were taking place in
October 1970 and discussion on whether or not Pierre Elliot Trudeau
over-reacted or if there truly was a state of apprehended insurrection
at the time. Information brought to light in 2010 about the RCMP's
secret plans, first devised in 1950, for indefinite detention and
internment of thousands of Canadians, code-named PROFUNC (PROminent
FUNCtionaries of the Communist Party), was used, amongst other things,
to suggest that the phenomenon of the police being above the civil
power was a thing of the past. The synopsis of
"Enemies of the State" aired by the CBC's Fifth Estate
and Radio-Canada's Enquête on October 15,
2010 which exposed the "PROFUNC" plan began: "The
secret contingency plan, called PROFUNC, allowed police to round up and
indefinitely detain Canadians believed to be Communist sympathizers."
"It seems hard to imagine today that a Canadian government
would approve a plan to round up thousands of law-abiding Canadians and
lock them away simply because they were perceived to be a threat to
Canadian democracy." The following is an excerpt
from the statement issued by CPC(M-L) on October 16, 2014 commenting on
this view: "This attempt to portray the events of
October 1970 and the PROFUNC plan as unimaginable today and the mass
raids and arrests as the doings of a police force that just got a bit
carried away in the past fails utterly in the face of the mass arrests,
raids and dirty tricks of the police and horrendous acquiescence of the
courts to the activities of the police before, during and after the
G8/20 protests. It is an amazing statement given that Canadian citizens
and residents of Canada were handed over to torture, the thousands of
people whose names appear on no-fly lists, the thousands who are
considered terrorists by virtue of being Muslim or Pakistani, or Arab,
etc. or whose opinion clashes with that of the Harper government over
the right to resist Zionism and the crimes carried out by the state of
Israel. "Both the invoking of the War
Measures Act in 1970 and the revelations about PROFUNC,
declared to be 'the most draconian national security program in
Canada's peacetime history' are presented as anomalies, departures from
the norm of Canadian 'democracy,' but sadly this is not the case.
"In fact, the 'debate' is not really about the past at all but
about the present and it is to cover up that the police continue to be
above the civil power. This is not an aberration. It reveals the true
nature (of the civil power), the actual essence of the Canadian
democracy. The only difference is that in the past, civil liberties
were suspended occasionally and now in the name of the war on terror, a
permanent state of emergency has been declared to warrant the
redefinition of what a democracy looks like and acceptance of a
permanent state of exception. "One media outlet
goes so far as to tell us that the majority of Canadians prefer 'peace,
order and good government' even if it means giving up or suspending
civil liberties. If civil rights are given up in exchange for peace,
order and good government, what is peace, order and good government?
Either it means nothing or it is a regime in which the police power is
above the civil power, and it is the police which determine when rights
can be suspended. "Another debate suggests that the
problem is to strike the right 'balance' between rights and security.
What then is the definition of a right if it can be suspended? Who
determines the conditions under which it can be suspended? According to
Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms 'rights'
have 'reasonable limits.' This means they are yours until you need
them. This is in contempt of the very definition of a right which
belongs to you by virtue of your being and which can be neither
forfeited nor forsaken in any way, only affirmed and enforced.
"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 offences 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.  
July 3, 1970, shortly after the
CPC(M-L)'s founding, 150 police raid its Montreal bookstore,
Progressive Books and Periodicals, ransacking the store and arresting
24 people. A number of those arrested are photographed in front of the
store after their release.
"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.
"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. [...]"
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 38 - October 10, 2020
Article Link:
Police Power Above the Civil Power: True Nature of Canadian Democracy
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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