Senator Boisvenu: Senator Gold, as you know, the Emergencies Act is the successor of the War Measures Act, which was only used three times in the history of our country. I was not yet born the first two times it was invoked, which was during the First and Second World Wars; however, on the third occasion, I experienced first-hand the October crisis of 1970. I was the president of a university student association. Senators will recall that, at the time, the Front de libération du Québec had conducted operations since the 1960s to destabilize the Quebec government. It organized riots, planted bombs in mailboxes, for example, and was involved in kidnappings, in particular that of a diplomat, James Cross, and the deputy premier of Quebec, Mr. Laporte, who was murdered.

Despite these deplorable actions, many historians believe that Pierre Elliott Trudeau was wrong to deploy the Canadian army in Quebec. Police could have easily dealt with these odious crimes. That is undoubtedly the reason why several years later Prime Minister Brian Mulroney changed the War Measures Act to make it more rigorous and to ensure it would remain useful in exceptional circumstances, given consultation with the provinces and the agreement of parliamentarians.

These two criteria have not been met under the existing legislation. The majority of the provinces did not want the act being applied in their province. In the other place, two opposition parties opposed this motion. Hence, there was not unanimous agreement. I think the situation in the country right now is vastly different than the situation in the 1970s, and the Liberal government’s abuse of power in invoking the Emergencies Act must be followed up with justification.

My questions are very simple. What current threat justifies the invocation of the Emergencies Act? Did the RCMP have information on the weapons that may have gotten into the hands of protesters? How many protesters were members of terrorist groups?