The Hub For most of history, we have thought about deprivation of liberty in quite literal terms. Short of execution, which Canada hasn’t done in 60 years, locking someone up has been the ultimate state sanction. That is why Pierre Trudeau’s use of the War Measures Act to arrest and jail nearly 500 suspected FLQ sympathizers during the October crisis is remembered as a low point in Canadian history for civil liberties.
Fifty years later, Justin Trudeau seems to have learned from his father’s experience. Tanks in the streets make people uneasy, and filling jails with people who have, at most, an attenuated connection to illegal activity is not a good look. A smidge authoritarian, a tad dictatorial. So, faced with a three-week street protest that clogged downtown Ottawa, Trudeau did not follow his father’s example and call in the army or round up ideological sympathizers. He opted, instead, for less visible tools.
