450 Quebec residents were arrested and imprisoned withoutrncharge. The next day the kidnapped Quebec pohtician wasrnmurdered by a “cell” of the FLQ. The murderers were laterrngiven passage to Cuba. Of the 450 Quebecers originally imprisoned,rnfewer than 20 were convicted, and most of thosernpleaded guilty to reduced charges.rnn n h e regional minority’s preoccu-rn1 pation with its language andrnculture would be contained withinrnQuebec’s provincial borders, bordersrnwhich would also contain thernFrench traditions of law and centralizedrnauthority that the federal systemrnadmits at the provincial level.rnThe swift response by Pierre Trudeau contrasted with the appeasementrnof his predecessor and did much for Trudeau’s reputation,rnand it is only now that the English Canadian majorityrn—75 percent of Canada’s population —is coming to realizernthe event’s true significance. Trudeau’s prompt action set arnprecedent that has been turned by MPs from Quebec into anrnarticle of faith: only they can handle the bare majority of francophonesrn—at most 13 percent of Canada’s population—whornwant a separate state of Quebec. English Canada’s acceptancernof this proposition together with Quebec’s own talent for strategicrnvoting in federal elections and a continued media focus uponrn”the Quebec problem” have propelled Quebecers into thernprime minister’s office for all but two of the past 30 years. ThernEnglish Canadian majority has been denied political leadershiprnof the country in which it represents three-quarters of thernpopulation. Moreover, its subjection to successive prime ministersrnfrom Quebec has condemned it to suffer an organicrnchange to its system of government: its tradition of inherentrnfreedom and responsibility under a sovereign parliament hasrnbeen changed to the Quebec model of legislated rights and entitlementsrnunder a centralized authority—which antagonizedrnQuebec again.rnFor this, Lester Pearson’s appeasement is largely to blame.rnThe reason for Trudeau’s swift response to the FLQ was that itrnposed an immediate threat to the revolution that he and his coteriernwere effecting: that of installing French Canadians intornpositions of influence and changing the federal system of dividedrnpowers to one that matched the French tradition of centralizedrnauthority.rnIn his book The Northern Magus, Richard Gwyn quotesrnJean-Luc Pepin, then a minister in a later Trudeau government,rnthat “We ourselves were a very small group, Trudeau,rnPelletier, Marchand, Lalonde, Chretien, myself, and a few peoplernin the civil service, say, 50 all told . . . and we were bringingrnoff a revolution . . . we were a well-organized group of revolutionaries,rnjust like them [the FLQ], but working in a quite differentrnway of course.”rnSurrounded on the North American continent by an audiovisualrnprint and electionic world of English, French Canadians’rnopportunities to learn English were boundless: bilingualismrnwas the natural condition of Quebec’s urban populations,rnhi the provinces and territories of English Canada, however,rnFrench was rarely heard or spoken.rnThis salient fact supplied the spark for revolutionary change.rnPearson’s commission on bilingualism and biculturalism shiftedrnlanguage and culture from provincial jurisdiction to the nationalrngovernment. In Trudeau’s second year as prime minister,rnhe passed the Official Languages Act that made fluency inrnFrench the criterion for advancement not only in the nationalrncivil and armed services but also “in all the institutions of thernParliament and Covernment of Canada.” Since he was alsorncreating new ministries and “a furtive expansion of centralrnagencies,” the linguistic requirement paved the way for theirrneventual domination by French Canadians. It also intruded onrnthe provincial preserves of English and French Canadiansrnalike, and undermined the federal system. That it failed to appeasernthe sovereigntists, while antagonizing the Canadian majority,rnall at huge cost to the Canadian polity, is a matter ofrnrecord.rnAs a parliamentary statute, the Official Languages Act mightrnhave been amended or repealed by a later parliament. It wasrnthe threat of repeal that drove Pierre Trudeau to engineer hisrnrevolutionary change. Without having sought a mandate fromrnCanadians in the 1980 general election, he incorporated thernlanguage laws in a virtually unamendable, but justifiable. Charterrnof Rights and Freedoms: the charter was the centerpiece ofrnthe “patiiation” deception of 1981-82.rnCanada has been a self-governing dominion since passage ofrnthe Statute of Westminster in 1931. The only reason whyrnCanada still sent its constitutional amendments to Westminsterrn—where they were automatically approved—was the failurernof successive Canadian governments to reach agreementrnwith the provinces on a formula for amending the constitutionrnin Canada. This Canadian failure was twisted by PierrernTrudeau and his fellow strategists into a colonial relic whichrncould only be resolved by “patriating” the BNA Act to Canadarnby means of a Canada Bill passed by the British Parliament.rnBut entrenched in the Canada Bill was the Charter of Rightsrnand Freedoms that incorporated Trudeau’s tieasured languagernrights; his Official Languages Act of 1969 would be forever preservedrnand protected from parliamentary repeal.rnIn debates on the Canada Bill, Britain’s foremost constitutionalrnauthority, the Rt. Hon. ]. Enoch Powell, made two significantrncomments. He said that as “an entrenched and justifiablerndocument, a charter of liberties or a bill of rights isrnincompatible with parliamentary sovereignty.” He called thernTrudeau stratagem “a tool to produce political results in Canadarnthat could not have been produced without that form of deception.”rnDesignated as the supreme law of Canada, the Charterrnof Rights and Freedoms also incorporated the redistributivernmechanisms and state-ordained equalizations which characterizedrnthe statist tradition of Quebec. By a cleverly planned de-rn18/CHRONICLESrnrnrn