The modern
Canadian experience with terrorism began in the late 1960s and early 1970s with
the FLQ bombings in Quebec.
It turned out that most of these acts were inspired by RCMP agents, who also
supplied the dynamite used to make the bombs. The RCMP were operating as part
of Operation Chaos, an operation involving U.S., British, Canadian and
Australian intelligence agencies aimed at disrupting the revolutionary movement
of the youth and students which was growing in those countries at that time.
The 1970 FLQ
crisis was used to justify the imposition of the War Measures Act in Canada. Under
the War Measures Act, hundreds of political activists were arrested and
imprisoned without charge for lengthy periods of time, including hundreds of
members and supporters of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)
which had publicly condemned terrorism on numerous occasions, and which has
never supported or excused terrorism as a legitimate form of political
struggle. Several years later, two members of the FLQ cell which held British
Trade Consul James Cross admitted to being RCMP informants. They revealed that
the RCMP knew the exact location of Cross at all times and could have rescued
him any time they wished, but they left him a prisoner of the FLQ for two
months in order to justify their continuing assault on the progressive and
revolutionary movement. Around the same time an RCMP officer was caught
planting explosives when the bomb blew up prematurely and severed several
fingers.
In the early
1980s series of terrorist acts, including the bombing of Litton Industries in Toronto, took place in Canada. At this time a movement was
gaining momentum against the testing of U.S. Cruise missiles on Canadian soil.
These terrorist acts, which also bore the trademark signature of the RCMP, were
used to attack and disrupt the movement against Cruise missile testing.
A third round of
terrorism on Canadian soil occurred in the mid-1980s, culminating in the Air India
bombing of June 23, 1985. The attack was supposedly carried out by Sikh
separatists demanding an independent Sikh homeland called Khalistan.
However, at the time both the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service (CSIS) claimed that the bombing had been planned and organized by the
Indian intelligence services, probably with the assistance of the American CIA,
as a means to discredit and destroy the Khalistani
movement. There were also suspicions about the involvement of the Israeli Mossad, which supported the Khalistani
movement as leverage to blackmail India into dropping its support for
the Palestinian cause.
This history of
terrorism in Canada
over the past 50 years demonstrates that terrorism is not a weapon used by
oppressed people to fight against their more powerful oppressors. Rather, it is
a weapon used by imperialism and oppressor states, such as the Canadian state,
to strengthen themselves and disrupt the revolutionary
movements which seek to put an end to imperialism and oppression