Graeme Hamilton, National Post · Monday, Oct. 18, 2010 MONTREAL — In 1967, Rhéal Mathieu pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to nine years in prison for his part in an FLQ bombing that claimed two lives. He served his sentence and obtained a pardon for that crime, but he never shed what a Crown prosecutor later called an “obsession” with the intertwined issues of Quebec independence and the French language. In 2001, he was convicted of attempting to firebomb three Second Cup cafés in Montreal to protest the chain’s English name.
Today, Mr. Mathieu is back in the news for a different type of campaign, a lawful initiative aimed at bringing down Quebec’s Liberal government. Through the separatist website Vigile.net, where he is a regular contributor, Mr. Mathieu has urged people to blanket the ridings of a dozen Liberals with posters accusing them of corruption and demanding their resignations.
“The idea is to launch a propaganda campaign as soon as possible to weaken the legislative majority of the [Liberal Party] in the National Assembly and bring down the Liberal government,” he wrote last month.
Instead of running to distance themselves from Mr. Mathieu after La Presse caught wind of the campaign, politicians from the sovereigntist Parti Québécois have only shrugged.
La Presse reported that Bernard Drainville, a PQ MNA, gave Vigile.net $500 from his riding budget last year, and he intends to do the same this year. Other contributors to Vigile.net include former PQ premier Bernard Landry and MNAs Louise Beaudoin and Agnès Maltais. Speaking to reporters yesterday in Quebec City, PQ leader Pauline Marois said she opposes violence but there is nothing wrong with supporting a website “that is proposing a democratic debate, a peaceful debate. I don’t think we want to propose censoring that sort of debate.”
Mr. Drainville told La Presse that he saw no problem with indirectly contributing to Mr. Mathieu’s campaign. Mr. Mathieu “has paid his debt to society,” Mr. Drainville said, noting that the Front de Libération du Québec member was just 19 when he was convicted of manslaughter.
During a special sitting of the legislature to adopt a law controlling access to English-language schools, Mr. Charest challenged Ms. Marois to “distance herself from groups that preach violence in Quebec.” Accused by Ms. Marois of proposing legislation that would allow “the richest to buy a right to English school,” he countered that the PQ was aligning itself with “radical groups.”
The Premier clearly got under Ms. Marois’ skin, as she hollered across the floor that Mr. Charest was failing to defend “this little people in America, this little francophone people.” She later clarified that she meant “little in number.... We are 2% of North America.”
(The bill in question responds to last year’s Supreme Court of Canada decision striking down a Quebec law that had blocked parents from transferring their children to public English schools after as little as a year spent in unsubsidized private English school. The new law will require students to spend three years in private English school before they can be considered for a transfer to the public system.)
The transformation of Mr. Mathieu from convicted bomber to legitimate pamphleteer is the latest example of a tendency to gloss over the violent fringe of the separatist movement. It was seen last year when a dramatic reading of the FLQ manifesto by Quebec singer Luck Mervil was cheered on the Plains of Abraham. And even the sovereigntist coalition protesting the new language law has welcomed the participation of such groups as the Jeunes Patriotes du Québec and the Réseau de résistance du Québécois, both of which employ the threat of violence to intimidate adversaries.
This month, newspapers, magazines and TV have been filled with coverage marking the 40th anniversary of the October Crisis, when the FLQ kidnapped British trade commissioner James Cross and Quebec labour minister Pierre Laporte, who was murdered by his captors. Much attention has been paid to theories that Mr. Laporte’s death was unintentional and that Ottawa was manipulating the FLQ terrorists.
On Saturday, 40 years less a day after Mr. Laporte’s body was discovered in the trunk of a car, the St. Jean Baptiste Society unveiled a new monument commemorating the October Crisis outside its Montreal headquarters. However the monument makes no mention of those kidnapped by the FLQ or killed in previous bombings; instead it lists the names of the more than 450 Quebecers arrested under the War Measures Act.
According to a report in The Gazette, of the eight speakers at the monument’s unveiling, only Bloc Québécois MP Serge Menard mentioned the lives lost because of the FLQ. Mr. Landry, the former premier, was more typical, dwelling on the psychological impact of having the streets filled with Canadian troops. It was “psychological state terrorism,” he said.