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LOCKING UP THE RADICALS
(This editorial is from the Feb. 1-14/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
IT COMES AS no surprise here that until 1983, the RCMP still had a detailed plan to round up and jail over 1,000 so-called "subversives" in the event of a third world war, or presumably other emergency situations. Documents obtained under the Access to Information Act show that the internment plan was revised and updated in 1969, a time of government paranoia about rising popular struggles. The Mounties' list of those to be interned included leaders of the Communist Party of Canada, and even many children of CPC leaders.
Many questions could be asked about this revelation. For one thing, did those at the top of the RCMP or in the Liberal government of the day seriously believe that locking up hundreds of Communists and other radicals would do any good while nuclear missiles were raining down? If the answer is yes, this country is obviously in deeper trouble than anyone thought.
Even more to the point, these files apparently do not answer whether similar internment plans still exist. This particular RCMP task was phased out seventeen years ago, just as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was taking over many other RCMP functions. Our educated guess is that CSIS, whose agents regularly track and photograph left-wing activists, has its own list of "subversives" and detailed plans for where to lock us up. As the Bruce Cockburn song goes, "and they call it democracy...".
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