Gilles Duceppe Quotes
Why would it be ridiculous that Quebec has an army?
"Quebec army idea not ridiculous: Duceppe." CBC News, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 18 May 2004.
In 1990 Lucien Bouchard resigned from his government positions to further the cause of Quebec separatism. A reporter from the Vancouver Sun asked him whether he felt like a traitor to this country.
Commenting on the hostilities between the Baltic states and the Russian government:
The founding fathers antipathy to standing armies had an historical basis, even in England.
In early America, there was great concern about a standing army—a military force that exists and is organized in peacetime. History showed the founding fathers that tyrants who siezed power almost always did so by getting control of the standing army. The logic was if there is no standing army, no one can control it and therefore no tyrant can control the country by force. At the time, however, with oceans protecting us, there was penty of time to mobilize a defensive army should any foreign power invade. However, with modern military technology, and the importantance of retaliation as a protective3 strategy, it is virtually impossible to not have a standing army and stoll be secure.
This is a very important quotation in that there are some who believed—then and now—narrowly that self defense is limited to responding to only physical attacks on the United States per se. Kellogg made it clear that it includes attacks on the United States and any of its possessions. Most important it allows response to any “danger” to the United States. By this definition, for example, if Saddam had been developing weapons of mass destruction in the Iraq war, the pre-emptive attack would have been self-defense. Since the claim of weapons development was bogus, it was not self defense. The key variable a reasonable danger. Nations determine that by what others do and say. In 2011, if Iran were developing nuclear weapons the U. S. could attack as an act of self defense because the Iranian highest level officials have called for “death to the United States”. When they just had the intention to harm us, there was no danger. But when they add the means to harm us to the intention, that is a danger. Likewise other nations may act in self defense if a potential enemy threatens to endanger them and has the means to carry out the threats or desires.
Gilles Duceppe is a Canadian politician, proponent of the Quebec sovereignty movement and former leader of the Bloc Québécois. He was a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons of Canada for over 20 years and has been the leader of the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois for 15 years in three stints: 1996, 1997-2011 and in 2015. He was Leader of the Official Opposition in the Parliament of Canada from March 17, 1997, to June 1, 1997. He resigned as party leader after the 2011 election, in which he lost his own seat to New Democratic Party (NDP) candidate Hélène Laverdière and his party suffered a heavy defeat; however, he returned four years later to lead the party into the 2015 election. After being defeated in his own riding by Laverdière again, he resigned once more.
