Gents-this is a good topic, and one that has been a hot item off and on since the Oka Crisis in 1990 during which soldiers of 5ieme GMBC confronted civilians on the Pont Mercier (?) in a CCO (Crowd Confrontation Operation) but without correct gear or training. After that,, the CLS of the day told my class at Army Staff College, Canadian soldiers would never again face a crowd unprepared.
The FLQ crisis was not the only time troops were prepared to use CCO techniques: I was a rifleman in 1976 in the HQ D&S Platoon of Task Force Two during OPGAMESCAN in Montreal, the Olympic Security operation. We did some CCO in our training period, and the Regular battalions did quite extensive CCO. Typical CCO gear (sticks, shields, visors, water cannon truck...) was used in this training at Petawawa.
In 1999/2000, I was A/G3 of LFCA, and Op ABACUS (remember Y2K-The Biggest Thing That Never Happened?) was our main effort. During the planning phase, the issue of CCO came to the fore, and again provoked debate within the Army. One camp held that since we were soldiers, we would use only lethal force. Bayonets, bullets, or nothing. The other camp (where I sit now...) held that giving a soldier a choice between lethal force or nothing was giving him no choice at all. I came to believe that we needed intermediate levels of force to deal with Canadian citizens without killing or maiming them. We also needed protection from incendiary fluids, acids, corrosives, etc that our CADPAT and kevlar just do not provide. The Ontario Provincial Police planners and LOs who worked with us were pretty clear: they would only ever ask for the Army if they (the police) had totally lost control of the situation. But, if they did ask for us, and the Provincial SolGen relayed the request to the CDS, they expected us to restore order.(the law of Canada also requires us to restore order if called upon to do so by a government of a province...) They made it clear to us that we would not be able to pick and choose between what situations we would deal with: we would have it all (or most of it) because the police would no longer be effective. Therefore we would definitely be facing a huge range of potential situations, including those in which killing Canadian citizens was not the best course of action.
Several years later, during OP GRIZZLY (the G8 Conference Security Op) I was CO of the JTFC's Reserve, a "plug and play" QRF based on a small mobile HQ, Para Coy/3 RCR, an NBC recce section, an "On Order"attachment of a Mass Decontamination Company, and with the ability to take other "plug and play" elements under command. Although the role of the military in GRIZZLY was not primarily to engage in CCO, it became clear during the planning of the op that such eventualities might occur without warning, and without us seeking them. After some struggle with Higher, Comd JTFC GRIZZLY (Comd LFWA) was able to obtain auth for us to do some limited CCO, primarily focusing on arrest and detention and use of pepper spray. It was not mass CCO but rather enough to let us deal with small groups who were obstructing our QRF response to an emergency.
In the past few years, several Rotos have done some limited CCO. However, I have yet to see the re-issue of the Internal Security manual, although I know it was being worked on. The old one was badly outdated, and it CCO portion was a relic of the old days before rioters started showing up armed, equipped, dressed and ready for a fight. Old tactics just do not work against these techniques.
IMHO we must equip our soldiers for the mission. If the mission is Assistance to Law Enforcement, or if it is Aid To Civil Power, we must make sure that no soldier is ever forced to gun down a Canadian citizen if a lesser but effective non-lethal system or technique could have been used without undue risk to our soldiers. Cheers.
