Parenting & Family Quote by Robert Bourassa

Bourassa’s sentence has the clipped, legalistic chill of a leader trying to turn panic into policy. The key word is “inadmissible”: not merely unwise or regrettable, but outside the bounds of what a government can allow itself to do. He’s drawing a line that is as much symbolic as strategic. “Fundamental point” signals that the immediate human stakes of a kidnapping are being subordinated to something he wants framed as larger: the credibility of the state’s authority and the rules that keep political violence from becoming a bargaining tool.

The subtext is deterrence, but also precedent. Bourassa isn’t arguing about this kidnapping alone; he’s arguing about the next one, and the one after that. The phrase “any one who would have wanted to be a terrorist” deliberately generalizes the threat, turning a specific crisis into an open invitation for copycats if the state blinks. “Eventually their freedom” smuggles in a grim market logic: kidnapping becomes a currency that can purchase release, and the government becomes the counterparty.

Context matters. As a Quebec premier facing the October Crisis atmosphere (fear, anger, pressure to act), Bourassa is speaking to multiple audiences at once: hostage-takers, the public demanding firmness, and institutions that need justification for hard measures. The rhetorical move is to convert a moral dilemma into an administrative necessity. It’s persuasive because it offers certainty in a moment defined by vulnerability, even as it quietly asks citizens to accept that the state may sacrifice the immediate for the long-term claim of order.