A Wink & a Nod

Ottawa politicos must never forget the No. 1 rule of Dominion politics: whatever you do, don't make Quebec sore. In following this ironclad precept last week, the Federal Government winked at violations of the immigration laws and gave a nod to the violators.

The violators were four Frenchmen accused (and convicted in absentia by drumhead courts) of wartime collaboration with the Nazis. The four were small fry compared with Count Jacques Duge de Bernonville (TIME, Sept. 20), who was still battling against a deportation order in Montreal courts last week. But they were guilty of the same offense against Canada's laws: entering the country illegally, on false passports.

Most important of the four was Dr. Georges Benoit Montel, 49, who helped to run the city of Annecy for the Vichy regime and stridently mouthed Vichy's pro-Nazi propaganda. He got into Canada two years ago posing as Dr. Lacroix, quickly got a job at Laval University. When Montel confessed his illegal entry, Dominion authorities (following almost invariable practice) ordered him deported.

But Montel had friends in high places in France; before long they were in touch with their friends in high places in Quebec, in Ottawa and in the Roman Catholic hierarchy. To save Montel from being returned to France and retried on collaboration charges, the Canadian friends built a little fire under the federal cabinet. Aware that Montel's deportation might set off a political uproar in Quebec, where, as in the case of De Bernonville, the collaborator could be portrayed as a victim of anticlerical Communists in postwar France, the federal cabinet decided to follow Bre'r Rabbit and "lay low."

By an Order in Council, unpublished because it was supposedly of no public interest, Montel got the right to stay in Canada, eventually become a citizen if he desired. Included in the order were two other Frenchmen: Dr. Andre Charles Emanuel Boussat and Julien Gaudens Labedan. A similar order is in the works for a fourth small-time collaborator, Jean Louis Hue. The government's rationalization: "Well, they're here. They've got jobs. Let them stay."

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