Young Trudeau was opposed to overseas conscription and in 1942, he campaigned for the anti-conscription candidate Jean Drapeau (later the Mayor of Montreal) in Outremont. Trudeau described a speech he heard in Montreal by Ernest Lapointe, who was then Prime Minister William Mackenzie King's top adviser on issues relating to Quebec and French-speaking Canada. Lapointe had been a Liberal MP during the 1917 conscription crisis, in which the Canadian government had deployed up to 1,200 soldiers to suppress the Quebec City anti-conscription Easter Riots in March and April 1918. In a final and bloody conflict, soldiers fired on the crowds. At least five men were killed by gunfire and there were over 150 casualties and $300,000 in damage. In 1939, it was Lapointe who helped draft the Liberal's policy against conscription for service overseas. Lapointe was aware that a new conscription crisis would destroy national unity that Mackenzie King had been trying to build since the end of World War 1. Trudeau never forgave Lapointe for "lying" and breaking his promise. His criticisms of King's war time policies, such as "suspension of habeas corpus", the "farce of bilingualism and French-Canadian advancement in the army. The forced "voluntary enrolment", was scathing.