Pierre Laporte (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ lapɔʁt]; 25 February 1921 – 17 October 1970) was a Canadian lawyer, journalist and politician.

He was deputy premier of the province of Quebec when he was kidnapped and murdered by members of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) during the October Crisis.

Pierre Laporte, grandson of the Liberal politician Alfred Leduc, was born in Montreal, Quebec, on 25 February 1921.

"[4] In 1958, he was part of a team of Le Devoir reporters exposing the natural gas scandal, leading to the formation of the Salvas Commission, soon after the election of 1960.

[6]Peter Edwards, the crime correspondent of The Toronto Star, wrote in 1990 that Laporte was a "devoted family man".

[6] After Duplessis's death, Laporte successfully ran for the Parti libéral du Québec for a seat in Chambly in the Quebec National Assembly and served in the government of Premier Jean Lesage.

[7] In 1962, he was involved in a scandal which it emerged that he lobbied successfully for the Quebec government to rent construction equipment from a firm he owned, leading to charges of conflict of interest violations.

[2] Several Québécois newspapers printed cartoons that mockingly showed Laporte leading hundreds of bulldozers and tractors into Quebec City for the government to rent.

[2] In 1962, Laporte was the leading force behind a bill passed in the National Assembly that disqualified from holding office, J. Aldéo Léo Rémillard, the Union Nationale mayor of Ville Jacques-Cartier, on the account of his criminal record.

[8] In a speech, Laporte warned that the Liberals must look after the interests of the "average men" as he stated: "Otherwise, the masses, like those of France in 1789 or Germany in 1933, will be swept away in an undoubtedly unacceptable excess, one that has been sown by our faults and our omissions".

[9] In the 1966 Quebec general election, the Parti libéral du Québec government of Lesage was defeated by the Union Nationale, and Laporte sat on the opposition benches for the next four years.

The Union Nationale premier Daniel Johnson Sr. called Laporte "le roi des patroneux" ("the all-time king of the porkbarrel").

[11] On 16 April 1970, Laporte alongside Gagnon and Côté were observed by the police meeting with D'Asti and Di Iorio in an apartment in Montreal.

[13] Gagnon and Côté later stated the meeting was called by D'Asti and Di Iorio who wanted to warn Laporte about allegations of electoral fraud in the Montreal area.

On 3 May 1970, in a room that was wiretapped by the police, D'Asti talked with Di Iorio, Angelo Lanzo and Romeo Bucci about their hopes that Laporte would be appointed Attorney-General of Quebec.

[16] The kidnappers – Paul and Jacques Rose, Francis Simard, and Bernard Lortie[17] – approached Laporte while he was playing football with his nephew Claude on his front lawn and forced him into their vehicle at gunpoint.

[6] Laporte was heading towards the street to pick up the football when he was confronted with a masked man who had just gotten out of a car parked in front of his house who pointed a submachine gun at his face.

[6] The FLQ dubbed him the "Minister of Unemployment and Assimilation," and held him hostage, demanding the release of 23 "political prisoners" in exchange for his freedom.

[19] Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked Canada's War Measures Act which allowed mass raids and arrests to take place in order to find the group who had kidnapped Laporte and Cross.

[6] Over the course of the night, Laporte was bleeding badly from his severed arteries and it was soon apparent that he would die soon if he did not receive prompt medical attention.

[19] On 17 October, seven days after he went missing, Laporte's body was found in the trunk of a car at Montreal Saint-Hubert Longueuil Airport.

[24] On 4 January 1971, Simard while in police custody wrote up an unsigned statement that stated that he and the two Rose brothers were the three men who killed Laporte.

[26] Vallières's theory was decisively debunked in 1982 when a book co-written jointly by Simard, the two Rose brothers, and Lortie, Pour en finir avec octobre, was published.

[26]However, the four co-authors of Pour en finir avec octobre expressed no remorse for Laporte's murder and made no apologies to his family.

[28][29] The journalist Dan MacPherson of the Montreal Gazette described Gendron's documentary—which depicted Laporte's murder as more or less an accident—as part of a tendency by Quebec separatists to whitewash the FLQ.