Madam Speaker, I examined this file with some emotion. I also heard the remarks and all the pain expressed so eloquently by the member for Newton—North Delta. I fully understand this pain and I assure him that I share it, as does everyone in Quebec who has heard about this tragedy.
We owe it to the victims to learn the truth and that is reason enough for there to be an inquiry. It will provide them with the answers they have been waiting for. There was a long legal process, a long investigation and the results are still, understandably, very painful for all concerned.
I will not repeat these reasons. I think they were expressed adequately and very eloquently by the member for Newton—North Delta. I do believe, however, that there are also numerous other reasons, one in particular being to ensure that this tragedy is not repeated.
We study history in order to learn from the past. If there is any area in which it is important to learn from our past, it is terrorism and all the attacks that have occurred in other countries.
I will begin with the briefest possible summary of the tragic events, which clearly demonstrate that the process which has just come to the end of one important stage, trial by jury, must be pursued further.
On June 23, 1985, an Air-India Boeing 747 exploded over the Atlantic. Everyone on board lost their lives. Of the 329 victims, 278 were Canadians. An immediate link was made to Sikh extremists who were opposed to the Indian government. After an investigation lasting 18 years, with a thousand ups and downs, three accused persons were brought before the courts. In March, however, they were finally found not guilty, for lack of hard evidence.
Since that time, there have been numerous allegations that CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, had botched the investigation, if not actually tried to cover it up intentionally. This is the largest mass murder in the history of Canada and a real ordeal for all the victims' family members who have recently seen two accused men acquitted for lack of evidence.
A year after the tragedy, although the investigators had reconstructed the chronology of the event, they had laid no charges. There were leads to Sikh extremists, who were placed under surveillance. Sikh militants Parmar and Reyat were arrested by the RCMP for conspiracy, and possession and manufacture of explosives, but they could not be linked to the Air-India attack. They got off with just a fine.
Parmar is known to the intelligence services of several countries. This Canadian citizen, a resident of the Vancouver area, has openly expressed the opinion that Sikhs must unite in battle, and must kill to avenge the storming of the Golden Temple. This is, of course, an opinion shared by very few Sikhs, who are known as a peace-loving people. Having been to India and having some knowledge of the Sikh religion, I know it to be a religion like Christianity characterized by love of others, forgiveness and understanding.
Three weeks before this attack, Air-India had already warned Canadian law enforcement authorities about threats of sabotage it had received. CSIS took these threats very seriously. It gathered video-taped evidence of several conversations during the month of June between Parmar and two other suspects, Bagri and Malak, against whom charges were laid 15 years later.
On March 5, 1985, CSIS put a wiretap on Parmar. On June 4, 1985, CSIS surprised him and another key suspect, Inderjit Singh Reyat, in the process of testing explosives on Vancouver Island, but they thought the two had been testing firearms.
On June 21, 1985, in the course of its surveillance work, CSIS intercepted a call between Parmar and Gill. During the conversation, Parmar asked Gill if he had delivered the papers and clothing to the same place. The latter said he had. The investigators interpreted these words as codes. According to them, “papers” referred to the plane tickets, and “clothing” to the suitcase bombs. In the meantime, Gill left Canada for England. He was never charged.
On June 22, 1985, an East Indian Canadian went up to the Canadian Airlines counter at the Vancouver airport and insisted his bags be ticketed through to India. The clerk, Jeanne Bakemans, initially refused, because the man's seat for his second flight could not be confirmed. After lengthy discussions, she finally took the bags, which contained the bomb that went off at Narita.
Two and a half years after the bombing of flight 182, the victims' families expressed frustration at the amount of time the investigation was taking: no arrest was made in connection with the incident.
On September 14, 1987, the Liberal opposition member, John Nunziata, reported that CSIS had known an attack on an Air India plane was being organized. His remarks created a real storm here in the House.
A week later, the RCMP was accused of being told of the attempt before it occurred. An informer, Paul Bessault, reported giving a tape recording to the RCMP indicating that an attack on an Air India flight was imminent.
In December 1987, the English network of the CBC revealed that CSIS had erased 300 tapes containing information on the bombing of flight 182. The conversations between the prime suspects, including Talwinder Singh Parmar, could have been used in evidence in the RCMP's investigation. Some, like Svend Robinson, believed that the tapes were erased because they contained information that would compromise the RCMP.
On October 15, 1992, Talwinder Singh Parmar was killed in a shootout with Indian police, when he returned to his country. Solicitor General James Kelleher rejected opposition calls for a royal commission into the catastrophe. He insisted that the RCMP had never been informed of the attack.
By the end of April 1995, 10 years after the tragedy, the RCMP investigation still had not solved the case. In an effort to get new evidence and new testimony, the police force offered $1 million to anyone who could provide information leading to an arrest.
The RCMP did identify six major suspects in the Vancouver area. However, it had difficulty gathering evidence and testimony that could help it lay charges in a criminal court. The investigation did, however, reveal who brought the suitcase bombs to the airport, who made the bomb, and who supervised the entire operation. Nonetheless, the RCMP still does not know the identity of the two men who checked the luggage or how they were recruited or paid, but it has a good idea of who it might be.
At Canada's request, Inderjit Singh Reyat was arrested in February 1988, in England, where he had moved in 1986. He was charged with making the bomb that exploded at the Narita airport in Japan. He was extradited to Canada after a lengthy legal battle. Found guilty in 1991, he served 10 years in prison. Shortly before he was to be released, he was suspected of building the other bomb. That is when he was given an additional five-year sentence after pleading guilty to manslaughter. The judge said he was convinced that the accused did not know the bomb he made would be used.
After 15 years of investigation and more than $26 million, the RCMP ended up laying charges against two individuals of Sikh origin. On October 27, 2000, Bagri and Malik were arrested and charged with first degree murder and conspiracy in the explosion of flights 182 and 301.
The trial of Bagri and Malik began on April 28, 2003.
During the trial, the RCMP entered thousands of pages into evidence. In its submission to the judge, the RCMP stated that CSIS, which had wiretapped members of Sikh extremist groups prior to the bombing, had an informant who knew the plane was going to be blown up. Three days before the flight, CSIS apparently asked the informant not to board Air India 182.
On Wednesday, March 16, 2005, Justice Josephson of the Supreme Court of British Columbia acquitted Malik and Bagri. The two men were accused of premeditated murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder following the bombing of Air India's Boeing 747.
The trial lasted 19 months, heard from 115 witnesses and is estimated to have cost $130 million. However, it is not over yet.
A justice of the B.C. Supreme Court criticized CSIS for having destroyed tapes and transcripts of conversations, with a source linked to the bombing, which could have had a drastic impact on the trial. In fact, we still do not know for sure why these tapes were destroyed. Some claim it was a standard procedure, but there is also information to suggest that it was due to rivalry between CSIS and the RCMP.
I believe that a parallel inquiry is essential for a number of reasons. First, there must be answers, once and for all, to all the questions surrounding the largest terrorist attack involving Canada, and second largest in North America after the events of September 11, 2001.
The Liberal Party has, on numerous occasions, promised Canadians that it will hold a public inquiry to find out what led to the Air India bombing. It is time it kept this promise. I fail to understand why it has not, despite the fact that, when the Liberals were in the opposition, they called for such an inquiry. The reasons they give are surprising.
We are currently witnessing a public inquiry involving individuals accused of much less serious offences than this, and their trial has just been set for this June. What is preventing us from repeating this same transparent process, which could provide real answers and assess the evidence, so we can learn the truth about the important issues I will identify in my conclusion?
Twenty years after the tragedy, the families are still waiting for answers. They did get some answers, but not on the extremely important issues. Did the rivalry between the RCMP and CSIS hinder the investigation? Did this kind of rivalry interfere with preventing the attack? What does this bode for the future? Out of respect for the 329 afflicted families, we have to get to the bottom of this. I think that the names of those who are known, even though they may not have been convicted, should be released, as the commission looking into an issue that is no doubt serious, but nothing like 329 dead, has done.
An independent inquiry would prevent such injustice from happening again and would somewhat alleviate the pain and suffering of the families of the victims of the Air India tragedy, who are feeling that the Canadian judicial system has let them down.
Light must absolutely be shed on what the court has described as “unacceptable negligence” in relation to the destruction of evidence by the security intelligence service.
It is absolutely vital that we have an open and transparent process to find out what happened when an Air India airplane crashed. The families have the right to know. The communities have the right to know.
This inquiry was requested by representatives of the Conservative Party. In the past, it was also requested by representatives of the Liberal Party.
On March 21, 2005, former Liberal minister Herb Dhaliwal suggested that the federal Liberals were breaking an oft made promise by refusing to call an inquiry into the terrorist attack against an Air India airplane.
On May 17, 1995, the Liberals put forward a motion calling on the government to initiate a royal commission of inquiry into the Air India disaster of June 23, 1985, which claimed the lives of 329 people.
The motion was eventually struck from the order paper because time was up and there was no unanimous consent to continue.
The NDP supports this motion. The Bloc Québécois does also. So what are we waiting for? It is very important, not only for the families, who are entitled to explanations, but also for the Sikh community, which is also entitled to explanations. There is no doubt whatsoever that involving a justice of a higher court, with its acknowledged impartiality, would result in people being aware of the difference between these few terrorists and the Sikh community as a whole, and would make that community better known in Quebec.
I can still remember the coroner's inquest into the killing of Corporal Marcel Lemay by Indians. Right at the start, the coroner set out the legitimate claims of the Indians and what had led to the crisis.
I am certain that an inquiry will never restore the great and honourable reputation of Canada's Sikh community in the eyes of the Canadian public. But there is more to it than that. We are living in a world where terrorism is the main danger.
When I was growing up, the main fear was the atom bomb. Thank God, we avoided that, and now the main threat is terrorist attack. Attacks in defence of the cause of one country can end up impacting on another, as we have seen recently in Spain. So terrorism is an international threat.
The bodies best equipped to protect us from terrorism are the intelligence organizations. There was a time, I know, when these functions were given to the RCMP, which had the double mandate of preventing hostile or terrorist attacks by other nations and of prosecuting the guilty parties when such acts had been committed.
The MacDonald commission determined that these two functions were so different that they needed to be separated. It is clear, however, that both these activities involve policing methods that overlap.
I think it is time to take a look and see whether the split was a good thing. It is true that security agencies, like many organizations making use of secret information, have the unfortunate habit of guarding their secrets jealously. Remarkable progress can be made in investigations, however, when these bodies decide to pool their information. It has to remain secret, of course, to ensure successful infiltration.
We proved this point in Quebec in our fight against biker gangs. Once the Sûreté du Québec, the Montreal police and the RCMP had been convinced to work together, we made progress and managed to break the threat to public security posed by the Hells Angels.
I can see the United States is doing the same thing at the moment with the creation of the new homeland secretariat
This is one of the questions that the commission of inquiry must examine. I repeat, I fully agree that this matter must not be partisan. Representatives of all parties in this House have called for an inquiry.
The reasons the minister gave recently are unsatisfactory, particularly since there is a commission of inquiry, the Gomery commission, and people have been charged. Furthermore, how long are we going to wait? We have already waited 20 years. I think it is time for us and the victims to have answers, since we are facing similar dangers and have to know what went wrong so we can move forward and avoid other terrorist attacks.
