Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you very much.
I join you today from Cornwall in the United Kingdom, where G7 leaders are gathering this weekend for their annual summit. Those activities notwithstanding, I am very pleased to participate in this important discussion about the horrific behaviour of Iran, which destroyed Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 and killed so many innocent people, including so many with links to Canada.
Early last year, the Prime Minister asked me to assist with the government's response. I began that task on March 31, 2020, and it continues today alongside my duties as Canada's high commissioner in the United Kingdom.
I was asked to do three things. The first was to assist ministers and public servants in responding to the myriad needs of the grieving families of the victims. The second was to catalogue the best practices to be mobilized in response to tragedies like this, so such information is readily available to help deal with any future crises. The third was to make suggestions for how the world can best prevent these awful circumstances from happening again.
In the course of this work, I consulted repeatedly with the families. They are courageous, resourceful, insightful, unfailingly gracious, generous, knowledgeable and astute. I also listened to families who lost loved ones in other international air disasters, such as the bombing of Air India flight 182 and the Max 8 crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302.
In addition, I engaged with more than 15 departments and agencies of the government of Canada and a high-calibre roster of external experts such as Professors Payam Akhavan, Thomas Juneau and Craig Forcese, among others. I engaged with Dutch officials leading the Netherlands' lengthy and dogged response to the 2014 attack on Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over the Russian border.
The results of this work were published last December in my report entitled “Flight PS752: The Long Road to Transparency, Accountability and Justice”.
Let me summarize just a few main points.
First is the title. Why is it such a long road? The answer lies in the large, complex, multinational nature of this tragedy, the complicated maze of international conventions and practices that need to be navigated with precision, the limited roles of organizations like ICAO and the brutal intransigence of Iran. Among other things, I have recommended significant changes in the international legal framework to ensure that culpable nations are not put in charge of investigating disasters that they themselves have caused.
Second, in my view, Iran's management of this tragedy has been deliberately evasive and deceptive. For 72 hours at the outset, they denied any state or military involvement, when they knew that wasn't true. They admitted that the destruction of PS752 was the result of military interference, but then they refused to conduct a transparent and comprehensive investigation of that very military interference. They have also stonewalled dozens of critical questions that Canada and the world have asked.
Third, beyond being denied full and honest answers, the families have been treated abhorrently by Iran. In some cases, the personal effects of their loved ones have been vandalized, lost or stolen. Their funerals and memorials have been disrupted or distorted. They have been targets of intimidation and harassment. Such abuse is simply inexplicable and unforgivable.
Fourth is that, in my opinion, Iran's conduct was grossly incompetent. Witness their deeply flawed risk assessment, which claimed that everything was quite safe in Tehran's airspace that morning. They were reckless. Witness the outrageous decision to keep that airspace open despite their own very recent missile strikes on Iraq and their full expectation of retaliation. They showed wanton disregard for human life. Witness their failure to tell commercial airlines that hostilities were under way. Those airlines were actually under surveillance by IRGC missile operators with their fingers on the triggers.
Fifth, Iran has displayed an attitude of impunity, divorced from any remorse or responsibility for its deadly conduct. The Iranians were bulldozing the crash site within just a few hours. They delayed downloading the black boxes for months on end. Even now, they say that if they had that faulty risk assessment to do over again, they would come to the same conclusion. They produced a late and shambolic safety report without a shred of hard evidence, and their criminal investigation remains secret and hypothetical.
Yes, the families should be outraged, and so should the entire international community. We have not been told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and without that, no one can or should feel at all safe or secure in the still dangerous skies over Iran.
I thank you for your attention.