Transport Committee on June 10th, 2021

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

When it came to the black boxes going to Paris for the decoding, I suspect that you would have been happy to have a higher status than observer. Did you put in a request at that point, and why did Iran officially not allow you to have a more elevated status?

[Kathleen Fox]

Mr. Chair, in accordance with ICAO annex 13, experts do not normally participate, even as observers, in the download analysis of recorders, so the fact that we were able to have somebody there was an extra step for us. We did not have direct access to the recordings, no, but we asked multiple times in writing and in person, in the form of Mr. Tasker.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

On every occasion, the Iranians refused to acknowledge it, and they never officially responded. Am I correct?

[Kathleen Fox]

Mr. Chair, with respect to the letters I sent, I had a response to only one of the three letters that I sent. In response to the request Mr. Tasker made, we, along with other expert countries, such as Sweden and the U.K., were not allowed to have direct access to the recordings in Paris.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

In your testimony, you referred to the fact that the Ukrainians provided you with a copy of the draft final report by Iran. You took the time to provide them with your observations, and those were sent back to the Iranians.

Given your observations and given the fact that Minister Goodale's report also referred to all the gaps that needed to be answered, if you had to grade the final Iranian report, what would your grade be?

[Kathleen Fox]

Mr. Chair, I think it would be oversimplistic to give it a specific grade. The report is incomplete. It doesn't provide proof. It doesn't provide details about what happened or why it happened, so it falls short of what we would have expected and certainly what the families deserve to hear.

I would just add for clarity that our comments were made to Ukraine and then Ukraine submitted our comments to Iran. All of them were provided to Iran, but Iran only dealt with some of them in the actual report. The rest were appended to the end of the report.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

That report you prepared.... Is that considered the property of the Government of Canada or the property of the Government of Ukraine?

[Kathleen Fox]

Mr. Chair, the comments we provided to Ukraine are really Ukraine's to deal with, but we have indicated to Ukraine and to others that we have no issue releasing our comments to the public if requested.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

If we officially requested, as Parliament, that you table that report, would you have any misgivings?

[Kathleen Fox]

To be clear, it's not a report. It's really our comments on their safety report. As long as Ukraine has no objection, we have no objection to releasing our comments.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

However, you think that unless they actually provide explicit approval, you would not do so.

[Kathleen Fox]

Again, we were appointed as a technical adviser to Ukraine. Therefore, we would want Ukraine to approve the release of our comments to them.

I can assure you, Mr. Chair, that all of our comments were provided to Iran.

I realize you may be running short of time.

Mr. Tasker, do you have anything you want to add with respect to Iran's treatment of our comments?

[Ewan Tasker]

No. I just have some fine details.

Some comments were addressed. Some that were not addressed were appended. Some were neither appended nor addressed.

Then, a final point—

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

More importantly, I'm wondering if, as Parliament, we could have access to your observations. What would prohibit that from happening?

[Ewan Tasker]

I, personally, have no problem with it. As we have stated before, we are welcome to release them. I think that, from a formality perspective, we would request approval from Ukraine. However, I am nearly certain that Ukraine would approve that release anyway, so they would be easy to get.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Ehsassi.

Thank you, Mr. Tasker.

Thank you, Ms. Fox.

We are now going to move on to the Bloc.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank all the witnesses here today. I think that they are very relevant witnesses in the context of our study and that we will learn a lot from them.

Let me start with Mr. Goodale. We know that the most important thing for victims is to have answers and to know what happened. We saw the opposite with Iran. It was very opaque and we found it very difficult to obtain information.

I would like to know how, specifically, you are obtaining information in this context. What actions have you taken and what are your methods?

[Ralph Goodale]

I think all of us who have dealt with the regime either directly or indirectly over the last year and a half have found information and facts and solid data very difficult to come by.

The forensic team that Mr. Yaworski is leading is one of the initiatives created by the Government of Canada in the course of the last 15 months to create a vehicle by which we could at least have some ability to gather information, to gather evidence, to gather intelligence and to make our own assessment of how credible it all is. As Mr. Yaworski has explained, that work is ongoing, and as soon as he is in a position to do so, he will present that information to the families. That's one way to further the quest for the truth. We certainly haven't got to, as I said in my remarks, the whole truth and nothing but the truth yet, and there is further work to be done.

The second element of this is the work that the Government of Canada is now undertaking as part of the international coordination and response group of countries. They are Canada, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Sweden and, to a certain extent, Afghanistan, although Afghanistan is preoccupied with some other issues domestically in that country at this moment. The coordination group have served notice of their claim against Iran. They have specified the things they will be seeking in negotiations for reparations. It's a lengthy list of demands on behalf of these countries. One of the things, and perhaps from the point of view of many of the families the single most important thing, more than money or compensation or whatever, is a demand to get from Iran the truth about what happened. In those reparations negotiations you'll have five countries, four of them actually at the table—Canada, Ukraine, Sweden and the United Kingdom—demanding those answers in the course of these reparations discussions.

If those countries are not satisfied with Iran's answers, then they have an opportunity to make an appeal to the dispute settlement mechanism under the International Civil Aviation Organization. If they're not satisfied with the result there, then they have the ability to appeal even further, to the International Court of Justice.

This is a complicated process. We have to make sure that every step is properly taken in the right sequence so that we don't mess up jurisdiction. The Government of Canada, in concert with those other victim countries, is intent on pursuing this search for the truth relentlessly until we get some degree of satisfaction far higher than what exists today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, High Commissioner.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you.

Earlier, Mr. Tasker and Ms. Fox said that, in the end, we obtained more information than we should have been entitled to, because of the status Canada had there. Did that result in less pressure on Iran?

Did it prompt them to be more careful about the amount of pressure so that they didn't lose the extra access?

[Kathleen Fox]

I can say that we have not been shy about requesting better access to the investigation.

However, the roles are very well prescribed by Annex 13 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

As for our relations with Iran, its representatives gave us more information than we were technically entitled to, but that did not prevent us from making a number of requests in a number of ways throughout the investigation process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

I actually wanted to find out whether you would have taken any steps or exerted any pressure if you had not had the additional access.

[Kathleen Fox]

Mr. Chair, we thought it was important to follow the protocols of Annex 13 of the ICAO Convention to avoid being kicked out, if I may use the term, of the investigation. Still, there is a certain way to proceed. We are used to it. We participate in 100 or 200 investigations a year outside the country in the same way. So we followed the role and the protocols prescribed by Annex 13.

However, it does show us that Annex 13 needs to be revised, and that is why we have made representations to ICAO to change it so that countries like Canada, which lost so many people, have more access to the investigation.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you.