Mr. Speaker, as I rise today may I also say that my most sincere condolences go to the families of all of the victims of this horrific air crash.
Twenty years ago the sun rose on a terrible day for Canadians when the debris of a jetliner blown out of the sky in the early dawn was our stark evidence of an act of brutal violence and our grievous reminder of the evils of terrorism. That day we as Canadians were united in our disbelief. We were united by our outrage. We were also united in our grief and our feelings for the families. In a word, all of Canada and Canadians were united by our humanity.
Those sentiments which emerged in the early hours will never grow old and will never be forgotten. For as long as there is a Canada, Canadians and people around the world will remember Air-India and we will honour the memory of the 329 souls so senselessly taken from all of us.
What would they be doing today if they had not been on that Air-India flight? Some of them would have continued on with their children and their grandchildren. Some of them would have been married. Some would have had the chance to watch all of the interesting debates ongoing in our chamber. They would have continued to be good Canadians.
It is only right that I join my fellow members in the renewal of my expression of deepest condolences to the victims' families.
It is my firm belief that it is the things which unite us as Canadians, grief, outrage, compassion and remembrance, which will endure as our most fitting memorial to the victims of the Air-India bombing.
The motion which the House will decide upon brought forward by the official opposition calls for an independent judicial inquiry. We recently learned with great disappointment that a very lengthy investigation and trial process had failed to secure any new convictions. We are seemingly without answers, left only with an anguished silence in the place of justice. It is a hard and cruel result, and it is only natural that in these frustrated days, we have the demand for a public inquiry.
Nonetheless, this is a deliberative House. Our role, difficult as it is, is not just to follow without reflection the instructions of the moment. While I too want to see justice prevail, I am going to speak against the idea of a public inquiry at this time and I believe with good reason. I realize that I am taking an unpopular stand in the House and all I ask is for a decent hearing of my views.
The prime motivation for an inquiry among Canadians is the search for justice. We all want to see the perpetrators of this despicable act behind bars. The public inquiry proposed today would get us no convictions. It would give us no answers to the central question of who is guilty. Who were the terrorists?
There is no question that Canadians want justice, no question that the government wants justice and no question that all of us in the House want justice. I think we would pay any price to see those responsible for this tragedy behind bars, but cost is simply not an issue here. That is why we have had an investigation and a trial of monumental proportions. It is a hard fact to face but it must be underlined. An inquiry would not identify the guilty parties and that is not what is proposed. Canadians need to understand that.
The next question in people's minds is, what did go wrong? Canadians want to know so as to prevent it from happening again. They want to be assured that a terrorist act can never again be visited on an aircraft carrying Canadians and that they are safe in our country.
There were very significant reviews and reforms in safety and security in the aftermath of the attack. In 1986, a review of airline and airport security was released, the Seaborn report, as the Deputy Prime Minister referred to this morning. It led to secure areas at airports, background checks of all airport workers, and a system to link passengers to their baggage. I am sure many of us have heard of people being removed from an aircraft because somehow luggage was there but not all passengers were there. All the luggage would be removed from the aircraft and often flights were delayed.
In more recent days the focus of air security has been intensified. The creation of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada was an investment of $2.1 billion since 2001. Explosive detection systems for baggage and, on the broad level, the passage of the anti-terrorism act and the national security policy were backed by the investment of over $9 billion in security related initiatives since 9/11.
The government treats air transport security with the gravity it deserves. We know that terrorists continue to look for vulnerabilities. The September 11, 2001, perpetrators knew that security measures had been enhanced and that bombs would not achieve their evil goals. Devoted public servants work daily throughout our country to ensure that gaps are filled before those who would do harm can exploit them to their advantage.
This motion sets aside all these important questions to order an investigation into an investigation. Here we come to the crux of the matter, and some of the hardest and most difficult facts of all. A public inquiry is not a trial. Its purpose can never be to determine guilt or innocence, civil or criminal liability. It would get us no closer to a conviction and it would do nothing to prevent a terrorist attack in the future. At most an inquiry could make a finding of misconduct and it would traditionally be used to make recommendations to avoid a similar occurrence in the future.
There is ample reason to doubt that a public inquiry would be successful in accomplishing any of the aspirations we would have for it, chief among them, because the purpose is to investigate the investigation, to ensure that a better job is done if we should ever have to conduct such an investigation again. Heaven forbid that it ever happens in Canada or any other country.
The most we could hope for from such an inquiry would be a diagnosis of our ills of 20 years ago. We would learn, and even this is doubtful, about the problems of a national security structure so radically revised since then as to make any recommendations from the inquiry inapplicable to have the organizations concerned operate today.
CSIS was one year old when this tragedy occurred. It was the cold war and CSIS was not focused on terrorism like it is today. The relationship between CSIS and the RCMP was not ideal. It reflected the fact that security intelligence activities had been removed from the RCMP as a result of the MacDonald commission. This relationship was changed in 1989 by an agreement laying out their specific roles and responsibilities.
Everyone agrees there were problems then. I would remind Canadians that the Liberals called for an inquiry at the right time in 1985 and at that time the Conservatives refused it and without good reason. The time was then, not now. The organizations concerned are charged with the crucial work of keeping us safe today. All concerned must admit that an investigation of this scope would be a crushing burden on current operations. It is also unreasonable to impose on an organization charged with our security in the present an inquiry about the past where it is not likely that new answers will result to enhance public safety today.
There can be no partisanship on the most important things that we deal with in the House: our common grief, our common outrage, and our common search for justice. We all recognize that time does not heal all wounds, but the remedy proposed today is premature.
It is not the answer to the agonies of who and why, nor even to the demand of never again. It can never help us know the unknowable. On those grounds, reason and conscience dictate. I must oppose this public inquiry at this time. I would urge other members to do the same, as this motion is premature today.