The final report into the 1985 Air India bombing calls for a powerful national security czar with direct access to the Prime Minister to sort out disputes between the RCMP and Canada’s spy agency - an ongoing turf war that the inquiry learned continues to this day.
The National security advisor, a job that currently exists in a much more diminished role than Judge Major envisions, would be the ultimate security authority.
"I stress this is a Canadian atrocity," Mr. Justice John Major said as he announced his findings. "For too long the greatest loss of Canadian lives at the hands of terrorists has somehow been relegated outside the Canadian consciousness."
The national security advisor would help shepherd terrorism prosecutions through the courts, as would a new director of terrorism prosecutions. It's felt these positions could help navigate the "intelligence-to-evidence" quandaries that beset the Air India probe in the 1980s and still hamper terrorism cases today.
The report recommends appropriate compensation for the families. "The families in some ways have often been treated as adversaries, as if they had somehow brought this calamity upon themselves. This goes against the Canadian sense of fairness and propriety," he said. "The time to right that historical wrong is now."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the report was a "damning indictment of many things that occurred before and after the tragedy" and he promised his government would respond "positively" to the recommendations, specifically the call for compensation.
“Our government launched this inquiry to bring closure to those who still grieve and to ensure that measures are taken to prevent such a tragedy in the future,” he said.
“We thank commissioner Major for his work and once again extend our deepest sympathies to the families and friends for the loved ones they lost.”
Justice Major suggests agents with the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency should get with the times and lose their longstanding aversion to the courts. "CSIS should conform to the requirements of laws relating to evidence and disclosure ... in order to facilitate the use of intelligence in criminal justice process."
However, the report also urges his colleagues on the bench to be more sensitive to some imperatives of state secrecy. Canada's sweeping laws to disclose documents to the accused may have to be reined in somewhat in terrorism cases, the judge suggests. He says judges should contemplate "non-disclosure orders" for terrorism cases.
“This was the largest mass-murder in Canadian history,” said Justice Major, in releasing his report at a news conference in Ottawa.
Judge Major made scathing findings about government agencies and government lawyers trying to discredit whistle blowers and even the victims’ families, while presenting an overly rosy facade of Canada’s security agencies.
The RCMP and CSIS, he said, “engaged in turf wars, failed to share information and adopted a misguided approach to sources,” he said. “… The government argued ‘that was then this is now’ basically suggesting that whatever weaknesses or deficiencies existed in 1985 have been fully recognized analyzed and rectified in present day.”
“The Commission rejects that position,” he said.
The families in some ways have often been treated as adversaries, as if they had somehow brought this calamity upon themselves.— Justice John Major
Judge Major goes so far as to suggest that Canada's national police force has become unfocused — an all-things-to-all-people agency.
He suggests the Mounties may have bitten off more than they can chew by probing both high crime while accepting contracts from provinces to patrol rural communities.
