No point dwelling on failure to prevent Air India attack, Ottawa says

Canada should learn from the intelligence failures leading up to the 1985 Air India bombing instead of speculating on whether the unprecedented terrorist attack could have been prevented, the federal Attorney General's department says in its final submissions to the inquiry into the tragedy.
The government submitted hundreds of pages Thursday to Commissioner John Major.
In the documents, government lawyers admit there were problems in the early relationship between the RCMP and the fledgling Canada Security Intelligence Service, created just 11 months before the bombing.
"It is impossible and indeed fruitless to speculate," the submissions said, "on whether the timing of Canada's paradigm shift may have facilitated the bombing or inhibited the subsequent prosecutions."
The government also says that the B.C. terror plot, which killed 331 people in two bomb blasts on June 23, 1985, "showed that insufficient groundwork had been laid in respect of the roles and responsibilities of the RCMP and CSIS in the case of a terrorist event."
Other parties involved in the 18-month long Air India inquiry made specific recommendations for legislative changes to ensure better anti-terrorism protections in future.
But the Attorney General's department, which represented the interests of CSIS and the RCMP at the inquiry, said it will wait for Major's recommendations expected in the fall.
"It is in the government's interest to await the considered recommendations of this commission," say the documents, signed by Deputy Attorney General John Sims. "As such these submissions will not offer or urge particular recommendations but will rather attempt to identify areas of concern which might benefit from the work of this commission," the documents say.
That didn't stop the government team from taking shots at some of the evidence presented to Major.
The Attorney General's department called the startling claim of former Ontario Lt.-Gov. James Bartleman of a specific advance warning to Air India on the weekend it was bombed the most "inaccurate testimony" of the inquiry. He is the former head of intelligence for Foreign Affairs.
10/07/08 Kim Bolan/Canwest News Service/Canada.com, Canada

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Categories: Air India - International Jul 2008, Foreign Jul 2008, NACIL Jul 2008, Safety Jul 2008