RCMP Watch

Bill Curry, Globe and Mail

The federal government delayed an investigation into how CSIS handled the Air India file partly out of fear that new revelations would drive up the cost of settling related lawsuits, an inquiry heard Thursday.

Ron Atkey, who chaired the Security Intelligence Review Committee overseeing the spy agency from 1984 to 1989, told the Air India inquiry that his watchdog agency decided to launch an investigation as early as 1988.

Mr. Atkey said there were no objections to his plan from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. However, it soon became clear that Crown prosecutors, the RCMP and the federal government had a long list of concerns.

The commission produced a previously released letter from March, 1989, to Mr. Atkey from John Tait, the then-deputy minister of justice, confirming the government’s request that an inquiry be delayed so as not to interfere with the ongoing criminal investigations, court cases and civil proceedings.

That final reason caught the attention of Norman Boxall, a lawyer representing victims’ families, who objected Thursday to the notion that civil liability was a justifiable reason for delay.

“I think I agree with the general line of your questioning, Mr. Boxall,” Mr. Atkey said. “I think it would be, as you put it, not helpful to the government’s case in terms of not just [being] embarrassing but it might cost the government more money in terms of any adverse findings that might have been made respecting CSIS.”

Mr. Atkey said that while he was reluctant to delay his inquiry, he ultimately found the government’s arguments persuasive.

“It’s a sobering experience when the deputy attorney-general comes to you and says: ‘Speaking on behalf of the Government of Canada — including the commissioner of the RCMP — we don’t think you should undertake this inquiry at this time for this and this reason.’ We considered this request very seriously and felt that, far be it for SIRC to impose itself into a process if we were on the cusp of getting criminal convictions,” he said.

In the end, SIRC did conduct an investigation in 1991-1992, which concluded nothing of value was lost by the agency’s erasure of taped conversations involving Air India bombing suspects. Victims’ families, on the other hand, have argued that the erasure is a key reason why no one has been convicted for the murder of the 329 people in the 1985 terrorist bombing.

Investigations by SIRC are conducted in private and the findings are issued in the form of summaries in annual reports. The SIRC is also limited to reviewing activities at CSIS and cannot expand inquiries to include other agencies such as the RCMP.

Throughout the ongoing public inquiry, the commission has often heard from elderly witnesses struggling to recollect conversations and meetings that took place more than 20 years ago. Other potentially key witnesses are no longer alive or are too sick to appear.

Lead commission counsel Mark Freiman asked Mr. Atkey Thursday to assess the impact of the government’s successful move to delay an inquiry.

“I don’t know the answer to that, Mr. Freiman,” he said. “The passage of time, of course, causes memories to fade, and the longer it goes on from June 23, 1985, the more people are not available or their memories become hazy, so I do have this concern about this inquiry that could have been conducted in 1989, 1990, as opposed to the inquiry you’re having today.”

On the issue of tape erasures that has seized the inquiry this week, Mr. Atkey repeated his assertions that they were erased innocently, if not thoughtfully.

“It’s my view that there was not malevolence in the sense of trying to cover up anything, but more malfunctioning if you will at the middle-management level,” he said. “A rule of common sense might have prevailed and I think this was somewhat embarrassing for CSIS at the senior-management level that erasures had occurred. … We saw no evidence that tapes had been erased to cover up something.”