New security czar needed: Air India report
Canada's national security adviser should be given sweeping new powers to resolve disputes between the RCMP and CSIS, the head of the Air India inquiry will recommend.
CBC News has learned that in the long-awaited final report from the commission that investigated the bombing of Air India Flight 182, John C. Major will say that national security continues to be badly organized between the Mounties and Canada's spy agency.
The national security adviser, who currently provides advice to the prime minister on national security and intelligence issues, should also be the final arbiter where the two agencies disagree, Major will say.
The position would be similar to that of an American-style national security czar.
This recommendation means that the director of CSIS and the RCMP commissioner would effectively report to the national security adviser only in cases where the adviser needs to resolve national security issues. Marie-Lucie Morin currently holds the post.
The Mounties and Canada's spy service have been criticized for failing to work together on the Air India case, an issue that has always infuriated the victims' families.
Former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli testified before the commission that the two agencies are still different cultures defending their own turf. He said someone needs to be the boss of both.
The report will also come down hard on holes in aviation security, saying there is an over-reliance on technology, not enough intelligence and too many ground crew who never get searched, CBC News has learned.
Flight 182 went down in the Atlantic Ocean near Ireland on June 23, 1985, killing all 329 people aboard, most of them Canadians. A separate luggage bomb destined for a second Air India flight killed two Japanese baggage handlers at Tokyo's Narita airport.
An inquiry into the bombing — how it occurred, why the authorities failed to find those responsible, and whether it could happen again — began on June 21, 2006.
Inderjit Singh Reyat was the only man ever convicted in the case after he pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2003.
Suspected ringleader Talwinder Singh Parmar died in India in 1991, and the RCMP's two main surviving suspects — Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri — were both acquitted in March 2005 after a 19-month trial. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ian Josephson ruled that the Crown's case against the two was too weak for a conviction.