Immediately after Ripudamin Singh Malik and ajaib Singh Bagri were found not guilty of charges relating to the bombing of air India Flight 182, some families of the victims and others called for a public inquiry. a public inquiry was demanded to look into not only the downing of the aircraft down over Ireland on June 23, 1985 but into the botched investigation that was conducted by the RCMP and CSIS.
No sooner were calls for an inquiry made than Minister of Public Safety and Deputy Prime Minister, anne McLellan, issued a resounding "no". McLellan’s big concession to the families was that she would personally meet with them. as if they haven’t suffered enough in the past 20 years.
The Deputy Prime Minister’s complete insensitivity to and compassion for the surviving family members of the victims of Canada’s worst act of terrorism overshadowed the question of whether she was right in her decision not to hold a public inquiry.
Despite the fact that public inquiries are said to be "impartial", they are nothing more than political tools to be used by the governments that call them. How they are conducted is carried out, not in regards to what is best for Canadians but what is best for the government and we have several examples of recent inquiries that show this.
In the early 1990s the Liberal government called an inquiry that was spurred by the death of a 16-year-old Somali at the hands of Canadian military personnel. The inquiry was proceeding, happily placing any governmental blame for what happened upon the previous Progressive Conservative government. But when it appeared that some of the blame might be put on the newly elected Liberals, the government shut down the inquiry. Case closed.
If public inquiries were not so political we would not see opposition parties constantly calling for them. When Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty was in opposition, no matter was ever too small for him to stand up and demand that the government hold an inquiry. Oddly enough he stopped doing that once his Liberal Party came to power. The Conservative government finally relented and called an inquiry into the tainted water in Walkerton. It served as nothing more than a political tool to attack the policies of the Tory government, both as to their spending cuts and the way that the then-government dealt with environmental issues. But no findings that the inquiry made or could have made altered the fact that the direct cause of Walkerton’s tainted water that resulted in seven deaths and hundreds of illnesses were the lack of testing and falsification of records by the civil servants who were in charge of monitoring the water, the beer drinking Koebel boys, Stan and Frank.
Now we are in the middle of the Gomery Commission that is examining how $100 million of taxpayer money ended up in the hands of Quebec advertising agencies for doing virtually nothing to earn those fees other than being buds of the government. Despite what Paul Martin said on his "I’m gonna get to the bottom of this come hell or high water" tour shortly after becoming prime minister, the inquiry is not going to do that. It is structured in such a way as to get the government off the hook. The Commission started by questioning the politicians; Chrétien, Martin, Gagliano. Then they moved to the second phase — the questioning of the actual people who took part in the transactions that are under investigation. In other words, the politicians were questioned about what they did or what they knew before the nitty gritty of what actually happened was obtained. The Gomery Commission was set up to ensure that, as much as possible, the Liberals that created the Commission would be forgotten and the ad execs and their subordinates would end up biting the bullet.
Public inquires also allow governments to use them as an excuse for not having to answer questions that otherwise should be answered. How many times have we heard little Scotty Brison stand up in the House of Commons, refuse to answer questions on behalf of the government and say, "Just Let Mr. Justice Gaaaaaaaaaaamery do his job"? Public inquiries, much like the courts did on the same sex marriage issue, allow the government to avoid responsibility and accountability.
Despite her nasty dismissal of the grieving relatives, McLellan might have a point about an inquiry not being productive or necessary. What will we learn from such an inquiry? That the RCMP shouldn’t destroy evidence or pay huge chunks of money to unreliable informants? We know that already.
In light of the political nature of these inquiries, perhaps it is time to have a public inquiry on whether we should have public inquiries.