By Arthur Weinreb
Thursday, May 24, 2007
A lot of startling revelations have recently emerged from the Air India inquiry. Perhaps the most shocking was the evidence of Ontario Lieutenant Governor James Bartleman who, back in 1985 was working as a federal government security official. At the inquiry, Bartleman claimed that he had received information about a specific threat for that fatal weekend, tried to tell an RCMP officer and was sloughed off. It never became clear why Bartleman waited almost a quarter of a century to make this information public.
There was also evidence of a bomb detecting dog being called in to search the doomed plane when it stopped in Montreal. The plane took off again before the dog and its handler could arrive at the airport; apparently it was costing too much money to keep it grounded. And there was information that the government of India and Air India constantly conveyed reports of threats to the airline by militant Sikhs during the weeks leading up to the downing of the Air India flight, reports that appears were not taken to be all that seriously.
Perhaps more understandable, but not that much more, was the evidence of former CSIS officers that the fledgling organization (CSIS had just been created the year before) simply didn't fully understand the ramifications or possible ramifications for Canada of the Indian Army's attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June 1984. Despite the threats, Canadian officials couldn't seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation.
As the inquiry progresses with what seems to be daily unbelievable revelations of what exactly happened 22 years ago, one question comes to mind; does anyone outside of the Indian diaspora in general and the families of the victims in particular actually care about what really happened? There doesn't seem to be the outrage that one would expect as the inept handling of the events that led up to the June 23, 1985 downing of the aircraft is revealed. Perhaps we haven't come too far from the time shortly after the plane was blown out of the sky when then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney called Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi to express his condolences. Although India lost a plane and a flight crew in the terrorist act, the majority of the brown skinned passengers who looked like Indians were in fact Canadians. There is some truth to the fact that had the victims been white, the reaction from officials on down would have been different.
But there is another reason why what happened back in 1985 is not catching the attention of a lot of Canadians. It is being treated as a historical incident with no relevance to the present. It's hard to believe that in this post 9/11 world there isn't more concern about the evidence coming out of the Air India inquiry, not in terms of what happened then but in terms of the present state of terrorist threats and our readiness.
The reality is that too many Canadians have their heads in the sand when it comes to the threat of terrorism. And current threats are not confined, as they were back in 1985, to a foreign government's interests in Canada but to our country as a whole and indeed our civilization. The perception of some Canadians is that what happened on that summer weekend 22 years ago has absolutely no relevance to present day Canada.
People should be demanding answers; not just why what happened, happened but whether or not it can happen again. Are we any better prepared to deal with threats now than we were back in 1985? Obviously airline security is being taken a lot more seriously now than it was in the 1980s but is it enough?
Unfortunately, there are a lot of Canadians with the view that we are just so nice that the terrorists will never do anything to us. The Air India inquiry must be examined in light of today's preparedness to combat terrorism rather than just be the examination of a tragedy that happened back in the 80s.
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