Government announces Air India action plan Government, plan, Air, action, India

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OTTAWA — Public Safety Minister Vic Toews unveiled on Tuesday the government's "action plan" in response to last summer's Air India inquiry.


The Air India Inquiry Action Plan, billed by the government as a "road map," contains six key areas that Toews said deliver on the promises made to victims' families and Canadians that such a tragedy does not happen again.


The areas are:


- Improving the trial process for major terrorist cases;


- Improving the witness protection program;


- Strengthening Canada's ability to detect the financing of terrorist activity;


- Improving co-operation between federal departments;


- Examining how security intelligence is collected and retained;


- Improving the aviation security system.


Some of the key points already been introduced to legislation.


"Today's a day for taking action," said Toews at a news conference.


The government is also working on a compensation package for families of the 1985 Air India disaster — the deadliest terrorist attack in Canadian history — and negotiations are ongoing for "ex-gratia" payments to the families, said Chris McCluskey, Toews' spokesman. Such ex-gratia payments would not expose the federal government to legal liability.


The road map was drafted in response to last June's report from former Supreme Court justice John Major, which was scathing in its criticism of the way successive governments have treated the Air India victims' families.


Major also concluded the RCMP is not properly structured to deal with terrorism and that there is a need for "greater specialization and a more concentrated focus on the means for investigating and supporting the prosecution of national security offences."


He also cited "turf wars" between the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service that hampered the Air India bombing investigation.


The Air India blast was the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history. On June 23, 1985, a bomb planted in a suitcase aboard Air India Flight 182 exploded over Irish airspace, killing all 329 people on board, including 280 Canadians

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Comforted by her daughter Shipra Rana of Toronto, is Sundra Arora, as she is overcome with emotion during the remembrance period at the beginning of the Air India inquiry seen in thie file photo