OTTAWA - Canadian diplomats who tried to help the families of the Air India bombing victims in 1985 didn't have the training or resources for the task, says an interim report from a public inquiry.
"They were well-meaning and well-intended, but unprepared and ill-equipped for what was expected of them,'' Commissioner John Major states in the preliminary volume released Tuesday.
"Their numbers and resources were inadequate for what was needed to respond to a terrorist attack.''
Major, a former judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, also noted -- although it's not part of his formal mandate to deal with the subject -- that many of the grieving families felt they were later shortchanged in financial compensation by Ottawa.
He even took a backhanded swipe at federal officials for not being more forthcoming about how they determined the totals to be handed out to individual claimants.
"Compensation was paid only after prolonged civil litigation,'' he wrote. "The compensation varied in amount for reasons not disclosed to the commission.''
The federal government paid more than $20 million in out-of-court settlements reached in 1990 with families who had launched civil suits, but there have long been complaints that some people were left out and others didn't get all they deserved.
Lawyers for the families haven't pressed the issue at the inquiry because Major has no official authority to make recommendations to the government on reopening talks.
Nevertheless, several relatives of the victims have raised the matter during their testimony, and Major said his report would be incomplete if he didn't take note of their concerns.
There was no immediate response from the government.
On the broader issue of the diplomatic aid offered after the bombing, Bernard Nguyen, a spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Department, said officials understand the pain of those who lost loved ones.
But he maintained consular help was delivered in a timely fashion, given the communication and other technological limits of the time.
Jacques Shore, one of the legal team representing the families, took a different view, arguing that even though nobody acted in bad faith Ottawa was institutionally "derelict'' in its duties to family members.
He expressed hope that Major will follow up his preliminary remarks on the matter with concrete policy recommendations to improve things in a final report due next year.
"We should have done better,'' said Shore. "We didn't do well enough (in 1985) but we have to ensure that if, God forbid, this should ever happen again we'll be prepared.''
Much of the interim report recounts the narratives provided by the victims' families recounting the human and emotional impact the bombing had on their lives. Major promised, early in his hearings, that their stories would find a place in the official record of the inquiry -- a pledge fulfilled by the volume issued Tuesday.
Shore welcomed the move, saying that for the first time many of his clients finally believe someone cares about them and is listening to their complaints.
"I think the commissioner has done exceptionally well in recognizing the human dimension of this inquiry,'' he said. "Canadians, particularly young Canadians, should understand what happened 22 years ago. So many have no idea.''
In three weeks of wrenching testimony in the fall of 2006, dozens of family members recounted their struggle to cope with a grief that has endured for two decades.
Some told of recurring nightmares, others of how they couldn't stop crying, still others of how they could no longer cry at all as they hardened their hearts in emotional self-defence. Few got any grief counselling and, when they did, it was typically at their own expense.
Many complained of inadequate help from Canadian diplomats when they travelled to Ireland to identify and repatriate the bodies of relatives recovered from the North Atlantic.
The Foreign Affairs Department initially put only three extra staff on duty at its Ottawa headquarters and dispatched only seven diplomats and three support staff to Ireland.
By contrast, 80 employees were pressed into emergency service to help about 500 Canadians in the region affected by the 2004 Asian tsunami, and hundreds were deployed to aid in the evacuation of 15,000 Canadian citizens from war-torn Lebanon in 2006.
In his second report, Major plans to deal with a wide range of other issues, including the turf wars between the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service that hampered the investigation of Sikh militants believed responsible for downing Air India Flight 182 with the loss of 329 lives.
The final volume will also address airline and airport security, as well as the legal problems of mounting terrorist mega-trials.
Oral hearings, which began 15 months ago, are expected to wrap up by the end of this week and lawyers for all parties will make their last written submissions in January. After that, Major will begin drafting his reform recommendations.
