Bob Rae, the man who recommended an inquiry into the deadly Air India bombing, says he never spoke to Ontario Lieutenant-Governor James Bartleman about a threat warning he received in the days leading up to the bombing, but he was aware that other threats had been made.
Bartleman revealed this week he received intelligence about the Air India bombing days before it occurred when he was the director general of intelligence analysis and security at the department of foreign affairs in 1985.
He said he took the information to an RCMP official, and was rebuked for doing so -- a few days later, on June 23, 1985, the attack occurred. Bartleman never mentioned the early warning until this week when he appeared before the Air India Inquiry.
Twenty-two crew members and 307 passengers were killed in the attack.
During an appearance on CTV's Question Period Sunday, Rae said this week's revelation was the first he had heard of the intelligence.
"I didn't talk to Mr. Bartleman and he didn't talk to me," Rae said, referring to his probe in 2005 that led to his recommendation that an inquiry take place.
"I certainly was aware of the fact there were threat assessments being done on a regular basis with respect to the Sikh community with concerns of what was going on in India and in Canada. It's one of the issues that I suggested the government needed to look at; how do we assess the threats."
He said it is not his place to suggest whether the inquiry should look into Bartleman's claims, but said he is sure it will.
"I'm quite confident that the commission is going to be looking at very specifically what did people know, when did they know it, how did they deal with the information that they had, how did they share that information between what, frankly, too often, have become the silos of government?"
Rae said Bartleman's testimony this week highlights a weakness that needs to be addressed in order to avoid similar catastrophes in the future -- the lack of communication and cooperation between different arms of government, which he referred to as "silos."
"The evidence is that they weren't talking to each other very well. I think the silos question is very critical for our system as well," Rae said.
The former Ontario NDP premier and federal Liberal leadership candidate also said he is troubled by the fact progress has been so slow on what he describes as "the largest mass murder in Canadian history."
"I think what we have to say is it took a very, very long time for charges to be laid. It took a long time for the trial to happen. People did their best in a difficult circumstances, you have to sort of say overall the system did what it could. Now did the system do everything it could? Did it perform well enough? That's a question that (Supreme Court Justice John Major, who is heading the inquiry) has to answer.
Rae said he is troubled by the fact Canadians seem to have taken a long time to embrace the Air India attack as a Canadian tragedy.
"And it then becomes a question of why has it taken us so long as a country to memorialize what happened, to remember what happened, and to really understand what happened? And that is something we all have to come to terms with."
On Friday, Bartleman called a press conference and said that Rae's report prompted him to come before the inquiry. Bartleman said he was "deeply sorry" for the pain family members of victims are experiencing and that he wanted to publicly reiterate why he did not speak out for "so many years."
"I thought that as I was director general of intelligence analysis and security at the time of the terrible event, I believed I could be of assistance to the inquiry.
"I thought it was my civic duty to tell the commission what I knew, whatever the consequence."
Bartleman said that he thought the police had acted on the information he had provided.
Rae has said that revelations during the Air India public inquiry illustrate the communication problems existing between the police and the government.
Rae delivered a report on the Air India bombing in November 2005, urging an inquiry into whether the threat of Sikh terrorism was adequately measured; and also whether the RCMP and CSIS had co-operated sufficiently in the investigation.
With new information emerging from the inquiry, critics have wondered if race played a part in how authorities handling the case.
Asked if she thought the information Bartleman provided to the RCMP would have been treated differently if the plane was filled with Caucasians, NDP MP Alexa McDonough said she felt it was a factor.
"I wish it weren't true. But I do think it's true," McDonough told Mike Duffy. "I also think it's shocking that as we pushed and pushed for an inquiry...they kept saying there's no need for an inquiry there's no new information there's nothing more to be learned.
"That turns out not to be true. It's an utter horror story, and thank goodness there is now a full public inquiry underway that can get to the bottom of this."
Family members of those who died in the bombing have expressed their shock at Bartleman's testimony, but it has also helped to confirm some of their worst fears.
"I think Mr. Bartleman's testimony really speaks to the concerns that so many of these individuals have that lost loved ones, that there was perhaps evidence that the government was aware of prior to the bombings," said Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla.
"I know that in speaking to these individuals that they are glad that there is an inquiry in place, that some of these facts are coming out and that we prevent this type of tragedy in the future."
