Home Programs National security Air India review Lessons to be learned: The report of the Honourable Bob Rae 2. The nature of this review process

2. The nature of this review process

In conducting this review, I have met several times with family members of the victims of the Air India bombing. These meetings occurred in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. The Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister McLellan, RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, and Canadian Security Intelligence Service (“CSIS”) Director James Judd, and Margaret Purdy, Special Advisor to the Deputy Minister of Transport Canada also attended meetings in the spring of 2005 with family members. The Prime Minister also attended the
20th anniversary commemorative service at the memorial site near Cork, Ireland on June 23rd.

I have also received detailed briefings from the RCMP in Ottawa and Vancouver, from CSIS officials in both cities, with the senior Crown Prosecutor Robert Wright and his associates in Vancouver, with the Premier and Attorney General of British Columbia, with the federal Deputy Ministers of Justice, Transport, Public Safety, and Foreign Affairs, among others.

The individuals and organizations I met with are listed in Appendix 2.

In addition to the transcripts of the trials of Reyat, Malik and Bagri, and the decisions in those cases, I have reviewed reports of inquiries held in Canada, (particularly the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) report of 1992), Ireland (Coroner’s Inquiry), and India (the report of the Kirpal Inquiry, India’s own inquiry into the Air India disaster, and the Jain Inquiry) and questioned countless officials.

I have been ably assisted by the Air India Review Secretariat, led by Taleeb Noormohamed and his staff, Michelle Sample and Chantale Lafond and by three colleagues at the law firm of Goodmans LLP, Benjamin Zarnett, David Lederman and Jenna Seguin.