The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks helped drive the RCMP and Canada's security agency to co-operate more closely, the Air India inquiry was told Friday.
Four senior Mounties and three regional directors of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) told the inquiry the frictions that once troubled their relationship have been replaced by collaboration.
"I think times have changed," Andy Ellis, CSIS director general of the Toronto region, told the inquiry.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the government set up what are known as integrated national security enforcement teams, which include Mounties, local police, Canada Border Services Agency people and CSIS representatives.
The inquiry has been told that squabbling and inter-agency suspicions between the RCMP and CSIS hurt the investigation into the 1985 Air India bombing, which killed 329 people.
Only one man has ever been convicted for his role in the plot. Another was shot dead by police in India in 1992 and two more were acquitted at trial in Vancouver in 2005.
Today, CSIS and the RCMP make a point of working together, said RCMP Insp. Ches Parsons.
"Every two months we go over all our active cases," he said. "It's important we both know what's going on."
"We have regular agency dialogue," said John Gillies, the CSIS director general for British Columbia.
"We share everything with CSIS," Supt. Jamie Jagoe said.
Nobody wants a conflict
By keeping each other informed about investigations, the two agencies can avoid bumping into each other, especially when they are looking at the same targets.
"We don't want to conflict with the RCMP, we don't want to get under their feet," said Ellis.
"If there is a potential conflict, we deal with it very early," said Parsons.
During the Air India investigation, CSIS had a source known only as Ms. E., who had information about a suspect in the bombing conspiracy. She didn't want to talk to the Mounties, and CSIS did little to change her mind.
That wouldn't happen today, Ellis said.
"We would try everything we could in order to convince Ms. E. to deal with law enforcement."
Ellis also said that CSIS has shed its reluctance to share information with the RCMP that might threaten to reveal secret sources.
"If they deem it to be critical to protecting human life, we would move mountains to make sure that happens," he said.
The inquiry under retired Supreme Court Justice John Major is looking into the investigation that followed the Air India tragedy.
The airline's Flight 182, which departed Toronto and Montreal on June 22, 1985, went down off the coast of Ireland early in the morning of June 23 killing everyone on board.
The bombing was blamed on Sikh separatists using B.C. as a base in their campaign to win a homeland in northern India.
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