‘This should not have happened’

The text of the Prime Minister’s address to a memorial in Toronto this evening for the victims of the Air India bombing is here.

It is not enough to say that the system failed.  It did of course.  But, this is to sanitize with words a succession of woeful inadequacies that Commissioner Major calls “a cascading series of errors.” No. that is not enough.

Commissioner Major delivered a damning indictment of many things that occurred before and after the fact.  Things, ladies and gentlemen, that this Government of Canada cannot defend, has no wish to defend. And, Commissioner Major finds that, to make matters worse, the families of the victims were for years after treated with scant respect or consideration by agencies of the Government of Canada.

These are things for which honour and duty require that the Government of Canada, the government that called this inquiry, now apologize.