Canada's Great Failure

One of them, anyway:

June 23 marks Canada’s National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Terrorism, which was established on the anniversary of the Air India Flight 182 bombing, when 280 Canadians were among the 329 innocents murdered in a shocking act of terror by Sikh extremists. ...

(Sidebar: a pointless bit of moral posturing after the failure to prevent or avenge the deaths of 332 people and curtail the damnable ideologies behind it.) 

While we designate its anniversary as Canada’s National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Terrorism, in practice, it is a date that most Canadians would barely recognize, let alone ponder. Meanwhile, the system that failed the victims remains intact.

A subsequent commission of inquiry headed by retired Supreme Court justice John Major uncovered “a cascading series of errors” on the part of Canadian intelligence, police and aviation authorities. From failures in gathering and sharing threat intelligence, to security complacency and airport screening errors, to the mistreatment of victims’ families and inadequate investigative resources, the voluminous report is a damning indictment that serves as a cautionary tale for our government today. ...

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Air India 182 stands as a withering counter-argument to political multiculturalism.

Failing to stamp out Old World hatreds and even deport those who threatened violence led to the murder of those on Air India 182 and two Japanese baggage handlers, Hideo Asano and Hideharu Koda:

A former CP Air employee has testified at the Air India trial how the bombs bound for two Air India flights in 1985 got checked in at Vancouver.

Those bombs killed 329 people aboard Air India flight 182 off the coast of Ireland, and two baggage handlers at Tokyo's Narita airport.

The bomb that blew the jumbo jet out of the sky began its trip on a CP Air flight from Vancouver to Toronto, connecting to the Air India flight to London and on to Delhi.

The passenger who checked in with the bag didn't have a confirmed reservation on Air India, so the agent refused to check his bag through to that flight.

But Jeanne Bakermans – who now works for Air Canada – told the trial of Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri that she relented because the passenger made a fuss.

Last week, the court learned the passenger never boarded the plane.

That wasn't the only bomb that Bakermans checked in that day. A short time later, a second man checked his bags to Tokyo, connecting to another Air India flight.  

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Despite two separate inquiries finding that Khalistani terrorists in Canada had masterminded the attack, the perpetrators managed to walk away largely unscathed, much to the despair of the victims’ families and the frustration of India. To this day, they are venerated as heroes by their fellow extremist ideologues.

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Forty years after the Air India bombing, the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history, more than half of Canadians say that it has never been treated like a national tragedy.

On June 23, 1985, Canadian Sikh terrorists blew up a bomb aboard Air India Flight 182, en route from Montreal to London, with a final destination of Mumbai. The plane exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 329 people aboard. The debris washed up in Ireland.

Of those aboard the plane, most of them were Canadian citizens.

Yet, 32 per cent of Canadians told the Angus Reid Institute that they had never heard of the attack. Just nine per cent said they know a lot about it. Among those who say they do know about the attack, 60 per cent say it hasn’t been treated as a national tragedy.

“It continues to be not just a faded page in Canadian history, but almost a blank page, particularly among young people in this country, among young Canadians, the lack of awareness is really very stark,” said Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute.

In fact, the pollsters found that if they asked Canadians what was the deadliest attack in Canadian history, only 17 per cent identified the Air India bombing. Twenty-seven per cent identified the Polytechnique massacre in Montreal in December 1989, which left 14 women dead, as the deadliest, followed by 18 per cent who said the mass shootings around Portapique, Nova Scotia, in 2020, which killed 22 people, as the deadliest.

While one-third of Canadians say they’d never heard of the Air India bombing, a majority — 59 per cent — say they know the main details. However, the number of Canadians who don’t know about it has grown to 32 per cent from 28 per cent two years ago.

In the aftermath of the attack, only one person, Inderjit Singh Reyat, was convicted, and he pleaded guilty to manslaughter for a bombing that killed two Japanese airport workers at Narita International Airport; it was supposed to bring down a second Air India flight. Only 29 per cent of Canadians can report accurately that nobody was convicted; in 2023, when pollsters asked the same question, 34 per cent knew the truth.

Seventy-one per cent believe there should be an exhibit about the bombing at the Canadian Museum of History and 65 per cent say it should be taught in schools. Fewer of those polled, just 41 per cent, support displaying wreckage from the bombed plane in Canada.

 

Then let's point out those who failed and continue to fail not only the victims, their families, but the country, as well.