Racism was not the problem with Air India

It was rather that usual suspect, political correctness--and before the term acquired its current meaning.

Government officials delayed the process for obtaining a wiretap warrant against the key figure in the Air India bomb plot because of religious concerns, a former intelligence officer told a commission of inquiry yesterday.

"There were concerns we were targeting the Sikh religion," according to Glenn Gartshore, who was the officer in charge of the Sikh extremism desk at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

CSIS considered Sikh extremist Talwinder Singh Parmar to be extremely dangerous, and wanted a warrant to intercept his conversations in the fall of 1984, about nine months before the bombing.

But a hurdle was erected by the office of Elmer MacKay, who was then solicitor-general, the Progressive Conservative minister responsible for CSIS.

The minister's office delayed the warrant application for a considerable period, Mr. Gartshore said, because the government did not want to be seen as targeting a religious group.

CSIS, in fact, was not investigating the Sikh religious community, but was very interested in individuals such as Mr. Parmar, who was considered a terrorist threat, Mr. Gartshore said.

It took five months from the time CSIS initiated the process for a Federal Court to approve the wiretap warrant on Mr. Parmar, a frustrating delay, Mr. Gartshore said...

Nonetheless, I doubt the egregious Ujjal Dosanjh will, in the face of the facts (after all he is a Liberal), retract his knee-jerk charges of racism.

With the Liberals you're damned if you don't and damned if you do. They had no compunction about crying "racism!" when Cabinet members Martin and Mina were criticized in 2000 for attending a fundraiser for a Tamil terrorist front group.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at May 24, 2007 08:12 AM