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view of the force's organizational structure, better positioning them for future leadership roles, he says it puts officers in the unenviable position of picking up a file that someone else has been carrying for years. It also creates havoc when a public inquiry seeks a cohesive narrative of how mistakes were made. "There was that complication of not having a lot of witnesses that could start at Chapter 1 and lead you through the whole book. It was piece by piece," he says. Yet the process could have taken much longer if not for the tight schedule Major imposed on hearing days. He typically instituted a five-days-a-week agenda, enforcing a 9-to-5 workday, with a one-hour lunch. That made for a far busier day than typical inquiries, which tend to follow a 9 a.m.-to-1 p.m. daily schedule, with afternoons used for preparation. "We didn't have long coffee breaks, and everyone co-operated," says Major, who spent eve- nings in his hotel room reviewing notes, keeping an eye out for inconsistencies with prior testimony. Freiman, a partner at Lerners LLP in Toronto, says Major insisted on efficiency. He formed a tight definition of who would be recognized as a party and who would be an intervener, with only parties permitted full standing to examine, cross-examine, and suggest witnesses. Interveners could provide written sub- missions, and take part in oral hearings if he deemed it relevant. "He understood the strengths of the inquiry process, in terms of allowing him to ensure that only relevant issues were brought up," says Freiman. "He wasn't at all hesitant in his rulings, in terms of ensuring that irrelevancies didn't clog up the commission's time, that people didn't go off on frolics. He kept a very tight rein on the inquiry and on its proceedings without ever losing track of the important stuff." Major's straightforward approach also came through in June 2007. That's when a potential witness suffered an apparent heart attack just as a group of others refused to offer testimony, as the commissioner said he couldn't guarantee their identities would be kept private. They felt their safety would be compromised even if their testimony were heard in private. "We do live in a democracy where we're governed by the Charter, where certain rights are defined and where freedom of the press is enshrined," said Major at the time. "We live with that and act accordingly." The commissioner took steps to establish his impartiality dur- ing the hearings, taking pains to not appear as siding with victims' families — he has avoided attending memorial services for this reason — nor the government, RCMP, or CSIS. He says his role was to put together a "puzzle" from the pieces of evidence the inquiry received. "There are a lot of holes; a lot of things that need explaining," says Major. "You get explanations. Well, which one makes sense? Which one is supported by evidence? Where did the evidence come from? Why hadn't it been made public before? All that sort of thing. So you're occupied with trying to find out what happened, not what some people thought happened." While the stakes were high at the inquiry into the biggest mass murder in Canadian history, Major says he felt no external pres- sure in leading it. He was nagged, however, by a desire to reach the finish line. "I wanted to get it done, particularly after we were into it for a couple of years. I thought, I've passed the biblical predic- tion of age, and we're into this, and there's been money spent. If I got hit by a car or left this world in other circumstances, it would be terrible to start over." Major credits inquiry counsel for taking care of the "heavy lift- ing." It was up to them, led by Freiman, to interview witnesses and collect evidence before presenting it at the hearings. He singles out the work of the inquiry's eight junior counsel, who spent endless hours scouring documents. "They were quite heroic, I thought. Young, in a room in Ottawa that was secured, and they'd be in this room with no windows, sorting out documents, piles of documents, trying to get some sequence to the whole thing. Without them, without the commission counsel with the help of the juniors, it just couldn't have been done." The inquiry's work culminated in the June 17 release of Major's final report, titled, "A Canadian Tragedy." Said Major upon release of the five-volume, 4,000-page tome: "A cascading series of errors contributed to the failure of our police and security forces to prevent this atrocity. The level of error, incompetence, and inat- tention which took place before the flight was sadly mirrored in many ways for many years, in how authorities, governments, and institutions dealt with the aftermath of the murder of so many innocents: in the investigation, the legal proceedings, and in providing information, support, and comfort to the families." Major's recommendations include an expanded role for the national security adviser in the Privy Council Office, a move he believes would improve co-ordination among agencies manag- ing national security. He would also like to see amendments to the Canada Evidence Act, eliminating the two-court system on national security confidentiality in terrorism prosecutions. He rejected the notion of a three-judge system for the handling of complex terrorism prosecutions. 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