OTTAWA—Canada is ramping up complaints about Iran’s “unprecedented” delay in granting access to the black boxes of a Ukraine airlines flight shot down by military forces over Tehran in January. A frustrated Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne said Friday that Iran’s continuing refusal to hand over the jet’s black boxes defies international protocols and is frustrating the investigation into the downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 on Jan. 8. “There is a path forward to make the truth come out with respect to the content of the black boxes. So clearly we are calling on Iran to follow that,” Champagne said. Champagne used a speech on foreign policy Friday in Montreal to repeat Canada’s call for the black boxes to be transferred to France for analysis “without delay.” “We owe it to the families to get all the answers to the questions surrounding this terrible tragedy,” the foreign affairs minister said. “We will continue to hold the Iranian regime accountable.” The Boeing 737-800 crashed barely two minutes after takeoff from Tehran’s airport en route to Kyiv. After days of denial, Iranian officials confirmed that its own military had shot down the jet during a time of heightened tensions. While Iran was initially co-operative — allowing Canadian investigators to visit the crash site and view the wreckage — Champagne said that “much work remains to be done in order for Iran to fully assume responsibility for this tragic event.” That also includes “swift compensation” for the families of the victims, a demand Champagne has said he pressed for during a meeting with Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif in Munich this week. Speaking to reporters after the speech, Champagne said that further delays in allowing the black boxes to be downloaded would be “quite unprecedented.” Canada has said that Iran lacks the technical expertise to download the data from the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder. Champagne said there are discussions between Iran and authorities in France to send the devices there to be analyzed, a solution that Canada and other nations have urged. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada said again Friday that it’s ready to dispatch its specialists to assist in the downloading of the black box data. Former accident investigator Larry Vance says that Iran “has no excuse” for not allowing the black box data to be downloaded. “The Iranians of course should be co-operating more. It’s exceptionally frustrating and abnormal for them to hold those black boxes for this long,” said Vance. “It’s way, way, way off base.” But Vance also cautioned that the focus on the black boxes has raised unreasonable expectations about their value to the investigation. Given that the cause of the crash is already known, the information they contain may not be that helpful — if they even continued to work after shrapnel from the missile tore into the aircraft, disabling systems. “It’s quite unlikely there will be very much new, if anything new, that will be revealed by the actual readout of the boxes,” Vance said. “For the investigation, it’s already long past the point where it’s of very much value,” he said. “What it’s turned into is just a diplomatic standoff, more than anything to do with accident investigation,” Vance said. Bruce Campion-Smith is an Ottawa-based reporter covering national politics. Follow him on Twitter: @yowflier |