In his first interview following winning the party leadership, Singh expressed doubts on the findings of the 18-month long inquiry led by former Supreme Court justice John Major into the bombing of Air India Flight 182 which left 329 people dead — 268 of them Canadians. The inquiry pointed to Talwinder Singh Parmar as the chief terrorist behind the bombing. In the same interview and many subsequent ones, Singh was unwilling to denounce extremists within Canadian Sikhs who pay homage to Parmar as a martyr. On March 18, 2018, a day after video of Singh speaking a 2015 rally in San Francisco where Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, often labelled as a terrorist, was honoured as a martyr in a massive poster on the main stage, Singh reversed his position.
