The inquiry into the Air India bombing may be able to release secret RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service documents to the public, which its commissioner has said are crucial to the proceedings.

The commission said in a release Friday its counsel, Mark Freiman, briefed Justice John Major on progress made in getting the government to produce the documents when the inquiry resumes next month.

Justice John Major has said the documents are crucial to the probe into Canada's worst mass murder.
(CBC)

In February, Major threatened to shut down the inquiry unless a dispute about how much evidence will be made public by the government was resolved. He called for a progress report on the matter on March 26.

"Mr. Freiman is confident that the necessary evidence will be available to begin stage two of the inquiry," the release said.

"In view of the update on the production of documents, the status report previously announced for March 26 is unnecessary."

Major has said repeatedly that he wants most of the proceedings to be accessible to the families who lost loved ones and to the media, meaning that documents from the RCMP and CSIS would have to be made public.

Certain documents have been released with entire pages and sections "black-lined" or censored.

Canada's worst mass murder

Government lawyers have argued that certain documents should be kept from the public due to continuing security concerns and that thousands must be vetted before public release.

Major and his staff have unlimited access to all documents, but the government gets to decide which parts of the documents can be released publicly or can even be referred to when witnesses are questioned.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has instructed his officials to use the broadest interpretation of the law possible when releasing documents.

The commission will resume hearing evidence on April 30 to provide "a reasonable amount of time" for counsel for the families and other parties to review the documents and prepare for the hearings, the release said.

The long-delayed probe is looking into the worst mass murder in Canada's history.

The 1985 bombing killed 329 passengers aboard Air India Flight 182, which exploded over the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Ireland. Of the passengers, 280 were Canadian citizens and 82 were children.

A separate luggage bomb destined for a second Air India flight killed two Japanese baggage handlers at Tokyo's Narita airport.