(BCTV) - Is Canada's Department of Immigration trying to cover up the fact that it almost lost that ship full of Chinese refugees? A News Hour investigation into last month's dramatic events off Vancouver Island has learned that despite the fact the ship was spotted and reported lying off shore, almost a full day went by before immigration took action. A leaked report, makes no mention of the delay.

Today, some of the newly-released refugee claimants from that dilapidated ship celebrated their first day of freedom in Canada by going shopping. Most of the refugees were released after going through an interview process. But as Clem Chapple reports, an official immigration report makes no mention of nearly losing a suspected smuggling ship.

Clem Chapple, reporting: "July 19, 4:56 p.m., an airborne fisheries observer photographs a ship well off shore (25 miles off Estevan Pt.). It is steaming very slowly, but speeds up when the aircraft, marked Canada, makes a low pass. The incident is carefully noted by the observer; he calls it a suspected smuggling ship, it has no flag or markings. Within an hour, he has reported the incident on land by phone to military intelligence, but three emergency numbers at Canada Immigration are only answered by voice mail.

The next day the ship is discovered sixty to seventy miles away at anchor in Tahsis Inlet by two off-duty American policeman who arrest a pair of the ship's passengers floating on a makeshift raft. Only then do Canada's watchmen go into action. The ship had been allowed to go wherever it wanted since the previous evening, but its plan for smuggling the passengers into Canada apparently went wrong.

But a confidential immigration report on the incident completely ignores the initial contact and the intervening night and potential for escape. The document talks proudly of operation "osprey crimson"... as if the first information was "reports that a potential smuggling ship had been located in Tahsis Inlet" ... and "how the immigration team members scrambled to reach the area"...and, "the incident was handed to us on a platter." The document even claims that "there was no other contact with ships en route and the smuggling ship was not overflown until it reached Tahsis," as if the previous day's contact and photographs did not exist.

The only immigration officer allowed to speak on the topic claims the RCMP had taken over. Were you slow in reacting?"

Jim Redmond, Immigration Canada: "I'm a little surprised at that. Our information is that there was a fisheries flyby that spotted it the evening before. The vessel was steaming at about two knows, and sped up to ten knots, and went in and dropped its anchor. The Mounted Police were on it fairly quickly, and my team was assembled and I had officers up there in the morning, and the remainder of the team arrived in the early afternoon."

Clem Chapple, reporting: "Immigration got lucky when something went wrong for the smuggling operation and it was left stranded in Tahsis Inlet. As one migrant put it: "There is supposed to be someone leading us somewhere. We are not supposed to be sitting in the water and be caught like this"."