As a way to look into the violence facing aboriginal women in Canada, the government has named five commissioners to lead the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
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Canada launched a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women on Wednesday, a long-awaited look into the root causes of decades of violence that have led to more than a thousand deaths and attracted global criticism.
Yesterday the Canadian government unveiled highly anticipated plans for a national public inquiry into the murders and disappearances of indigenous women and girls across Canada.
Rights groups have long called for such an inquiry, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned on a promise to establish one.
The federal government has provided $53.8 million to the commission for its work over the next two years, $13.8 million more than originally budgeted.
Police are getting ready for a grilling at the national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, even if they are not explicitly mentioned in its mandate.
The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) has waited more than 11 years for this inquiry, the organization said in a release Wednesday.
The federal government formally announced the inquiry August 3 at a morning news conference in Gatineau, Que., naming the inquiry’s five commissioners, led by chair Marion Buller, a British Columbia-based First Nations judge.
A coalition of British Columbia families and support groups said there’s no room for mistakes this time around.
“The national inquiry is an important step on our journey of reconciliation with the indigenous people of Canada”, Bennett said.
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The inquiry will formally run from Sept 2016 to December 2018, with an interim report due in fall 2017.
In particular, she is hopeful the inquiry will examine and address First Nations police services.
“When my cousin Tanya Holyk was being reported missing by my aunt, her file was closed a month after because the VPD clerk was racist and judgmental”, Williams said. “We can not ignore what we know”.
Brian Eyolfson is an Ontario human rights lawyer. The body will also have to examine violence in urban centres as well.
The country’s two other Indigenous women’s groups – the Native Women’s Association of Canada and Women of the Métis Nation – both lent their voices August 3 to a call by Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada for an Inuk commissioner.
This new commission will be able to refer cases to authorities, “like the attorney general or police, for more investigation”, says CBC News but they will not have the power to force police to reopen cases or charge anyone with a crime.
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“The victims deserve justice, their families an opportunity to heal and to be heard”, he has said. “It is going to take everyone-from coast to coast to coast, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, on reserve and off, men and women, young and old-working together to find lasting solutions so that the next generation of women and girls are free from violence”.
