An editorial from the Winnipeg Free Press, published Oct. 22:
The timing, it seemed, was worthy of a top-notch Hollywood movie.
No sooner had the keys to Parliament been handed to a party that has promised a national inquiry into Canada’s missing and murdered indigenous women when news broke Quebec provincial police face allegations they have taken aboriginal women for rides out of town and demanded sex.
The aboriginal communities’ distrust of police across Canada is like a poison infecting efforts on both sides to battle the violence plaguing indigenous girls and women.
Yet, the coincidence is not so remarkable: on any given day, Canadians can hear of yet another tragedy, heinous crime or grave offence against an aboriginal person.
This is a sad reflection on the reality in this country. And Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has now assumed the prime responsibility of addressing the historical, complex factors that feed into a shameful state of affairs.
Mr. Trudeau has made some important promises that can help address the generational effects of the racist policies and laws that got us here. Lifting the two per cent cap on funding for on-reserve programs is a good idea. Moving on the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report can be a road map to repairing the relationship between indigenous people and the rest of Canada.
But fixes will take generations. And they will require greater understanding by all Canadians of the historic, systemic causes of the social and economic malaise infecting First Nations communities. This is fundamental to understanding why aboriginal women are far more likely to go missing or be murdered in Canada.
There are warring opinions about the value of a national inquiry into the violence aboriginal women and girls live through. Stacks of voluminous reports, inquests, commissions, academic and non-governmental studies all speak to the common denominators putting women at risk. It would be a mistake, though, to ignore the fact aboriginal men and boys face equally alarming rates of violence and early death.
The research available, however, means much of the fact-finding typically assigned to royal commissions has been done. The Liberal government, then, can frame the mandate of an inquiry to focus on prevention, and on how best to help communities, families and police to respond to it.
As with the distrust in Val D’or, Que., where Sûreté de Québec officers are now facing serious allegations of possibly criminal acts, a deep-seated suspicion infects relations between indigenous people and police. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented numerous accounts of families who believe police were dismissive of their pleas for help when a loved one went missing.
And myths about the factors in violence against indigenous women continue to prevail. The RCMP report into missing and murdered aboriginal women should have dispelled, for example, the idea high-risk lifestyles are at play. Very few victims, aboriginal or not, were involved in the sex trade.
In fact, the RCMP analysis showed the crimes, regardless of the ethnicity of the victims, had more factors in common than not. It is the scale of the problem — aboriginal women were at much higher risk of being preyed upon — that is starkly different.
The review did not examine, however, the complaint police don’t respond as fast to calls for help from aboriginal families. That’s a big task, but one perfectly suited to a national inquiry.
It would not solve violence against aboriginal women and girls, but it would address the mistrust, help police and indigenous communities work together. It would be a meaningful addition to the work of Canada’s Royal Commission on Aboriginal People, Manitoba’s Aboriginal Justice Inquiry and British Columbia’s Pickton inquiry. That, then, would be a worthy accomplishment.
Winnipeg Free Press
