Commission Wants Inquiry into Missing Indigenous Women to Be Wide-ranging

By Mark Kennedy
Ottawa Citizen
December 14, 2015

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/commission-wants-inquiry-into-missing-indigenous-women-to-be-wide-ranging

An upcoming public inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women must explore a range of possible causes, including the role of gangs and the international sex trade, says the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

It also says the inquiry must expose “systemic” flaws that can be remedied with new policy.

In its final report, the commission strongly supports a public inquiry and provides more than 20 specific recommendations on how it should be structured. The TRC says the inquiry should look at the role played by governments, the RCMP and other police and the child welfare system.

Aboriginal women are more likely than other women to experience risk factors for violence.

As well, the commissioners say the inquiry should look at whether serial killers are at fault, and how the threat of violence against Canadian aboriginal women compares to similar threats in other countries.

“Aboriginal women are more likely than other women to experience risk factors for violence,” the commission says in its report, to be released Tuesday. “They are disproportionately young, poor, unemployed, likely to have been involved with the child welfare system and to live in a community marked by social disorder.”

The report cites a 2009 Statistics Canada survey that found 13 per cent of aboriginal women reported they had experienced violence within the past year, a rate 2.5 times higher than among non-aboriginal women. More than three-quarters of these violent incidents were never reported to police by the aboriginal women.

The TRC also points to “extremely high rates of intimate-partner violence.”

Of those aboriginal women with a current or former spouse who responded to the survey, 15 per cent reported having been a victim of spousal violence in the previous five years, compared to six per cent of non-aboriginal women.

The TRC, established to examine the residential schools saga, suggests that the schools’ impact on aboriginal communities could be linked to the violence against women. “Residential schools deprived children of access to cultural and spiritual teachings and disrupted Aboriginal women’s traditional roles as ‘mothers, grandmothers, caregivers, nurturers, teachers, and family decision-makers.’ ”

As well, it says “discriminatory” provisions in the Indian Act had the effect of denying aboriginal identity to women who married non-aboriginal men.

“This contributed to the separation of Aboriginal women from their communities.”

The federal government reiterated last week that it will establish a public inquiry into missing and murdered women. The government will spend the next two or three months in consultations to figure out how the inquiry should operate and what its mandate should be. The inquiry is expected to be appointed in the spring and last two years.

In an interview Monday with the Citizen, TRC chair Justice Murray Sinclair said a “very clear mandate” needs to be established for the inquiry. He said families need to understand there are “limits” to what an inquiry can do, but also that they can “benefit” from what it eventually reveals.

Among the TRC’s recommendations for the inquiry:

– In examining individual cases, it must be cautious when dealing with open cases where there may be a person of interest and where additional evidence is needed to lay a charge.

– It should consider panels with multiple witnesses when considering systemic issues.

– It should not name offenders, or identify criminal wrongdoing that has not already been found through an appropriate criminal process.

— It should examine whether there is evidence of involvement by street gangs, motorcycle gangs and traffickers in the sex trade with international ties.

– Anyone potentially affected by an inquiry must be protected from character and reputational harm, and has the right to attend and “be heard.”

– The inquiry should collect detailed data on when the incidents occurred, consistencies, similarities and differences between incidents, and how many victims were engaged in a “high-risk lifestyle.”

– It should examine whether the federal “tough on crime” initiative is reducing “victimization.”

Contact: mkennedy@ottawacitizen.com