HELPING THE HEALING,

Bridget Tolley’s pain was palpable. Fifteen years after her mother was struck and killed by a police cruiser on her Quebec reserve, there has been no relief from the sense of injustice.

Tolley was at the launch of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, holding a picture of her mother, Gladys. “I don’t want to do this anymore — I’ve been fighting for 15 years. I want justice so bad it hurts,” she said, tears rolling down her face.

Tolley’s case is typical of a justice system that has been applied in an uneven fashion when it comes to indigenous Canadians — for example, she says the lead investigator into her mother’s case was the brother of the officer driving the car.

But it’s not clear that the inquiry will make any difference to people like Tolley.

The $54 million allocated by the government is needed to offer justice and healing, said Carolyn Bennett, the Indigenous Affairs minister.

Yet there is not — and nor should there be — any judicial component to the commission.

It has been directed to make recommendations to remove “systemic causes of violence” by the end of next year.

“The commission is not a criminal court and cannot find any criminal wrongdoing,” said Bennett. If it discovers any information in the course of its inquiry, it can forward it to the relevant prosecutors but it has no jurisdiction in legal matters and is expressly forbidden from interfering in ongoing criminal investigations.

In fact, the extent of those investigations are likely to be limited. Bennett said no-one wants a “sterile courtroom drama where people have to testify.”

There will be no adversarial investigation into individual cases. The commission has been asked to build on existing literature, such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report, British Columbia’s Oppal report on missing women and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Rights. As such, it is likely to have all the heft of a glorified parliamentary committee report — earnest and worthy but non-binding and easily ignored.

More pertinent for families seeking justice and redress was the $16 million announced by Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, for family information liaison units in each province, to help families of missing or murdered indigenous women gather more information about their loved ones.

There was a tacit acknowledgment by Patty Hajdu, the minister for the status of women, that the inquiry is unlikely to reveal anything we don’t already know. Hajdu said she already sees “a concrete path forward,” introducing changes on RCMP accountability, even before the inquiry’s recommendations are handed down.

“Racism and sexism are embedded in institutions intended to protect women and girls,” she said in a sweeping analysis of Canadian history that blamed racism and “endemic” gender-based violence on colonialism.

Some degree of self-flagellation was inevitable, and given the anecdotal evidence, warranted. Even the RCMP Commissioner, Bob Paulson, has admitted the existence of racism and sexism in his force.

But that’s not the whole story.

There was no reference by any of the speakers at the launch event to the domestic violence problem in aboriginal communities. Statistics Canada revealed earlier this year that 10 per cent of indigenous women reported domestic abuse, more than three times the number of non-indigenous women.

Whatever the source of the violence, the inquiry is a useful admonition that the country considers it tragic and unacceptable that the murder rate for native women is four times the national average.

Even the Conservative party, which has long opposed an inquiry, said it supports the commission, “as long as it remains focused on reducing these horrific tragedies and achieving measurable improvements in the day-to-day lives of indigenous women and girls,” according to opposition critic Cathy McLeod.

That is a tall order — the inquiry’s impact will likely be slow and imperceptible.

Yet for all that, it is another important step toward healing, compromise and mutual accommodation with a segment of the Canadian population that has suffered marginalization and discrimination.

Bridget Tolley is realistic about what is achievable. “I might not ever get the justice my family wants. But I hope we stop other families (from) going through what we went through,” she said.