Frustration with MMIW inquiry grows

The delays are inexcusable. To the families that should be most invested in the process, they are frustrating and hurtful.

But can anyone really say they’re surprised by the negligible progress made thus far by the bureaucracy-bound National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls?

The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) this week issued its second report card on the inquiry, and the group gave the public investigation process passing grades on none of the 15 key criteria identified by NWAC. Ten of the measurement areas, concerned mostly with the inquiry’s organizational structure, accessibility, communication and respect for families, survivors and other stakeholders, were given complete “fail” grades. The remainder were judged to be either in need of action or not subject to assessment because of insufficient information.

In particular, NWAC criticized the inquiry commission’s decision to focus on assembling legal and research teams during its startup phase, leaving communications and community-relations components severely understaffed. According to the report card, this has created a framework — eight months into the inquiry process — that makes it very difficult for First Nations, Inuit and Metis families to make themselves heard.

In criticizing the inquiry’s failure to create a process that is sensitive to the trauma suffered by individuals, families and communities directly affected by the murder or disappearance of indigenous women, NWAC bluntly stated that it “cannot recommend that families participate in the inquiry process” until a more traumainformed framework is adopted.

On Tuesday, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett expressed sympathy for the concerns raised by NWAC and other groups, but noted that the inquiry operates at arm’s length from government. “When the families have concerns, I have concerns,” she said.

The inquiry, which is being conducted by Marion Buller — British Columbia’s first female First Nations judge — and four other commissioners, is expected to last two years and cost nearly $54 million. Delays in scheduling hearings — the first is slated for May 29 in Whitehorse, but others have been pushed back until fall at the earliest — and problems encountered by individuals seeking to register to contribute have already put both the timetable and budget in question.

By creating a process that has made the fundamental element of public involvement so difficult, the inquiry commission has already distanced itself from its core goal of promoting and advancing reconciliation. And the challenges created by its unwieldy — and, according to NWAC, inappropriately “top down” — structure will only increase as the investigation moves into its public-hearings stage.

In part, the inquiry’s ineffectiveness to date is a reflection of the fact that its most important goals are inevitably at cross purposes. The collection of stories and insights from people affected by the MMIW issue is necessarily a time-consuming process, made more so by the inquiry commission’s early missteps.

The other pressing concern facing the commission — the federal-government directive to “recommend concrete actions to remove systemic causes of violence and increase the safety of indigenous women and girls in Canada” — is an ongoing life-and-death issue that begs for the sort of swift and decisive action that governmentmandated inquiries are simply not designed to deliver.

Indigenous communities’ frustrations are justified. The talk has barely begun. Whatever action might result is years away.

In the meantime, indigenous women continue to die and disappear.

This editorial was published May 18 in the Winnipeg Free Press and distributed by the Canadian Press.