MMIW probe faces criticism over lack of police files
MMIW INQUIRY HASN’T ASKED LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES FOR COLD CASE DOCUMENTS
The national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women says that reviewing police files is a “centrepiece” of its investigation, but nearly a year and a half into its mandate, many police agencies across the country say the inquiry has not asked them for records.
The inquiry also says it has been unable to start reviewing the police files it does have due to technological challenges, though the problems have recently been resolved and it expects that work to begin shortly.
Since its launch, the national inquiry has been criticized for not focusing enough on police mis steps during investigations involving Indigenous women. Last summer, the inquiry went out of its way to clarify that it “can and will consider the conduct of policing services.”
But it is unclear what has been achieved since then. Police agencies in eight major Canadian cities — Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal — say they have not been contacted by the national inquiry to provide documents.
“The Vancouver Police Department has not had any requests from the national inquiry on missing and murdered Indigenous women,” said a spokesperson for the agency. The Edmonton Police Service said it “has not given any files to the inquiry. We have never been contacted to provide files.” The EPS is currently conducting its own review of cold cases involving Indigenous women.
Jennifer Cox, the commission’s lead legal counsel, said there are ongoing “conversations about document production” with police agencies’ legal teams. The inquiry currently has case files from “pretty much all over the country,” Cox said, some obtained through subpoenas and others from family members. But the inquiry did not provide details about what subpoenas it has issued, or which police forces have been contacted.
Cox also suggested subpoenas may not have been issued to police services in cities where hearings haven’t yet taken place. “A lot of the information we get is just prior to the hearing, or just after the hearing,” she said. But hearings have already taken place in Winnipeg, Edmonton and Saskatoon, where the city police services all say they have not been asked to provide records.
The national inquiry has obtained documents from at least three police agencies in Canada — the RCMP, the Thunder Bay Police Service and the Sûreté du Québec — which the commissioners first mentioned months ago.
In September, the four commissioners appeared before the House of Commons Indigenous affairs committee to give a briefing on the inquiry’s progress. “We have always intended to investigate policing, and I think the best way of describing it succinctly is that we intend to investigate the investigations,” Marion Buller, Chief Commissioner, told the committee. She said the inquiry had already begun engaging with police services including the RCMP, the Ontario Provincial Police, Thunder Bay police, “and more in the works, to obtain documents from them.”
The RCMP has confirmed it received subpoenas for 10 cases from the inquiry last summer, and that it received notice in late 2017 that more files would be requested, which it is now working to produce. The documents could include “police notes, medical examiners’ findings, forensic tests, photographs, transcripts of interviews, etc.,” according to a spokesperson.
The Thunder Bay Police also confirmed that it has released “materials” to the inquiry after receiving subpoenas, but would not specify the type or number of documents.
The Ontario Provincial Police has not received any request for files from the national inquiry, according to a spokesperson, despite having set up an internal project team “to facilitate requests for information and materials regarding OPP policies and criminal investigations.”
Quebec’s provincial police, the Sûreté du Québec, does appear to have transferred
a large number of documents to the inquiry. During the September briefing, Commissioner Michèle Audette told the committee that the SQ had transferred “several thousand files” on USB keys, thanks to the work of lawyers on the inquiry’s Quebec team. She later said more than 7,000 files had been transferred that “pertain to Aboriginal issues in Quebec.”
A spokesperson for the SQ told the Post that it expects to transmit more documents as requests are received from the inquiry.
The national inquiry’s mandate to study police has been a source of controversy since its early days. As soon as the inquiry’s terms of reference were released in August 2016, a coalition of organizations in British Columbia issued a statement saying it didn’t have “confidence that the role of policing will be appropriately addressed,” since police weren’t explicitly mentioned.
In July 2017, following more pressure from families, the inquiry released a statement clarifying that it would consider policing services across Canada, and that it had a forensic team reviewing police files.
In an interim report released in November, the inquiry referred to its forensic police file review committee as “a centrepiece” of its investigation. “It will put select police files on missing and murdered women and girls under a clinical microscope, provide analysis, and make observations regarding trends that may emerge among the practices of various police authorities across this country,” the report says.
On Tuesday, Cox said that review hasn’t started yet, largely due to problems the inquiry had in getting access to Ringtail, a software program for analyzing electronic documents, from the federal government. “We had documents sitting but we couldn’t process them so that people could look at them,” she said.
Cox said those problems were fixed as of early January, and the inquiry’s forensic team will soon be able to start looking at the documents. “We’re in full mode document production right now,” she said.