Get inquiry back on track

The resignation of Marilyn Poitras, one of the five commissioners of the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women, makes indisputable what has long seemed likely: despite the chief commissioner’s recent assurances and excuses, the embattled inquiry is in profound crisis. And if the federal government doesn’t quickly intervene, this important tool for reconciliation risks deepening the cynicism it was founded in part to address.

The resignation of Poitras, a Métis law professor at the University of Saskatchewan, is the latest in a spate of hitches that can neither be ignored nor explained away. In just the last several weeks, for instance, the executive director and four other senior staffers have also stepped aside for a variety of stated reasons. Asked about the upheaval last week, chief commissioner Marion Buller said the inquiry was “moving at lightning speed” and that the departures were merely coincidental.

But Poitras’ exit and her carefully worded resignation letter casts yet more doubt on those claims. The outgoing commissioner explained that while she believes in the importance of the inquiry, and in the terms of reference the government set out, she cannot perform her duties “with the process designed in its current structure.” In other words, she seems to be saying, the inquiry is being mismanaged.

This jibes with what we already know. The commission has been mired in controversy since its inception, its progress painfully slow and its work, such as it is, troublingly shambolic.

Not until September 2016, nearly a year after it was promised, was the inquiry finally formed, before going silent until its first news conference in February of this year. In March, it was revealed that the inquiry’s official list of victims’ family members, whose testimony is vital to the project, inexplicably included a mere 90 names. (It is believed there are as many as 4,000 victims.)

Then in late May, the inquiry finally launched its hearings, sitting for three days in Whitehorse before suspending them for the summer.

In under a year, the commissioners have squandered much of the trust that was placed in them. The Native Women’s Association of Canada released a report card that gave the inquiry failing grades in 10 out of 15 areas. Survivors and family members have repeatedly expressed frustration at the inquiry’s failure to communicate about its plans and its progress. In May, nearly 40 Indigenous leaders and artists wrote an open letter to the commissioners lamenting the lack of transparency. The enterprise seems to be having the opposite of its intended effect.

The inquiry’s task is both profoundly complex and vitally important. Its commissioners have been called upon to identify the roots of the long-standing epidemic of violence against Indigenous women; to recommend concrete proposals to curb this violence and seek justice for victims and their families; and to advise governments on how best to honour the many who have gone missing or been killed over the past three and a half decades.

Advocates have been calling for this probe for more than a decade. And the Liberal government at first seemed to understand the urgency, imposing a tight deadline: a preliminary report is to be issued in November of this year, followed by a final document in December 2018.

But the delays, the resignations, the internal dissent, the deteriorating relationships with victims, their families and the larger Indigenous communities — all of these have made the likelihood of success, never mind by deadline, look increasingly remote.

Calls to blow the process up and start again are growing. On Twitter, “#resettheinquiry” continues to trend. Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett says the government will push ahead. But it must not ignore the critics. Ottawa must figure out what obstacles exist to timeliness and effective communication and take whatever steps are necessary to get this commission back on track.

What is clear is that the government cannot stand back and hope for the best as the inquiry self-destructs. The creation of this commission is one of the few concrete gestures of reconciliation that this government has offered. It must not now be allowed to become yet another empty symbol — or worse, another case of justice denied victims and families who have already waited too long.

In under a year, the commissioners have squandered much of the trust that was placed in them