Canada’s look at violence against indigenous women failing

TORONTO — When hearings began in the long-demanded inquiry into Canada’s missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in September 2016, Anita Ross experienced a rare moment of happiness in a year marked by tragedy.

That February, her 16-year-old daughter, Delaine Copenace — a Johnny Cash fan who was “just starting to come out of her shell” — went missing during a walk in Kenora, Ontario, where she lived. She was found dead in a nearby lake wearing her favorite T-shirt three weeks later. A coroner ruled out foul play and labeled her death an accidental drowning, a conclusion Ross rejects.

Ross was hopeful that the two-year, nearly CA$54 million inquiry into the systemic reasons for the disproportionate number of indigenous women and girls who face violence, are murdered or go missing would bring justice and closure.

But now, after having testified before the inquiry in Thunder Bay, Ontario, she and others lack confidence that it will bring about the changes that it promised.

“I felt that it was a waste of a six-hour drive there and a sixhour drive back,” she said.

Her feelings are echoed in a blistering report released this week that concludes that the inquiry is unlikely to achieve its mandate of investigating and reporting on the systemic causes of all forms of violence against indigenous women and girls. It also finds that “unacceptable” breakdowns in “communication, transparency and accountability” are “effectively retraumatizing families.”

The result, according to the report released by the Native Women’s Association of Canada, a nonprofit established in 1974 that played an instrumental role in pushing for the inquiry, is that “an opportunity has been missed to communicate the realities of violence against indigenous women and solutions to end it.”

While 4 percent of women in Canada are indigenous, a 2014 report from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police found that they accounted for 16 percent of female homicides between 1980 and 2012. A Statistics Canada homicide report in 2016 found that indigenous women are fives times more likely to be victims of homicide than nonindigenous women.

The report is the NWAC’s third “report card” since the inquiry was announced in December 2015, and it assesses 15 areas taken from the inquiry’s promised objectives. This report card finds the inquiry failing in five areas — an improvement from the last one, which found it failing in 10.

One failure of the inquiry, according to the NWAC, is a lack of communication with families about basic details of the community hearings, such as when, where and how they would take place, and how families could be reimbursed for their travel costs — preventing many from testifying.

Ross said she heard about the hearings in Thunder Bay only by word of mouth. She was notified of the date of her testimony just a week before it was scheduled and was able to attend only because of donations. She is still waiting for the emotional and mentalhealth support that was promised to those who testify.