Report leaves women forsaken again
Missing Women’s Inquiry Commissioner Wally Oppal had been speaking for several minutes before the first derisive comment rang out: “Hogwash!”
Over the course of a rambling hour-long presentation unveiling his multivolume report, the former appeal court justice was interrupted several times by victims’ families and aboriginal women. They did not yell, “Bravo.”
Oppal, who was appointed to oversee the inquiry in September 2010, pleaded with his audience for understanding, for people to read the 1,448-page document and to consider his conclusions.
But the native people and victims’ families who attended his media conference on Monday responded with angry skepticism. Who can blame them? They had heard much of it before over the decade since serial killer Robert Pickton was apprehended — the police investigations were “blatant failures,” there were “patterns of error,” there was an “absence of leadership,” there were “outdated policing systems” … Yet no one was to blame. “All of us have to take responsibility,” Oppal said.
There was a “lack of accountability,” he said — there still is. His solutions? Working groups, liaison officers, community workers, mandatory training, research projects, consultation processes …
More money for victims’ kids, more money for victims’ families, more money for aboriginal women’s groups, more money for women’s shelters … a regional police force, a new agency for warning the public …
Police officers should “promote equality” and “refrain from discriminatory policing,” “equality” should be added as a fundamental principle to the Crown Policy Manual … there should be an end to endemic poverty!
Oppal might as well have thrown Jell-O at the wall and told the government to adopt whatever sticks.
He did a good job of documenting the police mistakes, but he didn’t do a good job of analyzing the reasons this tragedy occurred.
What seems missing from his tome was any perspective from the man who spent most of the last halfcentury in the legal system at every level.
From the prosecution service to the eccentricities of the provincial policing system, from the inner workings of the criminal justice branch to the politics of the bench, to how things get done in cabinet, Oppal is intimate with it all. And he’s from a visible minority group.
If there’s anyone who should know about institutional racism and systemic problems, it’s him.
Yet none of that insight was brought to bear. In spite of how much he says this was a heart-wrenching ordeal, Oppal appears to have simply gone through the motions.
And he is dead wrong when he says we are all responsible.
Yes, most of us should shoulder some blame for society’s inequalities.
But in this case, the media and the community clamoured for police to wake up and they were not just ignored, their fears and concerns were discounted and ridiculed.
It’s disingenuous to use long-standing social inequities to muddy the issue of institutional responsibility and the failure of government in this specific case.
Regardless, Attorney General Shirley Bond said the broad societal changes “will not happen overnight. There is a long journey ahead of us.”
No kidding. I’m reminded of a Jewish guy who once said the poor will be with you always, but let’s leave that quibble aside.
The systemic problems this report itemizes are also going to be with us for a long time.
The government’s response was to say we’ll have a lot more talk.
Bond committed to little else — the $750,000 she announced as funding for an emergency drop-in centre is considerably less than the legal fees charged by the commission’s own lawyers.
No wonder there were hecklers.
Imagine, after all this time, dozens of women went missing and now we know what went wrong — systemic failures in two police departments for which Mr. Nobody is responsible.
Still, given his conclusions, what was Oppal doing as attorney general from 2005 through 2009? Didn’t he see the systemic issues then?
At least he could have explained in his report why he’s making recommendations today on things he had the power to set right years ago.
Oppal said the missing women were “forsaken twice: once by society at large and again by the police.”
I tend to agree with the woman who yelled: “And now a third time by you!”