REASON FOR OPTIMISM
This week’s launch of a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women has been met with a tremendous degree of optimism. Everyone — including Tory politicians who once opposed the process — are hopeful the review can improve the plight of aboriginal women who, for too long, have been the victims of violence.
Calgary’s Chantal Chagnon has been helping to organize marches for more than a decade to remember such women, and now describes a sense of “hopeful optimism” with the launch of the inquiry set to begin Sept. 1.
Chagnon is hoping the process will provide a measure of justice by reopening cold cases that were dismissed by police as accidents or suicides.
“So many of my friends and family have been affected by this — it’s astonishing,” she said Wednesday. “It’s not whether or not you know someone, it’s, ‘How many people do you know that this has happened to?’ ”
People like Chagnon may end up feeling let down by the $54-million inquiry, which won’t file its final recommendations until the end of 2018. The fact is there is no judicial aspect to the process. Commissioners can pass on relevant information to Crown prosecutors, but they are banned from interfering in ongoing criminal cases. That’s perhaps as it should be; otherwise, the inquiry would be at risk of losing sight of its instruction to make recommendations to remove “systemic causes of violence.”
At the very least, however, it’s to be expected that police forces will respond promptly and efficiently to any new information that may shed light on cases that have languished or been mischaracterized. Justice deserves no less.
For now, the biggest win is the $16 million in federal funds to establish family information liaison units in every province, which will help relatives gather more information about their loved ones.
In the shorter term, the inquiry will give countless families the rare chance to be heard after decades of perceived indifference.
There’s no shortage of grim stories of violence and neglect, and sharing them in a supportive environment will perhaps be a small way of moving forward.
In the end, every Canadian hopes the inquiry accomplishes what it is designed to do: recommend measures that allow aboriginal women to enjoy the same level of personal safety and protection that most people take for granted.
If it can do that by bearing down to the root causes of the violence — and that’s a tall order given high rates of poverty and other disadvantages — then the country will be a better place. Aboriginal women deserve to have that hope.