INQUIRY BESET BY ‘SEXISM’: EX-STAFF
Another blow to B.C.’S probe of missing women
VANCOUVER • Employees of a high-profile public inquiry examining how police investigated cases of missing and murdered sex-trade workers say they encountered a “highly sexualized” workplace environment where male staff members made offensive comments about women and their bodies.
Five former commission staff members described to the National Post episodes of harassment, intimidation and conflict occurring behind closed doors at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, which was called by the B.C. government in 2010.
According to one former inquiry employee, a senior commission staff member made reference to a local sex-trade worker as “the fat hooker.” The same female prostitute had offered to assist the inquiry with its mandate, it is alleged. Similar remarks were made about the woman on other occasions, the source said.
A former employee alleges that another male staff member made degrading remarks about a female colleague’s body. “He said, ‘You should spend less time working behind your desk, and a lot more time working on your ass,’ ” the former employee recalled.
The workplace allegations may be the most serious trouble yet for a commission already beset with controversy.
The missing women inquiry has been criticized by aboriginal groups and individuals who say they have been excluded from the process. Robyn Gervais, a lawyer contracted by the commission to represent aboriginal interests, resigned in early March, citing numerous obstacles put in front of her.
“The delay in calling aboriginal witnesses, the failure to provide adequate hearing time, the ongoing lack of support from the aboriginal community and the disproportionate focus on police evidence have led me to conclude that aboriginal interests have not and will not be adequately represented in these proceedings,” Ms. Gervais told the commission. “As I leave this inquiry, I regret that I could not find a way to bring the voices of the missing and murdered aboriginal women into this room.”
Two media relations specialists hired by the commission terminated their contracts days after Ms. Gervais resigned; they did not discuss in public their reasons for leaving. Other contracted employees have quit or have not had their contracts renewed.
Lawyers representing local community interests and the families of missing women have also raised concerns about the inquiry process. Cameron Ward, a lawyer for the families, has alleged that police have withheld relevant documents from the inquiry, and that the commission itself may be “enabling” a police cover-up.
But concerns about its workplace environment are new. In an interview with the National Post, senior commission counsel Art Vertlieb said no one on his staff has ever raised with him issues about inappropriate behaviour in their office. Nor has any former or present staff member made a formal complaint, as far as he is aware.
“I’m astounded to hear that,” said Mr. Vertlieb, responding to the allegations of harassment and sexist language. “I have zero tolerance for that. And anybody who knows me would know that. We’ve got a staff primarily of women, not sort of by design, but it seemed the way things go.”
Some of the comments attributed to members of the commission staff are serious enough to warrant dismissal, were they indeed made, he said. None of the allegations regarding the inquiry workplace environment and inappropriate conduct have been proven.
Mr. Vertlieb is a veteran Vancouver trial lawyer and vice-president of the Law Society of British Columbia; he will serve as president next year. He is the most senior inquiry staff member working under commissioner Wally Oppal, a former provincial Cabinet minister and appeal court judge, whom the provincial government appointed to lead the inquiry.
Mr. Oppal is responsible for choosing commission staff members, all of whom are paid by the province. Commission staff have included lawyers, articling students and administrative workers. On Mr. Vertlieb’s recommendation, Mr. Oppal hired John Boddie, a former Vancouver Police Department sergeant, to serve as the commission’s executive director of operations and planning.
One person who left the commission said the workplace felt “like an
''[It] has become a manifestation of the forces it was intended to study''
old boy’s club. If a person doesn’t toe the line, they are told they’ll be given the crap work. They have to toe the line. This has nothing to do with Wally [Oppal]. He’s a fantastic person.”
Mr. Vertlieb was perplexed by the comment about an “old boy’s club.” The comment “makes no sense,” he said, “because there’s not that many old boys.... There’s me, I’m old. Wally’s old. John Boddie is [about] 60. There’s the three of us and that’s it.”
All of the former employees who spoke to the National Post requested that their names not be published, citing concern for their future employment prospects. “I’ve been made aware that my speaking [out] could end my career,” said one.
The allegations are especially troubling given the inquiry’s mandate, which is limited to events in a five-year period beginning in 1997. The B.C. government formed the inquiry in response to widespread concerns that the Vancouver Police Department and the RCMP failed to take dozens of missing women cases seriously, and were lackadaisical in their investigation of Robert Pickton, a Port Coquitlam pig farmer charged in 2002 with murdering 26 women missing from Vancouver.
Pickton was convicted on six counts of second-degree murder in 2007. The remaining 20 murder charges were later stayed. A preponderance of Pickton’s victims were involved in the sex trade and had worked in Vancouver’s drug-infested Downtown Eastside. Many of them were aboriginal.
A lawyer contracted to assist the commission says the inquiry “is replicating conditions that allowed women to go missing for so long: Lack of resources, dismissive attitudes, a failure to listen to the community. The commission has become a manifestation of the forces it was intended to study.... It’s like time travel. [There is] sexism, dismissiveness about discrimination. In the context, it’s completely abhorrent.”
Another lawyer who worked for the commission agrees, adding that aboriginal representation at the inquiry amounts to “tokenism. It’s nothing else but that. Everything that Robyn Gervais said was true,” the lawyer added. “I was silenced. It was the most degrading, humiliating, devastating, disgusting thing. It was like being treated like a survival sex-trade worker.”
Mr. Vertlieb acknowledged that commission employees have faced difficult challenges. “Our staff are tired,” he said. “They’ve worked incredibly hard. Some of us have been on [the inquiry] a year and a half, and we’re really, really tired. But I don’t think anybody’s been dismissive.” Mr. Oppal, he added, “will be floored when he hears this.... You could knock me over with a feather.”
Public hearings began in October and are scheduled to end this month.