Federal government must be part of solution

The much-anticipated roundtable discussion on murdered and missing aboriginal women will take place today in Ottawa.

This event has been spearheaded by the Assembly of First Nations with no financial support from the federal government. The AFN chiefs passed a resolution in July 2014 that called for a roundtable to discuss this serious issue.

In addition to several national aboriginal organizations, all the provincial and territorial governments and the federal government were invited to attend. The national aboriginal organizations included were the Native Women’s Association of Canada and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples in addition to the AFN.

Four premiers are scheduled to attend: Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne, Greg Selinger of Manitoba and Yukon’s Darrell Pasloski. Northwest Territories Premier Bob McLeod will chair the gathering.

The federal representatives are Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt and Kellie Leitch, the minister of labour, who is also responsible for the status of women.

The AFN website sets out goals for the roundtable as follows:

1. To create a dialogue with all levels of government, indigenous representatives and families to effectively address the crisis of violence against indigenous women and girls;

2. To identify solutions and collaborative means of moving them forward, including ongoing engagement of indigenous peoples, families and communities, to reduce and eventually eliminate all forms of violence.

The agenda will be focused on three priority areas: prevention and awareness; community safety; policing measures and justice responses. The meeting is scheduled to last seven hours, so it must be focused and intense.

So what can we expect to see accomplished at this auspicious gathering?

The premiers will bring a variety of mixed messages. Wynne, who is Ontario’s former aboriginal affairs minister, is already on the record saying the federal government must increase funding for reserves, including housing, schools and infrastructure. All the premiers agree that an inquiry is required.

The federal ministers no doubt will point to their five-year commitment of $25 million to combat violence which amounts to $5 million annually. Wynne has already called that a “drop in the bucket.”

So don’t hold your breath. There will be no announcement forthcoming from Ottawa.

The Conservatives refused to commit any funds to this meeting and only two ministers were sent when six were invited. If a major announcement was forthcoming, Prime Minister Stephen Harper would have attended. Nothing happens with this federal government without the approval of the PMO, so we can expect Valcourt and Leitch to stick to the party line.

The federal line is the violence toward aboriginal women and girls is not a sociological phenomenon but a matter for the police, with the violence internalized within the aboriginal community. This simple logic fails to take into consideration the poverty, poor housing and lack of resources that exist in aboriginal communities.

Also by portraying the problem as something internal to the aboriginal community, the Conservatives are able to wash their hands if it. This thinking ignores the racism that exists in the minds of Vancouver’s Willie Pickton, Saskatoon’s John Crawford and others who prey on aboriginal women.

Aboriginal people make up about 15 per cent of Saskatchewan’s population, but we have more than half of the female homicide victims. In federal and provincial jails, a disproportionate number of inmates are aboriginal. Clearly something is wrong and aboriginal women are paying a terrible price.

The roundtable has to expand the conversation to all Canadians and stress the awareness about poverty, colonialism and the racism that exists in Canadian society.

The discussion no doubt will turn to the need for an inquiry, which has everyone on side except the federal government. In fact, a quick search of commissions of inquiry initiated by the Harper government is extremely short and refers to specific matters only. Clearly, this is a government that doesn’t want to be confronted by the facts that would be contrary to its established positions.

Saskatchewan Justice Minister Gord Wyant goes into the roundtable armed with resolutions for an inquiry from the city councils of Regina and Saskatoon, as well as the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association.

The Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations also is well armed with the results of a series of consultations conducted around the province over the past two weeks.

Meanwhile, the federal government is the odd man out. It appears to be the only major jurisdiction in Canada that is not in favour of an inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women.

Since 1980, there have been close to 1,200 aboriginal women in Canada who have gone missing or been murdered. The Harper government is rushing anti-terrorist legislation through Parliament while all this is going on.

Two crazy men were responsible for the senseless deaths of two people and the government’s publicity machine shifted into high gear. Meanwhile, with 1,200 aboriginal women missing or killed, it remains silent.

Canada’s federal government must be a part of the solution.