A child's red dress hangs on a stake near the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. A former judge who chaired the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls says progress on the report's 215 calls for justice has occurred 'at a glacial pace.'JENNIFER GAUTHIER/Reuters
A former judge who chaired the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations are decrying inaction by governments five years after the landmark findings were released.
Marion Buller, who was the chief commissioner of the inquiry, and AFN National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak made the remarks separately on the fifth anniversary of the inquiry’s report, which was presented on June 3, 2019. It included a total of 231 calls for justice that were directed at all levels of government, institutions, industries and Canadians.
The public inquiry was the result of considerable political pressure from families and advocates who wanted to see a process to examine disproportionate levels of violence against Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people. After the 2015 election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government would name an inquiry to conduct this examination. It found that Indigenous women are 12 times more likely to go missing or be murdered than their non-Indigenous counterparts.
On Monday, Ms. Buller told The Globe and Mail that “progress, if any, has occurred at a glacial pace.” She said there’s a lack of political will from all levels of government, which have failed to move forward in a meaningful way.
She said that after the inquiry released its report, she was aware time would be needed for consultations before action was taken.
“I knew that it wouldn’t be overnight change, but I was expecting certainly a higher priority given to our calls for justice,” she said.
The AFN released a report card on Monday that says only two of the more than 150 calls for justice focused on First Nations have been fully implemented in half a decade. At a news conference in Ottawa, Ms. Woodhouse Nepinak implored all levels of government to take action.
“It’s disheartening,” she said. “It’s unacceptable.”
In response to Ms. Woodhouse Nepinak, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree said work on the 231 calls for justice require a response from the federal government, the provinces and territories, as well as civil society, all of which have worked on this issue for many years.
Ottawa has made progress on roughly 160 of the 215 calls for justice that are either the sole jurisdiction of the federal government or of shared jurisdiction, he added.
“There’s still work to do, there’s no question,” he said.
Mr. Anandasangaree said there are a number of areas where Ottawa has “moved fast” such as transitional housing for vulnerable people as well as pilot testing in Manitoba of the Red Dress Alert, which will notify the public when an Indigenous woman, girl or gender-diverse person goes missing.
Leah Gazan, the NDP’s women’s critic who pushed for the Red Dress Alert system alongside advocates, called the level of progress to date “unacceptable.”
In a statement, Ms. Gazan said Mr. Trudeau’s government has failed to treat the issue with the urgency it deserves. She said families and survivors deserve justice and the federal government must implement all calls from the commission, including to establish a national Indigenous and human-rights ombudsperson.
Ms. Buller also said Monday that the ombudsman, as well a National Indigenous and Human Rights Tribunal, should and could have been established years ago because there is no real forum for Indigenous people to complain about breaches of their rights and to see action.
The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs also released a statement on Monday to say that meaningful progress has been disappointingly slow, and the organization expressed its frustration with the lack of any substantial advancements. Grand Chief Cathy Merrick said its nations cannot afford to continue to experience glacially slow progress.
She said recent commitments from the federal government to test the alert system and fund the search of the Prairie Green Landfill, north of Winnipeg, for the remains of two missing Indigenous women, are steps in the right direction. But she said they fall short of addressing the deep-rooted issues.
“The high numbers of First Nations children in foster care, overdose deaths, suicides and pervasive poverty are stark reminders of the continuing marginalization our people face,” Ms. Merrick said.
The inquiry’s report included calls for widespread changes to the way the justice system handles cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and improved protocols to ensure police investigations are complete.
The police response was a major theme in the case of Robert Pickton, a notorious serial killer whose crimes resulted in public inquiries into police failures to adequately investigate the disappearances of Indigenous women and sex workers. It became public on Friday that the 74-year-old had died after he was attacked by another inmate in a Quebec prison.
Ms. Woodhouse Nepinak said she wishes she could say there has been progress in terms of response times from police in the years following Mr. Pickton’s case. But she said First Nations leaders continue to hear “horrific stories,” including about incidents that could have possibly been prevented had there been a faster response.
Sharon Johnson has been waiting more than 30 years and Thunder Bay Police have yet to make any developments in the investigation into the killing of her sister, Sandra Johnson, in 1992. She was 18 years old and found frozen and nude in the snow.
In 2022, police renewed pleas to the public for information that could lead to who was responsible for Sandra’s death.
For her part, Ms. Johnson started two awareness walks in 2005 in honour of her sister and other victims. She said she has since taken a step back from her advocacy duties for her own well-being but still speaks at events in the area – an experience that reminds her and her family of their continuing grief.
“It is a huge thing to talk about,” Ms. Johnson said. “There is somebody still out there that was responsible for whatever happened to her.”
Editor’s note: (June 4, 2024): A previous version of this article incorrectly attributed this quote to the NDP women's critic Leah Gazan: 'The high numbers of First Nations children in foster care, overdose deaths, suicides and pervasive poverty are stark reminders of the continuing marginalization our people face.' The statement came from Grand Chief Cathy Merrick. This version has been updated.