Five weeks ago, we warned the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls was in crisis, and urgent action was needed to rescue it.
Now the crisis has deepened. This week, Marilyn Poitras, one of the five commissioners, resigned. The inquiry has lost its way, she said. Four senior managers have also left.
The issue is not that Poitras quit. Chief commissioner Marion Buller noted that disagreements are to be expected.
But her resignation came 10 months into what was supposed to be a 26-month process. If the inquiry were proceeding effectively and expeditiously, Poitras would have known within the first two months that she was not prepared to support the direction being taken.
If it took her 10 months to understand the problems — almost 40 per cent of the time allowed before the commission is to report — it is no wonder that a large segment of the Indigenous community has lost confidence in the process.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urge patience and defend the commission.
But two factors undermine their credibility.
First, the growing number of Indigenous groups, including those representing the families of murdered women, who say they, like Poitras, have lost faith in the process.
And second, the inquiry’s creeping pace and disorganization. In its first full year, the commission will have held one set of community hearings, in Whitehorse.
It cancelled, with no clear explanation, hearings scheduled for Edmonton, Thunder Bay, northern B.C. and other communities, and rescheduled them for the fall. It had spent $5 million before hearing its first witness and has already warned that it would not likely meet its November 2018 reporting deadline and would exceed its $53.8-million budget.
The inquiry is necessary. Families need to understand what happened to their sisters, mothers and daughters, and why. And most important, we need to learn what can be done to end this violence. Abandoning it now would also be a profound betrayal of the families and communities that were promised answers.
But the commissioners, by cancelling hearings, signalling that they will miss their deadline and, in Poitras’ case, resigning, have acknowledged the inquiry is floundering.
The government should step in and work with the First Nations stakeholders and the commissioners to get the inquiry back on track. That might mean a changed, perhaps narrower, mandate, new commissioners or fewer commissioners. It would be disruptive. But it has to be done.
Indigenous women are six times more likely to be murdered than other Canadian women. The inquiry is a chance to change that grim reality, and provide a voice for families who have suffered in silence.
The government should not stand by and allow it to fail.
