Vowing to renew the relationship between Canada and its Aboriginals, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday (December 08) his government would set up an inquiry on missing and murdered indigenous women, a measure opposed by his predecessor.
Trudeau said his government was committed to repairing the partnership with Canada’s Aboriginals, who make up 5 percent of the population but have higher levels of poverty and addiction and are far more often victims of crime than other Canadians.
Canada’s Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister, Carolyn Bennett, would make it a top priority, he said.
“Among Carolyn’s top priorities will be the creation of a national public inquiry into the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Canada,” said Trudeau.
Speaking to a meeting of hundreds of Canada’s First Nations chiefs in Quebec, Trudeau said he was confident a new page could be turned in relations between the government and the native Canadians.
“I know that renewing our relationship is an ambitious goal, but I am equally certain that it is one we can, and will, achieve if we work together,” said Trudeau.
Trudeau named two indigenous members of Parliament to his cabinet when he took office last month, including Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould.
At a news conference in Ottawa, Bennett said that the government would listen to Canada’s First Nations in figuring out the way forwards.
“Will now go and listen to people about what they think this needs to be. And so only then will we have the budget for what we hear and what the families and the experts tell us as to what the most effective actual commission needs to look like,” she said.
Trudeau, whose Liberals won office in October after nearly a decade of Conservative rule, said during his campaign he would launch an inquiry on the murder and disappearance of hundreds of indigenous women in recent decades, a move former Prime Minister Stephen Harper resisted.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said last May that 1,017 Aboriginal women had been murdered between 1980 and 2012. Another 108 are missing under suspicious circumstances, with some cases dating back to 1952.
Hilda Anderson-Pyrz, whose sister was killed in 2011, said the announcement is a step in the right direction.
“I think that it’s very empowering and it’s very hopeful to indigenous people across Canada that this government is actually hearing what our people have been saying, like our people have been saying for years,” she said.
International rights groups, including Amnesty International and the human rights branch of the Organization of the American States, have urged Canada’s government to investigate.
Details of the consultation process for the inquiry will be outlined by cabinet ministers later on Tuesday, Trudeau said.
Critics have said an inquiry would likely take years to complete and cost millions of dollars, while its eventual recommendations will echo previous inquiries on inequalities faced by indigenous communities and lack enforcement power. (Reuters)
