On the first question about the federal-provincial-territorial working group on missing women, it's a group of officials of the different federal and provincial governments that brings together their expertise, which is informed by work undertaken at local, regional, and provincial levels to address issues of all missing women in Canada, including, obviously, aboriginal women. In terms of the Sisters in Spirit or NWAC sitting in as part of this group, no, they do not. But that's not to say that the substantial work that Sisters in Spirit has done with their report is not being taken into consideration by this working group. There are other groups that have been very active in this area. I would note, for example, the Saskatchewan 2007 report on missing persons as well.
The work of the working group is to look at how all points in the criminal justice system deal with reports of all missing persons, from the time a person, the family, or a loved one contacts police, victims' services, or another social service. Is there a way we can enhance collaboration between agencies? Is there a way to address some of the issues that have been identified by the RCMP as best practices?
The intention here is to try to come at it from a broad, systemic approach to facilitate how we deal with the victims and how we support the victims' families through these cases. Public Safety has estimated that 100,000 persons are reported missing annually and that approximately 4,800 persons may still be missing after one year. What we're trying to do is identify best practices that will get to the core of those persons who are truly missing and not, for example, runaway kids or persons who leave for other reasons and then come back or are found by family.