Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by many residents of Canada who wish to draw the attention of the Government of Canada to the following.
For the past five years, the Native Women's Association of Canada, NWAC, Sisters in Spirit initiative has worked to identify root causes, trends and circumstances of violence that have led to the disappearance and death of too many aboriginal women and girls.
In March of this year, NWAC released a report entitled "What Their Stories Tell Us", which provided evidence that 582 aboriginal women and girls had gone missing or had been murdered in Canada and that many mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts and grandmothers had been lost to violence in our country. This makes it a pervasive human rights crisis.
The petitioners want the Government of Canada to renew the funding for the Sisters in Spirit initiative phase two, "Evidence to Action", and to invest in an action plan for aboriginal women that NWAC has developed to stop the devastating number of missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls in Canada.
We owe it to our sense of justice to make this happen.