Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Kingston and the Islands.
I will begin by expressing my sincere condolences to the family and friends who have lost daughters, sisters, cousins, aunts and family. I cannot imagine the depth of their pain and I am profoundly sorry.
Despite their impossible suffering, they walk across Canada for justice. They come to the House of Commons, the people's House, and to the United Nations to ask for help. The chiefs of the Assembly of First Nations pass resolution after resolution demanding that the government establish a public inquiry into the disappearances and killings. Time and again, when they have appeared in front of the House, they have been left disappointed and wanting, and again, I must apologize.
Where is the outrage and the horror of each member of the House when we learn that 50% of the violent deaths of indigenous women and girls result in homicide charges compared with 76% for the general population? Where is the government that supposedly stands up for all victims' rights and ensures our communities and streets are safe? Where is the government's courage to act on the 2011 report of the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women, which acknowledged the concerns about inadequate police response to reports of missing women, the underfunding of services for indigenous women and the need to support families of missing and murdered women?
How can the government state that the number of murdered and vanished women is “disturbingly high” and yet repeatedly ignore calls for an inquiry, let alone refuse to take concrete steps to stop the killing? Why does the government refuse to give people who have lost a female relative or friend to violence a chance to tell their stories? Is it the government's fear that a public inquiry would raise questions about broader socio-economic problems in first nation communities and the extent to which those are the result of failed government policies, or perhaps it is the government's fear of revealing unpleasant truths about its own justice agenda?
Where is the compassion and the caring? Where is the fundamental human instinct to reach out to those who are hurting and try to reduce the hurt? Where is the attention to the many first nation women who are killed every year with guns and knives? Where is the Canada that 20 years ago, in 1993, backed the campaign that led to the recognition that women's rights were an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights? Where is the Canada that demands the end of the abomination that is violence against women and girls and works tirelessly to achieve this goal in all its communities?
At least 600 aboriginal women and girls have been murdered or gone missing over the past decades: Maisy, Shannon, Summer Star. We must know their names, their stories and the lives they touched. We must never reduce their contributions to their families and communities to mere statistics. We must honour their memories with real and meaningful action.
Today we call for the establishment of a special committee to conduct hearings and propose solutions to address the root causes of violence against indigenous women across the country.
In 2004 Amnesty International released a report entitled, “Stolen Sisters”, which documented the violence.
In 2005 the Canadian government announced $10 million to fund a national database on missing and murdered aboriginal women. About half the funds went to a project called Sisters in Spirit, run by the Native Women's Association of Canada, NWAC.
In 2006 the Conservative government was elected and in 2007 Canada was one of only four countries in the world to vote against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
In 2008, out of sheer frustration by the government's inaction, aboriginal organizations, citizen groups and rights groups brought their concerns to the United Nations and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. The committee then called upon Canada to urgently carry out thorough investigations of the cases to determine whether there was a racialized pattern to the disappearances and to take measures to address the problem.
In 2010 the funding for the Sisters in Spirit database was terminated and funds redirected.
By the time government funding for data collection on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls ended, NWAC had documented 582 cases nationally. If women and girls in the general Canadian population had gone missing or been murdered at the same rate, the organization estimates the country would have lost 18,000 Canadian women and girls since the late 1970s. It is impossible to imagine that such numbers would not have resulted in a hue and cry across the country, followed by immediate action by the government.
Yesterday, Human Rights Watch released the report, “Those Who Take Us Away: Abusive Policing and Failures in Protection of Indigenous Women and Girls in Northern British Columbia, Canada”. The report shows that the persistence of the violence indicates, at the very minimum, a need for a national public commission of inquiry.
Meghan Rhoad, a women's rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, said:
The high rate of violence against indigenous women and girls has caused widespread alarm for many years...The eyes of the world are on Canada to see how many more victims it takes before the government addresses this issue in a comprehensive and coordinated way.
NWAC president Michèle Audette, who has been fighting for years for a public forum to examine the deaths and disappearances of indigenous women, said:
My dream, and the dream of NWAC, of course, is that it will change legislation, policy, programs...and it will give an overview of the root cause of this systemic discrimination and how come women are ending like this with no answers and no justice.
The Human Rights Watch report calls for: a national commission of inquiry into the murders and disappearances of indigenous women and girls before the end of 2013; the development of the inquiry's terms of reference with leadership from affected communities, including the examination of the current and historical relationship between the police and indigenous women and girls, including incidents of serious police misconduct and the systemic socio-economic marginalization of indigenous women and girls that predispose them to high levels of violence; the development and implementation of a national action plan to address violence against indigenous women and girls with leadership from indigenous communities, that addresses the structural roots of the violence as well as the accountability and coordination of government bodies charged with preventing and responding to violence; the establishment of independent civilian investigations of reported incidents of serious police misconduct; and co-operation with the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women inquiry into the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
The government must at last do the right thing. It must investigate the deaths of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and it must act to stop the killing. The government must stop denying the anguish, hurt, pain of the families and communities of the 600 lost souls. It must hear their stories and respond with caring, compassion and necessary support.
The neglect, contempt and tears must end. This means the government must not only investigate these horrific losses, but also implement real measures that would improve the quality of life for first nations.
The basics of life, such as adequate housing, child welfare, clean drinking water, education, are persistently and dramatically substandard. As Ms. Fraser said in her parting words to Parliament:
—a disproportionate number of First Nations people still lack the most basic services that other Canadians take for granted....In a country as rich as Canada, this disparity is unacceptable.