Mr. Speaker, it is difficult to accept that in the 10 years since Amnesty International Canada released a major report documenting the violence against this country's indigenous women, there still has not been a strong federal response on this issue. There has been opportunity for both Liberal and Conservative governments, but a full decade later, we are so mired in the problem that the only reasonable response is a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women.
That said, the current government refuses to budge, despite overwhelming and ever-growing support for an inquiry. Instead of recognizing the benefits that the process would have, it has managed to plug its ears and claim that these are all just crimes that are being dealt with by the police. All the while, the statistics keep mounting, and a direct line that runs from the brutal murder of Helen Betty Osborne to the discovery of Tina Fontaine's body in the Red River this past summer is being dismissed as nothing more than a number of unconnected crimes.
The real crime, however, is inaction and indifference, as well as viewing these women and girls in the worst light far too often. Disappearances are too quickly dismissed as runaways or substance abusers, which is supposed to excuse a lacklustre effort to find missing people. In addition, when these instances are seen as nothing more than simple crimes to be dealt with by police, we are dismissing the fact that these women are almost seven times more likely to be the victims of violence than any other societal group in Canada.
Too often, we have heard members of the governing party wonder what good an inquiry would do. My colleague from Timmins—James Bay did a great job of explaining that. He said that, among many other things, an inquiry would allow us to see what makes these women so vulnerable and how they can be taken without police investigations. It would let us talk about how children and young women can be taken from their homes because the federal government will not allow therapy and in-house support for their families. We would hear how they get put into foster care and so often end up on the street. Most importantly, an inquiry would send the message that these women were people who were loved and should be respected, and that our Canadian society is ashamed that so many people could be allowed to disappear or die.
An inquiry is about a commitment to make societal change, like the change that came to the OPP because of the Ipperwash inquiry. That showed us that an inquiry process can and does work.
With all this in mind, I ask the government if it will reconsider and call an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women.