Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to this issue, on the traditional territory of the Algonquin people.
As a government, we want to end all violence against all women. We will not stop until we have eradicated violence against women in our society and until women feel safe. Do we think we are going to change this in an instant? We know it takes work, and that is why our government is committed to ending the ongoing national tragedy of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
We launched this inquiry as a national, independent inquiry to ensure the voices of women and families would be heard and that they would get the answers they deserved. We know families and survivors fought long and hard against the previous government for this inquiry. We are the first to recognize the necessity of this. We are the first to recognize that these are the steps we need to take in order to really end violence and, in this case, to end the ongoing tragedy against missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in our society.
The commissioner's mandate is very clear, and that is that families must be at the centre of the commission's work. The government took great care in ensuring the terms of reference authorized the commission to inquire into circumstances of individual cases in order to identify systemic issues at play, be it institutional issues or otherwise. It was also authorized to examine and report on the root causes of all forms of violence that indigenous women and girls experienced and their greater vulnerability to that violence.
The commission is looking for patterns and underlying factors that explain why the higher levels of violence occur. It has been clear from the start that policing would be looked into as part of that mandate.
Furthermore, we have heard, and take very seriously, the concerns that have been raised about how existing government policy and processes are impeding its work. A working group is being created to provide effective feedback and office support to the commission to ensure it is able to do its work effectively. Our government remains fully committed to ensuring families get the answers they have been waiting on for a very long time.
On November 1, the national inquiry's interim report was released. We are currently reviewing the commission's preliminary recommendations. However, government is also taking immediate action. We have been investing in women's shelters, housing, education, child welfare, and doing what we can to improve safety on the Highway of Tears. The government has also funded the family information liaison units to assist families of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in finding the answers they need from government agencies, and other help with services to address the trauma they suffer.
A condition of the funding is that the services be trauma-informed and culturally-responsive, and jurisdictions are expected to work with indigenous organizations to achieve this goal. There are so many more—