Ah, yes, the police. And the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry will find that everyone else did their best too, and isn’t it a pity that hundreds of Aboriginal women disappeared/were murdered?
Recall that the Harper government has already set the tone for this sort of thing.
If there has ever been a more obviously fixed process, I can’t think of one. And a safer prediction has never been made.
Who will speak for these women, many of whom ended up as pig food at Robert Pickton’s farm? The BC government had refused point-blank to make it possible for their advocates to appear. Out of twenty-one rights groups slated to testify, twenty have now pulled out, some, like Amnesty International Canada, because of the ripe smell of procedural corruption:
“We could not allow our presence to be seen as supporting a process that has gone so far off-track,” said [AIC Secretary General Alex] Neve. “It’s not a level playing field, we’re not even on the same field.”
Here is Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs president Grand Chief Stewart Phillip:
“[I am] bitterly, bitterly disappointed in this government and (Premier) Christy Clark’s failure to intervene to save this inquiry’s credibility.
“After 20 years of candlelight vigils, demands for an inquiry into why hundreds of aboriginal women were going missing, after crying endless tears, First Nations and women’s groups get nothing….
“We made a last-ditch, Hail Mary appeal, we had a meeting with government and the ministers indicated they will not provide legal counsel for aboriginal and women’s groups, and without that we cannot proceed.”
Sick-making. Disgusting. Dare I ask the question: if hundreds of white women had disappeared, would the BC government have hamstrung an inquiry so blatantly?
There are times I am truly ashamed to be a Euro-Canadian, and this is one of those times. How the hell can any of us with the remotest sense of decency look an Aboriginal person in the eye during and after this grotesque travesty?