Viewpoint 39-5: Hundreds of recommendations go unimplemented.

• Position: Reprint

Legal Strategy Coalition demands greater government commitment and accountability to ending violence against Indigenous women and girls

An alarming study released recently shows that governments in Canada have repeatedly ignored expert recommendations to stop violence against Indigenous women and girls.

Researchers with the Legal Strategy Coalition on Violence Against Indigenous Women reviewed 58 reports dealing with aspects of violence and discrimination against Indigenous women and girls, including government studies, reports by international human rights bodies, and published research of Indigenous women's organizations. The reports cover a period of two decades. Shockingly, researchers found that only a few of more than 700 recommendations in these reports have ever been fully implemented.

"How many Indigenous women and girls would have been found or would still be alive if governments had acted on more of these recommendations?" asked Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, President of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs. "This is yet another piece of irrefutable evidence that governments in Canada have breached their fundamental moral and legal responsibility to ensure the safety of all women, without discrimination."

The reports examined in this study include 40 listed by Federal Justice Minister Peter MacKay as evidence of why a national public inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women is not needed.

"The federal government has gotten it all wrong," said Cheryl Maloney, President of the Nova Scotia Native Women's Association. "The fact that governments have been sitting on these reports, leaving important, life-saving recommendations unimplemented, is exactly why we need the intervention of an independent commission of inquiry."

"A national inquiry is needed to examine why there has been so much resistance by successive governments to implementation of known and recommended measures to address the issue", noted LEAF Legal Director Kim Stanton.

Christa Big Canoe, the Legal Director of Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto said, "A properly established inquiry, backed by a clear commitment by government to act on its findings, would provide the kind of accountability to the public that we so sorely lack." She also stated, "Families of missing and murdered women need to have a hand in the creation of an inquiry process and most importantly in establishing the mandate of an inquiry to ensure that the voices of the survivors is heard throughout...