The Liberal Aboriginal Affairs critic says a federal committee’s near-unanimous call for an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women was absent in the final report on violence against women in Canada.
Referring to on the parliamentary committee looking into violence against women, the Liberal Aboriginal Affairs critic, Dr. Carolyn Bennett said:
“Almost everybody calling for a national public inquiry and then at the last possible minute when we were to table our report, the Conservatives took out the draft recommendations replaced them with their own and that was what got tabled in the House of Commons.”
She made her remarks at a roundtable discussion on missing and murdered Indigenous women was held last Friday evening in Saskatoon.
Bennett says the committee had five parliamentary secretaries who were doing the bidding for their Conservative Ministers.
Bennett says during roundtable meetings the committee heard from families who had loved ones missing.
“I remember just thinking that if the Conservatives could hear the stories they couldn’t continue to carry on in this way,” she said on Friday.
Although Bennett said the final report was “annoying” in terms of what it lacked, she did say the committee managed to enact one positive change. This was in getting the RCMP to provide better information about the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada.
“I think we felt that we’d put some pressure out there to actually have at least the RCMP come up with better numbers,” she said.