Open Letter: Groups affirm boycott of discriminatory Missing Women Commission of Inquiry
April 10, 2012
Fifteen organizations issued letters directed to Commissioner Wally Oppal
confirming that they will not be participating in the “second phase” of the
Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, citing concerns about discrimination and
the conduct of the Commission to date.
The attached letters from an informal coalition of advocacy and service
providing groups, the Native Women’s Association of Canada and the Assembly of
First Nations are written in response to an invitation letter sent by
Commissioner Wally Oppal, asking organizations to return to the Inquiry.
Full PDF copies at: http://www.ubcic.bc.ca/files/PDF/OpenLetterstoMWCI_041012.pdf
Text of the letter from the coalition of advocacy and service providing groups
available below.
For more information, please contact:
Aboriginal Front Door Society, Mona Woodward, Executive Director, (604)
697-5662
Amnesty International Canada, Craig Benjamin, (613)
744 -7667 ext 235
Atira Women’s Resource Society, Janice Abbott, Executive Director, (604)
331-1420
B.C. Civil Liberties Association, David Eby, Executive Director, (778)
865-7997
Battered Women’s Support Services, Angela Marie MacDougall, Executive Director, (604)
808-0507
Carrier-Sekani Tribal Council, Terry Teegee, Vice Tribal Chief, (250)
640-3256
Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence Society, Katrina Pacey, (604)
729-7849
Ending Violence Association British Columbia, Tracy Porteous, Executive
Director, (604)
633-2506,
x11
February 14th Women’s Memorial March Committee, Lisa Yellow-Quill,
L.YellowQuill@gmail.com
First Nations Summit, Colin Braker, Communications Director, (604)
926-9903
Native Women’s Association of Canada, Claudette Dumont-Smith, Exec. Director, (613)
722-3033 x223
PACE: Providing Alternatives Counselling & Education Society, Karen Mirsky, (778)
838-2972
Pivot Legal Society, Doug King, Lawyer, (778)
898-6349
Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, (250)
490-5314
Union Gospel Mission, Genesa Greening, Director, Community Strategies, (604)
506-0845
West Coast LEAF, Executive Director, Kasari Govinder, (604)
684-8772,
x212
WISH Drop-in Centre Society, Kate Gibson, Executive Director, (604)669-9474
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Missing Women Commission of Inquiry
Attn: Commissioner Wally Oppal, QC
#1402 - 808 Nelson Street
Vancouver, BC
V6Z 2H2
April 10, 2012
Dear Commissioner Oppal,
Open Letter: Non-participation in the Policy Forums/Study Commission
We write to advise the Commission that we, the undersigned groups, will not be
participating in the Policy Forums or Study Commission aspects of the Missing
Women Commission of Inquiry (the “Inquiry”). We are not prepared to lend the
credibility of our respective organizations’ names and expertise to this
Inquiry, which can only be described as a deeply flawed and illegitimate
process. The Commission has lost all credibility among Aboriginal, sex work,
human rights and women’s organizations that work with and are comprised of the
very women most affected by the issues this Inquiry is charged with
investigating.
Many of the organizations listed below have for years been demanding an inquiry
into the disappearances of so many marginalized women from Vancouver’s Downtown
Eastside and across the province. When this Inquiry was finally called, we fully
expected it to be a meaningful and inclusive process that would respect and
honour the expertise of women, Aboriginal people, sex workers and other
community members with important insight and knowledge to share. However, it has
become painfully clear over the course of the Inquiry’s proceedings that this
Inquiry is not a meaningful and inclusive process. Instead, it has served to
repeat the same discrimination and exclusion that we had hoped it was going to
uncover.
Women have been going missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and across the
province, for decades. Women, especially Aboriginal women, sex workers, and
women living in poverty, continue to face extreme violence in their lives, and
experience profound barriers to reporting their victimization to police. Police
and government failures to take women’s safety seriously and to commit resources
to improving the social and economic conditions in which women live are issues
of long-standing concern to all of the undersigned groups. It is disturbing to
note that this Inquiry into the disappearances and murders of sex workers from
Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is taking place while government funding for sex
worker support groups like PACE (Providing Alternatives Counselling and
Education Society) and PEERS (Prostitutes Empowerment Education Resource
Society) has been drastically reduced to the point that these two essential
organizations may soon be forced to close their doors. Women’s organizations
across the province are feeling a similar squeeze.
We feel that it is important to state our profound disappointment in how this
Inquiry has unfolded. Based on our experiences of exclusion from the Inquiry
process, as well as our assessment of events occurring throughout the course of
the proceedings, we have no confidence that our participation in the Policy
Forums or Study Commission will contribute to the truth, reconciliation and
accountability that we fully expected when this Inquiry was initiated. Instead,
we will continue to seek alternative ways to support the families of the missing
women and the vulnerable communities who continue to deal with ongoing violence,
and we will advise you of this work.
When the provincial government denied funding to the community group
participants who had been calling for this public inquiry for over a decade (the
“Community Group Participants”), the Inquiry became the subject of intense and
well-deserved criticism. We are extremely disappointed that multiple appeals to
the Province to remedy this injustice were unsuccessful, and that Community
Group Participants were unable to exercise the standing rights granted to them
by the Commissioner.
The failure to ensure equal access to the Inquiry process for the Community
Group Participants granted standing made it clear to us, as it was to the
broader public, that there would be deep inequities in terms of what evidence
would be tendered and what interests would be represented. The value of the
Inquiry was called into question and, at that point, so much more could have
been done by the Commission to fight for the integrity of the process. The lack
of commitment to fighting for the appropriate, meaningful, and adequately funded
involvement of Community Group Participants was extremely disappointing.
Additionally, former Attorney General Barry Penner, current Attorney General
Shirley Bond, and Premier Clark themselves bear responsibility for refusing to
adequately fund Community Group Participants, marginalizing their essential
contributions and undermining the legitimacy of the Inquiry process. The
families, who have appropriately been provided counsel, are unable to offer the
same contributions that would have been made by the many other groups who were
shut out. These groups have decades of relevant policy expertise, have been
supporting women who have experienced the most extreme levels of violence
imaginable, have been tracking deaths of women for many years, and have been
analyzing the serious problems with policing in British Columbia, as well as
other systems such as child protection, income assistance, housing, healthcare,
and transportation. These groups could have made a positive difference to the
proceeding and outcomes for women and families in our Province.
We would like to take this opportunity to set out a number of other concerns we
have had as this Inquiry has progressed.
Limitations of the terms of reference: In unilaterally setting the terms of
reference for the Inquiry without consulting any of the affected parties, the
provincial government unnecessarily restricted the Commission to examining the
criminal justice system and its handling of the Pickton investigation, without
providing for a fulsome examination of the various systemic issues leading to
marginalized women’s particular vulnerability to violence, the lack of
protections available, or the epidemic of missing and murdered women in British
Columbia.
No lawyers for organizations and community members who represent crucial
perspectives: 25 publicly funded lawyers have represented police and government
interests and yet no lawyers were funded to represent the Community Group
Participants who originally demanded an inquiry in the first place. The
Community Group Participants represent essential perspectives and experiences
that have not been, and cannot be, adequately represented by Commission counsel,
the amici or the two very dedicated but overburdened lawyers who represent the
families of the missing women.
Lack of Witness Protection: The Inquiry has recreated many of the barriers that
women face when requiring police protection. One key example of this was the
failure to grant adequate protection for the identities of vulnerable witnesses
who agreed to come forward to tell their stories. Instead, the Commissioner
granted significant protections for people convicted of assaulting the exact
women that the Commission was hoping to hear from.
Delayed, incomplete disclosure: The failure to order the disclosure of the book
written by Lori Shenher, a lead VPD investigator on the Pickton file, for
months, the order requiring the book to be redacted, and then the failure to
mark it as an exhibit so that the public may have access to it, is just one
example of the inadequate and delayed disclosure that has become commonplace
throughout this Inquiry.
Impossible Timelines: The provincial government has set a deadline of June 30,
2012, for the production of the Commissioner’s report. Hearings will end by
April 30. This arbitrary timeline cannot and will not provide for an
appropriately diligent examination of all relevant issues. The Commissioner’s
request for an extension was refused, and all indications are that similar
demands made recently by the families of Pickton’s victims will also be
rejected.
Conflict of interest: The Commission hired a former Vancouver Police Department
officer to conduct witness interviews and to “help” write an “independent”
report on the Vancouver Police Department and RCMP investigations that was
intended to be authored by the Peel Regional Police. The Peel Regional Police
had numerous officers under investigation by the RCMP while they were writing
their portion of the report about the RCMP investigations into Pickton. We also
understand this former VPD officer is writing questions for Commission counsel
and has no training to be doing this type of work.
Allegations of sexism and marginalization of witnesses: Former staff from the
Commission have alleged sexist conduct, and conduct inconsistent with the intent
for which the Inquiry was established, namely, to facilitate hearing the
evidence of marginalized women. The Commission appears woefully out of touch
with how it may be replicating the exact exclusion and discrimination that led
to this Inquiry being called in the first place.
Limited Witnesses: The arbitrary and unworkable timeframe has meant that the
Commission has not and will not hear evidence from many important witnesses. Key
witnesses requested by counsel for the families have not been added to the
witness list more than four months after the request was made. The Commission
has refused to hear evidence about possible connections between the Pickton
brothers and Hell’s Angels, or to look into allegations of corruption and
connections with organized crime. The purpose of the Inquiry is to get to the
bottom of why police failed to stop the killings of vulnerable women. The
question of whether women were prevented from coming forward to police with
information about Pickton because they were intimidated by organized crime
connections is highly relevant to this purpose and should be fully explored.
Instead, this line of inquiry has been explicitly shut down by the Commissioner.
Further to these concerns, the recent resignation of Robyn Gervais, the lawyer
hired to represent “Aboriginal interests” at the Inquiry, has further reinforced
our concerns. Ms. Gervais resigned her position citing the Commission’s
unwillingness to give enough time and weight to evidence from Aboriginal
witnesses. “Aboriginal interests have not, and will not, be adequately
represented in these hearings,” she said. “Given that these hearings were about
missing Aboriginal women, I didn't think I would need to fight to have their
voices heard.” From the outset, we did not support the appointment of amici to
represent community interests. Ms. Gervais’ resignation confirms our belief that
this was a tokenistic appointment that could never have been expected to
effectively represent the broad and essential perspectives of First Nations
people. We are extremely troubled by the recent announcement regarding the hasty
appointment, one month before the end of the hearings, of two new Independent
Counsel to present issues related to Aboriginal interests. We emphasize that
this will still not allow for the inclusion of critical Aboriginal voices -
those voices required their own legal counsel in order to participate.
On May 1, 2012, the Inquiry will shift into its Study Commission function and
begin holding Policy Forums in which interested individuals and organizations
can make submissions to the Commission on issues within the advisory and policy
aspects of its mandate. Given the record of the Inquiry thus far, our
organizations have no confidence that the insight or expertise we could now
offer would make any difference to the Inquiry’s outcome or the strength of its
recommendations. The government’s failure to commit the necessary resources to
this Commission does not bode well for its commitment to implementing any of the
Commission’s recommendations, and the Commission’s continued exclusion and
marginalization of community voices undermines the credibility of the entire
process. We see little value in spending our organizations’ extremely limited
time and resources contributing to a process that is fundamentally flawed and
irredeemably defective.
Canada has been criticized by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination against Women and, just weeks ago, by the UN Committee on the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination because of the inadequacies in its law and
practice respecting the prevention, investigation, prosecution and punishment of
violence against women, particularly Aboriginal women. The high levels of
violence experienced by Aboriginal women, as well as the hundreds of missing and
murdered Aboriginal women across the country, are evidence of Canada’s failure
to meet its international legal obligations to respect, protect and fulfill the
fundamental human rights of women. To date, Canada has not made an effective
response to these serious and significant findings by expert human rights
bodies.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has
initiated its inquiry procedure under the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in response to
information it has received regarding disappearances and murders of Aboriginal
women and girls. Given the failures of the British Columbia and Canadian
governments to address effectively the human rights crisis of missing and
murdered Aboriginal women and girls, including the social and economic
conditions that make Aboriginal women and girls more vulnerable to violence in
the first place, our organizations will dedicate what limited resources we can
offer to working with the United Nations to facilitate their investigations and
fact-finding processes, in order to ensure that Canada is held internationally
accountable for these ongoing human rights violations. We have no confidence
that the Commission of Inquiry can provide such accountability.
In closing, we reiterate our disappointment in the Missing Women Commission of
Inquiry, which continues to lose relevance and credibility. Ensuring that the
Commission proceeds with the maximum amount of evidence and input available is
literally a matter of life and death for the marginalized women who continue to
experience extremely dangerous situations on a daily basis in the Downtown
Eastside and throughout the province, and we are extremely upset that the
Commission has not chosen to implement measures to allow for this. We are angry
that millions of dollars continue to be spent on the Inquiry, and yet the
Province and Commissioner were not able to provide adequate funding for
Community Group Participants to participate in an appropriate manner. Our
organizations will continue to support the families of the missing women and
will work together going forward to ensure that real change happens for the
vulnerable women of the Downtown Eastside.
Yours truly,
Aboriginal Front Door Society
Amnesty International Canada
Atira Women’s Resource Society
B.C. Civil Liberties Association
Battered Women’s Support Services
Carrier Sekani Tribal Council
Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence Society
Ending Violence Association of British Columbia
Feb. 14th Women’s Memorial March Committee
First Nations Summit
PACE: Providing Alternatives Counselling & Education Society
Pivot Legal Society
Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs
Union Gospel Mission
West Coast LEAF
WISH Drop-in Centre Society
Read more: http://www.ubcic.bc.ca/News_Releases/UBCICNews04101201.html#ixzz1rf6LY0Pt