There’s no question the five members of the $53.8-million national inquiry into murdered and missing indigenous women have a daunting task before them.

They must identify the systemic issues that contribute to violence against aboriginal girls and women – from policing, welfare and child care practices to sexual abuse on reserves, government policies and social conditions.

It will be a lot of work. Indeed, before the inquiry got underway, the three ministers responsible for establishing it — Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, and then-Status of Women Minister Patty Hajdu — heard from 2,100 participants and received 4,100 online submissions in just over just two months.

So there’s no telling how many victims’ families will want to tell their stories before the commission, or how many people, such as police, the commissioners will want to interview.

Still, that is no reason for them not to get on with it. The inquiry was announced in December, 2015. And the commission members have had since last Sept. 1 to get their act together.

Yet not one public hearing has been held. In fact, the commission was incommunicado until this week when it held its very first press conference to announce that it still couldn’t say when public hearings will actually get underway. Vague answer? Sometime this spring.

Really?

That isn’t good enough. The commission of inquiry must hit the road quickly to hear from victims and families and communities if they are to meet their timetable of delivering an interim report by November of this year and a final report by Dec. 31, 2018.

While that is relatively speedy in the history of commissions of inquiry — the Truth and Reconciliation Commission ran two years over its official five-year mandate — it is a timeline they must keep. Not to do so would be to dash, once again, the hopes of so many families and communities across the country who are looking for answers to painful but vital questions.

Among them: why 16 per cent of all women murdered in Canada are indigenous, although only 4 per cent of Canadian women are. Or why, by the RCMP’s own 2014 tally, 1,181 indigenous women and girls had been murdered or gone missing between 1980 and 2012, a number that has since grown.

Time is of the essence. As shocking as those numbers are, they may be just the tip of the iceberg. A year ago, after their cross-country consultations to establish the inquiry, Bennett suggested the number of murdered and missing indigenous women was “way bigger than 1,200,” while Hajdu suggested it might be as high as 4,000.

That discrepancy arises partly because police officers often do not consider victims to have been murdered even though their families do. That’s a police practice the inquiry is also expected to investigate.

The chief commissioner of the inquiry, B.C. Judge Marion Buller, says she is aware “of the impatience and frustration” surrounding how long it has taken to get the hearings underway. But she excused the delay by saying: “We have to do the hearings and our work in a thoughtful and purposeful way.” That would hold more water if she hadn’t said the same thing last October.

Enough, already. The commissioners have a mandate to deliver answers to grieving families and communities — indeed, all of Canada — by the end of 2018. They cannot lose any more time getting started with this important work.

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.