f e at u r e s what the government is seen as. I just want you to know that.” “I simply wanted to emphasize that these allegations deserve to be explored, and that I believe funded counsel for those making the allegations, not just for those refuting them, would assist the process,” said Oppal in the statement. Funding for participants would provide them with legal counsel during the hearings of the inquiry. What is perhaps most interesting about this series of proceedings, though, is that it is fairly standard practice for the government to fund the participation of whichever groups the commissioner deems necessary. For the other groups to participate in the commission would cost the government an estimated $1.5 million, which is pocket change when placed in comparison to the $100 million that they have already spent on the Pickton investigation prior to the inquiry. Unfortunately, failing to provide funding to more participants is causing other groups to doubt the future accuracy of the conclusions of the inquiry, potentially spending a significant amount of the taxpayer’s dollar for untrustworthy results.
THE SUBJECTIVITY Of justice Missing Women Inquiry’s loses valuable voices with lack of provincial funding B y Sam a n t h a Th o mp s o n , e d i t o r -i n -c h i ef
the capilano courier | vol. 45 issue 4
I
12
n 2009, 26.3 per cent of homicide victims were female, according to Statistics Canada. Within this, evidence has shown that Aboriginal women face considerably higher risks of violence and homicide than non-Aboriginal women: according to the 2009 Juristat report, Aboriginal women were three times as likely to experience violent victimization than nonAboriginal women. It is our prerogative to recognize that there is a serious problem with these statistics in that the disproportionate amount of victims are women, Aboriginal, or both. Unfortunately, despite the shocking statistics, there is still a lot of progress that needs to be achieved in order to positively change this systemic problem, which partially occurs as a result of socioeconomic circumstances. Since the 1990s, many women have been reported as missing, with relatively little action taken to resolve the problem. Between Jan. 23 1997 and Feb. 5 2002, a huge number of women were reported missing from the Downtown Eastside (DTES) in Vancouver. It was suggested that there was a serial killer active in the community, yet the complaints that were related to missing women were not taken seriously. In many instances, the women reported as missing were Aboriginal, sex workers, or both. On Jan. 27 1998, the Criminal Justice Branch decided to pause proceedings on charges against Robert William Pickton for attempted murder, assault with a weapon, forcible confinement, and aggravated assault. However, in 2002 the police arrested Pickton, and he was charged with 27 degrees of first degree murder, six counts of second degree murder, and evidence at the trial indicated that Pickton may have murdered as many as 49 women – something that, it has been suggested, could have been avoided if the stay of proceedings against Pickton hadn’t happened, and if the reports of
missing women had been taken seriously in the first place. As is standard practice when something goes wrong, a public inquiry into the investigations surrounding the Pickton trial was launched in September 2010. Entitled the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, the Honourable Wally Oppal, Q.C., was named commissioner, and his final report of the commission’s findings due on Dec. 31 2011. The inquiry will look into the investigation of reported cases of the women missing from the DTES between 1997 and 2002, and why it took so long to convict Pickton. “There are two primary objectives for the commission: one is to look at … the investigations by the Vancouver Police Department and the RCMP … and whether there were mistakes made in the investigations which led to Pickton not being apprehended sooner,” says Christopher Freimond, spokesperson for the inquiry. “The other is to look at a decision by the Criminal Justice Branch … They made a decision at one point during the Pickton investigation not to proceed with charges of attempted murder against him after allegations were made by a woman that he had tried to kill her.” “The objective of the commission’s work will be to see whether any mistakes were made in the police investigation or in the criminal justice branch decision, and if so, what needs to change to make sure that those types of mistakes are never made again.” Certainly, the Pickton trial is not new news; however, situations arising out of the Missing Women Inquiry suggest that although the inquiry was launched with honest intentions, its ability to orchestrate any sort of change in the approach towards cases involving missing women is fast decreasing – and with the inquiry’s hearings scheduled to occur on Oct. 11, they’re running short on time to make things right.
WALLY OPPAL AND THE SKETCHY SITUATION One of the first concerns is that Oppal himself has been placed under fire, as he has been criticized for not remaining objective as the commissioner of an inquiry. Oppal recommended that the province fund the participation of the families of Pickton’s victims and twelve groups that advocate primarily on behalf of women, street sex workers, and Aboriginals; however, when the province agreed to fund the participation of only the families, and not the advocacy groups, Oppal wrote a letter and left a message on the answering machine of the previous provincial Attorney General, Barry Penner. These actions had critics questioning Oppal’s objectivity in the case, suggesting that he had already made a decision about what had happened prior to being presented with any evidence from either side. In addition, it has been suggested that Oppal is in a conflict of interest, as he was Attorney General himself during part of the Pickton murder investigation. At the end of August 2011, Oppal issued a statement to address some of these concerns, emphasizing that he had not yet made any conclusions prematurely about the issues that he was investigating. He quoted part of his voicemail left to Penner, which read, “These are the women who complained to the police about women being missing …[and] the police gave … the back of their hands to these women, and disregarded what they had to say. So they can’t cross‐examine the police, who are of course well‐armed with publicly funded lawyers … and the government is now being seen as funding the people who allegedly [did] everything wrong and ignored the women, ignored the victims but … funding … will not go and fund the victims, and not fund the women, the poor aboriginal women. That’s
BAD TO WORSE The lack of funding for these groups has been questioned by activist organizations, the BC NDP, and Wally Oppal himself. As the due date of Oppal’s final report draws nearer, the Missing Women’s Commission Inquiry, despite its hopefully good intentions, continues to be heavily scrutinized. Although the provincial government has firmly adapted the stance that they are here for the families of victims from the Robert Pickton case, they are not funding all of the families affected. Freimond said that the legal counsel for the families, Vancouver lawyer Cameron Ward, is representing 17 families, not “all” of them as the provincial government has been implying. When asked about the funding in the Legislature’s question period, Premier Christy Clark responded, “It is tragic what has happened in the Downtown Eastside, and it continues to be tragic – what happens down there for women and children and men who struggle every day in what is certainly one of Canada's poorest postal codes. It has been a challenge for governments for decades to try and get our hands around the issues down there, try and wrestle them down and make sure that it's a better place tomorrow than it has been in the past.” “The government is funding the families to be able to be heard at the commission, and we are making sure that as many voices as possible are heard before that commission. It seems to me to be our obligation to do that, and we're certainly living up to it, although it isn't required by law for us to do that. We want to make sure those voices are heard because, as I said, the issues facing women and children and men who live in the Downtown Eastside are serious, and they are urgent.” However, as the funding is not for all of the families, nor the other participants, many voices are not being heard. In his Ruling on Participation and Funding Recommendation, Oppal said that he had concluded that, without funding, those participants who had applied for funding would not be able to participate in the hearing portion of the inquiry. “I know the inquiry is committed to making sure that we can hear from as many voices as absolutely possible, because we want to make sure that the Downtown Eastside is a better place, is a safer place, and is the kind of close-knit, healthy community that many of the rest of us have the good fortune to live in,” said Clark. In addition, the government is funding full