One year after the Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls final report was released, almost nothing has been done to implement its 231 recommendations, according to the Native Women's Association of Canada, which graded the Trudeau government's actions a " 'resounding fail' in the four broad categories of human rights under which the inquiry made recommendations: health, security, culture and justice."
Instead of a national action plan to implement the recommendations of the report, the Liberal government only offers the non-excuse that Covid-19 prevented them from doing so, when they had nine months before Covid-19 had triggered even modest government reaction. This comment was seen as another insult by indigenous leaders.
Once again the Trudeau Liberal government have sounded good at feeling the pain of a distressed group but when it comes to money and action to address the problem, it is a enormous failure. Do you see a pattern here?
Meggie Cywink, whose sister Sonya Nadine Mae Cywink was murdered in another example of the threat indigenous women face, expressed:
her disappointment that the massive three-year effort of the National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls has not led to change. "Families, communities, and allies have not received any information about what governments -- either federal or provincial -- have been doing over the past year on this file," she said. "I can tell you that, whatever it is, it has had little or no impact on the families left behind," Cywink said. "It has brought us no solace and it has not changed the violence we witness or the genocide we survive."
The inquiry delivered its final report June 3, 2019, concluding that decades of systemic racism and human rights violations had contributed to the deaths and disappearances of hundreds of Indigenous women and girls and that it constituted a genocide.
In a report card released Wednesday to mark the anniversary of final report's release, the Native Women's Association of Canada found little has been done to address the inquiry's 231 calls for justice in the last 12 months. It awarded the federal government a "resounding fail" in the four broad categories of human rights under which the inquiry made recommendations: health, security, culture and justice.
"Instead of a national action plan, we are left with a lack-of-action plan," said association president Lorraine Whitman. "The sad fact is, we cannot afford to do nothing in the face of the violence that continues to take the lives of First Nations, Metis and Inuit women." ...
Native Women's Association of Canada President Lorraine Whitman said using the pandemic as an excuse for not delivering a plan is a "double slap in the face" to Indigenous women who are facing even greater risks of violence because of isolation measures aimed at slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus. "These are things we have been trying to tell the government, but they have not been doing much listening," Whitman said. ...
In a joint statement Wednesday, the national inquiry's four commissioners said they "deplore inaction on the part of some governments. As the final report asserts, the calls for justice are not mere recommendations or a quaint list of best practices -- they are legal imperatives rooted in Canada's obligations under international and domestic human rights norms and laws," the commissioners said.
Chief commissioner Marion Buller is among many calling for transparency. "I would like to see all governments, not just the federal government, be transparent about what they've done to date and what they plan on doing moving ahead. I think all Canadians deserve that transparency," Buller told The Canadian Press earlier this week. ...
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh called it "completely wrong" that a year has passed and Ottawa has not yet completed a national action plan. "The government doesn't need to plan this out and find the best time to do it," he said.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/trudeau-government-given-failing-grade-f...