Missing woman’s sister ‘anxious’ for results from coming inquiry

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This article was published 02/08/2016 (3390 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Less than two weeks ago, Bernadette Smith marked the eighth anniversary since her sister was last seen.

Wednesday, she will be one of the family members on hand at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., as the federal government launches a long-awaited inquiry into the high rate of indigenous women who go missing or are murdered in Canada.

But Smith isn’t here to glad-hand the government. In fact, she worries the inquiry won’t do anything but delay real action to address the issue of violence against indigenous women in Canada.”I’m anxious,” Smith said, shortly after landing at the Ottawa airport Tuesday afternoon. “I’m not putting my eggs into this one basket. I want to see what the terms of reference are, but I want to see action on prevention stuff now.”Smith said if the inquiry doesn’t have a large component looking at the role of racist government policies, and biases in policing and the justice system, she doesn’t want to participate.

An inquiry fulfils an election promise made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last fall and was one of the calls to action in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report released in June 2015. Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett is set to announce the commissioners for the inquiry and other details Wednesday morning.

Smith’s sister is one of more than 164 indigenous women currently listed as missing in Canada. Claudette Osborne-Tyo was only 21 years old when she disappeared on July 24, 2008. She was only two weeks from giving birth to her fourth child.

Osborne-Tyo’s family has criticized the Winnipeg Police Service for failing to take their missing person’s report seriously for more than two weeks. Family members were told Osborne-Tyo’s disappearance was related to her “lifestyle” — the young mother had a drug addiction and disappeared after social workers said if she remained in the family home with her kids they would be taken away.

By the time police began to investigate in earnest, two weeks had passed and the security tapes at the hotel where Osborne-Tyo was last seen had been erased.

Although indigenous women account for four per cent of the Canadian population, they account for 16 per cent of homicide victims. RCMP data show more than 1,000 indigenous women were murdered in Canada between 1980 and 2012.

Statistics Canada data suggest indigenous women are more than three times as likely as non-indigenous women to be victims of violence.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca