Sister of missing woman rejects inquiry

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/09/2014 (4039 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — The sister of a missing Winnipeg woman says she doesn’t favour a national inquiry on murdered and missing women because it would take too long before anything would be done to address the problem.

Bernadette Smith, whose sister, Claudette Osborne-Tyo, has been missing since 2008, said it could be years before an inquiry would make any recommendations.

“We know what the problems are,” Smith said by telephone from Winnipeg. “I want to see less talk and more action. I’m tired of people talking and talking and saying words but not actually doing anything.

“We need to see tangible action.”

Even plans for a roundtable this fall between federal ministers, provincial aboriginal affairs departments and national aboriginal organizations will be irrelevant unless families are offered a seat at the table, said Smith.

The roundtable is a compromise solution to try to do something on the issue while the federal government refuses to hold a national inquiry and its relationship with national aboriginal organizations is poor. The Assembly of First Nations and the Native Women’s Association of Canada are trying to arrange to have the roundtable in November in Yellowknife. The intention is to bring federal ministers from relevant departments such as health, justice and aboriginal affairs, together with aboriginal affairs ministers or premiers from every province and national aboriginal leaders.

There has so far been little discussion of including families.

“If you aren’t going to include families, it would be completely disingenuous,” said Nahanni Fontaine, special adviser to the Manitoba government on aboriginal women’s issues.

Fontaine favours an inquiry but said a roundtable may help since the federal government clearly won’t agree to an inquiry. But a roundtable, she said, “is essentially just another meeting.”

‘We know what the problems are. I want to see less talk and more action’

— Bernadette Smith, whose sister, Claudette Osborne-Tyo, has been missing since 2008

Smith has a specific list of things she thinks will help, including more shelters and treatment centres for women and early intervention to prevent children from having to be apprehended by social-services agencies.

She also says all schools on reserve need to go up to Grade 12 so native kids don’t have to move far from home to finish school.

Smith said when young people come to Winnipeg from the reserve, there are few supports to help them navigate their new environment safely.

Smith also says there has to be a plan in place to figure out how to handle chronic runaways. Many people, including the police, throw up their hands when a kid runs away repeatedly.

“But those are the kids you need to be really worried about,” said Smith.

Tina Fontaine, whose body was pulled from the Red River in August wrapped in plastic, was one such runaway. This week it was revealed numerous agencies, including the police and social workers, saw her the day she disappeared.

Smith said if the discovery of a 15-year-old girl, tossed away like garbage into a river, isn’t enough to get public attention, nothing will.

Fontaine said after years of work by native women, the police response and the public response to missing aboriginal girls and women has improved. But much remains to be done.

Smith recently met federal Status of Women Minister Kellie Leitch at Leitch’s request, found her to be genuine and is hopeful the meeting will have an impact.

But Smith was not impressed with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s August comment that Fontaine’s death was not part of a larger sociological phenomenon.

“I’m five times likelier to be murdered or go missing because I am an aboriginal woman,” said Smith. “I don’t think he thought it out. They care more about cats than they do about humans.”

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca