Posted: Thursday, 15 December 2011

The Canadian Labour Congress supports a decision by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women to conduct an inquiry into murders and disappearances of Aboriginal women and girls across Canada.

“We urge the Canadian government to cooperate fully,” says CLC President Ken Georgetti. “It is unfortunate that it has come to this. The government’s failure to take effective action to address this national tragedy is of great concern to us.”

Statistics show consistently that Aboriginal women face much higher levels of violence than all other women in Canada.Since 2005 the Native Women's Association of Canada has documented more than 600 cases of Aboriginal women and girls who have been murdered or who remain missing.

On December 12, the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women issued a report called Ending Violence against Aboriginal Women and Girls. The committee undertook an extensive study, which included testimony from Aboriginal women’s organizations. Members of the committee visited First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities to hear women’s experiences first-hand. The report does not appear to reflect the scope of evidence that the committee heard, but rather it focuses on current government measures. In that way, it effectively silences the voices of women who in the hearings called for concrete and sustained action.

The report, for example, fails to make any concrete recommendations to address the need for safe housing, stable funding for programs and services, and effective and unbiased policing. The report does call for culturally-specific training for law enforcement [officers], but does not recommend any accountability measures for how police handle cases. Nor does it require the police to consistently record and report whether victims of violent crime or missing persons are Aboriginal.

“Aboriginal women have led the struggle to bring national attention to this question,” says Georgetti. “We hope that the United Nations inquiry will result in more meaningful government action”.