According to New Brunswick’s auditor general, a 2023 plan in response to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls is no more than 10 per cent complete.
Paul Martin raised concerns about the two-year Weaving Our Voices Together plan as part of the second volume of his performance audit, released Tuesday.
“We have a plan to finally look at it for New Brunswick, and it’s sitting on a desk with nothing happening. That’s unacceptable,” he said in a scrum.
His report found that two committees were initiated as a result of the plan” an advisory committee made up of First Nations communities, Indigenous organizations and government departments, and a working group intended to co-ordinate work between different provincial departments.
But in the two years since the plan was completed, he found neither committee ever met.
“It’s time to stand up and take responsibility, and do what you said you were going to do,” he said.
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The audit also found that New Brunswick does not know the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in the province. Martin has called on the Women’s Equality Department to change that.
“Without this knowledge, they cannot determine if the plan is reducing violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people,” he said in the audit.
Opposition reacts
Progressive Conservative MLA Tammy Scott-Wallace was the women’s equality minister when the plan was being created — but she said she only learned it wasn’t implemented when reading the audit.
“I am, I must say, very disappointed to see that really that hadn’t progressed beyond the summer of 2023,” she said.
But she also said the department is very small. According to the audit, it was not given any additional funding to follow through with the plan.
“Perhaps it is time to have a look at the staffing there, and what more can be done,” she said.
Green Party Leader David Coon said he didn’t even know of the plan until the audit — despite looking for a news release.
“It was a program that was launched in stealth and carried out, to the degree that anything happened, out of sight and out of mind,” he said.
“It’s quite shocking, of course, to see that it didn’t go anywhere, really.”
Government response
The Women’s Equality Department has accepted all 11 of the auditor general’s recommendations — including that the department obtain data on the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in the province.
But the department said data collection provincially and nationally is unreliable due to “the suppression of data for privacy reasons.” The department committed to creating a plan to gather data to measure the impact of the plan.
Meanwhile, Women’s Equality Minister Lyne Chantal Boudreau said implementation of the plan will take time.
“It’s very serious for us, this, and we will try our best to make sure that we change this,” she said.
The recommendations are set to be completed by March 2027.
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