Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, Marc Miller, said the federal government is listening to survivors and families and moving towards accountability when it comes to responding to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ (MMIWG) calls for justice.
“We’re making sure that we don’t lose track … making sure that we are focused on families, survivors and their experience through all this,” Miller told Global News. “The federal government is not good at having those intimate, direct ties with families and survivors … we are sort of very corporate in nature and often quite sterile in the way we interact. That needs to change.“
This year’s annual progress report was the first to detail what work is being done that explicitly relates to the calls for justice.
Across departments, Miller said various initiatives are actively working towards addressing the calls but progress on the plan has been hard to measure.
When asked how many of the 231 calls for justice have been completed, Miller said, “It’s not a tick the box operation.”
“It isn’t limited to solely the federal government, that reminder is always poignant when you talk to families,” Miller added, “but we can certainly do things to make sure that the people that are vulnerable are no longer so.”
It’s been four years since the national inquiry and final report on MMIWG were released, and two years since Canada released its national action plan.
The final report concluded that what’s been happening to Indigenous women and girls in Canada is a “genocide” and families and advocates have cited a lack of action on the report’s findings ever since.
This year’s progress report highlights plans to advance accountability and accelerate the working process, citing the appointment of an ombudsperson, supporting 30 communities to develop safety plans, investing an additional $20 million in the pathways to safe Indigenous communities initiative and allocating over $3 million to develop 13 new healing and wellness programs to support Indigenous families and survivors.
“We have to hear the calls from families that moneys are going into different organizations and that never hits the ground. So I think we can walk and chew gum here but it is a cry that we do have to keep focused on,” said Miller.
“We’re not anywhere close to where we want to be, but it’s sad to say that these some of these changes are generational in nature.”
Miller said a lot of the issues that stall this work arise when change needs to happen federally, provincially and locally.
“Jurisdiction is a poisonous word in this space,” he said. “Often the barrier that we’ve had is sort of a corporate one in nature where … we don’t have good, intimate, direct links to ground grassroots organizations and we are not having those difficult conversations with with survivors.“
He said that while the federal government’s commitment is ongoing, every funding announcement can’t be celebrated.
“This is really about accompanying people and making sure that no one is patting themselves on the back until people are safe in this country,” said Miller.
“To be generational and transformational in nature, (the MMIWG crisis) needs to be addressed in many segments, including by the general population that really doesn’t spend enough time thinking about these issues.”