Trudeau government given failing grade for lack of action plan on MMIWG

OTTAWA — A national advocacy organization that fights for Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people is giving the federal government a failing grade for not delivering national action plan to respond to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

The Native Women’s Association of Canada has released a report card on the progress government has made since the release of the inquiry report one year ago.

It found little has been done to address the inquiry’s 231 calls for justice in the last 12 months, and awarded the federal government a “resounding fail.”

Association president Lorraine Whitman says Canada cannot afford to do nothing in the face of the violence that continues to take the lives of First Nations, Metis and Inuit women.

Last week, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett said Ottawa is delaying its plan to release a plan this month because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The inquiry delivered its final report June 3, 2019 concluding that decades of systemic racism and human-rights violations had contributed to the deaths and disappearances of hundreds of Indigenous women and girls and that it constituted a genocide.