Inquiring Into An Inquiry

Recently, I had the opportunity to enjoy some time with a very good friend of mine. We had dinner at The Manor; my chef, Henri, made an excellent Coquilles St Jacques, accompanied with -- but I begin to digress. Suffice it to say that dinner was a wonderful thing, as was the Chablis that accompanied it.

My friend, who I do not name for reasons that will soon become obvious, was a senior officer in the RCMP, and she used our get- together to do some necessary venting.

What irritated her was the strident call for an inquiry into the tragedy of the missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada.

 Now a public Inquiry, while an expensive use of taxpayer dollars, can be a useful thing, particularly in getting at issues that were to this point hidden, and unearthing who precisely was responsible. The point is to remedy the situation so that it does not occur again, and mete out justice to the perpetrators.

NONE OF THIS APPLIES TO AN INQUIRY INTO THE FATE OF THESE ABORIGINAL WOMEN.

We know, for instance, all too well what the issues and perpetrators are are, and hence the call for an Inquiry falls, not into determining the facts, but into political theatre.* As to what we do know, here my RCMP friend provided the following information, all of which has been made public, and duly ignored by those pressing for an Inquiry.

As of  June, 2013, there are 6,420 missing persons on Canada, of whom 1455 are women. Of those, 164 are aboriginal. And out of those, 105 are missing in unknown or suspicious circumstances. Further, 88% of the murders of aboriginal women have been solved by police. -- almost identical to the 89% of murders of non-aboriginal women.

Moreover my RCMP informant indicated that of these aboriginal victims, 30% were murdered by their husbands, 23% by another family member, and 30% were murdered by an acquaintance. Only 8% were murdered by strangers.

It gets worse. Of the aboriginal family members and acquaintances who kill aboriginal women, 44% are drunk, compares to 15% of murderers of non-aboriginal women. Also, 74% of the murderers of aboriginal women are unemployed and 71% of the murderers of aboriginal women had a criminal record, 53% had been convicted before of a violent crime, and 62% had a history of violence with the murder victim herself.

If you are going to have an Inquiry, try focussing on those statistics. I for one, would look forward to hearing whatever response will come from a number of very well paid band chiefs.

I'm done with this.



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* Justin Trudeau may not know these statistics -- he tends to wander lonely as a cloud -- but Mulcair certainly does, and keeps silent. For shame. I am also appalled to see the Premiers being roped into an issue best addressed by the professional "carers" such as Neil Young, David Suzuki and (this just in) Leonardo DiCaprio.