Members of the BC Coalition on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (the coalition) are deeply disappointed that Canada has granted only a six-month extension to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (the inquiry). Many Indigenous, civil society, and front-line service organizations supported the inquiry’s request for a two-year extension, to allow it to heed calls from the grassroots to reorganize its work and hold in-depth and meaningful institutional and regional hearings.
The coalition is a broad network of individuals, grassroots, and social justice organizations who have come together to address the ongoing crisis of murdered and disappeared Indigenous women and girls in BC and across Canada. The coalition and its members have advocated long and hard for a thorough and meaningful inquiry into violence against Indigenous women and girls, one that would offer clear steps towards the structural change needed across Canada to finally end the systemic violence faced by Indigenous women and girls.
