Red dresses on crosses are displayed at the entrance of a makeshift camp near the Prairie Green landfill in Winnipeg on April 27.SEBASTIEN ST-JEAN/Getty Images
The federal Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister believes that the Winnipeg Police Service did not fulfill its duty to adequately investigate the murders of four First Nations women at the hands of a serial killer, calling the situation a “complete failure.”
In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Gary Anandasangaree said the police force’s decision to not search a Winnipeg-area landfill, where the remains of at least two of the four women were disposed of in 2022, was irresponsible.
“You have got to really think about how you build trust, particularly with Indigenous people, after this,” he said. “We know that racialized kids have always been told to be very careful. But I think in this particular instance, there is a greater conversation taking place: Can we actually trust the police?”
Mr. Anandasangaree said this case has shown that there are systemic issues within the service, adding that there needs to be “an independent review about police actions.” However, he stopped short of calling for a formal public inquiry – something 600 First Nations across Canada, along with the victims’ families, have been demanding.
In an e-mailed statement, Winnipeg police Superintendent Cam MacKid defended the force, saying his office would speak directly to the federal minister about his criticism. He would not say whether police support a public inquiry.
The Manitoba government has not committed to an inquiry either.
In late August, Court of King’s Bench Justice Glenn Joyal gave the harshest possible sentence to Jeremy Skibicki, 37, for the first-degree murders of 24-year-old Rebecca Contois, 26-year-old Marcedes Myran, 39-year-old Morgan Harris and a yet-to-be-identified woman whom Indigenous elders have named Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, meaning Buffalo Woman. He is not eligible for parole for at least 25 years, serving four life sentences concurrently.
Although police located the body of Ms. Contois shortly after the killer’s arrest in 2022, the remains of the other three women have never been found.
For the past two years, families of the women and First Nations leaders have been advocating for a search of the Prairie Green landfill in the northern outskirts of Winnipeg, where GPS information revealed that the bodies of Ms. Myran and Ms. Harris had been buried. But Winnipeg police considered the search too dangerous.
Now, however, that search is under way, taken over by the federal and provincial governments, each of which has committed $20-million for the effort. Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew has called it a continuing humanitarian mission.
Mr. Anandasangaree said he is disappointed in the Winnipeg police because similar landfill searches have been conducted in other jurisdictions.
“This is probably, for me, the toughest file I’ve had to work on,” said the minister, who was appointed to cabinet in July, 2023. “The way I look at it is this: If it was my family member, what would I want my police department to do? And in their complete failure, what would I expect the government to do?”
But Supt. MacKid called the murder case “one of the most complex investigations in Manitoba history.” He said that more than 70 witnesses were interviewed, almost 8,000 hours of surveillance video were examined, more than 25 types of judicial authorizations were obtained, and in excess of 2,500 forensic exhibits were seized by the force.
It is important to note that there is “disinformation surrounding the investigation,” he said, and that police had, in fact, successfully conducted a landfill search south of Winnipeg at the separate Brady Road site to recover Ms. Contois’s remains.
Supt. MacKid added that while the service now supports a humanitarian search of Prairie Green for the other victims, considerable risks led to the decision in 2022 not to conduct an “evidentiary-based search” at that site. Those risks, which included potential exposure to toxic chemicals and asbestos, were consistent with a feasibility study that was later conducted with federal government funding, he said.
Nonetheless, Cambria Harris, daughter of Morgan Harris, said Winnipeg police would have searched for her mother’s remains immediately had she not been a First Nations woman.
“These police officers really need to start looking at themselves in a mirror,” she told The Globe. “Are you seriously telling us, after all this time, that our Indigenous women are disposable? That you don’t have systemic issues to address?”