Ghislain Picard, the Assembly of First Nations regional chief for Quebec and Labrador, said he hopes the government bolsters its plans for the data bank. He pointed to the unprecedented RCMP report released last May that found at least 1,181 aboriginal women went missing or were killed between 1980 and 2012 as evidence there are numerous cases that need to be solved.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Aboriginal leaders are calling on the federal government to strengthen its plans for a missing-persons and unidentified-remains DNA data bank, saying families of vanished women need answers.
Concerns about the much-anticipated DNA registry for linking the missing with the anonymous dead were raised after a Globe and Mail investigation found that Ottawa's plans for the data bank fall far short of the system in the United States. If left unchanged, the Canadian approach will not be as effective as the U.S. model, reducing the likelihood of solving cold cases and putting killers behind bars.
"If you're going to do something, then do it right," said Dawn Harvard, the interim president of the Native Women's Association of Canada. "Setting up an expectation, only to fail to deliver, just re-victimizes and re-traumatizes people who are already so hurt," added Ms. Harvard, who was in the capital Friday for a national roundtable on violence against indigenous women.
The Conservative government has heralded the national data bank, expected in 2017, as a valuable tool to assist in investigating missing persons, unidentified remains and criminal cases – and as a way to help bring closure to families of murdered and missing aboriginal women. Indigenous women are far more likely to disappear or be killed than non-aboriginal women.
While the government has not yet presented its data-bank plans to police agencies, coroners and medical examiners, the RCMP told The Globe that Ottawa will not pay for DNA testing in missing-persons and unidentified-remains cases, as Washington does. It will also be up to Canadian police and death investigators to decide which types of DNA to profile. In the U.S., a centralized lab always attempts to analyze two types.
These shortcomings mean Canada's data bank will not be as well-populated or as consistent as the one in the U.S.
A spokesman for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said recently that the government is committed to ensuring the data bank delivers results and will monitor its effectiveness.
Canada is well behind the U.S. and the United Kingdom in setting up a DNA registry to link the missing and unidentified. There are 697 anonymous dead in Canada, according to a Globe survey of coroners and medical examiners. At least 11 of the unidentified women were or could have been aboriginal. Some of their deaths are being investigated as crimes.
Ghislain Picard, the Assembly of First Nations regional chief for Quebec and Labrador, said he hopes the government bolsters its plans for the data bank. He pointed to the unprecedented RCMP report released last May that found at least 1,181 aboriginal women went missing or were killed between 1980 and 2012 as evidence there are numerous cases that need to be solved.
The report "fell on us like a time bomb," he said. "We have so many unsolved cases that have been documented for years."
Niki Ashton, the NDP critic for aboriginal affairs, said the government's data-bank plans lack the commitment needed to solve cases, especially older ones. She believes Ottawa should offer funding for DNA testing.
"This is a clear example of window-dressing in the worst way from the Conservative government," Ms. Ashton contended. "We need to resolve the outstanding cases and justice needs to be brought, but the way the government is laying out this plan will not get us there."