B.C. to resume issuing reports on inquiry into missing women

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The B.C. government says it will resume issuing regular reports on its progress in implementing recommendations made by the provincial inquiry into missing women, a practice it abandoned two years after the inquiry report was made public.

Justice Minister Suzanne Anton said Thursday her government would provide public updates after the B.C. auditor-general suggested it in a report released the same day.

"We will be implementing the recommendation – we have been listening," Ms. Anton said on a conference call for media.

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"What we have heard from the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry report is informing the work ahead with the national inquiry," she said, adding, "B.C.'s commitment to this national issue builds on the substantial amount of work on the recommendations which have already taken place."

The provincial government continues to work on issues raised by the inquiry, she added.

The government's last update on its work to fulfill the recommendations from the 2012 report came in 2014 and, at the time, the province said that would be its final update.

In her new report, Auditor-General Carol Bellringer said the province has made significant progress in implementing some recommendations, including a compensation fund for children of missing women.

But she said it has taken "limited or no action" on several other recommendations from the 2012 report, including that the province set up a Greater Vancouver police force to replace the mix of municipal and RCMP police departments that currently operate in the region.

Ms. Bellringer said the government should resume public reports on the inquiry because so many families and communities have been affected by the tragedies that were its subject.

Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, by former B.C. attorney-general Wally Oppal, was released in December, 2012.

The province set up the inquiry in 2010 to review police investigations into 67 women who had disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside during the 1990s and 2000s, as well as the 1998 decision to drop several charges, including attempted murder, against Robert Pickton. He is currently serving six concurrent life sentences after having been convicted, in 2007, of six counts of second-degree murder. Twenty other charges against him were stayed in 2010.

The Oppal inquiry found a host of problems and lack of co-ordination between police forces in the Lower Mainland and said women were treated as "nobodies." The report contained 63 recommendations and two urgent measures related to issues including police investigations and support for vulnerable women. In her 2014 update, Ms. Anton said work was "under way or complete" on 75 per cent of its recommendations.

The same report noted that the government was still talking to local communities about one of two "urgent measures" in the 2012 report: enhanced public transit along Highway 16, the so-called Highway of Tears that runs between Prince George and Prince Rupert.

(The other "urgent measure" in Mr. Oppal's report was funding to allow drop-in centres for sex-trade workers to operate 24 hours a day. The urgent measures were not formal recommendations, but Mr. Oppal urged the provincial government to act on them immediately.)

In its 2014 update, the province said it had taken several steps to improve safety along the highway, including enhancing cellular coverage, and that there was "no easy fix" given the distance between communities on the route.

This past June, the government announced a Highway 16 transportation action plan that includes $5-million in federal and provincial funding. In November, as part of that action plan, the province announced six-day-a-week transit service between Smithers and Moricetown – about 30 kilometres apart – would start in January, 2017.

The federal government announced in December, 2015, that it would launch an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. Five commissioners and terms of reference were announced in August, 2016.