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opinion

It's hard to recall a major inquiry that has been as badly botched as the one looking into the missing women of British Columbia.

You'd think that, given our history of holding taxpayer-funded inquisitions, especially in B.C., it would be something we could do in our sleep. But the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry has turned into a nightmare for both the B.C. government and the person leading it – Wally Oppal.

There have been so many mistakes and questionable decisions made along the way that, if this were a court case, it would have been thrown out by now.

A former B.C. Supreme Court judge and B.C. attorney-general, Mr. Oppal, despite his many qualifications, was a terrible choice to head this inquiry. He came in with too much baggage. And then weighed himself down with even more.

When he was attorney-general, Mr. Oppal didn't think that such a commission was needed. He also approved the decision not to proceed with 20 additional murder charges against serial killer Robert Pickton after he'd been found guilty of six. That infuriated many of the families who would have standing at the inquiry.

After his appointment, Mr. Oppal got into hot water trying to secure legal funding for a myriad of advocacy groups. In a letter to the government looking for more money, he suggested it was the Crown's failure to proceed with charges against Mr. Pickton in 1997 (when he was arrested for stabbing a prostitute) that caused the deaths of more women.

Trying to guilt the government into giving you more money by suggesting it has blood on its hands is never a good idea.

Mr. Oppal made it worse when he left a message on then-attorney-general Barry Penner's phone suggesting that the police had ignored obvious warnings about Mr. Pickton's murderous ways. Mr. Penner was so angry about the call that he outed Mr. Oppal, and that incited new calls for the head of the embattled inquiry commissioner.

Now, if Mr. Oppal comes down hard on the Crown and the police in his report – as he's likely to – both will insist that he was biased against them. If he goes easy on the police, the families will insist that the former attorney-general was always on the side of law enforcement.

Because 20 of 21 advocacy groups with standing at the inquiry withdrew over the funding squabble, Mr. Oppal's report is sure to be denounced when it finally comes out.

Can you say debacle?

Controversies aside, I'm not sure what the commission will tell us that we already don't know. Mr. Oppal opened his hearings by saying the question he most wants answered is whether society's most vulnerable women are treated the same as others by police and the law. Let me help him: Ah, no.

Mr. Oppal said we must also ask whether it's acceptable for our most vulnerable to disappear and be murdered. Really? That's a question he's out to answer? And to think the bill for this spectacle could come in close to $10-million by the time it's wrapped up.

The fact is, we already know what happened. The reason Mr. Pickton got away with killing so many women on his suburban pig farm is because the police screwed up. Even they admit it.

Both the Vancouver police and the RCMP failed to conduct surveillance on Mr. Pickton before he was finally caught in 2002 although there were plenty of reasons to consider him a prime suspect in the disappearance of scores of women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

We already know, as well, that Vancouver police ignored an expert on serial killers on its own staff who insisted that a mass murderer was likely behind the disappearance of skid row prostitutes.

But the question Mr. Oppal is not likely to answer is why police did not pursue the disappearance of these women with the same vigour they might have had they been from a better part of town and in a more honourable line of work.

That's probably an area too controversial for this damaged commission to wade into.

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