Margaret Buist and her team is sifting through the information gathered at pre-inquiry consultations.

Annette Francis

APTN National News

GATINEAU, Que. – For the past few months, Margaret Buist and her team of 25 employees have been working behind the scenes taking care of the logistics of the pre-inquiry meetings for the families and loved ones of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

Now that the pre-inquiry meetings have wrapped up Buist spoke to APTN National News about their work inside the Indigenous Affairs building in Gatineau, Que.

“We feel like we’re at the cutting edge of re-establishing a reconciliation framework and a new relationship with Indigenous people. I have a number of Indigenous people on my team as well, and so it’s been very important for them, too,” said Buist, director general of the MMIWG Secretariat.

Since last December, the Buist’s group has organized a total of 18 meetings across the country, which included 17 engagements for a total of 2,000 family members, loved ones and survivors of MMIWG, as well as national Aboriginal organizations and provinces and territories.

It’s been challenging to organize at times, with extra hours and coffee to make it through she said.

“Tuesday’s storm here in Ottawa, we had 325 people that needed to go home on Tuesday and so we were up all night for two nights in a row, trying to reconnect them to flights, working with airlines. You know a lot of people from the North. Flights were cancelled, so those are really intense periods for sure,” she said.

But in spite of the long hours, it’s important work said Buist.

Now, that the meetings are over the secretariat still has a lot of work ahead.

It will gather all the submissions, put them into a database, analyze and prepare a summary report.

“We’ve received approximately 3,800 surveys so far and the online survey is still open until Feb. 22,” said Buist.

She said there’s a lot of submissions that discuss a host of issues ranging from how to examine the causes of violence, address research needs, to incorporate healing into the process and deal with justice related issues.

“All of those aspects will go into the mix for the government to decide how to design the scope of the inquiry and to pick the commissioners and what it should look like and what the government wants to see from the inquiry at the end,” she said.

According to Buist the final summary report will be posted on the Indigenous Affairs’ website once it’s complete, but that will take several weeks.

She said it’s about getting it right.

“Listening (and) respecting what’s heard, engaging the families and loved ones and survivors throughout the process, having aspects of healing involved in the process and really respecting the importance of cultural aspects in the inquiry, I think are key,” said Buist.

The Liberal government hope to begin a national inquiry this summer.

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