Her death was a key factor in convincing the Trudeau government to set up a national inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Just a little over a week after the man charged with second-degree murder in her death was acquitted of that crime, hundreds of people gathered at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto on Saturday demanding justice for Tina Fontaine and others like her.

The rally, which replicated others that have taken place across the country, came ahead of the 40th International Women’s Day, which takes place March 8. The “Justice For Tina Fontaine” rally was joined this year by the International Women’s Day Toronto March, which is made up of a coalition of groups that organize around women’s issues.

A stream of speakers (most Indigenous women) all had a similar refrain: Fontaine, 15, was failed not just by a criminal justice system that did not secure a conviction in her case, but by every other institution she came in contact with in her short life.

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Before she was pulled from Winnipeg’s Red River in the summer of 2014, her body wrapped in a blanket that had been weighed down by rocks, Fontaine was supposed to be in the care of Manitoba’s Child and Family Services. She was put in a hotel room with little monitoring. When she disappeared, social workers did not tell her family back home. During the time she was reported missing, police came across her in a car with an older man and did nothing.

“No more stolen children, no more children are going to leave our community … and be put in hotel rooms,” Suzanne Smoke of the American Indian Movement told the crowd. Posters and banners in the crowd read “never again” and “without justice there can be no peace of reconciliation.”

New Democrat MP Charlie Angus (Timmins), who was also in attendance, called the foster care system’s effect on Indigenous children a conduit for gangs and murdered young women. “It is a modern day crime,” he said, adding “Tina gives us a face to a generation of children who have been taken and abandoned.”

In February, a jury in Winnipeg found Raymond Cormier not guilty of second-degree murder in the 2014 death of Fontaine.

Cormier, in undercover police tapes, admitted that he had sex with the teen and was heard saying he bet Fontaine was killed because he found out she was only 15.

The defence had argued that the tapes were hard to hear, that the transcriptions could be wrong and that Cormier’s denial to police of any involvement was the real truth.

There was no DNA evidence linking him to Fontaine and experts could not determine how she died.

“I’ve learned not to expect much of the Canadian justice system, I never have,” said 16-year-old Madyson Arscott at Saturday’s rally. “I was not surprised by the verdict … . My friends, the system is not broken, it is working exactly as it should be.” Arscott helped to organize Saturday’s rally. Her message to Indigenous youth: “You are worth the effort.”

The decision in Fontaine’s case came just days after a Saskatchewan farmer was acquitted in the murder of 22-year-old Cree man Coulten Boushie. The composition of the jury in the trial came under attack for an apparent lack of Indigenous members and the Boushie family has said they were treated poorly by the RCMP.

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The federal government’s inquest into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, of which there are thousands, is conducting hearings across the country for people to give testimony. The national inquiry, though, has had its fair share of problems with high staff turnover, communication problems and concerns about caring for people after they have gone through the traumatic experience of testifying about their lost loved ones.

The deaths of 11 children who have died in Ontario while in the care of children and youth services is currently under review by the coroner. Seven of the 11 youths in the review, who died between January 2014 and July 2017, were Indigenous.

With Star files