OTTAWA—Considering that Prince George is the biggest city on British Columbia’s Highway of Tears, Mary Teegee expected the National Inquiry Into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls to hold a full-scale hearing there.

The city sits at the eastern end of an area that became an emblem of the killings and disappearances that gave rise to the inquiry in the first place.

But in January, Teegee learned the inquiry would hold only a “statement gathering” session in Prince George. None of the commissioners would be there, and participants would tell the stories of their loved ones in private, without the option of speaking in an open setting, as has been done at the inquiry’s larger hearings elsewhere in B.C. and across Canada.

This decision had a personal impact for Teegee, whose 16-year-old cousin, Ramona Wilson, went missing in June 1994 and was found murdered 10 months later. Not only that, but as executive director of Carrier Sekani Family Services, she was asked to help organize the Prince George session. She was given less than two weeks’ notice to do so — hardly enough time to spread the word to families or book a venue, she said.

“We got told at the 11th hour to assist them,” Teegee said. “We did the best that we could.”

Poor communication, organization that came off as clumsy or insensitive — the situation was in some ways representative of the broader narrative that has enveloped the national inquiry since its first public hearings were delayed in the fall of 2017. That initial holdup was coupled with a series of high-profile staff departures that have included one of the inquiry’s five commissioners, a succession of executive directors, the inquiry’s lead lawyer, and more.

For Teegee, it all contributed to her sense that the process — so important to those who, like her, had pushed for years for an inquiry into the “national tragedy” of missing and murdered Indigenous women — has been bungled from the start. “I think the inquiry is a logistical nightmare,” she said.

Now, after almost two years of criticism and administrative setbacks, the national inquiry has arrived at a key juncture. In early March, chief commissioner Marion Buller asked for two more years and another $50 million — on top of the original $54-million budget — to complete the work. The four remaining commissioners are now steering the inquiry into a new phase of expert hearings and research, even as they plod toward a deadline they no longer wish to meet, waiting for the government to rule on the request for more time and money.

The legacy of the entire process — not to mention the credibility of Justin Trudeau’s quest for reconciliation in Canada — may well hinge on the answer.

“We have to do it right. We can’t do a superficial examination,” Buller told the Star in a recent interview, describing the “sacred responsibility” of the inquiry to address the systemic causes of violence against Indigenous women and girls, in memory of the hundreds — and perhaps thousands — who have died or gone missing in recent decades.

“In my view, to do anything less than that would not do honour to those people,” she said.

And yet, two months after asking Ottawa for more time and money, Buller said she has heard “nothing” from the Liberal government. The inquiry has also received no official responses to its interim report, published in November, which included calls on the federal government and the provinces to create a special police task force to address unsolved cases, provide funding to ensure families can participate in the inquiry — a frequent demand of critics — and expand a special mental health program to meet needs stirred up by the process.

“We made recommendations for funding for programming for healing that we’re seeing is time-sensitive and very critical,” Buller said.

But in the absence of an answer on the extension, the inquiry must “press on,” she said, describing how expert hearings on human rights have started in Quebec City, and will continue with sessions on government services, racism and policing until late June. Buller said the inquiry’s forensic review team is preparing to start its audit of police files on specific cases, and that work on the final report is also underway, with a view to finishing a first draft in August — just three months from now.

“We don’t have the luxury of a pause to wait for the government to get back to us,” Buller said.

In her own interview with the Star, federal Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett said Thursday that a decision on an extension will be announced “within a week or two.” She added that an official response to the interim report is in the works as well, and that she hopes to provide information on which recommendations the government plans to fulfil at the same time as it releases a decision on the extension.

“The issue (is what are) the concrete measures and actions that it will take to keep women safe in their communities,” she said. “That still is the goal.”

Yet some Indigenous leaders don’t think the process is worth more time and money. Sheila North, grand chief of the Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, said many of those who pushed for a public inquiry now feel a made-in-Ottawa process was imposed on them without enough consultation.

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“People started feeling disrespected and disregarded,” North said, explaining how there was “little or sometimes no information at all” about when hearings would take place, or co-ordination about how to access “after-care” for people retraumatized through their participation in the process.

Others were put off by the original inquiry format, something that could have been avoided through more consultation with Indigenous groups in different regions, North said. For example, some who came to testify at the inquiry hearing in Winnipeg in October felt the process was set up like a courtroom.

“People were expecting an environment where they can feel comfortable, and feel they are telling a story to people that care,” she said.

Melanie Omeniho, president of Women of the Métis Nation, said the lack of communication and outreach from the inquiry has left Métis families feeling disregarded by the process, and that some gestures of accommodation — such as when the inquiry invited fiddlers and dancers to perform at a hearing in Richmond, B.C., at the last minute, she said — came across as superficial and offensive.

Instead of an extension, Omeniho said work should begin immediately on implementing changes that have already been called for, such as reforms to police and justice systems, and filling gaps in statistics on missing and murdered Métis women and girls.

“They didn’t have the respect to ask the families that tried to engage with them if they were Métis,” Omeniho said. “The trauma keeps increasing and there’s no followup for them.”

Similar criticisms were outlined in a scathing inquiry report card published this month by the Native Women’s Association of Canada. Francyne Joe, the association’s executive director, said she sees two main problems with how the inquiry has unfolded: the scope of its mandate — to analyze “systemic violence” against Indigenous women and girls — is too wide and undefined, and the administration has been slow and uncommunicative.

But even so, Joe supports the extension for the inquiry, with caveats like a more transparent budget and improved co-operation with community groups. “We just want to ensure that at the end of the day, this report that comes out is going to be a substantial and effective report that’s going to make a difference for our women,” she said.

Buller, meanwhile, acknowledged the inquiry has its shortcomings, but said improvements have been made to ensure the process is respectful, and that participating families are supported in travelling to and from hearings. Now it’s just a matter of striving toward a final report that — unlike most calls for action from so many previous inquiries and reports — results in concrete change, she said.

“We want to keep this work moving,” Buller said.

The big question now is whether the federal government does, too.