OTTAWA — The federal government is not ready to create a special police task force for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, a key demand from the ongoing national inquiry that will go unmet as the Liberal administration decides in the coming days whether to grant the process more time and money.

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett cast doubt on the idea of a national police task force in an interview last week. Her office confirmed Wednesday that the government will “continue to look at it,” but will not announce plans to create such a unit when it responds to the national inquiry’s interim report, which was published almost seven months ago on Nov. 1.

The report included a list of recommendations that included the call on Ottawa to work with the provinces and territories to create a Canada-wide police task force that could assess or reopen missing and murdered cases, and review previous investigations.

Bennett told the Star that the idea of a special task force has merit, but it would be difficult to set up.

“The idea of creating an all-new body that has a mandate to oversee every police force in the country and every jurisdiction, again, is quite complicated, and requires lots of consultation,” Bennett said.

Francyne Joe, president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, said many families of missing and murdered women and girls feel a special police task force would help their healing and closure. Such a task force, staffed by third-party investigators, could also potentially glean more information from investigations in communities where there is a lack of rapport or even a distrust of police, Joe said.

“It’s important for the (inquiry) and the families to have a separate organization that isn’t biased toward any of the police,” she said, adding she is concerned the government is already moving too slowly to fulfil the recommendations from previous national inquiries, including the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

“I’d like to see some changes starting to be made now,” Joe said.

Bennett, meanwhile, said other recommendations in the inquiry’s interim report will likely be fulfilled. These include calls to establish a commemoration fund for the missing and murdered, consider restoring the Aboriginal Healing Foundation that dissolved in 2014, and increase support for Indigenous organizations to participate in the inquiry. “Those are specific areas that we are trying to respond in a positive way,” the minister said.

In terms of police work, Bennett said cases involving the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which in 2014 concluded almost 1,200 Indigenous women went missing or were killed between 1980 and 2012, could be reviewed or reopened by a special missing and murdered unit led by Assistant Commissioner Shirley Cuillierrier.

“The unit that (Cuillierrier) has set up within the RCMP to take referrals from the commission on cases is, I think, a really good thing, so that will be taken into consideration in terms of the recommendation of a police task force,” Bennett said.

The inquiry also has a research team tasked with reviewing how police investigated missing and murdered cases, but the process doesn’t have the power to reopen cases on its own.

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The Liberal government in Ottawa will soon announce whether to grant the inquiry another $50 million — on top of the original $54-million budget — and two more years to complete its mandate of studying the root causes of “systemic violence” against Indigenous women and girls, and recommending ways to make life safer for a segment of the population where murders occur at much higher rates than the Canadian average. The inquiry’s current deadline is Nov. 1.

Bennett told the Star last week that a decision on the extension can be expected “within a week or two,” and that the government is hoping to make its official response to the interim report at the same time.