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OTTAWA — Has Canada as a country committed an ongoing genocide against Indigenous women and girls?

This question dominated much of the reaction to the 1,200-page report from the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. The report concludes Canada’s actions, both historically and currently, do constitute genocide, and it repeatedly uses the term throughout.

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“This report is about deliberate race, identity and gender-based genocide,” says the opening paragraph from Chief commissioner Marion Buller.

But the reaction was skeptical on many fronts. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not use the word in his speech at the inquiry’s closing ceremony, despite an audience member calling out to him to do so. Justice Minister David Lametti said the government would leave the question of a genocide up to the “academics and experts.” Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian who led the UN Peacekeeping Mission during the Rwandan genocide, told Quebec media he has a problem with using “genocide” for Canada’s actions in this context.