OTTAWA—Faced with the testimony of aggrieved families who’ve wondered for years what happened to their loved ones, the commissioners of the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls are calling for the immediate creation of a special police task force to help unearth some answers.

The demand is a key part of the inquiry’s interim report that was released Wednesday, when the commissioners said they will ask the government for more time and money to complete their work, blaming red tape and bureaucratic hurdles for “challenges” that have spurred criticism over delays, as well as calls to reboot the entire process.

The 111-page interim report highlighted the commissioners’ provisional conclusion that entrenched racism, sexism and the subjugations of colonialism have combined to create a situation where the number of Indigenous women and girls who have disappeared or been killed in Canada remains just an estimation, and successive governments have failed to implement hundreds of recommendations from decades of research and multi-million dollar inquests.

Chief Commissioner Marion Buller said that, based on the testimony they’ve heard so far, many people across the country are longing for answers about their missing or murdered loved ones.

“Why investigations were stopped, why leads weren’t followed up on — they desperately, desperately want to know, and it’s vital to their healing that they find out,” Buller said.

The commissioners also underlined how they don’t have the power to reopen cold cases themselves; they can only pass on “new information” to relevant police forces to look at.

Qajaq Robinson, one of the inquiry’s other commissioners, said racism and “inadequate policing” has led many to lose trust in the justice system. A special police task force could be made up of Indigenous investigators or officers “with Indigenous language and knowledge capacity” who can work to reopen cases “in a proper way,” she said.

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett called it “an important, interesting proposal” but would not commit to taking immediate action.

Outside the recommendations of the report, the commissioners said they will soon ask Ottawa to extend the timeframe for the inquiry, which has been criticized by victims’ families for delays and a lack of communication.

The inquiry was launched in September 2016 to examine the “systemic causes” of violence against Indigenous women and girls. It held its first public hearing to gather testimony from families and victims in Whitehorse on May 29.

The current deadline for their mandate expires at the end of 2018.

The report outlined some of the obstacles the commissioners say have slowed down the process, such as the requirement to work in various jurisdictions and the obligation to abide by federal government procurement and human resources rules. This means it has taken four months on average to hire a staff member, and up to six to eight months to ink information technology contracts, the report says.

But Buller refused to specify how much more time or money will be needed.

Bennett, meanwhile, wouldn’t say whether she’s open to extending the inquiry’s timeline and budget. “We will have that conversation when it’s the (right) time,” she said, adding that “families don’t want this to take forever.”

Wednesday’s report also included urgent calls for a commemoration fund for victims’ families, and for Ottawa to expand the health support program for the 900 people that want to take part in the inquiry process.

There were also demands to enact the long-standing recommendations from the Trust and Reconciliation Commission that studied residential schools, as well as to immediately comply with a Human Rights Tribunal ruling from last year that found Ottawa was discriminating against thousands of Indigenous children by failing to provide adequate health and social services.

“Our problems that we’re looking at are historical and ongoing,” Buller said Wednesday at a press conference in an Ottawa hotel.

“Today, as we’re here in this room, Indigenous women and girls are suffering violence, and, that, somehow, has become normalized.

“And that is a national tragedy.”

Francyne Joe, president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada said she would have liked to see more information in the interim report from the families and victims who have testified so far at hearings in the Yukon, B.C., Manitoba and Nova Scotia.

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“I was at the Whitehorse hearings and that was a very difficult time for families,” Joe said. “However, it doesn’t really get reflected in this report.”

Cathy McLeod, a Conservative MP from B.C. who acts as the party’s Indigenous affairs critic, said she would support an extended deadline but not an increased budget, nothing that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that studied residential schools completed its work over more than five years with a $60 million budget.

She said the government’s first move should be to address the red tape that the commissioners blame for holding them back. “It’s absolutely ridiculous what they’ve had to put up with,” McLeod said.

The interim report refers to a 2014 study by the RCMP that found almost 1,200 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls between 1980 and 2012 — 19 per cent of which were unsolved at that time. The commissioners’ report also posits that, because of how different police services identify who is Indigenous, “the real number … is likely much higher.”