Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is pretending to address the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women through the public inquiry it announced Wednesday.

At the end of at least two years of hearings and consultations, the five commissioners, all with aboriginal backgrounds, will issue a report and recommendations pretending to address the problem.

We in the media will pretend these recommendations are historic and unprecedented.

And Canadians will pretend to care. And nothing will change. Because it never does.

Nothing other than the federal, provincial and municipal governments throwing even more of our money at aboriginal problems.

This in addition to the billions of dollars we already throw at these problems every year, in a first-world country where we can’t even get clean water to many native reserves, let alone alleviate the adverse social conditions of unemployment, crime, poverty, lack of education and addiction, that lead to increased rates of violence against everyone, including women, both on and off reserves.

The major source of public cynicism about this inquiry won’t be that even before it officially starts Sept. 1, its cost has already grown to at least $53.8 million, $13.8 million or 34.5% higher than the $40 million originally budgeted.

Rather, the cynicism will be based on the fact we’ve seen this all before. We’ve seen the teary-eyed cabinet ministers, the staged aboriginal settings and imagery, the promises by politicians that this time things will change. But they won’t. And we already know why.

The reason is contained in yet another study of the plight of aboriginals in Canada, a 2014 report by James Anaya, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples.

Addressing the issue of murdered and missing aboriginal women in Canada, Anaya noted that: “Since 1996, there have been at least 29 official inquiries and reports dealing with aspects of this issue, which have resulted in over 500 recommendations for action.”

Remember, that was in 2014 so no doubt there have been more inquiries and recommendations since then.

So what is this inquiry going to recommend that at least 29 previous ones making over 500 recommendations overlooked?

Especially since we already know what the root of this problem is. It’s that the vast majority of aboriginal women who are murdered -- as is the case with the vast majority of all women who are murdered -- are murdered by men they know.

And that in the case of aboriginal women, they are most often killed by aboriginal men, and that the frequency of these murders is increased by the appalling social conditions in which many aboriginal men and women live, both on and off reserves.

This latest inquiry will highlight, as have so many inquiries before it, racism against aboriginals.

It will point to, as have previous inquiries, systemic police bias against aboriginal women living in poverty, who often turn to drug addiction and prostitution, as one of the factors that enabled serial killer Robert Pickton --- about half of whose victims were aboriginal -- to carry out his murders for so long.

But we’ve heard this all before, when the real question is why haven’t the billions and billions of dollars Canadians spend every year supposedly alleviating these abhorrent conditions done the job they were supposed to do?

And is the root problem that we’re not spending enough money, or that the money we’re spending is being spent in the wrong ways?