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She says while no inquiry can undo what has happened, it will help find a way forward because Canada “can and must do better.”

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The inquiry, once eventually launched, is expected to take two years and cost $40 million. That means two more years of government inaction and $40 million going to lawyers, stipends and meeting rooms that could instead be directed to what we already know about the problem(s).

The issue is a glaring tragedy. Between 1980 and 2012, almost 1,200 native women have either vanished or been murdered; mostly both. If more than two white women were missing in southern Ontario police would be setting up command posts and Facebook would be awash in injunctions to wrap trees in pink ribbons and flash porch lights in sympathy. The indifference to the plight of these women and of the native community as a whole is staggering. But that alone does not support the premise that an inquiry is the answer.

Can we admit that we already know a considerable amount about what ails the aboriginal communities? It begins with just how large a portion of the non-native community doesn’t value the lives of aboriginals. There’s a reason why the CBC shut down comments specifically for those of its online articles that discuss native issues; the tenor of the remarks ran the gamut from hysterical ignorance to quasi-white supremacy. In my medium of talk radio, any discussion of native issues immediately prompts calls from people who think natives are lazy freeloaders who need to get over the past and move on.