International Spotlight on Canada’s Continued Failure to Translate Words into Actions

NWAC appeals to UN and OAS over weak government response to genocide.

NWAC recently embarked on an energetic flurry of global advocacy to throw a much-needed international spotlight on Canada’s woefully inadequate response to the Final Report to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The federal government published its response, entitled Federal Pathway to Address Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ People, on June 3, 2021.

Straight on the heels of this response, NWAC contacted key United Nations (UN) and Organization of American States (OAS) human rights experts and bodies. We expressed our deep concern that the government’s response will result in the continuation of race-based genocide in Canada—a key finding of the Inquiry’s Final Report.

Key actors at the international level included the highly respected UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Francisco Cali Tzay. In a detailed letter to Mr. Tzay, we indicated that the Federal Pathway plan focuses on a small handful of short-term goals, which primarily relate to the National Inquiry’s follow-up process and not the content of its 231 Calls for Justice.

Simply put, in its current form, the federal government’s plan does not provide a viable way forward on how, when, and by whom the Calls for Justice as a whole will be acted upon in practice and how they will be financed. Not surprisingly, a number of Indigenous and civil society actors, several former National Inquiry commissioners, and families who have lost loved ones have heavily criticized the plan’s lack of substance and steps needed to achieve real progress.

We also conveyed our concerns about the federal government’s lamentable response to such an important, high-profile domestic human rights inquiry to the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and the UN Commission on the Status of Women, as well as the OAS’s Office of the Secretary General and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

We can only be hope that more action and fewer empty words will ensue as a result.