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The national commission investigating the root causes of violence against Indigenous women and girls came to the conclusion this week that Canada is engaged in “nothing less than [a] deliberate, often covert campaign of genocide.”
Those are the words of the chief commissioner, Marion Buller, who was the first Indigenous woman appointed as a Provincial Court judge in British Columbia.
She was not speaking metaphorically: Ms. Buller and her commission are accusing Canada of being in the act of committing one of the most reviled crimes in history. That has inevitably turned the release of their report into a legal and linguistic debate that will do nothing to improve the lives of Indigenous women and girls.
But it’s a debate that has to be had, because the commission’s accusation of a continuing genocide doesn’t ring true. Let’s take the finding to its conclusion. Is the commission saying that the deaths of the 38 Indigenous women who, according to Statistics Canada, died by homicide in 2017 should be investigated under Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, the law governing genocide?
And is there evidence that the federal government is criminally complicit in those deaths, and that the homicides were “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, an identifiable group of persons”?
For the rest of this editorial: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-is-canada-committing-genocide-that-doesnt-add-up/