“Have you actually read the RCMP study of missing and murdered Aboriginal women?”
“As an Aboriginal woman I have lived the life of an Aboriginal woman.”
This is the transcript of an exchange between two candidates running for election in the riding of Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies. It took place at an all-candidates debate hosted by the Alaska Highway Newspaper in Fort St John, British Columbia on October 6, 2015.
I’m on Twitter @akurjata.
UPDATED with audio of the exchange via AHN reporter Jonny Wakefield:
Moderator:
“Last weekend a group of women from the Peace traveled to Ottawa to raise awareness around missing and murdered Aboriginal women.
“The Prime Minister has said such an inquiry is not the best way to deal with the issue while opposition parties have said calling such an inquiry would be one of the first things they do in office.
“Do we need an inquiry?”
Bob Zimmer, Conservative Party:
“If I thought an inquiry would save one life, one life, I absolutely would do it.
“There’s already been 42 studies that have been done.
“The most recent one is the RCMP study on missing and murdered Aboriginal women.
“It talks about the issues, it talks about what’s the major cause of those missing and murdered Aboriginal women.
“The study’s been done, there’s been many other ones that have been done.
“I think the key is that we respond to it.
“One of the major drivers of missing and murdered Aboriginal women is lack of economic activity or simply put lack of a job.
“And I think our perspective and we have tried to do thing where we bring economic activity or jobs to reserve and different other legislation to see that through.
“Ultimately, when people have a job they’re not in despair and they can stay on reserve and that’s where we want them to be, we want them to be happy where they live and go from there with their families (audience member boos, crowd noise grows)
“I know a lot of them don’t want to move off reserve they want to stay there and I support them there, we just want them to be able to live there happily and healthily.”
Moderator:
“Kathi Dickie, your party supports an inquiry. Would you?”
Kathi Dickie, NDP:
“Yes, we would conduct , the NDP would do an inquiry within 100 days, but I’m still kind of a little bit flabbergasted here (audience laughter/applause)
“OK, OK…
“Almost 1200 women murdered because they didn’t have a job? And they wouldn’t stay on reserve? (applause/inaudible)
“We have 42 studies… obviously we have lots of work.
“Women are still going missing today.
“They are still being murdered.
“Again, the 42 studies, obviously they have not worked.
“We need an inquiry to get to the root causes of those things (applause/inaudible)
“We need to deal with this issue, it’s a shame on Canada’s reputation. 1200 Aboriginal women missing or murdered. That’s shameful, absolutely shameful.”
(applause)
Moderator:
“Bob Zimmer, a rebuttal?”
Bob Zimmer:
“I’ll agree with Ms. Dickie to this point that it is shameful, the fact that there’s missing and murdered Aboriginal women.
“I just wanted to ask you Ms. Dickie, have you actually read the RCMP study of missing and murdered Aboriginal women?”
Kathi Dickie:
“As an Aboriginal woman I have lived the life of an Aboriginal woman (crowd applause, inaudible).. there are four women in my community that have been murdered and without those cases being solved.”
Bob Zimmer:
“So have you read the study, because it’s very comprehensive.”
Kathi Dickie:
“I don’t… because obviously it has not worked, they’re still going missing and being murdered.”
Bob Zimmer:
“This is what I’ll say: the reason we don’t want to continue to study the issue is because the answers are here.
“We need to act.
“And instead of pushing this out further another two years to have this study we actually want to get on the ground, we actually have done a lot of stuff already to move this forward.
“Our whole point in this in not having a study is to get to work and get it solved.”
