Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Police services

Recommendation 73: We call upon non-Indigenous police services to ensure they have the capacity and resources to serve and protect Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. We further call upon all non-Indigenous police services to establish specialized Indigenous policing units within their services located in cities and regions with Indigenous populations.

1. Specialized Indigenous policing units are to be staffed with experienced and well-trained Indigenous investigators, who will be the primary investigative teams and officers overseeing the investigation of cases involving Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people.
2. Specialized Indigenous policing units are to lead the services’ efforts in community liaison work, community relationship building, and community crime-prevention programs within and for Indigenous communities.
3. Specialized Indigenous policing units, within non-Indigenous police services, are to be funded adequately by governments.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Police services

Recommendation 74: We call upon all police services for the standardization of protocols for policies and practices that ensure that all cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people are thoroughly investigated. This includes the following measures:

1. Establish a communication protocol with Indigenous communities to inform them of policies, practices, and programs that make the communities safe.
2. Improve communication between police and families of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people from the first report, with regular and ongoing communication throughout the investigation.
3. Improve coordination across government departments and between jurisdictions and Indigenous communities and police services.
4. Recognize that the high turnover among officers assigned to a missing and murdered Indigenous woman’s, girl’s, or 2SLGBTQQIA person’s file may negatively impact both progress on the investigation and relationships with family members; police services must have robust protocols to mitigate these impacts.
5. Create a national strategy, through the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, to ensure consistency in reporting mechanisms for reporting missing Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. This could be developed in conjunction with implementation of a national database.
6. Establish standardized response times to reports of missing Indigenous persons and women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people experiencing violence, and conduct a regular audit of response times to monitor and provide feedback for improvement.
7. Lead the provincial and territorial governments to establish a nationwide emergency number.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Police services

Recommendation 78: We call upon all levels of government and all police services for the establishment of a national task force, comprised of an independent, highly qualified, and specialized team of investigators, to review and, if required, to reinvestigate each case of all unresolved files of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people from across Canada. Further, this task force must disclose to families and to survivors all non-privileged information and findings.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Police services

Recommendation 79: We call upon all police services to voluntarily produce all unresolved cases of missing or murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people to the national task force.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Educators

Recommendation 82: We call upon all elementary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions and education authorities to educate and provide awareness to the public about missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people, and about the issues and root causes of violence they experience. All curriculum development and programming should be done in partnership with Indigenous Peoples, especially Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. Such education and awareness must include historical and current truths about the genocide against Indigenous Peoples through state laws, policies, and colonial practices. It should include, but not be limited to, teaching Indigenous history, law, and practices from Indigenous perspectives and the use of Their Voices Will Guide Us with children and youth.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Social workers and those implicated in child welfare

Recommendation 88: We call upon all levels of government for financial supports and resources to be provided so that family or community members of children of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people are capable of caring for the children left behind. Further, all governments must ensure the availability and accessibility of specialized care, such as grief, loss, trauma, and other required services, for children left behind who are in care due to the murder or disappearance of their caregiver.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Social workers and those implicated in child welfare

Recommendation 98: We call upon child welfare agencies and all governments to fully investigate deaths of Indigenous youth in care.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Extractive and development industries

Recommendation 99: We call upon all resource-extraction and development industries to consider the safety and security of Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people, as well as their equitable benefit from development, at all stages of project planning, assessment, implementation, management, and monitoring.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Extractive and development industries

Recommendation 100: We call upon all governments and bodies mandated to evaluate, approve, and/or monitor development projects to complete gender-based socio-economic impact assessments on all proposed projects as part of their decision making and ongoing monitoring of projects. Project proposals must include provisions and plans to mitigate risks and impacts identified in the impact assessments prior to being approved.

Calls for industries, institutions, services, and partnerships

Extractive and development industries

Recommendation 101: We call upon all parties involved in the negotiations of impact-benefit agreements related to resource-extraction and development projects to include provisions that address the impacts of projects on the safety and security of Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. Provisions must also be included to ensure that Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQQIA people equitably benefit from the projects.