Elizabeth May: Mr. Speaker, I want to share with the hon. member for Churchill how deeply moving and how clear her passion is for this issue. She personally has spent time, as have I, talking to the families of missing and murdered aboriginal women. I absolutely share the commitment of her party and my party to a full national inquiry that would meet the demands of Sisters in Spirit and the organizations that are gathered outside today.
In that light, I also support this motion. Certainly a parliamentary inquiry and the ability for it to travel would be useful, but it is not in itself sufficient to deal with the legacy issues and how we go forward together.
How can we build from the parliamentary committee process to a national inquiry, with the resources necessary to really deal with this crisis?
Niki Ashton: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the shared sentiment.
This is about leadership. It is a test of leadership, the leadership of the government, of the Prime Minister and of the commitment and apology he made to residential school survivors for a new day and a new chapter.
Unfortunately, aboriginal women in Canada have continued to die at the same rate they did before the apology. Organizations and voices that were there to support them and prevent these deaths from happening in some ways are now gone.
Therefore, my question to the government is this. Will it realize that enough is enough, that now is the time to act and that leadership means calling a national public inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women?