She was called the Christmas angel, and she was a story that broke your heart.
A six-year-old girl was found badly beaten and assaulted, left near unrecognizable, before she was found in Paul First Nation and rushed to hospital the weekend before Christmas. It was just another story in a litany of stories in 2014 on missing, murdered and abused aboriginal women that built up outrage and calls for a national inquiry on the issue.
The trouble is, an inquiry will solve nothing. There have been reports over the years and recommendations on how to address the problems that plague First Nations communities and to date, nothing significant has changed.
In 2005, the Liberal government of the day supported the Kelowna Accord, which came about after 18 months of roundtable discussions between the federal government, provincial and territorial governments, and First Nations groups. The accord would have seen $5 billion committed over five years targeted for First Nations and aimed at improving health, education, housing and infrastructure, economic opportunities, etc. Really, it would have been a drop of water in an ocean of need, but it would have been a good start.
Besides the horrific and saddening stories of missing and murdered aboriginal women we hear, we know of serious problems in First Nations communities such as higher infant mortality, health problems like diabetes, lack of housing, lack of access to clean water, higher suicide rates and more. These are the issues the Kelowna Accord acknowledged.
However, following the Conservatives’ election, the Stephen Harper government scrapped the accord and little action has been taken since to address some of these issues. Instead, we have seen more frustration, friction and antagonism between the federal government and First Nations.
In the past few weeks, we have seen several local people reach out their hands to help their less fortunate neighbours. But there needs to be a wider-scale, government-led response to do the same, to create better outreaches and better outcomes for all people.
Hopefully, the year 2015 sees Canada as a whole work to protect not only national security, but the security of all of its individuals. We owe it to the Christmas angel, and all others as vulnerable as her.
