B.C. Attorney General Suzanne Anton is disputing a claim that the Highway of Tears investigation has been gutted.
"There was no reduction in 2012/13 for investigations into missing women, as reported in the media," Anton said in a statement. "This was in fact a restructuring of temporary positions into a permanent special projects unit - positions that remained focused on serious crimes such as the missing and murdered women."
From a peak of 70 investigators plus support staff, a dozen members and staff are now working on the B.C. RCMP's Project E-Pana, which was launched in eight years ago to try to solve 18 murders or disappearances along Highways 16, 97 and 5 between 1969 and 2006.
Anton said that as various tasks were completed, it was expected that any resources seconded to the unit would be returned to their permanent positions.
"As with any task force, as tasks are concluded and persons of interest eliminated, there is less investigative work to be done by the team," Anton said. "As such, investigations are scaled down and members re-purposed."
With the numbers on E-Pana are down, B.C. RCMP has said it still has enough resources necessary to continue the investigations.
It also noted that additional efforts with respect to education and prevention campaigns are also underway, especially in the North District RCMP region, "and they have not been impacted by the budget reduction."
According to the Vancouver Sun, more than $25 million has been spent on the E- Pana investigation and, to date, police have laid no charges in any of the 18 cases. The only major development came two years ago when DNA evidence connected victim Colleen MacMillen to an American sex offender who died in prison.
Anton said she understands from the RCMP that as both costs and the number of investigators have been reduced, some of those temporary investigators are being moved into permanent positions in major crime.
"As such, they don't show up on the E-PANA financial account but in reality, they continue to investigate E-PANA files in what we now know as the special projects unit within the RCMP's major crime section," Anton said.
In sentencing serial killer Cody Allan Legebokoff to life in prison, and declaring him a sexual offender in the process, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Glen Parrett suggested Tuesday that the problem of missing and murdered women is not entirely a policing issue, but also sociological.
And while he commended investigators for helping to bring Legebokoff to justice, Parrett also noted that it began when an RCMP officer happened to pull him over north of Vanderhoof after seeing him speed away from what turned out to be a murder scene.
"It is a mistake, in my view, to limit the seriousness of this issue and to pretend, as some do, that policing is an answer when the circumstances of this case raise questions about the effectiveness of that process at times," Parrett said.
"We simply must do better, especially where the commitment to policing is reflected in an 84 per cent cut to the budget of the Highway of Tears task force."
The Vancouver Sun reported the E-Pana budget now stands at $800,000, down from a high of $5 million from 2009/10 to 2011/12.
Cariboo-Prince George MP Dick Harris declined to comment directly on what Parrett had to say but did echo the Justice's comment that while they represent a disproportionate number of victims, the issue is not limited to aboriginal women.
In answer to widespread calls for a national inquiry, Harris said enough studies have been done to know what the root causes are and it's time for action.
"What we need to do is insure that the law enforcement tools they need to catch the people who are committing these crimes so they never get back out again and do it to anyone else," Harris said.
The federal government unveiled earlier this week a plan to spend $25 million over five years on combatting violence against aboriginal women and girls. To run from 2015 to 2020, it includes
$8.6 million to support aboriginal communities in developing community safety plans; $7.5 million for a victims fund and policy centre for victim issues; $5 million to work with aboriginal communities, as well as aboriginal men and boys, to denounce and prevent violence against aboriginal women; $2.5 million to create projects and raise awareness "to break intergenerational cycles of violence and abuse"; $1.4 million "to share information and resources with communities and organizations, and report regularly on progress made and results."
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