Our clients, the families of 18 missing and murdered women, seek truth, justice and accountability from the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry.  Their questions include:

1)  Why did the law enforcement authorities let Robert William Pickton get away with murder for over five years?

2)  Did Pickton really act alone, or are there more killers preying on the weak and vulnerable members of Vancouver’s downtown east side?

……..

The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry has completed its second day of hearings.  Other participants provided opening statements, including Sean Hern, counsel for the Vancouver Police Department, who expressed the VPD’s contrition and regret for their mistakes but urged the Commission not to apply the benefits gained by hindsight, Cheryl Tobias, Q.C. for the Department of Justice, who neither apologized nor acknowledged any RCMP shortcomings, and David Crossin, Q.C. for the Vancouver Police Union, who praised the dedication of two police officers, who allegedly gave their heart and soul to the failed investigations.

The hearings move into the first day of evidence, but we learned yesterday that document disclosure issues are even more serious than we thought.  Ms. Tobias indicated that the RCMP have given the Commission 75,000 pages of documents, which seem like a lot, except she told the Commission last December that there were about 2 million pages in the investigative files.  75,000 pages would be less than 4% of the RCMP files on the investigation.  We also learned from the Commission yesterday that “several large files recently disclosed were unable to be loaded due to their size” and that there would be further delay “in loading the police witness disclosure” earlier given by the Commission to Peel Deputy Police Chief Evans (but not yet shared with us).

These document disclosure issues make it impossible to prepare properly for these hearings, an issue which we will no doubt have to address soon.