On December 14, 2011, we made oral submissions in support of an application, on behalf of the the 25 families of missing and murdered  women we represent, to have additional witnesses appear at the hearings.  The Commission directed that we make submissions in writing and the hearing adjourned for the day at 11:37 a.m.  The transcript of the morning’s proceedings is here.

On December 23, 2011, we delivered our written submissions and are awaiting a ruling.  The witnesses we are seeking to add to the witness list includes civilians like informants Bill Hiscox, Ross Caldwell and Lynn Ellingsen, who told the police as early as July 1998 that Robert William Pickton was responsible for the disappearances and deaths of the women, Pickton’s brother David, who lived on the property where the women’s remains and DNA was found, Bev Hyacinthe, a long time Pickton family friend who worked in the RCMP’s Coquitlam detachment.  It includes police officers like RCMP Cst. Ted vanOverbeek, a key member of “Project Evenhanded” who received information about Pickton’s complicity a years before he was apprehended, and RCMP Cst. Nathan Wells, who executed the search warrant on February 5, 2002 that led to Pickton’s arrest and subsequent conviction of six of the murders.  There are also a couple of senior officials on the list, then Attorney General Ujjal Dosanjh and current RCMP Commissioner Robert Paulson, who worked on the missing women investigations while a sergeant in British Columbia.

The Commission is currently hearing the testimony of Supt. Robert Williams from Alberta, the second of three police “armchair quarterbacks” who weren’t involved in the investigations, but merely reviewed them later.  Next week, Peel Deputy Police Chief Jennifer Evans is scheduled to testify.

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The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry was established by Attorney General Mike de Jong on September 29, 2010 and its terms of reference oblige it to inquire into the Crown’s January 27, 1998 decision to stay serious criminal charges against Pickton and the conduct of the police missing women investigations prior to February 5, 2002.  It was directed to submit its report by December 31, 2011.  The Commission commenced evidentiary hearings on October 11, 2011 and was subsequently granted a deadline extension to June 30, 2012.  The Commission has not yet called any police or Crown witnesses who were involved in the matters under review.