The Vancouver Sun is reporting that Attorney General/Solicitor General Shirley Bond will announce today that the Missing Women Commisssion of Inquiry will have its term extended for another six months, presumably to June 30, 2012.

We have not received any confirmation of this yet and continue to struggle with the uncertainty surrounding the proceedings.  For instance, late yesterday Commission Counsel Art Vertlieb announced that next week’s scheduled witnesses –  RCMP C/Supt. Robert Morrison, Supt. Jim Gresham, C/Supt. Janice Armstrong , Mr. Max Xiao,  VPD  Superintendent Jeff Sim and Police Board representative Elizabeth Watson – would actually not be attending the hearings next week and may be coming at some later date.  That news caught us by complete surprise, as we had been busily preparing to cross-examine them on their evidence.

We’ve been told that the long-awaited report of Peel Deputy Chief Evans (who has been working with the files for a year) will be delivered by Monday.   Next week’s hearing schedule, at  least at this moment, is said to include testimony from Susan Davis and Elaine Allan, to be followed by an application for an order protecting vulnerable witnesses and some sort of hearing to deal with the RCMP and VPD lawyers’ concerns about publication of “sensitive” information.

We look forward to attempting to address these evidentiary issues in the hearings.  At this point, it appears to us that the RCMP and VPD are trying to keep the tightest possible lid on the evidence that might lead the public, and our clients, to the truth.  If this inquiry is to fulfill its mandate, the lid will have to be pried off to expose the entire story, however messy it may be, to the Commission’s scrutiny.