Commissions of inquiry can benefit the public by stripping away coats of institutionally applied whitewash and exposing a scandal to public scrutiny, so that appropriate steps can be taken to ensure something similar is never repeated.  However, a government can cynically manipulate a commission by restricting its operation so severely that a cover up is actually perpetuated.

That, according to Commissioner Peter Desbarats, is exactly what happened in the Somalia Inquiry, a public inquiry established to investigate the 1993 death of sixteen year old Shidane Arone at the hands of members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment.  In his compelling book, “Somalia Cover-Up: A Commissioner’s Journal”, Mr. Desbarats chronicles the way his commission was shut down as it attempted to pursue the truth.

“Significant information was made available to [the Commission] only after lengthy delays.  Clear evidence emerged that documents were being tampered with.  Conflicting testimony from different sources made it obvious that some of the witnesses were telling lies”, is the way the dust jacket summarizes Mr. Desbarats’ account.

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In the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, the institutional participants have reached into their bag of tricks to pull out tactics we have seen over and over again in at least fifteen previous administrative tribunal hearings.  They’ve tried to achieve control of the story by internally investigating the matter themselves and divulging their results preemptively.  They’ve deluged the tribunal with a disorganized jumble of documents in the hope that under-resourced and overworked lawyers spend so much time sorting through the mess that they don’t realize that critical records have been withheld from them until its too late.  They’ve “lawyered up” to try tilt the already slanted playing field even more dramatically in their favour.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Shirley Bond has imposed such a restrictive time frame on the Commissioner, former Attorney General Wally Oppal, that it is apparent that there will be inadequate time to hear from many important witnesses.

Those witnesses who do attend the hearings are being asked to recall events from 10 – 15 years ago.  In such circumstances, documents created back then play a crucial role in ferreting out the truth.  The following are just a few examples of records that are still missing from the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry:

• Crown Counsel’s files relating to the charges of attempted murder, forcible confinement, assault with a weapon and aggravated assault arising from Robert Willy Pickton’s March 23, 1997 attack of a Vancouver women at the Port Coquitlam property he shared with his brother, charges that were stayed in 1998;
• The book written by lead VPD investigator Lori Shenher about the investigation, which was apparently submitted to McClelland & Stewart for publication in 2003;
• Shenher’s own investigative file, delivered to the RCMP-controlled Project Evenhanded in 2001 and then apparently withheld from her and from the Commission ever since;
• Police emails about the investigations;
• Records of a meeting held April 9, 1999 attended by Shenher, then Attorney General Ujjal Dosanjh, two other cabinet ministers, their aides and senior managers of the VPD and RCMP at a time when Shenher considered Pickton to likely be responsible for the disappearancesand murders of the missing women;
• Police officers’ notes of a “brainstorming session” held at VPD headquarters a little over a month later, May 13, 1999, when, according to Shenher’s testimony, Pickton’s likely role as perpetrator of the crimes was discussed “at length” by the 18 police officers in attendance.  One of those was VPD Deputy Chief Doug LePard, who wrote the VPD’s internal internal investigative report.

These missing documents, and others, are vitally important to our clients, the families of 25 murdered women, who are trying to determine why the Crown, the VPD and the RCMP failed to stop Pickton’s five year long murder spree.

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The last two sentences of Peter Desbarats’ book, Somalia Cover-Up, gives us cause for optimism:

“The truth will eventually emerge.  It almost always does.”

The lead VPD investigator on the missing women investigation testified Tuesday that after Robert “Willy” Pickton was arrested, she wrote a book about her experiences investigating the missing women cases.  We immediately asked for production of the manuscript.

Det. Cst. Lori Shenher’s manuscript was to be published as a 320 page paperback by McLelland & Stewart in September of 2003.  When the Globe and Mail and the Province newspapers reported in April 2003 that Shenher was writing a book about the case, VPD spokesperson Anne Drennan flatly denied it. 

David Crossin, Q.C. objected to our disclosure application on the basis that the book’s contents were irrelevant to the inquiry.  If we understand the argument, the lead investigator’s factual account of the missing women investigation is said to be “irrelevant” to the Commission mandated to inquire into the conduct of the missing women investigation.

Mr. Crossin was directed to review the manuscript and determine whether it is relevant to the inquiry.  We await the outcome of his review with interest.

This from Matthew Burrows in today’s Georgia Straight:

A long-time Downtown Eastside activist who tried for many years to raise the alarm about a serial killer preying on sex-trade workers in her neighbourhood may choose not to testify at the B.C. missing women’s inquiry. “I am seriously considering withdrawing, because it makes me feel as though the report has already been written, with all the focus on the policing aspect of it, and the actions of the commissioner,” Jamie Lee Hamilton, an advocate for LGBT issues, said by phone on February 1.

 Hamilton confirmed she is scheduled to speak to the commission, but added, “They’re spending so much time with the police, the different various policing officials. I believe that they have 34 policing officials on their witness list and I think they’ve only got through four of them so far. So it’s very concerning.”

 Earlier, Hamilton slammed Commissioner Wally Oppal for his treatment of lawyer Cameron Ward, who is representing the families of 25 missing and murdered women. Hamilton told the Straight that lawyer Jason Gratl, hired by the commission to represent the interests of Downtown Eastside residents—and in particular sex workers’ interests generally—is also getting short shrift at the inquiry.

 “And yet, there are all these lawyers for the police—I think there are 19 now—and they are always getting up and taking their time, they are objecting, objecting, objecting,” Hamilton claimed. “If the commissioner wants this to be a credible inquiry, he needs to take a stand now, and he needs to get rid of all the lawyers. Because there doesn’t have to be those lawyers there.”

 Hamilton said she had a clothing boutique on Hastings Street from 1993 to 1997, where many of the Downtown Eastside murdered sex-trade workers had shopped and “hung out”.

 “I knew Sarah de Vries, who lived right around the corner,” Hamilton added. “I knew Angela Jardine, I knew Helen Hallmark. I knew Andrea Joesbury, I knew Serena Abbotsway.”

 And Hamilton also knew Det. Const. Lori Shenher, who is now testifying downtown.

“I phoned her [Shenher] to say that, during the past three years, there’s been 21 women go missing,” Hamilton said, referring to a 1998 conversation. “I had a complete breakdown of the years. She demanded to know how I got that information. I said, ‘It doesn’t matter how I got the information. These are the facts. Are you going to verify those numbers?’ Just previous to that, I had reached the civilian person in the office, Sandy Cameron, who was just awful to me and rude. I kept notes of that. So when I talked to Shenher, Shenher then said to me, ‘Yeah, your numbers are correct, but please don’t release that information, because it’s going to create a panic.’ I said, ‘I can’t do that.’ I said women have to be warned that there is a serial killer down here.”

Hamilton conceded in closing that it could be “sad” for a lot of people if someone with her history and close relationship to the victims of Robert Pickton does not testify when she has the chance to.

“I think it’s sad as well, but it appears that the commission of inquiry is a whitewash, and it doesn’t appear that they want to hear from community members or family members,” she said. “They’re giving allocation of all the time to police officials. Doug LePard, who wasn’t even involved in the cases back in the day—but wrote the report—he was on the stand for two weeks. The officer from Ontario [Jennifer Evans] was a week. Kim Rossmo was close to a week, and now we’re already on the third day for Lori Shenher. And she’ll be on most of this week and most of next week.”

On March 23, 1997 Robert “Willy” Pickton attacked a downtown eastside Vancouver sex trade worker at the Port Coquitlam property he shared with his brother.  The Crown laid charges of attempted murder, forcible confinement, assault with a weapon and aggravated assault against him but stayed the charges as the trial approached.

Why?

The VPD and the RCMP had Pickton in their sights as a prime suspect in the disappearances of other downtown eastside sex trade workers from August of 1998 onwards but didn’t apprehend him.  He was able to kill dozens of women, as many as 49 in all, until February 5, 2002.

Why?

These are the central factual questions posed by the terms of reference of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry.  The anguished families of Pickton’s victims have long sought a public inquiry into these questions, and others.  Now that the Commission is finally hearing testimony from the police officers actually involved in the investigations, will the families get the answers they need and deserve?  Or will the sudden appearance of a host of lawyers for individual police officers to augment the teams that the VPD and RCMP have had to look out for their interests for the last decade throw a spanner in the works?

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The latest report from The Vancouver Sun’s Neal Hall is here.

The next witness at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry will be Vancouver Det. Cst. Lori Shenher, who had primary conduct of the missing women investigation for the VPD from June of 1998 until late 2000.  Before joining the VPD, she was a Calgary journalist.  She is also credited as a technical advisor and writer on 25 episodes of Da Vinci’s Inquest, where a fictional missing women’s case was a recurring theme on the show.  

In July and August of 1998, Shenher received information from Bill Hiscox that a Port Coquitlam pig farmer named Robert “Willy” Pickton was likely responsible for the disappearances of women from Vancouver’s downtown east side.  She determined that the information was credible, and soon learned that Pickton had been charged with the attempted murder and forcible confinement of a Vancouver sex trade worker the year before.  (The Crown dropped those charges; the Commission is supposed to inquire into the facts concerning that decision)  Although three more informants independently came forward with information fingering Pickton as a likely serial murderer, neither the VPD nor the RCMP apprehended him.  On February 5, 2002, a junior Coquitlam RCMP member investigating an apparently unrelated matter found evidence of some of the missing women on a property owned by Pickton and his brother and sister.  Pickton was subsequently convicted of six murders and twenty other first degree murder charges against him were stayed, the Attorney General decising that “it would not be in the public interest” to prosecute him further. Pickton is believed to be responsible for as many as 49 murders, which would make him Canada’s most prolific serial murderer.  The case reportedly cost Canadian taxpayers as much as $200 million dollars to investigate, prosecute and defend.