Public funds can't be treated like a bottomless pit, of course. And yes, you don't want to think too long about the massive sums that will have gone to lawyers by the time the various aspects of the Pickton case have run their course. Imagine what those millions could have done to change the lives of the women who were Pickton's victims - and could still do for the women who continue to be out there on the street night after night, risking their lives with every "date."
But really, to stack the deck quite so blatantly is just plain offensive. If there's no more money for lawyers so that sex workers can be heard as part of the inquest, then funds need to be pried out of the hands of some of the groups on the government side to even things out.
3 comments:
Who made the decisions?
How were the decisions made?
In the Missing Women Inquiry intended to prevent such crimes from happening again, groups representing the populations from which Pickton plucked his victims will get not a single publicly funded lawyer. Families of the women Pickton murdered will share one government-funded lawyer. Government and police agencies will have more than a dozen.
The B.C. government's unprecedented decision to refuse funding to official inquiry stakeholders shows it puts a very low value on this probe.
[...]
The province's move to deny legal funding to these stakeholders defies public-inquiry convention, and defies inquiry commissioner Wally Oppal, who recommended the province fund lawyers for 13 groups to whom he'd given official standing. - Ethan Baron, The Province
of course the groups were not provided funding. Did any one really expect the government to provide funding to groups who might bring some unwelcome truths to the table?
The enquiry is only being held as a P.R. exercise so the government agencies who contributed to the problem which led to all the murders have an opportunity to white wash themselves in public--it wasn't our fault.
As one woman said at the press conferance, there are still 32 missing women. Do you believe the government/police forces want more problems laid at their door during the enquiry? The groups who were denied funding could well do just that.
Only Pickton was arrested, tried, and convicted. If at least the 13 groups were funded what might else come out at the enquiry? Not many of us believe Pickton acted on his own. Not many of us believed there wasn't a serial killer, even though the police and government kept saying there wasn't.
In short, the enquiry is a P.R exercise aimed at exhonerating the government and "their agencies" and then close the book on it all.
The government and "their agencies" never cared about the dead/missing women and never will. If it had been 50 or more west side matrons, well it would have been a different story.
If we want the murders of women to stop society needs to start at the beginning and put some value on the lives of women and provide the necessary services. I don't see that happening in my life time.
Post a Comment