In spring 2015 Radio-Canada’s Enquête decided to do a special program on the case of missing Indigenous woman, Sindy Ruperthouse, a 44 year old Algonquin woman missing from the Val-d’Or region of Quebec since the spring of 2014. The idea was to investigate if police had really done all they could to solve this case. Enquête went to Val-d’Or in May 2015 and rather than just looking into the case of one missing Indigenous women, they uncovered a whole new scandal involving abuse of power by the Sûreté du Québec (SQ), Quebec’s police force.
May 2015 : The Enquête interviews
The episode, "Abus de la SQ: les femmes brisent le silence." (Abuse by the SQ [police]: Women break the silence) was finally aired about 6 months after the original interviews on October 22, 2015. It included the May 2015 interview featuring a group of native women in Val-d’Or, making bold accusations against the local police of psychological, physical and sexual abuse. Enquête then spent a few months after the interview doing follow up before airing this episode in October 2015.
Nearly 10 women are featured in the May 2015 interviews with their stories of being picked up by the Sûreté du Québec police officers (SQ) for apparent public drunkenness and driven out of town and told to walk back to town “sober up.”
First they speak about the fear they felt walking back to town by themselves in the cold for several lonely dark kilometres. However, the injustice against these women did not end there. These women testify in the interview that at least 6 SQ officers were known to often ask for sexual favours once they had driven these women to the middle of nowhere. Some paying $200 for oral sex, “$100 for the service and another $100 to keep my mouth shut” explains 26-year-old Bianca Moushoun.
These women are living in fear of police, but even so, some courageous women did attempt to file complaints over the years with the police, but either never heard back or later felt intimidated in their community, and did not follow through with charges.
But interestingly as soon as the TV camera’s showed up, and they felt someone was listening and that they were being taken seriously, they were ready to speak, stand up for their children and grandchildren who they do not want to face a similar future of abuse at the hands of the police.
Indigenous women demand justice – the case against the SQ in Quebec
Later in the episode of Enquête they interview an SQ official who says that the day after the interview in May 2015, the police opened new investigations as many of the women in the community began to come forward. 8 police officers were put under investigation in a detachment that according to Enquête has around 50 officers in total.
At the same time, none of the officers under investigation were suspended from their jobs until after the program was aired in October 2015. Also, the day after Enquête aired the episode, an emergency new conference was called by Quebec’s Public Security Minister, Lise Theriault, who announced that while they knew about some of the allegations, the Enquête episode had revealed more than the Ministry was aware of and they had finally put the 8 officers on leave of absence. Then she cried expressing her sadness and regret. But Ms. Theriault, where was the action and all of those tears before the TV cameras rolled up? These truly looked like crocodile tears.
Is the Sûreté du Québec the problem?
On October 28, CBC journalist Neil Macdonald published an article titled, "Not just aboriginal women should be scared of Quebec's police." This article makes the case that abuse by the SQ has not only a long history in the province, but also has a long history of being ignored. Macdonald writes, "As it turns out, authorities had been aware of such allegations for months. But, as usual, the provincial police force was being allowed to quietly investigate itself, even though it has a nearly perfect record of declining to lay charges against its own members. It took the reporting of Radio-Canada's premiere investigative program to pour on some disinfectant, and when that happened, things moved fast."
Unfortunately while making some very strong points about the huge shortcomings in idea that police forces can investigate themselves, the CBC article takes a bit of an anti-Quebec tone. Explaining, "But the SQ, which came into being in the late 1930s as bullyboys and strikebreaking thugs in the service of then premier Maurice Duplessis, has a reputation for operating by its own rules. In this case, Val d'Or's detachment decided to punish the town by simply not showing up for work all weekend. The force's director general, evidently unbothered by that, declared there is "no crisis," [...] In English Canada, such overt contempt for civilian authority would be shocking.” Obviously this is shocking to anyone that reads it. I assure you it is going to be upsetting and socking for Québécois people too!
The idea that a whole police detachment of around 50 calls in sick for the weekend to punish the people of their community for standing up for themselves is shocking and unbelievable. However, I can think of quite a few headlines I have read recently related to police forces across Canada, and pretty much every time it seems the activities they are involved in or justifying are shocking and unbelievable.
While the accusation that the SQ "has a reputation for operating by its own rules" is completely true, the reason I claim the article seems to take an anti-Quebec tone (or Quebec-is-different-and-more-lawless-than-the-rest-of-Canada-tone) is because they write as if the SQ is anymore corrupt or scandal-plagued than the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) or other police forces across Canada. It is not like we are talking about murdered and missing Indigenous women from Quebec - these cases are spread out across Canada because the police forces are racist and sexist across the country.
Plus how many current and former female RCMP officers are currently suing Canada’s federal police force, the RCMP, for sexual discrimination and harassment? Oh right, as of May 2015 over 350 had joined a class action lawsuit against their current or former employer according to the National Post. If RCMP officers cannot even treat their female colleagues with dignity and respect, how could we ever trust them with investigating the cases of over a thousand missing and murdered aboriginal women? Or “simpler” investigations of harassment and abuse by police against native women?
How could one camera crew in Val-d’Or expose so much?
When Enquête went to Val-d’Or to investigate the disappearance of Sindy Ruperthouse they had no idea what they would discover in this community of about 33,000. On October 31, a CBC article explained, "When Enqûete began examining the investigation into Sindy's disappearance, they heard about leads that hadn't been followed up and a family who drove all weekend, every weekend in search of their daughter. This past week, the Grand Council of the Cree offered a $50,000 reward to anyone with information on Ruperthouse's whereabouts. According to Martin Prud'homme, the director-general of the SQ, Ruperthouse's file has now become a murder investigation even if her body has not yet been found." From the research I have undertaken I have not been able to find any information explaining why the police changed her status from a missing person to a murder investigation in the days following the airing of the Enquête episode.
I think it is also important to recognize that Sindy is not the only murdered or missing Aboriginal woman from the Val-d’Or region. In 2003, a young Indigenous woman, Jeannie Poucachiche was found murdered on the side of the highway on her 20th birthday. Until now, I have not been able to find any articles that explain if her murderer was ever found or brought to justice.
These are just two cases out of the nearly 1,200 murdered or missing Aboriginal women in Canada. So what might happen if solid investigative journalists start making investigations across Canada? What other ongoing crimes would they uncover?
According to Vice News, the episode of Enquête was released "on the heels of an extensive investigation published in La Presse, which revealed that in the last 15 years, 259 indigenous youth had died in violent or mysterious circumstances in the province [of Quebec]. By poring over more than 3,000 coroners’ reports, reporters found that Quebec's Aboriginal youth were dying at a rate three to four times higher than in the rest of the province, and that many of the deaths could have been prevented with better access to resources and services." The power of journalists to take on these cases, ask the right questions and speak truth to power is evident. However, this La Presse investigation was woefully underreported in English language media across Canada.
We have to ask, what action is being taken to challenge this criminal situation? Also, journalism is not the answer to solving systemic sexism and racism, this has to be confronted by people across Canada working together and demanding change.
Call for Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women! A Call for Change!
According to a report made by the RCMP, there have been nearly 1,200 cases of missing or murdered aboriginal women in Canada since 1980. This report found that while Indigenous women are about 4.3% of Canada’s population, they are 16% of victims of female homicide in Canada and 11.3% of the missing women in Canada. For decades family members of the missing and murdered Indigenous women, their friends and allies have been protesting and demanding that their cases be taken seriously, while government and police forces have turned a blind eye.
It was about 10 or 11 years ago when I attended my first Women’s Memorial March in Vancouver’s downtown east side (DTES). It is held every year on Valentine’s Day and focuses especially on missing and murdered Indigenous women. I remember organizers symbolically knocking on the doors of the Vancouver Police Department, explaining to the hundreds of people that had gathered that the family members of missing and murdered DTES women (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) had been coming every year for 15 years demanding the police and government do more to find their loved ones or get justice for their families. That the families and their allies had been banging on those doors asking for help and action from the police while serial killer Robert Pickton was on the loose, killing and disappearing a reported 49 women over a span of almost 30 years. Isn’t this also shocking and unbelievable? In a few months, February 14, 2016 Vancouver will have its 26th annual march, and still we will be knocking on those doors. Because while Pickton is in jail, so many other cases are unsolved, and worse yet, women across this country continue to feel too afraid to come forward and seek help.
During the episode of Enquête, at the end of the scene with the May 2015 interview, the general director of the Aboriginal Friendship Centre in Val-d'Or, Édith Cloutier, shared her incisive thoughts on the issue at hand. Cloutier expressed, "On my way to work today I had no idea of the magnitude of what I would learn and of the emotion. If this is happening here in Val-d'Or, I have to wonder what is happening in Winnipeg, I wonder what is happening in Vancouver, I wonder what is happening in Toronto. At this point, that's enough. That's enough of the abuse. That's enough of the racism."
Her point really speaks for itself and is part of the reason I began researching this article with the question in mind, is what is happening in Val-d’Or Quebec a case of the extreme or the everyday injustice facing Indigenous women across Canada?
Or put in another way, when most non-indigenous people in Canada hear about the accusations against police in Val-d’Or they find it shocking and unbelievable. But do you think most Indigenous women in Canada will find it so shocking or so unbelievable?
Today across Canada individuals and organizations are coming together to call for a public inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women to understand how these women have been systemically ignored, disapeared and murdered with impunity. On October 23, Amnesty International Canada (Francophone) published an article about the situation in Val-d’Or and outlined some good points about what an inquiry should look like. They explain, “As the accounts from Val d’Or illustrate, such an inquiry must be comprehensive, focusing on the all the forms that violence against Indigenous women takes and the discrimination and marginalization that put Indigenous women at risk. “
They also point out that for an inquiry to be real and effective it must be:
- Well-resourced
- Independent
- Designed and guided by Indigenous women, family members of the missed and murdered, Indigenous communities and leadership
Of course, an inquiry is not what is going to change the situation for Indigenous women in Canada. That would be wishful thinking. The inquiry is a chance for Aboriginal women and their communities to come together and evaluate the situation they face in Canada and to come up with concrete demands for the government of Canada, the provinces, the territories, the police forces and whoever else they decide needs to be held to account.
This is a chance for Indigenous women and their communities to determine their own future, rather than have it dictated to them by politicians and police who think they know what’s best. Over 200 years of the ‘Canada knows what’s best’ strategy has only succeeded in dehumanizing and marginalizing Indigenous women and their communities. This inquiry is a chance for them to clarify their needs and demands so that they can come together as Indigenous women and so that all allies who believe in social justice and equality across Canada can fight alongside them for their demands.
Back to Article Listing
