The federal government ends MMIWG’s funds at the Northern Prosecutor’s Offices

The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Canada (PPSC) says that the special financing he used to support victims of sexual violence in the three territories, which originally derived from the national investigation into disappeared and murdered indigenous women and girls, has finished .

The $ 23.5 million were initially assigned in the federal government Budget 2021and was scheduled to last three years. An email obtained by CBC News shows that the federal government’s decision not to renew it is leaving a 25 percent hole in the PPSC budget only in Nunavut.

According to the prosecution service 2022-23 Departmental PlanThe money was intended to “improve the level of justice provided to indigenous victims, witnesses and communities that experience sexual violence and intimate couple violence” in the territories.

In an email, the Director of Communications of the Prosecutor’s Office, Alessia Bongiovanni, confirmed that the money had ended in fiscal year 2023-24 and had not been renewed.

Anne Crawford, a lawyer with 40 years of experience in the north, said that the change of financing will have a negative effect on the credibility of the crown in the communities of the north, and does not understand why it is happening now.

“We are very wrong if we believe that the problems revealed in the (National Research on Disappeared and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls .

“If this was after the elections and priorities were realized … you would say that it is fine, well, it is where it comes from,” said Crawford. “I am simply surprised that it is a failure somewhere that someone does not realize the impact (of).”

CBC News organized interviews with the main prosecutors of each territory in mid -January. Bongiovanni then canceled the interviews in his name.

“We are working to reorganize our resources within the assignment of current money in a way that meets our mandate, while minimizing interruptions to the communities we serve,” he wrote.

The Minister of Finance of Canada, Dominic Leblanc, and the Minister of Justice, Arif Virani, rejected interviews about the financing decision. Anna Lisa Lowenstein, a spokeswoman for Virani, said in an email that “sexual violence anywhere is negligible, and the location should never be a barrier to receive justice.”

“We are still committed to supporting the safety of all victims, witnesses and communities throughout Canada, even in the north,” says the statement.

The lawyer worries important programs at risk

Financing has been used for programs such as specialized prosecution equipment In Nunavut and The NWT to handle cases of sexual aggression.

In a press release on the creation of the NWT team in May 2022, the Public Prosecutor’s Office said it would be attended with two higher prosecutors who have an “extensive experience” working with people who are victims or witnesses of sexual violence.

The team would supervise all cases related to sexual aggression, said at that time, and would also help other prosecutors to prepare for cases, work on prosecution strategies and make sentence recommendations.

In an interview in October, the main federal prosecutor of the NWT, Alex Godfrey, said that the team was expected to grow to three people in 2025.

Nunavut, who had a sexual aggression rate that was Almost six times the national average In 2018, according to Statistics Canada, he launched his own specialized prosecution team in April 2024. At that time, it consisted of four prosecutors, two legal assistants and a rotation of witness coordinators.

Special teams are just an example, said Crawford, of programs that closed the gap between communities and prosecutions. That is the type of program that now worries is at risk because MMIWG’s financing has gone.

In other parts of Canada, said prosecutors, police and decision makers grow in the same places where they end up working. In the north, prosecutors, police and decision makers often come from other places.

“There is a gap that requires trust and investment to unite,” he said. “Every time we eliminate services like this … we improve that gap and improve cynicism and lack of confidence that we have already created in (the) community.”

Crawford said he wonders if the decision was taken by someone who does not realize that the Federal Crown is the only prosecutor’s body in the Northern territories, unlike the provinces where there are also provincial crowns.

He is also worried that the Nunavut Prosecutor’s Office cannot keep all his prosecutors, and that they will be those with the least antiquity, the recent graduates of Inuit, who will lose work.

‘There will be changes’

An email from Philippe Plourde, Nunavut’s main federal prosecutor, obtained by CBC News, said the end of the funds meant that the PPSC Nunavut office had a 25 percent hole in its budget.

“There will be changes in the office in the near future,” he wrote in the communication of January 6. “We are asked to consider all the solutions and that we are ingenious to settle for less.”

Plourde also asked people who were considering moving south or changing their jobs in the next year to inform them, so that these changes could be taken into account in planning.

Crawford said he has not seen Plourde’s email, but he has heard of him. He also said that the PPSC now has a 25 percent hole in its budget in each of its territorial offices, not only in Nunavut.

CBC News contacted the PPSC to verify the email of January 6, the information within it and if each office had a quarter of its funds.

The PPSC did not address the email in its answer last week, nor did it answer the questions directly. Instead, he said, each Northern Office was “making measures to continue discharging his mandate in the light of his current financial circumstances.”