Canada to withdraw jets fighting Islamic State within weeks: minister

Among those recommendations is a public inquiry into the tragic phenomenon of missing and murdered aboriginal women, something to which the Liberal government has already committed.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and AFN National Chief Perry Bellegarde laugh as they talk before the beginning of the Assembly of First Nations Special Chiefs Assembly in Gatineau, Quebec, Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2015.

The prime minister is expected highlight the need to develop a nation-to-nation relationship with Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples – a promise repeated in Friday’s throne speech.

“Nowhere is this more obvious than in the government’s relationship with First Nations”, Trudeau told the special chiefs assembly of the Assembly of First Nations in Gatineau, Que. The Stephen Harper Conservative government killed the deal.

Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould made the announcement Tuesday afternoon during a news conference in Ottawa.

Trudeau said another government priority will be to make “significant investments” in First Nations education. “The victims deserve justice, their families an opportunity to be heard and to heal”.

The police reviewed cases from 1980 to 2013 and found 1,181 aboriginal women fell into the missing or murdered category — nearly double earlier estimates.

Just one day after Finance Minister Bill Morneau conceded the promised Liberal middle-class tax cut will cost more than originally planned, Trudeau told First Nations leaders of his plan to remove the two per cent cap on reserve program funding.

“There’s a lot of provincial and territorial work that has been done as well in national aboriginal organizations”.

National chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Perry Bellegarde, welcomed the pledge.

The prime minister hinted that his government is considering negotiating an agreement similar to the 10 year, $5 billion Kelowna Accord the Paul Martin Liberal government struck with First Nation, Inuit and Metis leaders shortly before his government fell in 2005. The children were not allowed to speak their native languages and were forced to convert to Christianity.

CBC News continues to investigate Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls by exploring the stories of these women, their families and their communities.

Trudeau promised to “fully implement” the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which examined the residential schools saga.

“What’s needed is nothing less than a total renewal of the relationship between Canada and First Nations peoples”, he said.

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