Institutional gap · Canada
The federal tracker for the 231 Calls for Justice on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada listed 2 of the 220 calls it tracks as complete and 82 as not yet started at the federal level as of 2025-06-03
In June 2019 the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, a commission established by the federal government, delivered its final report with 231 Calls for Justice addressed to governments, institutions, industries and all Canadians. Among them was …
- Resolution status
- not confirmed
- Checked
- 2026-09-15
- Evidence type
- SecondaryPress reports and institutional documents
- Outlet
- cirnac-calls-for-justice-tracker
- Authoring mode
- Derived from press reports
- Views
- 6
What is happening?
In June 2019 the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, a commission established by the federal government, delivered its final report with 231 Calls for Justice addressed to governments, institutions, industries and all Canadians. Among them was a call for a national action plan to follow the report.
The calls are spread across levels of government. A federal news release of 2025-06-03 divides them into 29 addressed to the federal government alone, 186 addressed jointly to the federal, provincial and territorial governments, 6 addressed to provinces and territories alone and 10 addressed to non-government actors.
In June 2021 the federal government released a National Action Plan, developed with organizations serving Indigenous women and with families and survivors, together with the federal share of that plan, called the Federal Pathway.
Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada publishes an online tool that tracks federal progress on the calls. As of 2025-06-03 it followed 220 calls, being 215 for which the federal government is solely or jointly responsible plus 5 in which it plays a supporting role. It listed 138 of them as actioned, meaning complete or underway, and 82 as not yet started at the federal level. 2 of the 138 were marked complete. A regional news analysis of the tracker identifies both as corrections measures: bringing into force the Indigenous-related provisions of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, and creating a Deputy Commissioner for Indigenous Corrections, effective 2023-05-01.
No source opened here gives a completion date for the 82 calls not yet started, a committed budget for them, or a published test that separates a call that is actioned from a call that is complete.
Whose problem is this?
| Role | Who |
|---|---|
| Affected | Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQI+ people, whom the inquiry and its calls concern · their families and survivors · organizations serving Indigenous women whose federal core funding ended on 2026-03-31, as reported by a regional broadcaster |
| Raised by | The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, through its 2019 final report · organizations serving Indigenous women, families and survivors who took part in the national action plan work · the Auditor General of Canada, for one program linked to the calls |
| Decides | Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, which coordinates the Federal Pathway and publishes the tracker · federal departments that carry individual calls, such as Public Safety Canada for Indigenous policing · Parliament, which appropriates program funding · provincial and territorial governments, for the 186 joint calls and the 6 addressed to them alone |
| Bears the cost | The people the calls concern, for as long as 82 calls remain not yet started at the federal level · organizations serving Indigenous women whose core funding ended |
The department that reports progress belongs to the same government that carries most of the calls, and no source opened here shows the provincial and territorial side of the joint calls reported in the same place.
Where does this problem end?
| Axis | This is the problem | This is not the problem |
|---|---|---|
| What | The federal implementation mechanism for the 231 Calls for Justice — the National Action Plan, the Federal Pathway, the annual tracker and the budgets of linked programs — and the distance between calls tracked and calls marked complete | Whether each individual call prescribes the right policy |
| Whether the characterization of the violence as genocide in the inquiry report is legally sound, a legal question outside this document; the summary carrying that wording could not be opened | ||
| How responsibility for joint calls ought to be divided between the federal government and the provinces and territories, a political question this document does not answer | ||
| Who | Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQI+ people, their families and survivors | The status of any individual missing person or homicide case, and anything that would identify a victim or a family |
| Where | Canada, at the federal level | The 6 calls addressed to provinces and territories alone and the 10 addressed to non-government actors, which appear only as background |
| When | The final report of 2019-06 through the tracker data of 2025-06-03 and later reporting to 2026-09-15 | Events before the inquiry was established |
| Scale | 220 calls tracked federally · 82 not yet started at the federal level | Whether the homicide figures for 2024 are an outcome of the pace of implementation, which no source opened here establishes |
The boundary is drawn around the machinery that is supposed to carry the calls to completion, not around the content of the calls or the harm they describe.
What is the state now, and what should it be?
Now
| Indicator | Value | As of |
|---|---|---|
| Calls for Justice issued by the national inquiry | 231 | 2019-06 |
| Addressed to the federal government alone | 29 | federal release, 2025-06-03 |
| Addressed jointly to federal, provincial and territorial governments | 186 | federal release, 2025-06-03 |
| Addressed to provinces and territories alone | 6 | federal release, 2025-06-03 |
| Addressed to non-government actors | 10 | federal release, 2025-06-03 |
| Calls followed by the federal tracker | 220, being 215 of federal sole or joint responsibility plus 5 in a supporting role | 2025-06-03 |
| Listed as actioned, complete or underway | 138 | 2025-06-03 |
| Of those, marked complete | 2 | 2025-06-03 |
| Listed as not yet started at the federal level | 82 | 2025-06-03 |
| Published test separating actioned from complete | none found | 2026-09-15 |
| Completion date or committed budget for the 82 | none found | 2026-09-15 |
| New federal program spending linked to the calls, projected | about 3.7 billion Canadian dollars at the 2024-25 peak, about 1.8 billion Canadian dollars from 2028-29 onward | projection by an independent policy research organization |
| Federal core funding of at least three organizations serving Indigenous women | ended | 2026-03-31 |
| Audit of the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program by the Auditor General of Canada | tabled, with a government response the same day | 2024-03-19 |
Needs a new measurementthe target state: no source opened here sets a date by which the calls are to be complete, a committed budget for the 82 calls not yet started, or a published definition of what complete means. The federal government has taken the calls as the list its own tracker measures against, which fixes what is to be addressed but not when, with what money, or by what test.
How big is it?
231 calls, 220 tracked federally, 82 not yet started at the federal level as of 2025-06-03. The scale of this problem is first a count of commitments. Of the 220 calls the federal tracker follows, 138 were listed as actioned and 2 of those 138 were marked complete.
The money attached to the calls is projected to fall. An analysis by an independent policy research organization projects that new federal program spending linked to the calls falls from a peak of about 3.7 billion Canadian dollars in 2024-25 to about 1.8 billion Canadian dollars from 2028-29 onward, a decline the analysis puts at 51 percent. That is a projection of announced plans and not a record of money spent.
The people the calls concern are counted only in part. Statistics Canada reported on 2025-12-02 that in 2024 the homicide rate for Indigenous people was 10.84 per 100,000, more than eight times the rate for non-Indigenous people, and that the number of Indigenous women who were victims of homicide was 53 in 2023 and 81 in 2024. No source opened here connects those figures to the pace at which the calls are carried out, and a change across a single year does not by itself say anything about the mechanism this document describes.
The 2021 Census counted 1,807,250 people with an Indigenous identity in Canada. That count covers every gender and age, the subdivision for Women+ is not in the material opened here, and the tracker counts calls rather than people, so the population file for this document records the estimate as not derivable rather than assembling one from parts that do not fit.
Under what conditions does it arise?
1. A call carries no date. No source opened here attaches a completion date or a legal duty to any individual Call for Justice. The National Action Plan and Federal Pathway released in June 2021 are described in the federal material opened here as an implementation framework without completion deadlines or a binding enforcement mechanism.
2. Most calls are shared. 186 of the 231 calls are addressed jointly to the federal, provincial and territorial governments. The tracker reports status at the federal level, so a joint call can be listed as not yet started federally while a province acts on it, or the reverse, and no source opened here brings both sides into one count.
3. The counting is done by the party being counted. Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada runs the tracker on the federal response, and no source opened here publishes the criterion that moves a call from actioned to complete.
4. Measurement inside linked programs can be missing. The Auditor General of Canada reported on 2024-03-19 that Public Safety Canada had not implemented the distinctions-based data collection that the inquiry final report called for, and so could not determine whether the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program had improved equity. The same report of 2024-03-19 found that 13 million Canadian dollars of program funding for 2022-23 went unspent, that 61 positions under community tripartite agreements were vacant, that 38 percent of the communities sampled had full-time staff in place, and that there was no approach for allocating the funding equitably. The program covers about 385 communities, 155 under self-administered agreements and 230 under community tripartite agreements, out of about 680 First Nations and Inuit communities in Canada.
5. Funding horizons are short and projected to fall. Linked program spending is projected to decline after its 2024-25 peak, and a regional radio report states that federal core funding for at least three organizations serving Indigenous women ended on 2026-03-31.
A list that is tracked every year but carries no dates can show movement in every report while leaving the untouched items exactly where they started.
What has been tried?
| Attempt | By whom | What was done | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Final report and Calls for Justice | National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls | Delivered 231 calls to governments, institutions, industries and all Canadians, including a call for a national action plan | 2019-06 |
| National Action Plan and Federal Pathway | Federal government, with organizations serving Indigenous women, families and survivors | Released an implementation framework and its federal share; as described in the federal material opened here it carries no completion deadlines and no binding enforcement mechanism | 2021-06 |
| Audit of one linked program | Office of the Auditor General of Canada | Reported that the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program left 13 million Canadian dollars unspent in 2022-23, had 61 tripartite positions vacant, had no approach for allocating funding equitably, and lacked the distinctions-based data the inquiry called for | 2024-03-19 |
| Response to the audit | Public Safety Canada | Acknowledged that some elements of the program need to be re-examined and said it would work with Indigenous communities, provinces, territories and police services; no timeline was stated | 2024-03-19 |
| Annual progress report and public tracker | Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada | Published tracker data showing 220 calls followed, 138 actioned including 2 complete, and 82 not yet started at the federal level | data as of 2025-06-03 |
| Core funding decision | Federal government | Federal core operating funding for at least three organizations serving Indigenous women ended, one of them at about 840,000 Canadian dollars a year, as reported by a regional broadcaster | 2026-03-31 |
Three kinds of step were taken and each made the calls more visible without fixing a date. The inquiry named what should change, the federal plan organized the calls into a framework, and the tracker counted them every year, while the one independent audit opened here looked at a single linked program and found that the data needed to judge its progress had not been collected.
What was found?
| Finding | Observed value | Evidence grade |
|---|---|---|
| Calls for Justice issued | 231, in June 2019 | high — federal news release and the publications catalog record of the final report |
| Division by addressee | 29 federal alone, 186 joint, 6 provincial and territorial alone, 10 non-government | high — federal news release, 2025-06-03 |
| Calls followed by the federal tracker | 220 as of 2025-06-03 | high — the tracker itself |
| Listed as actioned | 138 as of 2025-06-03 | high — the tracker itself |
| Marked complete | 2 as of 2025-06-03 | high — the tracker itself |
| Listed as not yet started at the federal level | 82 as of 2025-06-03 | high — the tracker itself |
| Which two calls are complete | both corrections measures, one of them a Deputy Commissioner for Indigenous Corrections effective 2023-05-01 | medium — one regional news analysis |
| Published test separating actioned from complete | none in any source opened here | medium — an absence across the federal material opened |
| Completion deadlines or binding enforcement in the 2021 plan | none described | medium — as described in the federal release |
| Linked program audit | 13 million Canadian dollars unspent in 2022-23 · 61 positions vacant · 38 percent of sampled communities with full-time staff · no approach for equitable allocation · inquiry data collection not implemented | high — the audit report itself, 2024-03-19 |
| Federal response to the audit | some elements to be re-examined, no timeline stated | high — Public Safety Canada release, 2024-03-19 |
| Projected linked spending | about 3.7 billion Canadian dollars at the 2024-25 peak falling to about 1.8 billion from 2028-29, a decline of 51 percent | medium — one independent policy research analysis |
| Federal core funding ended | at least three organizations serving Indigenous women, one at about 840,000 Canadian dollars a year, on 2026-03-31 | medium — one regional radio report; the national report could not be opened |
| Indigenous homicide rate in 2024 | 10.84 per 100,000, more than eight times the non-Indigenous rate | high — Statistics Canada, 2025-12-02 |
| Indigenous women who were victims of homicide | 53 in 2023, 81 in 2024 | high — Statistics Canada, 2025-12-02 |
| Indigenous identity population | 1,807,250 in 2021 | high — 2021 Census profile |
| A broader audit of spending on the calls by the Auditor General | reported as in early planning | low — the reporting could not be opened |
Why is it still unsolved?
Institutional gap — the list of what should change exists, the federal plan exists and the federal tracker exists, and none of the three contains a step that turns a call into a dated and funded obligation.
The calls came from a commission of inquiry and arrived as a list rather than as orders. The federal government answered the list with a plan and then with a tracker, and each step made the calls easier to see without attaching a date or a sum of money to any one of them. A tracker can report how many calls have moved, but nothing inside the tracker makes any single call move.
The second part is that most of the calls belong to more than one government. Of the 231, 186 are addressed jointly to the federal, provincial and territorial governments, and the federal tracker reports federal status only. Responsibility that is shared in the wording of a call is not gathered into any single ledger in the sources opened here, so no one count says where a joint call actually stands.
The third part is the definition of done. The categories in the tracker are set and applied within the federal government whose response the tracker reports, and no source opened here publishes the test that moves a call from actioned to complete. The column that grows is the one with the looser boundary, and 138 actioned calls sit beside 2 complete ones without a public account of what separates them. Where an independent office did examine one linked program, the Auditor General of Canada reported on 2024-03-19 that Public Safety Canada had not collected the distinctions-based data the inquiry called for and so could not tell whether the program had improved equity. In that one case the measure needed to judge progress was itself missing.
The fourth part is the funding horizon. An independent policy research organization projects a decline of 51 percent in linked program spending after 2024-25, and a regional report states that federal core funding for at least three organizations serving Indigenous women ended on 2026-03-31. No source opened here gives a federal reason for either, and this document does not supply one.
What observation would mean it is solved?
Candidates — (a) the federal tracker lists no call as not yet started at the federal level and the count marked complete rises across successive annual reports (b) a published criterion for complete exists and an independent audit confirms that calls marked complete meet it (c) the gap between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous homicide rates narrows across several years of Statistics Canada data.
(a) alone is weaker than it looks. Leaving the not yet started column only requires that something has begun, and the actioned column already holds 136 calls that are not marked complete. Because the categories are set by the government whose response is being tracked, the counts can move when the categories move.
(b) does not exist yet, and that is the finding. No source opened here publishes the test for complete, and the one independent audit opened here covered a single linked program rather than the tracker. Until that test is public, a rise in the complete column cannot be read as a change in anything outside the tracker.
(c) alone cannot be attributed. Homicide figures move with many factors and can change sharply from one year to the next, and no source opened here links them to the implementation of the calls. A narrowing gap would matter in its own right and would not by itself show that any call had been carried out. The three have to be read together, with (b) as the condition for reading (a) at all.
What is it connected to?
Fills with researchthe relation to documents already in this corpus on drinking water legislation and child welfare reform for First Nations in Canada, on the absence of national data on missing and murdered Indigenous people in the United States, and on the implementation of family violence inquiry recommendations in Australia was not established in this round. Those documents share a population or a form, a list of recommendations followed by slow implementation, but relation type and evidence grade were not confirmed here.
What these sources do not say
- What separates actioned from complete. The tracker uses both categories and no source opened here publishes the criterion that moves a call from one to the other, so the count of 2 complete is a count of labels whose test is not public.
- When the 82 calls not yet started are to begin, or with what money. No source opened here carries a target date or a committed budget for them.
- Whether any later tracker data exists. The most recent tracker data point in the sources opened here is dated 2025-06-03. A regional news analysis dated 2026-06-09 still reports 2 calls complete, and no source opened here carries a later figure.
- Where the joint calls stand on the provincial and territorial side. The tracker reports federal status only, and no source opened here combines federal status with provincial and territorial action on the 186 joint calls.
- Why federal core funding for organizations serving Indigenous women ended. The regional report opened here states that the organizations received no formal advance notice or reason. No federal statement giving a reason appears in any source opened here, and this document does not infer one.
- Whether the Auditor General has begun a broader audit of spending linked to the calls. A national Indigenous broadcaster reported that the office described such an audit as in early planning, but that report could not be opened, and no statement from the office itself is in the sources opened here. Nothing in this document rests on it.
- Whether a national organization serving Indigenous women withdrew from the national action plan process. A report to that effect could not be opened, and nothing in this document rests on it.
- The exact wording of the inquiry characterization of the violence as genocide. The executive summary that carries it could not be opened, which is why the question is excluded from this document rather than stated.
- How many Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQI+ people there are. The census count opened here covers all genders and ages, and the Women+ subdivision is not in the material opened here.
- Whether the rise in Indigenous women who were victims of homicide between 2023 and 2024 has anything to do with the pace of implementation. Statistics Canada reports the figures and no source opened here links them to the calls.
- The federal position. The federal news release of 2025-06-03 presents the annual report as tracking progress on the calls, and the Public Safety Canada release of 2024-03-19 accepted that some elements of the audited program need re-examination. No federal statement addressing the 82 calls not yet started, the undefined test for complete, or the end of core funding was found in the sources opened here.
See the evidence
| Item | Source | Confirmation |
|---|---|---|
| Division of the 231 Calls for Justice into 29 federal alone, 186 joint federal provincial and territorial, 6 provincial and territorial alone and 10 non-government · annual progress report on the Federal Pathway released 2025-06-03 · the National Action Plan and Federal Pathway of June 2021 | Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, news release (2025-06-03) | 2026-09-15 |
| Tracker data as of 2025-06-03 — 220 calls followed, 215 of federal sole or joint responsibility plus 5 in a supporting role, 138 actioned, 2 marked complete, 82 not yet started at the federal level | Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, Calls for Justice progress tracker | 2026-09-15 |
| Identification of the two calls marked complete as corrections measures, including a Deputy Commissioner for Indigenous Corrections effective 2023-05-01 · 2 calls still reported complete in June 2026 · funding uncertainty around further progress | NetNewsLedger (2026-06-09) | 2026-09-15 |
| Homicide rate for Indigenous people of 10.84 per 100,000 in 2024, more than eight times the non-Indigenous rate · Indigenous women who were victims of homicide, 53 in 2023 and 81 in 2024 | Statistics Canada, The Daily (2025-12-02) | 2026-09-15 |
| Federal core operating funding for at least three organizations serving Indigenous women ended 2026-03-31, one of them at about 840,000 Canadian dollars a year, with no formal advance notice or reason reported | MBC Radio (2026-04) | 2026-09-15 |
| New federal program spending linked to the calls projected to fall from about 3.7 billion Canadian dollars at the 2024-25 peak to about 1.8 billion from 2028-29 onward, a decline of 51 percent | Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives | 2026-09-15 |
| Catalog record of the inquiry final report, June 2019, with links to the full text and the Calls for Justice | Government of Canada Publications, Reclaiming Power and Place | 2026-09-15 |
| Audit of the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program — 13 million Canadian dollars unspent in 2022-23, 61 positions under community tripartite agreements vacant, 38 percent of sampled communities with full-time staff, no approach for equitable allocation, distinctions-based data collection called for by the inquiry not implemented · about 385 communities covered out of about 680 | Office of the Auditor General of Canada, Report 3, First Nations and Inuit Policing Program (2024-03-19) | 2026-09-15 |
| Government response to that audit — some elements need to be re-examined, work with Indigenous communities, provinces, territories and police services, no timeline stated | Public Safety Canada, news release (2024-03-19) | 2026-09-15 |
| Executive summary of the inquiry final report, sought for the wording of its characterization of the violence | National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls | URL not confirmed: the site TLS certificate had expired and the page could not be opened |
| National report on the end of federal funding for programs addressing the crisis | CBC News | URL not confirmed: automated fetch returned HTTP 403 |
| Report that a national organization serving Indigenous women withdrew from the national action plan process | APTN News | URL not confirmed: automated fetch returned HTTP 403 |
| Report that the Auditor General described an audit of programs linked to the calls as in early planning | APTN News | URL not confirmed: automated fetch returned HTTP 403 |
| 1,807,250 people with an Indigenous identity in Canada, 2021 Census | Statistics Canada, 2021 Census of Population, Indigenous population profile | 2026-09-15 |
The central figures come from federal pages opened directly. The tracker, the federal news release, the audit report, the government response to it, the Statistics Canada release and the census profile were all opened, and they carry the 231, 220, 138, 2 and 82 counts, the division of calls by addressee, the audit findings of 2024-03-19 and the homicide and population figures. What rests on non-government sources is narrower and graded lower above: the identification of the two calls marked complete comes from one regional news analysis, the end of core funding from one regional radio report, and the spending projection from one policy research analysis. Four rows carry no URL and are kept rather than deleted — the inquiry executive summary refused retrieval because its certificate had expired, and three national news reports refused automated retrieval — and no claim in this document rests on any of the four. No statement of the inquiry wording is reproduced, which is why the genocide characterization is named in the scope block as excluded rather than described. This is a research-based definition, so observation_refs is empty and provenance_mode is press-derived.
This table holds 14 evidence rows, 10 of which carry a source you can open · 8 distinct sources. How this table is made
People affected
Estimated range Not derivable
The reason and what is missing are listed under “What is missing” below
What is missing 3
Grouped by how it gets filled, not by block number — that axis is the only one that tells a reader what can be done next.
- SectionWhat is it connected to?
the relation to documents already in this corpus on drinking water legislation and child welfare reform for First Nations in Canada, on the absence of national data on missing and murdered Indigenous people in the United States, and on the implementation of family violence inquiry recommendations in Australia was not established in this round. Those documents share a population or a form, a list of recommendations followed by slow implementation, but relation type and evidence grade were not confirmed here.
Fills with research
- SectionWhat is the state now, and what should it be?
the target state: no source opened here sets a date by which the calls are to be complete, a committed budget for the 82 calls not yet started, or a published definition of what complete means. The federal government has taken the calls as the list its own tracker measures against, which fixes what is to be addressed but not when, with what money, or by what test.
Needs a new measurement - Derived valueThe affected population could not be derived
The people this problem concerns are Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQI+ people in Canada. The only population figure opened in this round is the 2021 Census count of 1,807,250 people with an Indigenous identity, which covers every gender and age, and the Women+ subdivision of that count is not in the material opened. Applying a gender share without a source would be an unsupported chain term. The federal tracker counts Calls for Justice rather than people, so it supplies no term either.
2021 Census count of Indigenous identity Women+ in Canada · a count of Indigenous 2SLGBTQI+ people · any source relating an individual Call for Justice to the number of people it reaches
Needs a new measurement
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