Was Robert Pickton merely a lone, crazed killer who capitalized on regrettable police errors, or are there wider issues that the Pickton Inquiry should properly explore—the flaccid police response, not only with respect to Pickton’s many victims, but to missing sex trade workers and Aboriginal women in general?

Good luck getting that big, ugly picture. First it was the Harper government, crushing the Sisters in Spirit initiative for blatantly ideological reasons.

Now the right-wing government of BC has jumped in, refusing funding to Native, sex worker and women’s groups that would have permitted representatives to appear before the Inquiry, scheduled to begin proceedings on October 11. After all, who wants to hear from a bunch of women when there’s serious work to be done?

Thus, ironically, right before our eyes we see yet another exemplar of the very problem that the Inquiry is supposed to be examining. The effective message from both levels of government is clear: women—particularly poor, Aboriginal women—don’t matter. And that message is not likely to be contradicted by the findings of an inquiry that has been preemptively hobbled by the BC government.