It’s all quite bittersweet. The government finally admitting that Canada needs this information is huge. But the numbers are painful. RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson told a parliamentary committee that the findings were a “surprise.” To whom, I wonder? Definitely not to the familes, friends, and communities of these missing women and girls. But I digress.

“What we can say is that there is a misrepresentation, or overrepresentation, within the aboriginal community of missing and murdered women,” he announced. “There are 4 percent aboriginal women in Canada—I think there are 16 percent of the murdered women who are aboriginal, 12 percent of the missing women are aboriginal.”

I suppose this is why he is surprised. But it still hasn’t occurred to the government and law enforcement to listen to these peoples. As wonderful as the official report is, this still must be painful to many families who did research that was deemed invalid.

APTN reported the RCMP requested a small look at files from 200 different police forces across Canada to collect data. And it has the ability to be useful.

“This initiative will help the RCMP and its partners identify the risk and vulnerability factors associated with missing and murdered aboriginal women to guide us in the development of future prevention, intervention and enforcement policies and initiatives with the intent of reducing violence against aboriginal women and girls,” Sergeant Julie Gagnon said in an email to the Globe and Mail.

RCMP may finally view aboriginal peoples lives as important enough to look into their deaths, despite criticizing the NWAC for its numbers in the past and politicians spitting in the face of such inquiries.

Yet the stance on inquiries themselves has not changed. Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney rejected the calls from opposition at least four times. In the same breath, Blaney announced that foul play is suspected in two-thirds of those 160 missing cases, while the rest are for unknown reasons. His rejection and this data seem to counteract each other.

Blaney also said that it was a time for action instead of more paperwork. But, in March, during the horrible time when Loretta Saunders was found dead and another inquiry request was tabled, Claudette Dumont-Smith, executive director of NWAC, explained the importance of an inquiry.

The Globe and Mail explained Dumont-Smith’s stance like this: “an inquiry would study every angle of the problem in a way that has not been done before, and could compel people who have important information to testify.”

Seems reasonable.

If Canada does not begin asking marginalized groups’ for input, we will be in a perpetual state of oppressor-oppressed. Most of us are taking the right steps forward. To avoid taking five steps back, government and law officials must become willing to learn from those they previously called irrational, because it turns out they were right.

Ratna Omidvar. Illustration by Antony Hare.

“This journey of learning how to become a Canadian has been one of the most exciting and one of the most frustrating journeys in my life,” says Ratna Omidvar.

Born in India, Omidvar earned her bachelor of arts before going on scholarship to Germany, where she met her Iranian husband. The two moved to Tehran before fleeing the Islamic Revolution. They landed in Germany with few prospects, ultimately seeking asylum in Canada.

Both arrived with a wealth of education, skills, and experience, but it took them six years to find stable employment. She remembers befriending other credentialed immigrants who worked in unskilled labour or drove taxis, all seeking the elusive but vital Canadian work experience that would lead to better jobs.

Profiled by The Globe and Mail as this decade’s nation-builder for citizenship, Omidvar now works to ease immigrants’ path to prosperity as president of the Maytree Foundation, a private Canadian charity dedicated to reducing poverty.

Maytree sees systematic poverty as the main threat to Canadian society, and uses more than just money to fight it. Among the foundation’s tools at hand are grants, training programs, research, networking, policy proposals, and scholarships.

Instead of just studying the problem of poverty, “we have the capacity to put some of these really good ideas into action, and see if they work or not,” says Omidvar. In that way, Maytree has become a kind of angel investor for poverty-reduction schemes, experimenting with pilot projects, scaling up the ones that work and learning what they can from the ones that fail.

Since Omidvar joined Maytree in 1998, the foundation has oriented its focus to immigration, integration, and diversity. Two recent Maytree projects aim to empower new Canadians and help those in power to reap the fruits of diversity. One Maytree project, for instance, the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, helps skilled immigrants get Canadian credentials, teaches businesses how to hire, train, and integrate immigrant employees, and lobbies government to adopt policies that encourage immigrant employment. DiverseCity, a program launched in 2008, aims to increase racial diversity on boards of directors and in the media by building a directory of experts from minority communities.

With an appointment to the Order of Ontario, an honorary diploma, and a book set to launch in September, Omidvar has thrived in Canada. But she laments the lost time and productivity she and many immigrants endure.

“I lost 10 years—the best 10 years of my working life—and I’ve kind of dedicated myself to making sure others don’t lose 10 years, 20 years of their working life; that they can ease into life, far better and quicker than we were able to.” But Omidvar says the real reason she advocates for immigrants is because when they thrive, everyone does.

“It’s because I know, intuitively and substantively, that the well-being of immigrants leads to the well-being of Canada,” she says. “And what’s good for Canada is good for immigrants.”