A Winnipeg NDP MP says the Trudeau government needs to stop studying and start acting on a plan to search the Prairie Green landfill.
“This government has a history of doing studies with no action,” Leah Gazan said. “I’m going to encourage the government not to stall. There was a feasibility study that’s already been done that said it was feasible. It’s time to move into action and stop delaying.”
Police believe the remains of two Indigenous women – Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran – are located in Prairie Green. The women are suspected to have been victims of an alleged serial killer.
Earlier this week, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anadasangaree announced the government is providing the Long Plain First Nation with $740,000 to further investigate the scope of a potential search of the landfill.
The government already put forward $500,000 earlier this for a similar study which says a search of the landfill is feasible.
Aside from the latest funding, the Liberals remain non-committal on what role they would play in a search.
“This is the next natural step in this process and it’s important that we get that information required in order for us to assess where we go from here and this is where I am looking forward to the Province of Manitoba being at the table,” Anandasangaree said outside Liberal caucus on Wednesday.
The Progressive Conservatives campaigned against searching the landfill during the Manitoba election campaign but the newly elected NDP under Wab Kinew supports a search.
Speaking to APTN’s Nation to Nation, Hill Times columnist Rose LeMay called the latest Liberal announcement “interesting.”
“There already has been a feasibility study which clearly said that these things – landfill searches – are possible,” she said. “They are possible, they are done so often in the States that the FBI actually has procedures on how to do it.”
Green Party co-leader Elizabeth May told APTN News with a change of government in Manitoba things should move more quickly on a landfill search and the Trudeau government must be right there to support the province in any way it can.
“When a provincial government says we need help to do this thing that you support,” she said. “That the federal government gets out its cheque book and I will certainly support federal support and federal government resources to allow what we think will be complicated, it will be technically challenging and there should be no feasibility study that stands in the way of searching the landfill.”
However, Gazan was quick to add that at the end of the day the buck stops with the Liberals.
“The federal government has human rights obligations. International human rights obligations that they’re failing to uphold by not searching the landfill.”
