VANCOUVER - The head of a sweeping public inquiry into the Robert Pickton investigation wants to give those most hurt by the disappearances a greater voice during upcoming hearings.
On Thursday, Wally Oppal released a status report asking the provincial government to expand the inquiry to include a study commission.
"As a result of concerns expressed by the community ... I am recommending that the lieutenant governor in council grant the commission the powers of a joint study and hearing commission," the report said.
In an interview, Oppal said the response to the inquiry from those who have lost loved ones has been "overwhelming."
"We want to make sure that everybody who wants to be heard is heard, that's really the object of this suggestion that we made."
Expanding to a study inquiry would allow people to testify without being sworn in and they wouldn't need a lawyer, Oppal said.
"When you have an inquiry of this sort many people come forward, particularly those people who feel aggrieved and people who are vulnerable. So for that reason we want people to feel comfortable."
Oppal was asked to lead the inquiry shortly after the Supreme Court of Canada upheld six second-degree murder convictions against Pickton last year.
The former pig farmer was initially charged with killing 27 women, but one of those charges -- involving an unidentified Jane Doe -- was dropped. He was later convicted on six of those charges, while the remaining 20 were stayed.
The DNA from six more women was found on Pickton's farm in Port Coquitlam, B.C., but he was not charged in those deaths.
Oppal has already granted legal standing at the hearing commission to affected parties including the Vancouver Police Department, the Criminal Justice Branch and a lawyer representing eight families of women whose remains were found on the Pickton farm.
Pickton's victims were among a list of dozens and dozens of women who went missing from Vancouver's impoverished Downtown Eastside over decades.
A police task force investigating the disappearances has said that between 1978 and 2001 about 65 women went missing from the Vancouver area.
Another 32 women and girls have vanished or were murdered along an 800-kilometre stretch on Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert in northern B.C., referred to as the Highway of Tears.
Oppal said his mandate won't change. He will still look into the actions of Vancouver police, the RCMP, and the Crown in the Pickton case.
But other Canadian public inquiries have been known to drag on as budgets balloon, and B.C. Attorney General Barry Penner was reluctant to immediately endorse any change to the inquiry terms.
Penner said Oppal's report is supposed to be in by the end of the year.
"I am keen to find out if there are specific things we can learn from what may not have gone well in the investigation into the arrest and conviction of Mr. Pickton."
But Penner noted the current process can be adversarial, with potential of a finding of wrongdoing, which sets up the need for government-funded lawyers.
He said money could be saved under the "less legalistic" study process. Penner said approval would have to come from the new premier Christy Clark and the cabinet.
Ernie Crey, whose sister's DNA was found on Pickton's farm, urged Clark to adopt Oppal's suggestion.
Crey noted he and others have complained the inquiry's terms of reference were too narrow.
"While I understood the importance of examining the police investigation and coming up with proposed reforms, I strongly believed the commission needed to look at the policy environment that keeps women living in the Downtown Eastside, making them easy prey to men like Robert Pickton," Crey said in a written statement.
"The proposed study commission makes sense because it could help lead to important changes in the lives of women who continue to live on the DTES and communities in northern B.C."
Crey's sister, Dawn, disappeared from the Downtown Eastside in 2000, and her DNA was found on the Pickton farm in 2004. Pickton was never charged in her death.
Vancouver Police have already released a report reviewing the department's actions into the missing women case.
The report was critical of its own department and the RCMP investigation, and in it Vancouver Deputy Chief Const. Doug LePard admitted lives could have been saved if the case had been handled differently.
Since his appointment, Oppal said he's read many reports into serial killers such as Paul Bernardo, Clifford Olson and Ted Bundy.
"Some of the same mistakes there appear to have been made here in the Pickton inquiry, we don't know that yet."
But he said after reading the other reports, it seems the way these people get away with murder and the mistakes made in the investigations are similar.
"That is the unwillingness or the inability of police to share relevant information so as to prevent crimes from taking place."
