By Canadian Press

Preliminary search finds no reports of coerced sterilization to police: RCMP

Apr 2, 2019 | 10:29 AM

OTTAWA — The head of the RCMP says the police force is looking into whether any complaints about forced or coerced sterilizations have been made to law-enforcement agencies in Canada, but that a preliminary review has not identified any.

In a letter to NDP health critic Don Davies, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki says the Mounties searched their national database but did not find any criminal reports of forced or coerced sterilization.

The letter followed Davies’s request in February that the RCMP launch an investigation into allegations dozens of Indigenous women in Saskatchewan and elsewhere were pressured into tubal ligations.

The Saskatoon Health Regional Authority has publicly apologized and a proposed class-action lawsuit has been filed against the province of Saskatchewan, the federal government, regional health authorities and individual doctors.

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In her letter, Lucki says the RCMP will work with commanding officers in each province and territory as well as with other police forces to determine if any complaints of forced or coerced sterilization were made.

But she does not say the RCMP will launch an investigation and instead asserts that it is important any evidence of criminal activity be reported to police — which at this point does not appear to have happened.

The Canadian Press