Missing aboriginal women focus of new centre

Part of the $10-million funding announced in the March budget will go toward a National Police Support Centre for Missing Persons, which would be linked to National Aboriginal Policing Services.

"Aboriginal women, including First Nations, Inuit, Métis and non-status Indians are 3½ times more likely to experience violent victimization than non-aboriginal women. They're three times more likely to be victims of spousal violence than non-aboriginal women, and they are significantly overrepresented as victims of homicide," Ambrose said, speaking at Vancouver police headquarters on Friday.

"In the past 30 years, there have been at least 600 cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women and the details of each case has been distressing and shocking to Canadians."

Some of the money the government has committed will be used to set up a national tip website for missing persons and the enhancement of the Canadian Police Information Centre database to get additional missing persons data.

The government will also seek to amend the Criminal Code to make it easier to get warrants for wiretaps in missing persons cases.