The Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls will be making a second visit to the Yukon.

Chief Commissioner Marion Buller said today the commissioners will “definitely” be returning to the territory to gather more stories.

“It’s pretty clear that we’re going to need some more time to get our work done in the way that we need to do that. It’s becoming very obvious,” she said before a second round of hearings in Whitehorse today.

The inquiry has been widely criticized for being slow to start hearing testimony, spending down its budget, and for lacking transparency.

As the first stop of the national inquiry, Whitehorse has been a kind of testing ground for the commissioners.

After this week’s hearings, said Buller, they will reassess the path forward, including how much more time is needed to hear from family, friends and survivors.

Though she couldn’t speak to a possible expansion of the budget, Buller said her colleagues will “certainly be careful, because we know it’s publicly funded, taxpayers’ money.”

Buller has said previously that the inquiry will need more time and more money to complete its work, but has not said how much is needed or when the request will be made to the federal government.

The federal government gave the commissioners a budget of about $53.9 million and asked them to complete their work by the end of 2018, but most family hearings will not take place until this fall.

The commissioners heard emotional testimony on Tuesday from four families who have lost loved ones, and Buller said from her perspective, the day was a great success.

This morning, commissioners heard from Edna Deerunner, who wants an apology from the RCMP for failing to respond to her mother’s death.

Deerunner, who was born in Ross River and now lives in B.C., said her mother was murdered by her father, but that as far as she knows, the RCMP didn’t properly investigate.

“An apology from the RCMP would be powerful,” she said.

Joan Jack, a lawyer who came up from Atlin, B.C. for the inquiry, told the Star that many indigenous people don’t trust the RCMP.

“I, personally, know some wonderful RCMP,” she said, but suggested that across Canada, work can be done to address racism in the force.

Jack is in Whitehorse to support her husband and his family, who are testifying tomorrow.

The body of her husband’s sister, Barbara Jack, was found on Grey Mountain in the 1970s. She was 14 years old.

To this day, the family doesn’t know what happened.

The inquiry is not mandated to re-open cases, nor find fault for a failed investigation or prosecution.

It can examine police files and “determine whether there are patterns of mistakes or failings by police forces,” reads the inquiry website.

Jack said rumours circulated in her family that RCMP played a role in Barbara’s death.

“Imagine you grew up thinking that the RCMP killed somebody in our community, even if that was true or not,” she said.

Jack hopes that when the inquiry returns to the Yukon, more people from the Taku/Tlingit First Nation will come out to speak about how Barbara’s death affected them.

The commissioners expected to hear from nine families today. ­ – With a file from The Canadian Press