Two First Nations women have been chosen to lead the Thunder Bay Police Services Board, making an all-Indigenous leadership at the helm of the beleaguered force in what is being called another new start.
Karen Machado and Denise Baxter are expected to be voted in as chair and vice-chair of the police board on Tuesday. Both women are from Northern Ontario and were appointed to the board by the province and city, respectively, earlier this year.
“There seems to be, from my short duration so far, a serious commitment to moving forward and effecting change, and, as a board, it’s going to be our role to lead them that way,” Ms. Machado told The Globe and Mail.
She and Ms. Baxter join the recently appointed police chief Darcy Fleury, a Métis from Manitoba and 36-year RCMP veteran, and the president of the police association Colin Woods, a 13-year Thunder Bay Police veteran from Treaty 3 territory in Northwestern Ontario.
Ms. Machado, who is from the Red Rock band, said she’s hopeful the new leadership will work well together and in new ways with fresh approaches. She said she’s up for the challenge and brings a lot of experience with what she called a quasi-military workplace as a former superintendent of the local corrections centre.
Ms. Baxter, who is from Marten Falls First Nation, is the vice-provost of Indigenous Initiatives at Lakehead University. She previously served as a community member on the governance committee of the Thunder Bay Police Services Board.
Chief Fleury declined comment on the two new appointments.
The problems of the Thunder Bay Police Service were laid bare in 2018 with a report that centred on nine problematic police investigations into the sudden deaths of Indigenous people.
Since then, these cases have been reinvestigated and subsequent reports have identified dozens more probes of Indigenous deaths that were incomplete and require review. Indigenous leaders in the region have called on the force to be dismantled amid a flurry of human-rights complaints and investigations of senior members of the force.
The Ontario Civilian Police Commission said in March that “an emergency continues to exist in the board’s oversight of the service” and that there would be continuing uncertainty until a newly constituted board was put in place and the new police chief went through a transition period.
The province appointed an administrator to oversee the board in April, 2022, and that term was recently extended to supervise the transition to a new police chief and new board.
The new board recently set up a separate governance and labour relations committees, which includes Indigenous leaders and community members. A big part of their task will be to address the more than 100 recommendations from various inquests and reports over the years that previous boards failed to make any substantial progress on.
Two significant reports by the province in 2018 indicated how systemic racism was a factor in the manner in which the service policed Indigenous peoples – often failing to complete proper death investigations – resulting in a broken relationship with Indigenous peoples and communities.
“We’ve already begun some of the work to look at those recommendations. … There’s quite a bit of them,” Ms. Machado said, adding that the work so far has been positive and that everyone is committed.
“We’re all very cognizant of the history and the challenges. We talk about it.”
The new chair and vice-chair will assume their roles on July 1, when province-appointed administrator Malcom Mercer steps down.
Since 2018, two other First Nations women have served as chair, including Georjann Morriseau who in 2021 filed a human-rights complaints against her fellow board members and the service for discrimination and harassment.
The police association also sounded alarm bells with a survey that revealed low morale with the majority of some 300 members having no confidence in the force’s chief and leadership.
Human-rights complaints filed by active and former officers pointed to allegations that workplace claims for PTSD weren’t being supported by then-police chief Sylvie Hauth. She retired in January ahead of a Police Services Act misconduct hearing against her, which essentially cancelled it.
“Building that trust will be us doing what we are committed to doings: showing progress, communicating and understanding,” Ms. Machado said. “It’s not going to happen overnight.”
Willow Fiddler