Thunder Bay Progress Report

DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE – Following a two-year systemic review of the Thunder Bay Police Service (TBPS), the Office of the Independent Police Director (OIPRD) released a report in December 2018 with forty-four recommendations. At that time, the OIPRD committed to releasing annual public reports on the implementation of its recommendations in 2020 and 2021.

The first of two OIPRD annual public reports on implementation, One Year After Broken Trust, was released in February 2020 and reviewed implementation from January 2019 to January 2020. This report found that although important steps were taken, only four recommendations were considered fully implemented, while the majority were in progress as it was premature to assess the implementation of most recommendations. The final OIPRD annual public report on implementation was scheduled to be released in February 2021, however, implementation progress was limited in 2020-2021, and so the OIPRD made a decision to forego a final report in 2021 and instead continued to monitor the progress of the TBPS through its frequent public reports to the Thunder Bay Police Services Board (TBPSB). For ease of reference, links to each of these reports are provided here.

Similar to its findings in One Year After Broken Trust, OIPRD monitoring finds that although significant steps have been taken to implement each of the recommendations, the majority remain ongoing due to the continuation of the work.

The OIPRD has developed a Broken Trust recommendations progress tracker on its website. The progress tracker notes the recommendations that were implemented by the end of 2022. The remaining recommendations could not be assessed because they are evolving. Other recommendations relate to ongoing investigations or could be impacted by the Office of the Chief Coroner’s current systemic review of the Broken Trust Re-Investigation of Indigenous deaths in Thunder Bay.