Thunder Bay: Shameless

“The Human Rights Commission said that there is no leadership at the top on this Indigenous stuff that’s going on and I just went ballistic. I could write a book on what we’ve tried to accomplish and what we are accomplishing. So, for Human Rights to say there’s a lack of leadership, THEY CAN KISS MY ASS.” These were former Mayor Keith Hobbs’ comments in response to the Human Rights Commission’s statement that civic leadership in Thunder Bay had not done enough to take on anti-Indigenous racism.

“Traditional Canadian Dance”

The Inquest brought national attention to Thunder Bay and finally shone the light on the Thunder Police and others who were ignoring their duties. CANADALAND asked the question: “But, what did this change?”

Falconer himself is not sure. “I will say this about Thunder Bay, for all the different examples of tragedies and misconduct by police leading to deaths or serious injury. When it’s exposed, there is a traditional dance in Canada, that starts with denial, the media pressure increases, the facts become irrefutable and somebody loses their job and somebody apologizes and the regular Canadian dance apology happens, it’s almost like musical chairs, somebody’s left standing and loses their job and that is expected as part of the Canadian protocol of we did wrong. Thunder Bay is utterly immune to that level of shame. I have never seen anything like it. I can tell you there are countless examples of representation of the 7-Youth Inquest that have exposed absolute egregious examples of racism and terrible neglect of Indigenous People. It emboldens them. It actually emboldens the bad actors. There are virtually no consequences. The Chief of Police decided it was time to retire *chuckles* with all of his benefits after all of the egregious examples, on his timing. He was not in any way censured. There are no consequences for these people, there is no sense of shame.”


Click here to listen to CANADALAND’s Thunder Bay podcast

Related Posts