14 sudden death cases of Indigenous people in Thunder Bay, Ont., recommended for police reinvestigation

An investigative team that has been looking into sudden death cases in Thunder Bay, Ont., for years is recommending that police reinvestigate an additional 14, according to a confidential report leaked to CBC News. 

The cases involve Indigenous people and date back to between 2006 and 2019. The youngest person was two months old and the oldest was 61.

The report is part of the final work of the Broken Trust committee, formed after the province's oversight agency, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, found evidence of systemic racism in the city's police force in 2018.

The committee called for the reinvestigation of the sudden deaths of nine Indigenous people. Part of the process was to consider if other sudden death investigations undertaken by the Thunder Bay Police Service should be conducted again. 

The leaked report, most recently updated in February, begins with a disclaimer that "due to finite timelines and resources allocated to the process outlined in this report, cases provided here are not an exhaustive list," adding there may be other sudden death cases that "warrant further investigation."

Brian Gray, a spokesperson with Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney General, confirmed to CBC News that the ministry has received and is now considering the request to refer 16 sudden deaths for reinvestigation.

Those 16 include a coroner's review for a missing person death and for a drug death.

In addition, there are 25 unresolved missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) cases from Thunder Bay — some of which have remained open and have been unresolved for over two decades — that the report recommends be reviewed.

This is the latest development in a series of complaints and external investigations into the city's police force over the past two months, and it comes as the original Broken Trust process begins to wind down.

In 2018, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director issued its Broken Trust report, which found evidence of systemic racism within the force. At the time, the office reviewed 37 sudden death investigations by Thunder Bay police and found nine of them to be "so problematic" that they should be re-conducted by a multidisciplinary investigative team.

Those original nine reinvestigations have been criticized by families and their lawyers for lacking transparency, but they have since concluded and the results are now being shared with family members, according to Ontario's chief coroner.

The Broken Trust report also recommended the team establish a protocol to determine if other Thunder Bay police sudden death investigations should be redone. 

CBC News has requested but has not yet received a copy of that protocol from Ontario's chief coroner, who acts as a spokesperson for the executive governance committee overseeing the reinvestigations.

But as part of its work, the multidisciplinary investigative team conducted a non-exhaustive review of the police service's and the provincial coroner's records for sudden death and Indigenous death cases between 2000 and 2020. They included 229 cases.