Lawyer says families 'ignored' as Broken Trust final report on death reinvestigations expected within weeks

A lawyer representing three of the nine First Nations families involved in the Broken Trust reinvestigations has serious concerns about the process just as it begins to wrap up, with Ontario's chief coroner saying a final report is expected "within weeks."

While the reinvestigations were supposed to put families first, said Aboriginal Legal Services program director Jonathan Rudin, their clients have instead been "ignored" and largely left out of the process.

"It is repeatedly said by people that a central concern was families not be hurt again by this process," Rudin told CBC News. 

"People are very good at saying that. People are not very good at following through with that … as the wishes of the families were just ignored."

Rudin represents the families of Jethro Anderson, Kyle Morrisseau and Jordan Wabasse — First Nations teenagers who died between 2000 and 2011 while attending school in Thunder Bay, and all part of the seven youths inquest in 2016.

He said concerns about the lack of transparency and communication are heightened.

The office of Ontario's chief coroner, Dr. Dirk Huyer, confirmed the final report will recommend the reinvestigation of more sudden deaths of Indigenous people, and the chief coroner is about to order another systemic review of Indigenous death investigations by the Thunder Bay Police Service (TBPS).

The nine original reinvestigations were recommended in the 2018 Broken Trust report by Gerry McNeilly, then the head of the police watchdog agency, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD). That report found evidence of systemic racism in the city's police force.

The report reviewed 37 sudden death investigations by Thunder Bay police and found nine of them to be "so problematic" that they had to be conducted again.

The report also suggested reinvestigating the 2015 death of Stacy Debungee from Rainy River First Nations. That case has since been reopened by Ontario Provincial Police, and three Thunder Bay police officers involved in the original investigation are now facing criminal misconduct charges under the Police Services Act.

Now that the nine reinvestigations have been completed, a final report has been prepared and will soon be presented to the embattled Thunder Bay police oversight board, Huyer told CBC News, speaking on behalf of the executive governance committee charged with overseeing the process.

That report will provide a summary of the work done and will respond to the recommendations made in the Broken Trust report, Huyer told CBC News.

But Rudin said he hasn't heard about a timeline for that report, nor does he know what exactly will be included in it.

"If people are serious about transparency, if they're serious about trying to repair trust — or create trust frankly — between the Indigenous community and the Thunder Bay Police Service, that's done by actually letting people know what's going on," Rudin told CBC News.