The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - What's At Issue with the Thunder Bay Police Service?

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

Digging into allegations of system racism in Thunder Bay. Then, can pension funds be made to be spent in Canada? A conversation with Wade Davis, and what can be done to help incarcerated individuals with mental illness.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Our sympathies, obviously, to you and to your entire family. Grand Chief, I want to start with you, though. During the news conference at Queen's Park recently, you said the Thunder Bay Police Service has turned into a cold case factory when it comes to investigations into the deaths of Indigenous peoples. Tell us more about what you meant by that. Well, I just want to, first of all, thank you for having us. And I just want to begin by acknowledging Vince and the Osberg family and the Munoz family and the Boleski family and all the other families that are out there still waiting for answers as to what happened to their loved ones,

how and why they died in Thunder Bay and just waiting for answers from the Thunder Bay police. And I think that's the reason why I made that comment when we were opening up the press conference the other week is, you know, just the track record that the Thunder Bay has in terms of resolving or solving these tragic cases is just horrendous. And that number just keeps escalating. Melanie, I think we need to know more about your daughter. Why don't we start with having you tell us what was she like? She was... She was... Well, she liked to do artwork.

She was... She liked to play piano on occasion. She liked to sketch. She did some artwork. She was a good daughter to us. She graduated Conn College just last June. Which college? The Confederation College.

We just saw a couple of pictures of her. She was a beautiful young woman. You must have been very proud of her. Yeah, we are. Vincent, I'm sorry to do this, but again, this will bring home the seriousness of this case. Can you share with us some of the circumstances around her death? Well, she died on the early morning of the 30th, which would have been Friday night, Saturday morning. And she was at a house she liked to frequent

she was in a relationship with this young male and I guess around 1 32 o'clock there was a and then one one call made and the police didn't respond to the residents. When I was talking to the coroner, he said that a fight had broke out between my daughter, Jenna, and her boyfriend, and that the mother claimed that she separated the two, sending one upstairs, one downstairs. But, you know, when I did a timeline on my daughter, that she separated the two, sending one upstairs, one downstairs. But, you know, when I did a timeline on my daughter,

she was still alive at 2.41 a.m. And the last time would have been about 5.41 in the morning that someone was in her account, whether it was her or someone else, we don't know. And that's the timeline about 541 there was was someone was using her device to see a message that her cousin Vanessa had sent to her so anyway what happened is that the two nine-one-one calls I guess that police officer was dispatched but he refused to go and attend the first one was that initially it was reported as a domestic call but later ruled as an unwanted guest who was supposed

to be there and the flags that that surround us is that the they were not supposed to be together. Melanie tried to separate, tried to separate because the boyfriend had conditions that he was not supposed to be on her because he had committed an assault on her back last July 14. And my daughter had fought him off and he was charged. And later on, my daughter was in another violent incident with this person, and she had been cut or stabbed in the leg, and a body map was done. And we also have a chat screenshot, which I had forwarded to Thunder Bay Police recently and also to SIU, that she confirmed that it was him through the Facebook post. that she confirmed that it was him through the Facebook post.

I'm going to ask our director, Sheldon Osmond, to bring up a couple of graphics showing some stats about Canada's eight largest pension funds. These are known as the Maple Eight, and among them, they have about $2 trillion in assets. And here's how it's allocated. I'm not going to go through all the hundreds of billions of dollars of valuation, but just to give you a sense, the Canada pension plan has got 14% of its money invested in Canada. The Caisse du Depot et Placement in Quebec, 27%. The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, about a third. The public sector, about 22%. Let's keep going. BC Investment Management, about 29%. Alberta Investment Management, 43%. OMERS, the Ontario Municipal Employees, 24%. And Healthcare of Ontario is the biggest one there at 55%.

Okay, Keith, to you first. Given this data, how would you characterize the Maple 8's level of investment in Canada? They're overinvested. Overinvested? They're overinvested. Even though one's only over 50%. If you use the sort of the normal standard of the structure of the global financial market,

and you look at Canada's position in that, certainly on the equity side, for example, it's 3% or 3% of the total global market. So when you see numbers like 10% and 20% and 30%, that's over overinvested. Barbara, what would you say? Well, it depends. So all these pension plans have Canadian dollar liabilities, or they own a pension promise in Canadian dollars. So there's certain types of assets

that you want in Canadian dollars. So take Canadian government bonds as a nice hedge portfolio, and there's less desire to go foreign for that but in other areas you know we just don't see the opportunities in canada and certain types of asset classes like infrastructure is a great example and to really to get that diversification across countries as well as types of assets we go elsewhere what's your percentage at your fund we're about 40 40. so that's on the high side compared to the maple eight that's right and you're you're comfortable with that, obviously? We're comfortable with that, given the makeup of it, yes. Okay. Jim Leach, what do you say? Well, they're both right. It depends on, as Barb said, first of all, there's reasons to be in Canada. One is currency. All of the obligations of these pension plans are in Canadian dollars.

So that's a reason to be overweight in Canada. Another reason is that we have a bit of an informational advantage in Canada. We're here. We know what's going on compared to our foreign competitors, etc. By the same token, you have to have a diversified portfolio. And as Keith said, only 3% of the equity markets are in Canada. So anything over 3% in equity would, you know, be termed as overweighted. But there's another type of diversification one needs to get from the demographics. So different countries have different demographics.

You may want to spread into a younger population or an older population to be investing in. And secondly is different industries. So, for example, if you want big exposure to five Canadian banks and a whole bunch of strong resource companies, yes, the Toronto Stock Exchange is the place to be. yes, the Toronto Stock Exchange is the place to be. But if you want exposure to technology, to consumer products, et cetera, large manufacturing, you're not getting it by investing in the Toronto Stock Exchange, unfortunately. You said you're at 40-ish percent? That's right.

How did you land on that number? Well, we do, most pension plans will do something called an asset liability. They look at their liabilities, they look at the different assets they can invest in, and they look at 10, 20 years and factor in as much of the modelling as you can. It's never a perfect exercise. And then they use judgment in terms of where is the growth, where our opportunities are. And then usually that leads to a certain amount of bonds that you want as a hedge to interest rates. Usually that leads to a certain amount of bonds that you want as a hedge to interest rates. You're looking for certain types of inflation protection because we all provide pensions that are indexed to the CPI.

So we need that in our assets and we need assets that provide economic growth. And that's really where we try to get the diversification across globally. I want to start with the essay that captured so much attention. It's called The Unraveling of America. You first published it in Rolling Stone a few years ago, and it went viral. And here's a quote from that. And Sheldon, if you'd put this up, I will read it for those listening on podcast, and then we'll chat. Odious as he may be, you write, Trump is less the cause of America's decline than a product of its dissent. As they stare into the mirror and perceive only the myth of their exceptionalism, Americans remain almost bizarrely incapable of seeing what has actually become of their country. OK, lots to pick apart here. What is the actually has become of their country that you are referring to?

has become of their country that you are referring to? Well, let's remember that essay, Steve, was written at the low point of COVID when the American performance was not just scandalous, it was leading people to say, for the first time, the world had pity for America. You know, I've been asked by a lot of editors to write about COVID. I didn't think I had anything new to say

until one night I was paddling my kayak around a little island off of Vancouver. And I thought, you know, COVID's not just about medicine and public health. It's also about culture and history. And what I was seeing is that the fundamental collapse of the infrastructure and the solidarity of the American society, which had been a process that had been going on since the Second World War. And at the time, Canada seemed to be performing much, much better. And although it did suffer in time from COVID, there were three elements in the Canadian society that seemed to be holding us together.

And I use a metaphor of going to get your groceries at the Safeway. In the States, there seems to be a chasm between you and the checkout person. And in Canada, that doesn't exist because you know the clerk is getting a decent wage because of the unions. You know that your kids probably go to the same public schools. You know, above all, that if her kids get sick or his kids get sick, they'll get the same medical care. And those three strands woven together become the fabric of Canadian social democracy. And I think one of the things the Americans don't understand is that health care, for example, is not about health. It's about solidarity. It's about fairness, about feeling. So that essay was written very much in the heat

of the moment. Got some things right, some things wrong. Who could have guessed, for example, that RNA vaccines would be developed in a matter of months when previously the fastest had been four years? As if to affirm the very American exceptionalism, the essay calls into question. But I think it hit a nerve. I mean, it went incredibly viral. 362 million social media impressions. There was media interest in 23 countries, five million people read it on site. And I think it just had that attention, not because it was a diatribe, not because it was ideological, not because it was a polemic, not because it was an indictment of America. It was an intervention. And when you do an intervention, you hold the mirror to show your loved one how

far they've fallen. And as Cory Booker says, if America hasn't broken your heart, you don't love her enough. The senator from New Jersey. This is a country, though, that has been obsessed with individualism and individual rights for 250 years. Is it reasonable to expect it to be different? Well, individualism, yes, but equity and fairness has changed. If you look at the 1950s, for example, the marginal tax rate on the wealthy was 90%.

The social contract that came out of the great American victory in World War II, and I say victory not just militarily, but the industrial surge that literally saved civilization. 1946, America made 95% of the world's automobiles, 5% of the world's population, half the global economy. And that wealth allowed for a truce between capital and labor that gave us a middle class, gave us the weekend, whereby a working man could support a family,

have a house, buy a car. Well, that social contract... Annual vacation. Annual vacation. Maybe even a cottage in the woods. But that social contract has been eroded and eroded. And that's really, I think, accounts for a good part of the Trump phenomena, a sense of unfairness

and a sense of having been left behind. What is the myth of American exceptionalism you refer to? What it really was, in a way. You know, this is a country that took the ideas of the Enlightenment, liberty, and happiness. Happiness wasn't contentment. Happiness by the founding fathers was seeking actively a life of virtue, of doing good. And, of course, all of that was stumbled over each other in a bunch of contradictions, which is what the first essay in this book is about. How do you have individual freedom

in a land that endorses slavery? So this is the constant struggle in the history of America. But it was a shining city on the hill. It set the example for the world. It was the great revolution, you know, and it gave us a possibility that, as Jefferson wrote, you know, I've sworn upon the altar of Almighty God to fight against all forms of tyranny over the mind of man. That was a pretty powerful idea when written in the 18th century. As he owned slaves himself. As he owned slaves himself. This is the great contradiction, isn't it? Since the conclusion of the inquest, I gather the Ontario government has missed the deadline

by which it said, or by which it was urged to start enacting the first of the 57 recommendations made by the coroner's jury. Can you give us some insight as to why they have missed that deadline? Yes. Governments rarely and they're most often are tone deaf to the challenges of Canadians and Ontarians suffering from mental health challenges within corrections. The coroner's office gave the government of Antietam an opportunity to stand on the right side of history to make a public statement, a very simple public statement, that individuals suffering from mental health challenges

should not be put in jails. And they missed that. And there was many other recommendations. And what I articulate from this is that you have many inquests, especially Suleyman's, Ashley Smith, and many other recommendations. And what I articulate from this is that you have many inquests, especially Suleyman's, Ashley Smith, and many others, tragic deaths, where government rarely acts in inquests. And then the question sometimes happens, while inquests do a very important and critical job, it is not legally binding. So the government is not obligated to necessarily act on these inquests. But does it have to cost more lives for the governments not to act?

And that's the question that we need to ask, because there's many Soleimans around us. My brother was one of them, but believe me, there was just another individual that just passed away last week at Toronto South, the Tension Centre, with similar circumstances of Soleiman's tragic death. You know, Mayor, it's a fact that governments are under no legal obligation to give voice to the recommendations that come out of coroner's inquests. But why wouldn't they in this case, if it was done so transparently and with good accountability? And, you know, here we have four people who have, you know, good experience in this system and know what's possible. Why rag the puck?

Why rag the puck? So I'll start by saying I'm currently a psychiatrist at Waypoint, which is a forensic mental health care hospital, which is not a correctional facility. But I have overseen several cases as an inquest officer. I think that stigma is a big reason that there's less pressure on governments. It is difficult for people with mental illness to advocate for themselves. It is especially difficult for people with mental illness within the forensic system to advocate for themselves. It is a population that is not, I think, high up on the empathy list of most citizens.

And so there's less pressure on governments to, and other agencies, important agencies, to act on the recommendations. What do we do about that, Mick? That's a very, very good question, Steve. Thank you for asking that. I think despite the lack of action from governments, for example, there has been a community response. And that community response has been from social service agencies, from folks with lived experience. And I think this response has put additional pressure, for example, on the Ministry of Health to fund additional initiatives that support individuals with mental illnesses,

be that within the forensic mental health care system or within the community or even within correctional system. So I think as a as a civil society we have made some strides in the right direction as a result of this inquiry the agenda with steve pakin is made possible through generous philanthropic contributions from viewers like you thank you for supporting tvo's journalism