THUNDER BAY – The Thunder Bay Police Services Board has appointed two new members to an expert panel meant to advise the force on policies and its progress in meeting outside recommendations.
Candice Metallic and Janine Seymour will join an expert panel assembled by the board, filling in after the departure of member Kimberly Murray.
Metallic is the founder and lead counsel of Metallic Law, a former in-house lawyer for the Assembly of First Nations, and served as counsel in the Iacobucci “Independent Review of First Nations on Juries in Ontario,” and in Sen. Murray Sinclair’s investigation into the Thunder Bay Police Services Board in 2018, the board said.
Seymour is a Wauzhushk Onigum Nation lawyer focused on Indigenous law and child protection, a member of Sunset Country Family Health Team and Waasegiizhig Nanaandawe’iyewigamig, founding board member of Ahze-mino-gahbewewin/Reconciliation Kenora, and a former political advisor to Ogichidaa Francis Kavanaugh, the Grand Chief of Treaty No. 3.
Murray departed the panel earlier this month after being appointed to another role as Special Interlocutor on Residential Schools Unmarked Burial Sites.
The panel said at the time it would look to find a replacement with a background in Indigenous justice. Murray is the former executive director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The panel was convened by the board as the service faced growing questions about how it has investigated the deaths of Indigenous people, human rights complaints from current and former officers, and investigations by the OCPC and OPP into police leadership.
The panel was called together before outside administrator Malcolm Mercer was appointed to act in place of the board.
Other members include Alok Mukherjee, former chair of the Toronto Police Service Board; Sandy Smallwood, former chair of the Ottawa Police Services Board; Paul Cook, former president of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police; Laura Kloosterman, retired police officer and now with Badge of Life Canada; and Dilnaz Garda of Beyond the Blue, an advocate for the mental health of police officers.
A workplan presented to the board in March proposed that the panel’s work be completed in four months and that it provide advice to the board on policies, as well as address outstanding recommendations from OIPRD and OCPC reports.
