Public Safety Strategy: Direct Action, Smart Spending, and Accountability for Thunder Bay
Public safety is the single most pressing concern facing our community today. With only 51 per cent of residents reporting that they feel safe, we cannot rely on incremental adjustments or single-focus solutions. Achieving a measurably safer Thunder Bay requires an integrated approach that pairs assertive enforcement against violent crime with neighbourhood-level presence, smart workforce relief, officer health support, and root-cause solutions for homelessness, addiction, and youth prevention.
Step-by-Step Action Plan
Step 1: Return Neighbourhood Police Hubs for Community Safety
Vote & Action: Vote to establish decentralised Neighbourhood Police Hubs in high-need commercial and residential zones, including Downtown Fort William, the Waterfront District, Blucher, Limbrick and Simpson-Ogden.
Focus: Create accessible, permanent footings for police officers and community partners directly in the neighbourhood.
Community Relationships: Hubs allow constables and Special Constables to build long-term relationships with local residents, business owners, youth, and seniors, fostering trust and proactive intelligence gathering.
Protecting Kids & Seniors: Provides dedicated, visible safe-haven spaces near schools, senior facilities, and transit nodes, ensuring quick response times and visible deterrence against harassment, disorder, and petty crime.
Funding & Responsibilities:
City Funding: Allocate upto $300,000 annually for municipal space acquisition, co-location with existing community centres or municipal buildings, and facility upkeep.
TBPS Responsibility: Direct officer staffing and scheduling to ensure hubs serve as active bases for foot and bike patrols rather than administrative offices.
Step 2: Target Violent Crime, Gangs, and Illegal Firearms
Vote & Action: Fully support and vote to resource the Thunder Bay Police Service (TBPS) Gangs and Guns Unit, Intelligence-Led Policing, and Joint Intelligence Teams operating alongside the OPP and RCMP.
Focus: Direct proactive enforcement toward inter-provincial trafficking corridors to intercept illegal firearms, handguns, and toxic drugs entering Northwestern Ontario.
Funding & Responsibilities: Funded primarily through core TBPS operational budgets. As an At-Large Councillor, I will vote to ensure we work hard to advocate to the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Public Safety Canada for dedicated, sustained operational grants through the Ontario Guns and Gangs Strategy and the federal Building Safer Communities Fund.
Step 3: Restore Order in Downtown Cores and Commercial Districts
Vote & Action: Vote to permanently integrate high-visibility foot, bike, and mobile patrols radiating from neighbourhood hubs across commercial districts and high-frequency corridors.
Focus: Expand integrated model building on initiatives like Project Support that pair police officers with Social Navigators and Community Integration Teams (CIT). Social Navigators resolve non-violent distress and provide immediate service referrals, leaving uniformed officers focused on criminal activity, open drug sales, and property crime.
Funding & Responsibilities:
City Funding: $450,000 annually from municipal revenues to co-fund Social Navigators, outreach teams, and Special Constables.
TBPS: Redeployment of active foot-patrol shifts within existing operational schedules.
Step 4: Optimize Police Staffing, Protect Officer Health, and Cut Overtime Costs
Vote & Action: Support front-line complement additions while fundamentally restructuring how we deploy specialized personnel, manage scene security, and support officer wellness.
Proactive Officer Care & WSIB Reduction: Allocate $250,000 annually within the TBPS budget for proactive psychological care, early-intervention Operational Stress Injury (OSI) support, and rapid physical rehabilitation. Caring for officers before they reach burnout or severe injury directly reduces long-term WSIB claims, keeps officers healthy, and accelerates return-to-duty timelines.
Smart Relief & Overtime Reduction: Establish a special constableconstables team and an active registry of recently retired officers to handle static, non-enforcement tasks:
Scene Security: Utilize retired officers or Special Constables to hold and secure crime scenes once threats are resolved.
Traffic & Transport: Deploy Special Constables for perimeter control, road closures, and non-hazardous transport.
Impact: Eliminates the practice of keeping higher-wage constables on 1.5× and 2.0× overtime rates for static duties, returning active constables to neighbourhood 911 response and generating an estimated half a million dollars ($500,000) in net annual overtime savings .
Step 5: Maximize 911 Response Times and Crisis Triage
Vote & Action: Expand the IMPACT (Integrated Mobile Police and Crisis Team) model with St. Joseph’s Care Group to handle wellness and non-emergent distress calls.
Focus: Offload low-priority calls to Special Constables, crisis workers, and 311/online reporting streams, allowing primary response officers to respond rapidly to Priority 1 and Priority 2 emergencies.
Funding & Responsibilities:
City/TBPS: Funded by reinvesting internal overtime savings directly into front-line constable positions.
Provincial Advocacy: Demand an updated provincial policing funding formula that accounts for Thunder Bay’s status as a regional hub—where local police serve a daily regional population up to 30,000 higher than official census numbers indicate.
Step 6: Systemic Solutions for Homelessness, Addiction, and Mental Health
Vote & Action: Vote to allocate municipal land, planning resources, and capital reserves to accelerate supportive housing developments and 24/7 shelter infrastructure.
Focus: Transition unsheltered individuals from encampments into structured supportive housing rather than relying solely on displacement. Strongly advocate for a regional 24/7 Crisis Diversion Centre and expanded sobering beds to keep individuals out of hospital emergency rooms and police holding cells.
Funding & Responsibilities:
City Direct: Commit $1.5 million annually toward municipal housing development seed funds, site servicing, and land preparation. Funded through Building Safer Cities and Housing Accelator Fund
Provincial & Federal: Health care, long-term addiction treatment, operating beds, and social housing subsidies are the explicit funding responsibility of the Ontario Ministry of Health, Ontario Health North, and the District of Thunder Bay Social Services Administration Board (TBDSSAB).
Step 7: Upstream Youth Prevention and Senior Safety
Vote & Action: Allocate municipal grant funding to grassroots youth programming, recreational access, and neighbourhood safety initiatives in full alignment with Thunder Bay’s Community Safety and Well Being Plan (CSWB).
Focus: Support neighbourhood hub programming, youth leadership frameworks, and senior safety audits to ensure vulnerable groups have safe community spaces and direct connections to local officers and ambassadors.
Funding & Responsibilities:
City Direct: Direct $350,000 annually toward neighbourhood-level CSWB prevention grants.
Federal Support: Maximize funding from the federal Youth Gang Prevention Fund.
Shift from the City’s Current Approach
- From Centralized Response to Neighbourhood Hubs: Instead of relying exclusively on central dispatch and cruiser-based patrols, we bring officers back into the neighbourhood to build trust with seniors, protect youth, and deter local disorder.
- From Reactive Overtime to Smart Relief: Instead of paying premium constable overtime to guard static scenes or handle road closures, we deploy retired officers and Special Constables—saving hundreds of thousands of dollars and returning constables to active neighbourhood patrols.
- From Reactive Medical Leave to Proactive Care: Instead of waiting for officers to suffer prolonged stress injuries leading to long WSIB absences, we invest upfront in mental health and physical care to keep our workforce healthy and on active duty.
- From Single-Agency Policing to Integrated Response: Instead of forcing police to serve as primary responders for non-violent mental health or addiction calls, we systematically pair foot patrols with Social Navigators and crisis teams.
Measurable Four-Year Results
Residents should evaluate the success of this plan after four years based on the following specific benchmarks:
Citizen Safety Rating: Increase citizen safety perception on official municipal surveys from 51% to at least 70%.
Neighbourhood Presence: Establish and fully staff at least 5 Neighbourhood Police Hubs across key high-priority zones.
911 Response Times: Achieve a 15% to 20% reduction in average Priority 1 and Priority 2 emergency response times across all city quadrants.
Overtime Expenditure: Realize a net reduction of at least 15% in annual TBPS overtime costs through the systematic use of Special Constables for static tasks.
WSIB & Lost Time: Reduce total lost-time days from physical injuries and Operational Stress Injuries (OSI) by 20% to 25%.
Active Patrol Visibility: Increase net primary constable active patrol time in high-need districts by 20%.
Supportive Housing Capacity: Successfully deliver a net addition of at least 150 operational supportive and transitional housing units in Thunder Bay.
This balanced approach will have a very small financial impact on our tax rate payers . It will have a very high impact on safety and security within our community.
NetNewsLedger question:
Public safety remains one of the most serious concerns facing Thunder Bay residents. A 2026 Thunder Bay Police Service citizen survey found only 51 per cent of respondents said they felt safe in the city. Disorder and substance use were each identified as concerns by 87 per cent of respondents, while homelessness and encampments were cited by 77 per cent. Residents also placed strong emphasis on solving violent crime and illegal-firearms offences, neighbourhood patrols and reliable response to 911 calls.
Over the past year, Thunder Bay has experienced a number of serious incidents, including shootings, homicides, stabbings, major drug seizures and weapons investigations. At the same time, police and community organizations have repeatedly pointed out that enforcement alone cannot address the conditions driving public disorder, addiction, homelessness and mental-health crises.
At-large councillors represent the entire city and have a direct role in approving budgets, setting municipal priorities, voting on policing and social-service investments, and pressing other levels of government for support.
Question:
If elected as an at-large councillor, what specific measures would you support to make Thunder Bay measurably safer across all neighbourhoods? Please explain how you would vote and advocate on issues including violent crime and illegal firearms, drug trafficking, downtown and neighbourhood disorder, homelessness, addiction and mental-health response, police staffing and 911 response times, youth prevention programs and community-based safety initiatives.
What should the City fund directly, what should be the responsibility of Thunder Bay Police, and what support would you seek from the provincial and federal governments? Finally, what measurable results should residents use after four years to judge whether your approach has worked?
Please identify what your proposals would cost, how they would be funded, and what they would change from the city’s current approach.
