Debra Black, Toronto Star
The Toronto Star

Former police chief Wesley Luloff had long complained it would take a death before anyone would pay attention to funding problems with the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service.

Yesterday, the jury of an Ontario inquest into the deaths of two young men at the Kashechewan reserve recommended a public inquiry or a royal commission should be held to examine parity of services, community health and safety and the quality of life for the Nishnawbe-Aski communities.

Ricardo Wesley, 22, and Jamie Goodwin, 20, who had been arrested for intoxication, died in their cells on Jan. 8, 2006, in the Nishnawbe-Aski police detachment after a fire engulfed the jail. In 2006, the detachment had no fire alarm, fire extinguisher or smoke detector. Nor did the reserve, along the west coast of James Bay, have a fire station or a firefighting force and the fire truck sat broken in a junkyard area beside the airstrip.

Yesterday, the jury ruled the deaths, from smoke inhalation, were accidental.

Testimony at the inquest painted a picture of a community of 1,600 in pain with a long history of trauma, including sexual assault and abuse at residential schools, high suicide rates, alcoholism, drug abuse and an E. coli outbreak in 2005. There is no hospital or detox centre, only a nursing station on the reserve.

Also at the heart of the inquest was the standard of services offered by the Nishnawbe-Aski police compared to the police services of other municipalities. Luloff told the inquest the First Nations of Ontario deserve the same standards as the rest of the province. Yesterday, the jury attempted to address some of those concerns, with 86 recommendations. One calls for the federal and provincial governments to provide the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service with enough funding to ensure the communities it serves receive the same level and quality of policing services and infrastructure found in other municipalities.

The jury also suggested that Ottawa amend the terms and conditions of the First Nations Policing Policy to allow for major capital funding."

Other recommendations attempted to deal with the substandard quality of some of the Nishnawbe-Aski police detachments in Northern Ontario. "It is recognized that as many as 19 of the NAPS detachments do not meet National Building Code Standards and do not have sprinkler systems installed," the verdict said.

For Ricardo Wesley's father, George, yesterday's verdict comes as some relief. Wesley, speaking in Cree, spoke to reporters using a translator. He said he wanted to thank the jury for its hard work and recommendations.

Kashechewan's Chief Jonathon Solomon and Stan Louttit, Grand Chief of the Mushkegowuk Council, the regional Cree government, endorsed the recommendations.

Copyright 2009 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.
May 22, 2009