THUNDER BAY – City officials will be taking the next steps in looking at having cameras monitor local waterways where seven Indigenous youth have been found dead in the past 17 years.
Thunder Bay city council on Monday night authorized a request for information to be put out to provide more details about the feasibility and effectiveness of using surveillance technology in identified high-risk areas.
“We wanted council’s authorization to move to this next step and for it to be crystal clear that we’re going out and talking to vendors about their systems, what the costs might be and what the experience has been in other communities in terms of outcomes,” city director of corporate strategic services Karen Lewis said.
Two Indigenous teens – 17-year-old Tammy Keash and 14-year-old Josiah Begg – were found in watercourses earlier this year. The bodies of five other teens were recovered from local rivers between 2000 and 2011. Most recently, the body of 21-year-old Dylan Moonias was discovered in the McIntyre River in September.
Using surveillance cameras along waterways was advocated for by Nishnawbe Aski Nation deputy grand chief Anna Betty Achneepineskum during a deputation to council in June.
“We feel it will save lives. We feel it will provide safety for our people, not only the students but other people here in the city,” Achneepineskum told council in June.
A working group consisting of Thunder Bay Police Service communications director Chris Adams, city director of central support Charles Campbell and city supervisor of network and technology services Jack Avella has been formed to examine a surveillance program.
Lewis told council the only commitment administration was seeking is to gather information surveillance camera systems.
“We will come back with as detailed of a picture we can provide based on the information we gather. This is an exploratory phase,” Lewis said.
“We will do our best to estimate costs based on assumptions we make in respect to the level of staffing required for the monitoring centre, what changes we might contemplate in that. This is not a tender where we will have an exact price.”
Lewis said the locations identified for investigation include 12 kilometres of recreation trails and waterways, as well as the areas monitored by the existing Eye on the Street program.
“Cameras have changed a lot in the years since the Eye on the Street program was first created. There are things such as analytics that are built into it that can detect unusual movement. They also have a longer range so we’ll be looking for that information and bringing it back,” Lewis said.
Coun. Trevor Giertuga said he wanted more specific guidelines, especially around costing.
“This request for information is fairly vague. It doesn’t set any parameters to how many cameras we’ll be looking at. It talks about McVicar Creek, the Neebing-McIntyre Floodway, the Kaministiquia River Heritage Park, County Park trails. This could be upwards of over $1 million,” Giertuga said.
