Correctional services minister tours jail, won't commit to immediate replacement

THUNDER BAY – Despite acknowledging the urging from fellow MPPs and the mayor, Ontario’s correctional services minister won’t make a firm commitment to replacing the nearly century-old district jail.

Yasir Naqvi met with local media Wednesday morning prior to touring the Thunder Bay District Jail on McDougall Street, his first stop on a day that will also include visits to the Thunder Bay Correctional Centre and local probation and parole offices.

But he made it clear there are no concrete plans in the works to immediately replace the 90-year-old jail.

“I’m not going to speculate on that because I’m not in the position to do that,” Naqvi said. “I’ll be very frank with you, where it starts is listening to all the people involved in providing the services and coming down locally and that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

He acknowledged having meetings with fellow Liberal cabinet colleagues Thunder Bay-Superior North MPP Michael Gravelle and Thunder Bay-Atikokan MPP Bill Mauro, who both have publicly advocated for a new jail to be built.

Municipal leaders have also brought the issue to his attention, including a delegation that attended the Association of Municipalities of Ontario meetings this past August.

Those calls have only proceeded to get louder since a riot at the jail on Dec. 7, where a correctional officer was held hostage by inmates for more than three hours and the facility was put in lockdown for 12 hours.

“That was a harrowing experience and I was quite involved from my perspective in making sure things got resolved peacefully and we’re thankful due to the professionalism of our staff nobody was seriously hurt,” Naqvi said.

“That’s why I’m here. I want to talk to people and learn from their perspectives. I want to be able to see what kind of facilities we have so I can make appropriate decisions in the future.”

While there is no definitive answer about updating local facilities, the minister said he is eying changes to how the province can transform the correctional services system because the status quo is no longer effective.

“If you look at the last 10 years and you look at the demographic of people coming into our care and custody there has been a major shift,” he said.

“First of all, the number of people in remand has doubled in the last 10 years. We’ve gone from 30 per cent of our overall population of inmates to 60 per cent on remand…The other big change that’s taken place over a decade or so is a lot of people with mental health and addiction issues are coming in, which means we have to do a better job of providing mental health supports.”

The increase in the number of remanded inmates can be attributed to federal legislation that changed the criminal code and established mandatory minimum sentences, Naqvi said.

He also said the province is bringing mental health experts to work in the facilities, as well as hiring 571 new correctional officers across Ontario since 2013.

Naqvi also commented on the state of labour relations with the correctional officers after the province and OPSEU reached an eleventh-hour deal over the weekend, averting a potential strike.

“Our big focus now is to normalize operations in all our jails across the province,” he said.