The Thunder Bay police are withholding official communications from a decorated local journalist because, they say, he is not a local journalist. It is no doubt purely a coincidence that he played a central role in reporting that exposed corruption, racism and misconduct within the department, leading to criminal charges against multiple officers, including a staff sergeant who was sentenced to three years in prison last month for what a judge described as “militantly illegal police conduct.” 

This isn’t a story I’m happy to write. As an editor, our role is to fix problems for our journalists. I’ve been trying to fix this one for almost two years. Those efforts to resolve this issue quietly, through dialogue with police officials, including police chief Darcy Fleury, have failed. 

In a nutshell, the Thunder Bay Police insist that Jon Thompson is not a local journalist, because he works for a national outlet. Nevermind that his role is funded through the federal government’s Local Journalism Initiative, and that he won a Digital Publishing Award just last week for Best Reporting at the community/local level. Nevermind that he has lived in Thunder Bay for most of his life, and has worked there as a journalist for the better part of two decades. 

In any case, this is a distinction without a difference. In my 14 years of experience as a journalist and editor I have never heard of such an arbitrary standard being applied. There is no precedent for withholding official communications based on the scope of a journalist’s outlet. The police appear to be making it up as they go along. 

But it matters, in this case, because the police force is using it as an excuse to exclude Indigenous journalists, and journalists whose beat is to cover Indigenous stories, from official updates critical to their work. 

The police maintain two media lists. One for “local” media, and another for “national.” Last month, as the city faced a staggering tragedy with five dead bodies discovered in quick succession, those on the local list received invitations to briefings, events with the families, relevant information essential to adequately cover the ongoing search and identification efforts. 

At the exact same time as these critical emails were being sent, those on the “national” media list received an invitation to a flag-raising ceremony and other self-congratulatory bafflegab. The national list, in other words, only receives updates about stories the police want journalists to cover. 

On more than one occasion, Jon has had to explain to angry families why he was not present at important events. It almost strains credulity to have to explain that the police refuse to provide him with the same official updates and invitations they share with other journalists, meaning he often doesn’t know about such events until after they’re over. 

Jon is not alone. We know that local, Indigenous journalists with a national newspaper and a national broadcaster have also been segregated onto what can only be described as a decoy media list. Jon is not Indigenous, but his beat is covering Northern Ontario Indigenous issues. The affected reporters that we know of represent the majority of the journalists in the region who a) cover Indigenous stories and b) have the capacity and editorial latitude to do deep investigative work that does not rely on police press releases. 

Effectively, the police force’s position appears to be that because Jon covers Indigenous communities outside of Thunder Bay city limits, he is not allowed to report on events in the city over which they have dominion. Apropos of nothing, this is the same police force found by two distinct oversight bodies to have engaged in a pervasive pattern of systemic and specific racism.

“Deliberately excluding journalists from receiving basic information about the Thunder Bay Police Service’s activities flies in the face of the basic levels of transparency that all Canadians should expect from their publicly-funded institutions,” said Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists.

“In a democracy, it is journalism’s role to keep the public informed and to hold those in positions of power to account and to keep the public informed. Preventing journalists from fulfilling those duties demonstrates both a blatant effort to avoid scrutiny and disregard for the public’s right to know.”

A long and frustrating journey

Jon may not be the only affected journalist, but he has been facing this longer than most. In January 2025, I first attempted to address the police force’s attempts to exclude him from their official email list with Matthew Vis, at the time the police force’s media relations coordinator. 

He responded by making a complaint to our editorial leadership team about Jon’s language in emails addressing this matter. We thoroughly investigated, and concluded that Jon had done nothing wrong. We also came to the conclusion that the complaint was lodged in bad faith, in an effort to derail our complaints over his treatment. Our senior leadership team felt that both his mistreatment and the complaint lodged against him were retaliation for his Canadian Screen Award-winning reporting in the Thunder Bay podcast series, and later docu-series with Crave, which exposed misconduct within the police force. 

I had a lengthy conversation with Vis, during which he acknowledged that the police force maintained two distinct media lists. But he didn’t describe them as local and national, in that discussion it was clear that one was for journalists they didn’t like very much. 

The conclusion of that conversation was relatively amicable. In a January 21, 2025 email summarizing our conversation, I wrote that he had “agreed to treat Jon as you would any other journalist, ensuring that he is copied on all releases and other communications with media, invited to all press conferences, briefings or other events to which any media are invited, and treated with the same respect and courtesy as any other member of the press.” 

For a time, that was true-ish. Jon was subsequently inexplicably dropped from the email list again, around the holidays last year, and it took more than two months of repeated email on my part to get him put back on it. But it was resolved. 

In recent months, it became clear that he had once again been dropped from the official media list. I once again engaged with the department, this time in the form of Tracie Smith, director of corporate communications. 

She advanced the specious argument that Jon was not a local journalist, and that this somehow justified excluding him from official communications necessary for him to do his job. She was clearly also working from a playbook that at this point felt like deja vu. 

Like her predecessor, she responded to our well-founded complaint by lodging a few of her own. She wanted us to address her concerns related to Jon’s “journalistic integrity.” That’s a charged accusation to make against any journalist. Her complaint consisted of two points. 

• One one occasion, she reported, Jon has incorrectly identified that a body was found in the river in a social media post. In fact, his source was incorrect and the body was found near the river. As Smith herself pointed out, he “later clarified the error.” As we told her, this represents an example of a journalist doing their job well, and while errors can happen and sources can be mistaken, our responsibility is to promptly correct errors. As he did in this case.
• Publishing accurate information without waiting for the police to confirm it. The same police force that have refused to share even official communications and releases with him. 

In a nutshell, Smith’s complaint was that Jon was not reporting only what the police wanted him to report, and only when they wanted it reported. 

I escalated my complaint from there, asking for a response from police chief Darcy Fleury. Smith initially told me he would be unable to respond as he was on vacation. A claim that would have been more credible had he not issued a public statement in his official capacity the night before she sent that email. 

Eventually, he responded, repeating the same made up distinction between local and national media and the unprecedented contention that this justified picking and choosing which journalists receive official communications. He did not respond to a subsequent invitation to share any comment he would like included in this story. 

Fleury, of course, succeeded Sylvie Hauth, the former police chief now facing criminal charges. 

I also shared my concerns with police service board chair Karen Machado, who succeeded former Fort William First Nation Chief Georjann Morriseau, who was improperly investigated by the Thunder Bay Police, leading to criminal charges against Hauth and a former police lawyer. 

I reached Machado through the crisis communications PR firm hired to help navigate what can fairly and accurately be described as a cesspool of scandal surrounding the force and its police board. 

Machado forwarded my complaint to the Inspector General of Policing for investigation. 

We also consulted an award-winning lawyer in northern Ontario, who noted that the responsibilities imposed upon governments and public bodies under section 2b of the Charter, namely freedom of expression and freedom of the press, include a requirement for positive action in cases like this. 

To quote the Justice Department’s summary of the relevant case law, “a positive claim will be determined pursuant to the ‘single core question’… ‘is the claim grounded in the fundamental Charter right of freedom of expression, such that, by denying access to a statutory platform or by otherwise failing to act, the government has either substantially interfered with freedom of expression, or had the purpose of interfering with freedom of expression?’ In this context ‘a substantial interference with freedom of expression occurs where lack of access to a statutory platform has the effect of radically frustrating expression to such an extent that meaningful expression is ‘effectively preclude[d].’”

The police department’s actions in this case meaningfully preclude Jon from doing his job as a journalist. They thus have a positive duty under the Charter to remedy the situation. Something easily accomplished by simply including him on the media list that gets the information that is directly relevant to his work as a journalist. 

For reasons that border on the inexplicable, the force would rather shred what remains of its reputation than allow a journalist whose reporting has embarrassed them to continue reporting on their actions.

Allow me to close with a note for chief Fleury, who will no doubt be reading. I have spent the better part of two years attempting to resolve this issue privately and politely. You have personally rebuffed those efforts. It’s important that you understand two things at this juncture: 

1. Jon is there to stay. He is of the north, and he will continue to report on your department no matter what retaliation or mistreatment you subject him to. 
2. We are a notoriously dogged outlet. We always exhaust every avenue before we fight, as we have done here, but once engaged in a fight we cannot avoid, we do not quit. 

All of which is to say, we will not stop until you provide Jon access to the official communications to which he is entitled. If you think this will blow over, or that we will get bored, you don’t know Ricochet. 

Postscript/Update: Hours after this article was published, an unprecedented press conference was called, at 10:30 on a Friday night, by the chief of police in Montreal. Almost 20 years after the shooting of Freddy Villanueva by police led to riots in the majority BIPOC neighbourhood of Montréal-Nord, 16 police officers in the same neighbourhood are now under investigation, with some expected to face criminal charges, for racist and hateful acts against Black and Arab residents during street stops. Dreadlocks cut off and kept as trophies. Tickets issued based soley on race. By number of officers involved, it may be the largest policing scandal this country has seen in decades.

“I was extremely surprised,” chief Fady Dagher said. “I didn’t think it was possible in 2026. This is how deeply, deeply hurt I am.” He said the officers involved “tarnish[ed] our uniform.”

This article you’re holding in your hands isn’t about Jon Thompson. And it isn’t about Ricochet. It’s about the importance of police oversight in a democratic society. We give police more power than any other institution. Increasingly, from the RCMP to municipal forces big and small, they don’t want the public to know how they wield it.

And maybe that’s one thing. But we cannot possibly accept that a police force like the one in Thunder Bay, wrestling with the darkest parts of its identity, should be able to rewrite the rule book to prevent journalists from covering its actions.

It’s this simple: If Chief Fleury can get away with blackballing a journalist for award-winning work exposing violations of public trust, future violations of public trust will not be exposed.