Aug 20, 2026 · 12 min · 7 segments
The Parole Board of Canada has granted full parole to Brayden Bushby, the man convicted of fatally injuring Barbara Kentner back in 2017 and the leadership of Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation are outraged…
Jennifer LaewetzPanelist
Niigaan SinclairPanelist
Dennis WardHost
Well, no, because this has actually been several attempts that the parole board's been trying to release him to the public.
The question is whether he'll be able to stick to these seven conditions.
Some of them that he's already violated, including use of alcohol, involving himself in different relationships that are toxic and et cetera.
This is not only an injustice, but it is a traumatizing event for the family, but also for all Anishinaabe people in and around Thunder Bay.
This is an individual that has proven time again to show a great deal of animosity towards not just indigenous peoples, but also from other peoples, considering some of his recent choices of tattoos.
And this is a person who just certainly doesn't seem to be learning, but yet the parole board just seems determined to let him out.
Yeah, Jennifer, as Egon mentioned, Bushby had already been granted day parole, including just two years after he was convicted, ran into trouble both of those times.
I think it's concerning because we've already seen a pattern of somebody that seems to not be able to follow the rules.
I mean, the root cause of him being in prison to begin with is the fact that he committed such a disgusting crime that ended the life of an indigenous woman.
And I think, you know, to get to that point where I read in a news article that he had been drinking for several days, but then was violating his parole conditions by allegedly consuming alcohol so obviously the prison stint that you had already had was not effective enough i just i'm just really concerned about what has changed in those multiple attempts to get to this point already and then saying well we don't think that there's a risk to the public or anything like that this person was already a risk to the public and then threw out prison and then got some parole and had violated those conditions showed that, again, he was a risk to the public.
So I'm just really concerned about this and at what point we're going to start valuing not just human life but Indigenous lives as well because that's part of the layered problem here is that people will maybe not view this as serious as it should be because there's already a crisis in our country on people not valuing our lives and that is why we're talking so much about missing and murdered Indigenous women and Two-Spirit individuals because...
It's a crisis and the people that are committing these crimes and harming our people are, you know, allowed to walk free with a label that they're not going to be a risk to the public when they've already been a risk to the public multiple times.
If this is a non-Indigenous woman or male, this is a much different story.
If this is a killing that took place in Toronto, it's a much different story.
Because it's in Thunder Bay, because it's an Indigenous victim, This gets a scant amount of attention, maybe a brief amount of attention, maybe an attention in documentaries that mainstream Canadians may or may not see, but quickly fades from the public consciousness because of the mere sake that we know that Indigenous peoples are deemed deficient or lesser than or second tier citizens within the country.
And we know certainly that when it comes to the murder of indigenous peoples, as we know within situations in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, no one is held to account.
And while brief investigations take place, there is nobody eventually charged or in the cases of individuals who are charged, they are charged and then given perhaps the lightest sentence, the lightest or the most opportunity to face rehabilitation, even though they will violate crime over and over and over again.
Well, no, because this has actually been several attempts that the parole board's been trying to release him to the public.
The question is whether he'll be able to stick to these seven conditions.
Some of them that he's already violated, including use of alcohol, involving himself in different relationships that are toxic and et cetera.
This is not only an injustice, but it is a traumatizing event for the family, but also for all Anishinaabe people in and around Thunder Bay.
This is an individual that has proven time again to show a great deal of animosity towards not just indigenous peoples, but also from other peoples, considering some of his recent choices of tattoos.
And this is a person who just certainly doesn't seem to be learning, but yet the parole board just seems determined to let him out.
Yeah, Jennifer, as Egon mentioned, Bushby had already been granted day parole, including just two years after he was convicted, ran into trouble both of those times.
I think it's concerning because we've already seen a pattern of somebody that seems to not be able to follow the rules.
I mean, the root cause of him being in prison to begin with is the fact that he committed such a disgusting crime that ended the life of an indigenous woman.
And I think, you know, to get to that point where I read in a news article that he had been drinking for several days, but then was violating his parole conditions by allegedly consuming alcohol so obviously the prison stint that you had already had was not effective enough i just i'm just really concerned about what has changed in those multiple attempts to get to this point already and then saying well we don't think that there's a risk to the public or anything like that this person was already a risk to the public and then threw out prison and then got some parole and had violated those conditions showed that, again, he was a risk to the public.
So I'm just really concerned about this and at what point we're going to start valuing not just human life but Indigenous lives as well because that's part of the layered problem here is that people will maybe not view this as serious as it should be because there's already a crisis in our country on people not valuing our lives and that is why we're talking so much about missing and murdered Indigenous women and Two-Spirit individuals because...
It's a crisis and the people that are committing these crimes and harming our people are, you know, allowed to walk free with a label that they're not going to be a risk to the public when they've already been a risk to the public multiple times.
If this is a non-Indigenous woman or male, this is a much different story.
If this is a killing that took place in Toronto, it's a much different story.
Because it's in Thunder Bay, because it's an Indigenous victim, This gets a scant amount of attention, maybe a brief amount of attention, maybe an attention in documentaries that mainstream Canadians may or may not see, but quickly fades from the public consciousness because of the mere sake that we know that Indigenous peoples are deemed deficient or lesser than or second tier citizens within the country.
And we know certainly that when it comes to the murder of indigenous peoples, as we know within situations in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, no one is held to account.
And while brief investigations take place, there is nobody eventually charged or in the cases of individuals who are charged, they are charged and then given perhaps the lightest sentence, the lightest or the most opportunity to face rehabilitation, even though they will violate crime over and over and over again.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
