KENORA – A candidate running for Kenora city council is receiving heavy backlash from the Indigenous community for comments made on a podcast earlier this year.
On June 9, episode 130 of the podcast Brave New Normal titled “Karla Joy Treadway: Indian Chiefs and Liberal Corruption” had candidate Karla Treadway as a guest.
In the episode, Treadway said, “Kenora is surrounded by some of Canada’s most dangerous reserves,” and “If you take a criminology course in university, you will do case studies on the reserves here where you are 80 per cent likely to die of non-health-related causes.”
Another comment that has upset many people was when Treadway said she is working on a story with the premise of “this is skid row, and this is happening in a lot of Canadian towns.”
Treadway has since said on social media that “skid row” was referring to Kenora and not an Indigenous community.
In the episode, she discussed the city’s safe injection site and homeless shelter.
“They also built a homeless shelter right downtown without the appropriate rules and boundaries and support, and it was like overnight, like we became skid row so, so fast.”
Community members are also pointing to Treadway hosting Tim Thielmann on her own podcast, The Sovereign Sphere, in May 2026.
Thielmann is the writer and director of Making a Killing, a 2025 documentary with a description that reads “exposing the massive scandal behind the taking of wealth, land, and power from the Canadian public to benefit Indigenous tribes.”
The episode description reads that Thielmann discusses things like “Why $32 billion a year in federal Indigenous spending has produced zero improvement in outcomes,” and “the residential school narrative vs. what the evidence actually shows.”
The two podcasts have generated countless responses from Indigenous communities and allies, with Ogichidaa (Grand Chief) Francis Kavanaugh of Grand Council Treaty Three saying in a news release on Wednesday, “It is my belief that respecting the human dignity of our people or the rights and jurisdiction of the Anishinaabe Nation in Treaty #3 is not up for debate in a political platform.”
He continued that “elections should be about discussing how we plan to work together for the benefit of the public and that is where we have endless opportunities,” and spoke to the responsibility of respectful collaboration within overlapping jurisdictions.
There is also discussion about a peaceful protest being held in mid-October.
“We need to turn our anger and sadness into something positive and stand up for the injustices that have happened to our people,” said one social media user about the protest.
On Sept. 16, Treadway posted a video on social media titled “The Full Story,” in which she says “I want corruption, waste, and terrible outcomes exposed wherever they exist, whether that is inside the federal government, a municipality, a corporation, an institution, or even a rural First Nations community.”
“If we invest time, money, and resources into helping people, are we actually creating better outcomes? I now host conversations about corruption within our systems because I care deeply about the people that are victimized by these very same systems,” she continued.
Treadway said that the controversy exposes that one can only question some groups and systems, and will be “heavily punished” if they choose the wrong ones to question.
She also says that when she called Kenora skid row, she defines skid row as “a designated place where human beings are abandoned, where people are dropped off from surrounding communities, and money continues to funnel in but that money goes to NGOs and highly-paid social service workers while the problem or the people don’t improve.”
She said that she does not believe any group of people is more valuable than another.
Treadway and fellow council candidates Tyler Johnson and Chris McCaffrey are running together and leading “A New Vision for Kenora” on Facebook.
Johnson told Newswatch that Treadway is being threatened, and that “we’re all scared.”
“I’m a lawyer, every issue has two sides and the truth generally is somewhere in the middle,” he said.
“(Treadway) is a media personality that’s being held to the standard of a lawyer and politician from apparently the day she started posting on social media and I just feel it’s completely unwarranted.
“There’s nothing that she can say that will change people’s minds at this point, and it’s really quite disheartening to me because I know that she wants to make things better,” he continued.
Robert Williamson, an elder of Grassy Narrows First Nation, responded to Treadway on social media that “I have never thought of my community as a danger to Kenora.
“The drug dealers and gangs you talk about are in Kenora. They’re in Winnipeg. They are in cities across this country. They are not based on reserve. When police make arrests, it is people from the city, not from our communities. Our people are the ones put in danger by the drugs and violence that flow through Kenora. Not the other way around.”
Local activist Tania Cameron told Newswatch that it’s false to refer to the response as a “witch hunt,” as it is Treadway’s direct quotes that have fueled backlash.
“I see the posts of individuals sharing how it’s harmful and how its affected them, and I really feel (the three candidates) can’t be elected to office, so I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that they are not elected,” she said.
Newswatch has reached out to Karla Treadway, Chris McCaffrey and Grand Council Treaty Three for comment.
