Saskatoon police chief talks overpass strikes and bear spray on The Evan Bray Show

Another overpass in Saskatoon was struck by a semi-truck last week, and some are wondering why more serious charges aren’t being leveled against the drivers and companies involved in these collisions.

Cam McBride, Saskatoon’s chief of police, joined The Evan Bray Show on Tuesday to discuss the police response to the overpass incidents, as well as the ongoing struggle with bear spray in the city, Saskatoon’s rank on Statistics Canada’s Crime Severity Index and how his officers assist other jurisdictions with arrests.

Read more:

• Police ticket 50-year-old man after Saskatoon’s latest overpass strike on 51st Street
• Saskatoon business facing $7k fine for unlawful sale of bear spray
• Saskatoon police briefs: Assault suspects and teen wanted on Canada-wide warrant arrested

Listen to the full interview, or read the transcript below:

EVAN BRAY: I feel like your officers must be getting really well versed on overpass heights and related traffic offenses. Another overpass was hit just this past week in your community, chief.

CAM MCBRIDE: Nobody would believe it if we forecasted it a year ago.

This one was a grain bin that was being hauled through the city. I understand your officers wrote a ticket for driving without due care and attention. Why is that the charge for your officers? I know the Saskatchewan Highway Patrol wrote a couple of other tickets as well.

MCBRIDE: The due care ticket is kind of a catch-all ticket that we will often use to summarize a series of events or when a specific event occurred while driving. And it captures any conceivable thing that you could define as not using the care that a person should use and that the public expects them to use.

And if they’re trying to successfully defend that in court, they would have to prove that they did take proper care, which would be successfully going under the underpass without crashing into it. I’m assuming that’s what makes that the appropriate ticket.

MCBRIDE: Yeah, absolutely. And we see it all the time, and we’ve really been working hard with our traffic unit, both our provincial unit, paid for by the province of Saskatchewan, and our own Saskatoon Police Traffic Unit, to target commercial vehicles and get a handle on some of this stuff, and we’ve been really disappointed at what we’ve been finding. For example, we’ve done four significant projects recently, 226 commercial vehicles checked, 169 tickets issued, 63 vehicles taken off the road because they just were simply unsafe to be on the road. So that’s a basically a 27 per cent failure rate of vehicles that we’ve checked. It’s just something that is not seeming to get better over time.

Why aren’t the police laying charges like criminal negligence? What would have to be the case for it to meet the threshold of a criminal charge like that?

MCBRIDE: If I had anticipated the question, I’d be far better versed. But when we look at things that happen from a traffic perspective, often utilizing the Traffic Safety Act or the vehicle equipment regulations are the appropriate charges in any given case. And we see that, even with some very significant collisions, we utilize the Traffic Safety Act. But when we think about criminal negligence, we think more so about placing individuals at significant risk or causing significant harm to the community that would be defined as criminal in nature, and that’s a big thing to prove in court. And utilizing the Traffic Safety Act or the vehicle equipment regulations, we know we can prove those things. And if we look at maximum penalties, there are some pretty significant penalties if they’re applied appropriately in a given case.

I want to change gears for a second, because the Crime Severity Index numbers come out from Stats Canada every year in July. They were just released here in this past week. First of all, what are the CSI numbers measuring? And then give us an idea of what it showed for Saskatoon.

MCBRIDE: It’s not just about numbers of crimes. Statistics Canada provides a weighting for various offenses. For example, a homicide would have a very high weighting, whereas a theft under $5,000 would have a very small or light weighting. And so it’s looking at crime severity across the spectrum of number, volume and severity of those crimes. Historically, Saskatoon has been quite a bit higher. For a while there, we were one, two or three, and we’ve seen a steady decline over the last few years. This year we were sitting at 10. And I should clarify: this is the census metropolitan area of Saskatoon. And we talk about that number because that has been the number that StatsCan has historically used to describe Saskatoon. I know this year there were some more specific numbers to Saskatoon proper, but in order to maintain consistency we’re looking at Saskatoon metropolitan census area, and that’s where we are, is number 10. I think it’s a reflection of a lot of hard work, a lot of community involvement, a lot of partnerships, and we’re definitely moving in the right direction. And, of course, we’re always comparing ourselves to other cities across Canada.

I watched the chief in another part of Canada do an interview on the crime severity index. Their organization went down the list, which is positive for the community. You never want to be number one on the crime severity index, but he attributed it more to crime going up in other parts of Canada at a higher rate than it is in his community. He even suggested he didn’t know that a lot has changed in his community, it’s just parts of Canada have gotten worse. How much does that play into it?

MCBRIDE: That’s always part of the consideration, so what we do is take the value from CSI that is there, but we’re also comparing it to our local statistics and what’s happening specifically in the city of Saskatoon based on our own numbers, which we can compare over a long period of time because we’ve been collecting that data so long. And so I can say in 2026, so far, we’re a little bit down in violent crime, although based on media releases, it doesn’t always feel that way. But we’re definitely down in violent crime and we’re we’re kind of status quo in terms of property crime year-to-date in 2026.

I saw a social media post from the City of Saskatoon suggesting that while the CSI numbers may be showing a positive trend, let’s not forget there’s a lot of unreported crime, and so we need to make an effort to get crime reported. Whether it’s property-related crime or serious incidents, we know, for example, sexual assaults are largely unreported to police. Is that something that you think about and that you put intentional effort towards regularly, chief?

MCBRIDE: I do, and I hear from the community that some of our mechanisms for reporting crime are cumbersome. I’ve been actually speaking publicly about optimism around a new web-based platform for reporting crime. We’re not there yet. I thought we would be there already, but we’re a little bit slow getting that off off the ground. But we will have better reporting options. And CSI is based on police-reported crime, and so if the public’s not reporting to us, we can’t report to Statistics Canada.

You and I have talked about bear spray and the problem that it’s caused in your community, and the efforts that you and the rest of the authorities in the city of Saskatoon have taken to try and deal with the issue. Recently, since you and I chatted last, there’s been a fine issued for a business in Saskatoon selling bear spray without taking the proper ID. I think this this feels like a good step, because it kind of closes that loop and shows that there will be consequences if businesses don’t do their part to ensure that it’s getting into the hands of the right people.

MCBRIDE: Absolutely. When the legislation was proposed, I was concerned around whether or not fines that would be a deterrent would actually be implemented. And we’ve heard from the City of Saskatoon that some of the smaller vendors are saying “Well, we’re out, we’re not going to do it. It’s too much hassle. We don’t want to sell bear spray anymore.” And that’s good for us, because typically they were the ones who were least likely to comply, and if they’re out, that’s good,

Have you ever been ever to trace back through an investigation to where someone got the bear spray? Has it been an investigative tool for you, or is that hard to measure if it’s maybe deterred people from trying to buy it in a retail store in the city.

MCBRIDE: It’s been really hard to measure over the years, partly because some of the vendors were buying product that didn’t have serial numbers and had no identifying features that enabled us to really trace it or track it. With the new legislation, if you’re selling bear spray, it has to have those identifying characteristics. So moving forward, definitely we will have that capacity. It’s not always practical or necessary, but where it is, we can do it.

There was a story recently of a robbery of a scooter from a 13 year old in Lawson Heights. I know your team arrested three people there. How challenging are street robberies in the summertime for your officers?

MCBRIDE: They’re very challenging. They happen far too frequently, and from a policing perspective we always talk about deterrence. And when we make an arrest like that, where we have somebody who’s a prolific thief or a prolific violent offender who’s doing these kind of things in the community, we want them held accountable. If we’re going to go through the work of arresting, charging, and sending them to court, let’s have some good results out of the court system, and even some good conditions that we can follow up with after the fact.

Your officers recently made two arrests on Canada-wide warrants. One was for a man wanted for murder from Ontario. The other, if I’m not mistaken, was someone on multiple weapon charges from Quebec. Do those agencies from other parts of Canada reach out and ask for your assistance, or is this just your officers happen to come across these guys and thus execute those warrants?

MCBRIDE: We have really good communication with other services across Canada. In these two cases, we were approached by the police services who had initiated these files where the crimes had occurred. They had some information that they were either living in or hiding out in Saskatoon. In one case, we put our warrant enforcement unit on it. In another case, some of our investigators were on it, and we were able to find them and arrest them. And these are incredibly violent individuals who needed to answer for their crimes. And it worked out well, and we’ll do the same. If we have somebody and we catch wind that they’re in another city, we’re very quick to make that communication and connection, and we help one another all the time.

I want to talk about a topic of discussion in Regina, but relate it your thoughts and how you deal with it in Saskatoon. The Regina Police Service this past week warned people of a 49-year-old male by the name of Jason Paul Thorn, a high risk sex offender that’s being moved into a home in the city’s Heritage neighbourhood on Monday. He is being deemed a high risk to re-offend, and yet is going to be in the community on conditions. Of course this has got a number of people worked up. If he’s a high risk to re-offend, how is it that he’s back out in the community?

MCBRIDE: It’s incredibly frustrating from a policing perspective, because we understand and we’ve seen firsthand the violence and the victimization that these individuals have inflicted on members of our community, and so it’s very frustrating. Although we understand that there are rules and legislation that govern how long we can hold people and how they’re released. In some cases they just have to be released. And when they’re released with conditions, or even without conditions, with advance notice, we have the ability to create a plan, and to, for lack of a better term, be all over them, to be monitoring them, following them, keeping track of them, and where they slip up, and often they do, we’re there. We’re ready to arrest and charge once again. But it’s so incredibly frustrating, and I think that’s why we always talk about advancing bail reform, advancing proper sentencing guidelines and ensuring that the sentence fits the crime.

The Saskatoon Exhibition fires up this week. The parade is tomorrow. What does that look like for your officers enhancing community safety for this celebration and week-long event?

MCBRIDE: We work incredibly well with Prairieland. They run an amazing show. They are very safety conscious, and their processes and policies have professionalized and improved year over year. I have full confidence that they’re going to do the same this year, and we’re very proactively working with them. We have staff on site the entire time that the exhibition is going on, and we’ll be working in partnership with them to make sure people are safe and have a great time.