NORTH BAY — November 5, 2026
North Bay has become the latest Ontario community — and the first in Northern Ontario — in this year’s run of Halloween candy reports, after a sewing needle was discovered inside a Twizzlers licorice candy collected while trick-or-treating. The North Bay Police Service issued a safety alert to the community after receiving the report on Wednesday, November 4, and is urging parents and caregivers to inspect all Halloween treats carefully before allowing children to eat them.
Police say the needle was discovered when the person opened the candy. One detail in the release will shape the whole investigation: the wrapper did not appear to have been tampered with before it was opened. A second detail limits it: the person who reported it could not identify exactly where the candy was obtained, saying only that they had been trick-or-treating in the neighbourhoods surrounding the North Bay Police Service headquarters and North Bay Fire and Emergency Services. Police have not reported any injury in connection with the candy, and they have not said how the needle came to be inside it.
The police advice attached to the alert is direct. Parents and caregivers should carefully inspect all Halloween treats before children consume them, looking for unusual damage or signs of tampering, checking for foreign objects or suspicious materials, and throwing away anything that appears questionable. Anyone who discovers a foreign object or suspicious material inside Halloween candy is asked to contact the North Bay Police Service at 705-472-1234. Families who do find something are also generally advised by police in these cases to keep the candy and its packaging, which are the evidence investigators need.
The North Bay report does not stand alone this year, and the pattern across the province is part of the story. In Ottawa, police announced on Tuesday, November 3, that they are investigating a report of a needle found inside a chocolate bar believed to have been collected in the Prince of Wales and Chinatown areas, with no injuries reported. In Hamilton, police said on November 2 that sewing needles were found inside Halloween chocolate bars — Aero, KitKat and Caramilk among them — collected by children along a stretch of Limeridge Road on the Mountain. In Oshawa, Durham Regional Police canvassed the Ritson Road North and Taunton Road area on November 1 after a mother reported five sewing needles in five separate candies, again with no injuries reported. Toronto police are investigating a report from the Upper Beaches, and Quebec provincial police have two reports of needles or metal pins in chocolate. None of those police services has said the cases are connected, none has named a suspect, and the North Bay release draws no link either.
What the reports have in common, beyond the objects themselves, is how hard they are to run down. Halloween candy passes through many hands and is collected across whole neighbourhoods in a few hours; in the North Bay case, the person reporting could not pin down which street, let alone which house, the Twizzlers came from, and the untampered appearance of the wrapper leaves the point of entry — before, during or after distribution — unresolved on the facts police have released. That uncertainty is precisely why the response in every one of these cases has taken the same form: not a suspect hunt with a name attached, but a public alert aimed at the families still working through bags of candy collected on Saturday night.
That timing is the practical point for North Bay parents. Halloween fell on Saturday this year, and by the middle of the following week a large share of the candy collected in the city has still not been eaten — it sits in bags and bowls being worked through over days and weeks. An alert issued on November 4 is not late to that reality; it lands while the inspection it asks for can still do its work. Police are asking that any further finds be reported to them rather than simply thrown away, so the report can be added to the file. RL News will update this story if North Bay police release further information about the candy or the investigation.
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