Michener Award Finalists Announced: Investigative Journalism that Sparked Change Across Canada

OTTAWA, ON, May 6, 2025 /CNW/ - The Michener Awards Foundation is proud to announce the finalists for the 2024 Michener Award for meritorious public service journalism. This year's entries reflect Canadian journalism of the highest calibre, holding institutions to account and improving lives across the country.

The finalists are Global News, The Globe and Mail (2 entries), La Presse, Toronto Star, and The Vancouver Sun.

"This year's finalists exemplify the power of journalism at its best — urgent, fearless, and deeply human," said Michener Awards Foundation President Margo Goodhand. "These stories demanded accountability, and in doing so, they brought change."

The Michener Award, Canada's highest honour in journalism, was founded in 1970 to recognize excellence in public-service journalism. The independent jury's decisions are heavily influenced by the degree of public benefit generated by the print, broadcast and online stories submitted for consideration.

Chief Judge Katherine Sedgwick said of the finalists, "The inspiring work done by these newsrooms is a reminder of the critical importance of public-service journalism. All the investigations nominated for this year's Michener Award have resulted in positive changes that directly affect the lives of Canadians."

The finalists are:

Global News – Federal Procurement Investigations

Tipped that there was something fishy about the awarding of government contracts to provide rapid tests for COVID-19, Global News launched a series of investigations into the murky world of federal procurement. Anchored by reporter Patti Sonntag, aided by other reporter teams and a fruitful collaboration with First Nations University, Global News uncovered a raft of questionable practices that prompted parliamentary committee studies, probes by the country's ethics commissioner and two separate audits. Among its findings was proof that excessively priced multibillion-dollar contracts were awarded to an importer of Chinese products for rapid COVID tests, while Canadian firms offering lower prices were bypassed. The reporters further discovered that cabinet minister Randy Boissonnault was in a potential conflict of interest over contracts secured by his former business partner; Boissonnault eventually resigned. Most impactful was Global's deep dive into self-professed Indigenous companies that benefited from lucrative contracts awarded under the government's Procurement Strategy for Indigenous Business. The team exposed a litany of loopholes, lack of scrutiny and serious shortcomings in the program, with many contracts going to companies that were Indigenous only on paper, and with few benefits winding up in Indigenous communities.

 The Globe and Mail – The Algorithm

The Globe and Mail exposed serious flaws in Canada's food-safety system with a disturbing account of how the Canadian Food Inspection Agency had failed to protect Canadians. The investigation began after three people died and many were sickened by a listeria outbreak linked to plant-based milks produced at a factory in Pickering, Ont., in the summer of 2024. It took months of work by reporters Grant Robertson and Kathryn Blaze Baum. Their series detailed how the agency had adopted an algorithm based, in part, on information supplied by companies to determine which facilities were prioritized for inspections and which were not. The Pickering facility had not been inspected for years. The Globe proved that during the 11 months that listeria was known to have been in the plant before the recall, no inspector was sent. Had the bacteria been detected by an inspector earlier, deaths might have been prevented. The algorithm effectively allowed some food-manufacturing companies to police themselves and avoid being flagged for inspection. Once the series was published, the federal minister of health ordered a complete review of the algorithm and how it should be changed. In addition, the Pickering facility was closed permanently.

The Globe and Mail – Have Nurses, Will Travel

Throughout the Covid pandemic, many Canadian hospitals found themselves facing a critical shortage of nurses. Enter private for-profit agencies offering temporary staffing by trained nurses, many of whom had been recruited from the public system in other provinces. When the Globe and Mail's Tu Thanh Ha, Kelly Grant and Stephanie Chambers investigated contracts given to one Ontario-based nursing agency by New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador, they discovered that this staffing relief came at a heavy cost to taxpayers. The provinces were paying the company as much as $300 an hour for each nurse – six times the rate that nurses in the public system earned. The agency also billed the provinces for other questionable expenses, including meal allowances that were not passed on to the nurses. In response to the Globe's reporting, the auditors general of both provinces launched investigations into the contracts; Newfoundland overhauled its dealings with private nurse-staffing agencies, tightening the rules for hourly rates and expense claims, and abolishing meal allowances; and New Brunswick introduced legislation to cancel its contract with the company, which it called "unfair to taxpayers," and pledged to work toward reducing its reliance on temporary health-care workers.

La Presse – Sexual abuse, physical abuse and professional misconduct: Scandals that have rocked Quebec's youth protection system

Dozens of children wrongly removed from their parents; others, as young as nine, routinely restrained or put in seclusion; a detention facility where nine educators had sexual contact with underage detainees; a foster home where sexual assault went on for 15 years despite multiple reports to authorities… These are just some of over a dozen stories published by La Presse in 2024 exposing the rampant dysfunction in Quebec's youth protection system. The painstakingly researched and deeply troubling findings of investigative reporters Ariane Lacoursière, Caroline Touzin, Gabrielle Duchaine and Katia Gagnon set off a shock wave that forced authorities to make major changes to the management of the provincial youth protection office. As a direct outcome of these journalists' conscientious efforts, investigations were launched into allegations in three regional agencies; one was put under trusteeship; the provincial director of youth protection was asked to resign; and the Quebec government created the role of Commissioner for Children's Well-Being and Rights.

Toronto Star – Kids in Crisis & The Invisible Girl

"How is it that children and families are being abandoned by the system meant to protect them?" The question was from the father of a 14-year-old boy with autism, desperate to find help for his son. It underpins two exhaustive investigations by the Toronto Star into systemic failures to protect Ontario's most vulnerable children. Kids in Crisis, by Megan Ogilvie and Amy Dempsey Raven, revealed that children with complex health needs were being housed in office buildings, trailers and roadside motels. It told the shocking story of parents being forced to consider the unthinkable last resort of abandoning their special-needs children at a hospital, the only way to get action from agencies that could help. In response, the Ontario ombudsman launched an investigation and Premier Doug Ford announced an audit of the child-welfare system. In The Invisible Girl, reporters Wendy Gillis and Jennifer Pagliaro found disturbing details about the life and death of a four-year-old girl whose body was found in a dumpster in a wealthy Toronto neighbourhood. Their work made it clear that Neveah had been utterly let down by everyone who should have been protecting her. Premier Ford admitted that Ontario's child-protection agencies had "failed" Neveah.

The Vancouver Sun – The Preventable Death of a University Student

A talented young university student overdosed in a residence hallway surrounded by her fellow students and then a medical team. Yet everybody and everything that might have saved her life failed. Her parents wanted to know why. They fought to obtain records that detailed the final moments of their daughter's life. A journalist for the Vancouver Sun, Lori Culbert, got involved, and wrote a story with such passion, power and grace that it made us stare into the human cost of an overdose epidemic that we tried to ignore. She showed us that it wasn't only poor people dying of overdoses alone in dark alleys. It could happen to anyone. The reaction to this story was immediate and far-reaching. The British Columbia government promised to pay for easier-to-administer nasal naloxone, the overdose-reversing drug, instead of a cheaper option; instructed post-secondary institutions to install naloxone kits in every campus building; and provided portable kits at every event. Campus first responders and the 911 service updated their training on drug overdoses. High-school students across B.C. are now required to take CPR training. Educators in other provinces took notice and are beginning to follow suit. This story continues to make a difference.

The winner of the 2024 Michener Award will be announced at a ceremony at Rideau Hall on Thursday, June 5th, hosted by Her Excellency the Right Honourable Mary Simon, Governor General of Canada.

About the Michener Awards

The Michener Awards honour, celebrate, and promote excellence in Canadian public service journalism. Established in 1970 by the late Right Honourable Roland Michener, Governor General of Canada from 1967 to 1974, the Michener Awards are Canada's premier journalism award. The Michener Awards Foundation's voluntary Board of Directors administers the award, in partnership with the Rideau Hall Foundation with sponsorship from BMO, Cision, Power Corporation of Canada, and TD. Learn more at www.MichenerAwards.ca.

SOURCE Michener Awards Foundation

For more information, please contact: Jill Clark, Manager of Communications and Media Relations, Rideau Hall Foundation, 613-619-0230, [email protected]