Press release, May 31:
The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) capped off its 2025 national conference weekend by presenting this year’s CAJ Awards, Canada’s preeminent national investigative journalism awards program, run by and for journalists, at a gala dinner held earlier this evening at the Delta Hotel in downtown Calgary.
Jeff Hamilton and Katrina Clarke, from the Winnipeg Free Press, were awarded this year’s McGillivray Award, which recognizes the program’s best investigative journalism published or broadcast in 2024.
The McGillivray jury concluded that Hamilton and Clarke’s exposé of the many cracks in Manitoba’s childcare system bore all the hallmarks of excellent investigative work — it brought clarity to complex subjects and used vivid personal examples to convey systemic flaws.
Hamilton and Clarke were also recognized as winners in the Written News category.
The CAJ Awards were presented in a bilingual ceremony hosted by Joelle Tomlinson (Global News) and Tiphanie Roquette (Radio-Canada). Finalists who were unable to attend the in-person event were invited to participate remotely. The entire ceremony was live-streamed on the CAJ’s YouTube channel.
This year’s program marked the first time the CAJ has celebrated excellent journalism from nominees with gold and silver awards.
Here are the gold and silver winners, chosen from a record 540 entries across 18 categories.
The recipients in the WRITTEN NEWS category are:
GOLD
Jeff Hamilton, Katrina Clarke
Building blocks, crumbling foundation
Winnipeg Free Press
SILVER (tie)
Grant Robertson, Kathryn Blaze Baum
The algorithm
The Globe and Mail
Wendy Gillis, Jennifer Pagliaro
The invisible girl
Toronto Star
The recipients in the HUGO RODRIGUES AWARD FOR COMMUNITY NEWS (formerly Community Written) category are:
GOLD
Heather Wright
York 1 environmental
The Independent of Petrolia and Central Lambton
SILVER
Jessica Lee
Grizzly bears back in crosshairs
Rocky Mountain Outlook
The recipients in the BROADCAST OVER FIVE MINUTES category are:
GOLD
Brandi Morin, Geordie Day
The Apache Stronghold standing in the way of a massive copper mine
Ricochet Media
SILVER
Brittany Guyot, Tom Fennario
Food for profit
APTN Investigates
The recipients in the BROADCAST UNDER FIVE MINUTES category are:
GOLD
Romain Schue, Thomas Bignon
Dans les coulisses des traversées clandestines avec des passeurs indiens
Radio-Canada Info
SILVER
Davide Gentile, Daniel Boily, Jacques Racine, Ivanoh Demers
Une plaie de lit fatale pour un tétraplégique
Radio-Canada Info
The recipients in the COMMUNITY BROADCAST category are:
GOLD
Lela Savi?, Emmanuelle Moussa
Pas tout Montréal
La Converse
SILVER
Taryn Grant
On the doorstep
CBC Atlantic Voice
The recipients in the DATA JOURNALISM category are:
GOLD
Valérie Ouellet, Mike Crawley, Aloysius Wong, Andreas Wesley
Canada’s international student spike was blamed on private colleges. Here’s what really happened
CBC News – Investigative Unit
SILVER
Sylvie Fournier, Daniel Tremblay, Benoît Michaud, Jo-Ann Demers
Eglise catholique inc.
Radio-Canada Info
The recipients in the ONLINE MEDIA category are:
GOLD
Chris Beaver, Katie O’Connor, Jasmine El Kurd, Pam Palmater
NDN POV
TVO Today
SILVER
Robert Cribb, Declan Keogh, Norma Hilton, Scott Martin, Rhythm Sachdeva
Lead in drinking water
Investigative Journalism Bureau
The recipients in the FREEDOM OF INFORMATION JOURNALISM category are:
GOLD
Caroline Touzin, Ariane Lacoursière
Centres jeunesse et foyers de groupe de la DPJ : De plus en plus de mesures de contention ou d’isolement
La Presse
SILVER
Amanda Follett Hosgood
BC illegally collected personal info tied to the Wet’suwet’en conflict
The Tyee
This award is kindly sponsored by the Ken and Debbie Rubin Public Interest Advocacy Fund.
The recipients in the PHOTOJOURNALISM category are:
GOLD
Martin Tremblay
New hope for Syria
La Presse
SILVER
Carlos Osorio
Portfolio
Reuters, The Globe and Mail
The recipients in the SCOOP category are:
GOLD
Anaïs Elboujdaïni
Le Canada demande à des travailleurs de la santé de Gaza s’ils ont soigné des membres du Hamas
La Converse
SILVER
Bethany Lindsay
One third of B.C.’s ‘publicly funded substance-use treatment beds’ don’t provide any treatment
Investigative Journalism Foundation
The recipients in the DAILY EXCELLENCE category are:
GOLD
Shannon Waters
What on Earth just happened with B.C.’s carbon tax?
The Narwhal
SILVER
Suzanne Rent
Build Nova Scotia gives Atlantic Road Construction and Paving deadline after company puts barriers at trail in Dartmouth Cove
Halifax Examiner
The recipients in the WRITTEN FEATURE category are:
GOLD
Rachel Browne
A killer among them
Maclean’s
SILVER
Fabrice de Pierrebourg
Reconstruire une cité millénaire
L’actualité
The recipients in the COMMUNITY WRITTEN FEATURE category are:
GOLD
Tyler Harper
In every Nelson he visits, Jeff Truesdell finds the man he loved
Nelson Star
SILVER
Liny Lamberink
Regrowth
CBC North
The recipients in the JHR / CAJ AWARD FOR HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTING are:
GOLD
Robert Cribb, Declan Keogh, Wendy-Ann Clarke, Owen Thompson
Mind games
Investigative Journalism Bureau, Toronto Star, TVO
SILVER
Gabrielle Duchaine
La maison des horreurs
La Presse
The recipients in the CWA CANADA / CAJ AWARD FOR LABOUR REPORTING are:
GOLD
Natalia Rivero Gómez
Reporting on working conditions in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program
The Rover
SILVER
Emma Arkell
Canadian teachers face harassment in wake of ‘parental rights’ policies
Xtra Magazine
The recipients of the JHR / CAJ EMERGING INDIGENOUS JOURNALIST AWARD are:
GOLD
Tchadas Leo
Portfolio
CHEK News
SILVER
Crystal Greene
Portfolio
Ricochet Media, IndigiNews Media, Pivot Media
The recipients in the ENVIRONMENTAL AND CLIMATE CHANGE AWARD category are:
GOLD
Jenn Thornhill Verma, Johnny C.Y. Lam, Murat Yükselir, Melissa Tait, Clare Vander Meersch
Labrador Inuit are taking the fight against climate change into their own hands
The Globe and Mail
SILVER
Team
Eyes of the beast: Climate disaster survivor stories
Climate Disaster Project, Neworld Theatre
The recipients in the NATIONAL NEWSMEDIA COUNCIL/CAJ STUDENT JOURNALISM AWARD OF EXCELLENCE are:
GOLD
Nalyn Tindall
Getting by on gig work: The hidden costs of ‘easy’ money
The Eyeopener, Toronto Metropolitan University
SILVER
Om Shanbhag
The driving dilemma: How nursing students struggle to access placements
The Western Gazette, Western University
Funding for this award is generously provided by the Fraser MacDougall Journalism Prize Fund
The CAJ would like to thank the awards judges — the experienced current and former journalists who willingly volunteered their time and efforts to review all the entries and name the finalists and winners in each category. This awards program doesn’t function without journalists and their newsrooms stepping forward to submit their work for review and consideration, or the judges who take on the task of reviewing that work.
The CAJ congratulates all the recipients and finalists and thanks all those who submitted entries for consideration. Many judges once again noted the excellent quality and breadth of work contained within the pieces submitted into the program.
Journalists continue to produce striking, important, and meaningful work that educates, informs, exposes, uncovers, affects change, and makes our communities better places to live. The CAJ is proud to play a role in recognizing the best of this work on an annual basis.
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