Projects
The IJB combines lessons learned over nearly a decade moving dozens of public interest stories from classrooms to media front pages and broadcast outlets through the National Student Investigative Reporting Network, which Cribb began building in 2010. The model has since produced impactful student investigations into nursing home deficiencies, end-of-life care, environmental threats, medical malpractice, jury system inequalities, youth mental health, two-tiered healthcare, oil industry impacts on public health and lead-tainted drinking water across Canada.
Featured Projects
Choosing Death
Canada has expanded eligibility to the medical assistance in dying program to include those who aren’t actually dying, removing the requirement that applicants have a fatal or terminal condition that would make their natural death “reasonably foreseeable.” The controversial change has contributed to a jump in the number of Canadians ending their lives upon request.
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RICHARD LAUTENS/TORONTO STAR
Suspended
An Ontario program designed to make roads safer is ensnaring drivers who pose no threat, imperiling livelihoods and sowing distrust, IJB/Toronto Star investigation finds.
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Karysa Mackay had her driver’s licence suspended after a psychiatrist she doesn’t recall ever meeting reported her to the Ministry of Transportation. Photo by David Jackson for The Toronto Star
Hate Crimes
Canada’s hate problem is reaching new heights, but its justice system has failed to dissuade prolific purveyors of hate and discrimination who repeatedly target vulnerable groups.
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Kevin J. Johnston, Bill Whatcott and John David Popescu (left to right). Toronto Star Illustration / Ramon Ferreira
Collaborator Profiles
The IJB profiles those who work with us from time to time. To conduct our high-impact investigations, we collaborate with academics, journalists, media organizations, researchers and students, among others. The purpose of these profiles is to highlight the important contributions to our projects by bright minds outside of our organization.
View projectToxic Supply
An analysis of newly obtained data on opioid overdoses across the country — including numbers from provincial coroners, street drug tests in Ontario and B.C., and a previously unpublished national drug user survey — reveals a national crisis spiking into uncharted territory during the pandemic.
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Tamara Grant, 51, runs a supervised injection site out of her west-end apartment. She’s reversed over 60 overdoses since the pandemic began. No one has died under her watch, she said. DECLAN KEOGH / IJB
Lead in Drinking Water
Two years after journalists revealed that nine per cent of schools and daycares in Ontario exceeded national safety guidelines for lead in drinking water, the scale of the problem remains unchanged. The most recent data shows one in 10 water quality tests from Ontario schools and daycares found lead levels above Health Canada’s maximum accepted […]
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Marcus Oleniuk for Toronto Star
Invisible Threat
One in five homes tested nationwide showed radon levels exceeding Health Canada’s guideline of 200 becquerels per cubic metre (Bq/m³). The scale of the problem has been captured in six years’ worth of test results from 30,000 homes across Canada, believed to be the largest and most detailed body of results collected in this country.
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Radon is an invisible, odourless radioactive gas that is naturally emitted from uranium in soil and enters homes, where it can concentrate. Graphic by Aidan Lising
Generation Distress
One in five Canadian youth are part of a mental health crisis that is undermining—and far too often ending—their lives as they struggle to find effective help that may never arrive. Generation Distress reveal spiking demand for youth mental health services, the pressure on educational institutions and governments, and innovative solutions emerging to address the crisis.
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Past projects
Over the past decade, Cribb has been developing the collaborative student journalism model with major media outlets. Among the projects that have emerged are stories and series that have impacted public policy, won national awards and received international attention. Here’s a sampling:
1 Jury Duty
How a broken jury list makes Ontario justice whiter, richer and less like your community.
2 Oneida residents say the tap water is making them sick
But across the road, their neighbours have safe, clean water.
3 ‘We’re in a David-and-Goliath situation.’
A small Ontario town takes on Nestle to save its water.
4 The high cost of OB/GYN mistakes in Ontario
Why are one-third of all damages paid to patients attributable to obstetrical care?
5 Medical-record software companies are selling your health data
Up to five million Ontarians are part of a health data boom, whether they know it or not.
1 2 3 4 5
Other projects
Environmental sustainability
- In Sarnia’s Chemical Valley, is ‘toxic soup’ making people sick?
- The dirty secret of Toronto’s bacteria-laced harbour
Indigenous health
- This is what access to clean water looks like for a First Nation in a remote corner of Ontario
- Contaminated water, poor health care and high cancer rates have plagued this remote First Nation. It’s now on the verge of disappearing
Justice system
- Letters to shoplifters threaten legal action if hundreds in damages aren’t paid — even if the goods are recovered
Financial
Medical care
- Demand for youth mental health services is exploding. How universities and business are scrambling to react
- Drug-dealing pharmacists are feeding Ontario’s opioid crisis
Consumer protection
- How hospitals are prescribing Benadryl to kids, against medical advice
- Moving Benadryl behind the counter doesn’t resolve safety concerns: pharmacists
- Self-harm ‘doping’ puts athletes at risk in para-sport
- Funeral home sales practices place high cost on grieving families
Health systems
- Should the wealthy be allowed to buy their way to faster health care at private clinics?
- Privacy commissioner to investigate sale of health data
Detention centres and prisons
- Wrongful detentions of Canadians at Guantanamo
- Lack of COVID prep for immigration centres
- Damaging phone policies for Ontario prisoners
Housing and homelessness
- Sleep and homelessness
- Mapping the rise of Toronto’s AirBNB Ghost Hotels, and its effects on homelessness
- Eviction of seniors in Toronto