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When help means losing choice: The reality of rural mental health care
Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare’s two cottage-country hospitals are not built for mental health care. Yet hundreds of people come to them every year in need of it. And the hospitals’ emergency departments must somehow meet that need. Partly as a result, about 99 per cent of the psychiatric admissions at these two hospitals in 2024-25 were… Read more
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Judge’s denial of transgender inmate’s transfer request highlights trend reported by IJB
An Ontario judge has rejected an incarcerated transgender woman’s request to move to a women’s prison – part of a broader trend first identified in a recent Investigative Journalism Bureau probe. Amanda Joy Cooper, 59, has a history of violent sexual assaults against women, many committed while she was living as a man in Quebec… Read more
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We’re not counting every maternal death – and it threatens even more lives.
Dr. Giulia Muraca, PhD, is a perinatal epidemiologist and an Associate Professor in the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Health Research Methods, Evidence & Impact at McMaster University. When Canadians think about maternal death, they often imagine a catastrophic emergency in the delivery room: a severe hemorrhage, a life-threatening infection, or a dangerous spike… Read more
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Vinesha Ramasamy: The Patient Files Documentary
A routine biopsy changed her life. For years, Vinesha Ramasamy sought answers to what went wrong in the surgery that left her in debilitating pain. But after the hospital visit is over, the answers aren’t easy to come by. Her story is one of thousands found in Ontario hospital patients surveys obtained by the Investigative… Read more
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Behind the reporting: How, and why, we dug into medical coercion
We’ve all gotten medical advice we didn’t follow. Get more exercise? With what free time? Eat less meat? No, thank you. Eight hours of sleep a night? Lol, I’ll get right on that. But sometimes you’re deemed too sick – too crazy – to ignore medical advice. Tens of thousands of times a year, Ontarians… Read more
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Six years of lead data shows Ontario schools and daycares still harbour hazardous levels in water
Dangerous levels of lead continue to threaten children’s health in Ontario. The IJB database of lead levels in the drinking water of schools and daycares across the province has been updated to include six years of findings drawn from drinking water taps. The IJB reviewed more than 175,000 lead test results between 2019 and 2025.… Read more
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Behind the reporting: When hope becomes an industry, people deserve to know what they’re buying
For most of my adult life, I never heard the ticking clock. The question of whether I would have children one day was something I held loosely. I always believed that if having children was meant to be part of my story, it would be. If not, I trusted there was a purpose in that… Read more
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Behind the reporting: Emma Jarratt on investigating the systemic abuse of women
The Michele Landsberg Award recognizes journalism that advances awareness of women’s equality issues through a gendered lens. It is an extraordinary honour, particularly because it carries the name of Michele Landsberg — a formidable advocate and fearless Canadian journalist whose work helped make women’s experiences visible in places where they were too often ignored or… Read more
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Seven ways to make the egg-freezing industry better for women
Fertility Inc. is a multi-part series by the Investigative Journalism Bureau that delves into the Wild West of the egg-freezing industry, its aggressive marketing, the high cost and the chances of an eventual successful pregnancy. The largely unregulated, private fertility clinics that offer egg freezing to women in Canada need stronger safeguards around transparency, advertising and counselling, say many experts who have studied or worked in… Read more
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As Canada’s new First Nations water bill is tabled, lawyer decries ‘legal gymnastics’
Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty called it a “historic day” when she tabled long-awaited legislation meant to safeguard drinking water for First Nations, many of whom are left without water to drink, wash, cook or fight fires. Among other things, Bill C-37, the First Nations Clean Water Act, proposes to provide minimum standards for water… Read more
