2013.03.20

Glen McGregor, left, and Stephen Maher shared this year's Hillman Award for their robo-calls exposés.

Hillman Awards salute Canadian investigative journalism

Four reporters, two of them members of CWA Canada, were honoured for excellence in journalism in service of the common good at a ceremony in Toronto Tuesday night.

Winning the Canadian Hillman Award were Glen McGregor of The Ottawa Citizen (and member of the Ottawa Newspaper Guild), and Stephen Maher of Postmedia News, for their exposé of vote-suppressing robocalls by Conservative Party operatives during the 2011 federal election.

McGregor, a national affairs reporter and data journalism specialist, covers federal politics and government for the Citizen. Maher, an investigative journalist and columnist, shared a 2009 Canadian Association of Journalists award for his work with McGregor on political favouritism in stimulus spending under the Harper government's Economic Action Plan.

Photo: Katie DeRosa Katie DeRosa of the Victoria Times Colonist (and member of the Victoria-Vancouver Island Newspaper Guild) and Elizabeth Stolte of the Edmonton Journal received honorable mentions.

DeRosa was recognized for an investigation of Canadian refugee policy; she exposed how expensive and damaging the Harper government's plans to jail refugees and asylum seekers can be. An investigative reporter, she covers crime, justice and military issues.

In 2012, DeRosa was the inaugural recipient of the R. James Travers Foreign Corresponding Fellowship. DeRosa travelled to Australia and Thailand to investigate Canada's new mandatory detention policy under Bill C-31 following the arrival of hundreds of Tamil asylum seekers aboard the MV Sun Sea.

Stolte was honoured for a data-driven investigation that found that more than 10,000 First Nations children on reservations in Alberta were not registered or attending school. A beat reporter and feature writer at the Journal, Stolte is passionate about First Nations education and has explored the challenges posed by underfunding and the lack of a supportive school system.

Since 1950, the Sidney Hillman Foundation has recognized journalists, writers and public figures who pursue social justice and public policy for the common good. The awards honour the legacy and vision of union pioneer and New Deal architect Sidney Hillman. The $5,000 Canadian Hillman prize was inaugurated in 2011.