Michener Award

For the discontinued Canadian film award, see Wendy Michener Award.

The Michener Award is one of the highest distinctions in Canadian journalism. The award was founded in 1970 by Roland Michener, who was Governor General of Canada at the time, and his wife Norah. The idea for the award was developed in 1969 with Bill MacPherson, then president of the National Press Club and managing editor of the Ottawa Citizen, who remained a secretary of the committee administering the award until his death. Since 1970, the Michener Award has been presented yearly by the Governor General at Rideau Hall to a Canadian news organization "whose entry is judged to have made a significant impact on public policy or on the lives of Canadians".

Although the award is presented to media organizations rather than individual journalists, five individuals of the nominated finalists are invited to the award ceremony so that their contributions can also be acknowledged. Since 1987, the Michener Foundation also awards annually the Michener-Deacon Fellowship, which provides financial support to a journalist wishing to complete a project that serves the Canadian public interest. The fellowship is named in honor of Roland Michener and late journalist Paul Deacon.

Past winners

Where multiple winners are combined in the table below, the winning work was a collaborative joint project of both news organizations. If two distinct pieces simply finished in a tie, then each work is listed on a separate line.

Year	Recipients	Work	Refs.
1970	Financial Post and CBC Television	The Charter Revolution, a collaborative investigation of the air charter business.
1971	CBC Television	The Tenth Decade, a documentary series about Canadian politics in the John Diefenbaker era.
1972	The Globe and Mail	Reportage on political conflicts of interest in Ontario.
	Halifax Scotian Journalist	Reportage on conditions at a women's prison in Moncton, New Brunswick.
1973	CTV News	"Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil", an hour-long documentary on the use of covert listening devices and the Canadian government's attempts to legislate around them.
1974	Montreal Gazette	Investigation into real estate development in Montreal.
1975	Montreal Gazette	Investigation into treatment of girls in youth detention.
	London Free Press	Series on mercury poisoning in Ontario.
1976	Vancouver Sun	Uncovering a series of illegal break-ins by the RCMP.
1977	The Globe and Mail	A year-long series of articles calling for reform in systems of child protection.
1978	Kitchener-Waterloo Record	Investigation into health and safety conditions at area meat packing plants, which had to be investigated by inspectors from the United States Department of Agriculture due to Canadian inaction.
1979	Kingston Whig-Standard	Investigation of unsafe emissions from an aluminum plant in Massena, New York, and their effect on the health of residents of Cornwall and Cornwall.
1980	Edmonton Journal	Investigation into abuse in Alberta's child welfare system.
1981	CFTM-DT (Montreal)	Investigation into management problems at Quebec's Fédération des caisses d’entraide économique.
	Kitchener-Waterloo Record	Investigation into a real estate fraud scheme which led to the first jail term ever imposed under Canadian securities legislation.
1982	Manitoulin Expositor	Investigation into a local suicide rate almost twice the national average, which led to the creation of a new suicide prevention hotline in Sudbury-Manitoulin.
1983	Kitchener-Waterloo Record	Separate stories on Revenue Canada's tax collecting methods, high pressure stock sales in Ontario and quality control problems in farm supply industries, which had been submitted separately but were all judged to be of sufficiently high quality to be honoured collectively.
1984	Kingston Whig-Standard	Story on federal tax reform.
1985	The Globe and Mail	Problems affecting immigrants.
	Toronto Star	Series on ethnic minority communities in Toronto.
1986	The Globe and Mail	Coverage of an amendment to the Criminal Code which impacted freedom of the press.
1987	CBC Television	Runaways: 24 Hours on the Street, a documentary about homeless youth.
	Southam News	"Southam Literary Project", a series on literacy skills in Canada which sparked a major expansion of adult education programs to assist adults with learning disabilities and other literacy issues.
1988	The Globe and Mail	Three investigative reports into real estate corruption in York Region, failures in Canada's business-class immigration programs, and failures by Ontario athletic commissioner Clyde Gray to properly enforce safety regulations in boxing.
1989	Le Devoir	Coverage of efforts to expand indigenous self-government rights in the Nunavik region of Quebec.
1990	Elmira Independent	Coverage of contamination of the local water supply with dimethylnitrosamine from a Uniroyal plant.
1991	CBC Television, Toronto and Winnipeg	Collaborative reports on health insurance fraud, police corruption, furnace repair fraud, immigration practices, a federal tax loophole, and abuse of First Nations band government funds.
1992	Edmonton Journal	"Psychiatry on Trial", an examination of the judicial system's reliance on psychiatric testimony.
1993	Ottawa Citizen	Coverage of a government plan to privatize Toronto Pearson International Airport.
	The Globe and Mail	Coverage of the Canadian Red Cross scandal around HIV-tainted blood in the medical blood donation system.
1994	CKNW (New Westminster, British Columbia)	Coverage of a controversial power plant.
1995	CBO-FM, Ottawa	Investigation of the Somalia Affair, a military scandal surrounding Operation Deliverance.
1996	Toronto Star	Reports on spousal abuse in Ontario and flaws in the province's child protection system.
1997	Halifax Daily News	Series of articles by David Rodenhiser documenting sexual abuse in Nova Scotia reform schools.
1998	Toronto Star	Series of reports on problems of Ontario's health care system.
1999	CBC National Radio News, Winnipeg	Curt Petrovich's work to uncover a scandal involving the Progressive Conservative Party's funding of Independent Native Voice during the 1995 Manitoba provincial election.
2000	The Fifth Estate	Series of reports on mistakes and abuse of the police and the justice system.
2001	The Record	Investigation of the misuse of municipal funds involving MFP Financial Services Ltd. (see RIM Park funding controversy).
2002	Toronto Star	Investigation into Race and Crime series of articles.
2003	La Presse	Two series of articles on poor hospital care in Montreal.
2004	The Globe and Mail	Investigative work on the sponsorship scandal by Daniel Leblanc and Campbell Clark.
2005	The Globe and Mail	Series of articles on breast cancer by Lisa Priest.
2006	Prince George Citizen	series of articles on the safety of truck drivers in the logging industry.
2007	The Globe and Mail and La Presse	Series of articles on the treatment of prisoners of the Canadian forces in Afghanistan, particularly after their handing over to Afghan security forces.
2008	CBC News and The Canadian Press	Joint project that investigated the use of taser guns by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
2009	Montreal Gazette	Reporting on the mismanagement of a water management project in Montreal.
2010	the fifth estate	Reporting on the incarceration and death of Ashley Smith.
2011	Victoria Times-Colonist	Reporting on a British Columbia government policy that reduced support for people with developmental disabilities.
2012	Postmedia and the Ottawa Citizen	Reporting that exposed the "robocall scandal" in the 2011 Canadian federal election.
2013	Toronto Star	Coverage of Rob Ford's substance abuse issues.
2014	The Globe and Mail	Series on thalidomide.
2015	Enquête	"Abus de la SQ: les femmes brisent le silence", an investigation into ongoing physical and sexual abuse of indigenous women in Val-d'Or, Quebec.
2016	London Free Press	"Indiscernible", a series that chronicled the jailhouse death of a man with mental illness.
2017	The Globe and Mail	Investigation into how Canadian police handle sexual assault complaints.
2018	Telegraph-Journal	"Sounding the Alarm", a series on understaffing of emergency medical services in New Brunswick.
2019	The Globe and Mail	"False Promises", an investigation into exploitation of temporary workers and foreign students by unscrupulous immigration consultants.
2020	APTN	"Death by Neglect", an investigation into how indigenous children are being failed by the child protection system.
2021	CBC Saskatoon and The Globe and Mail	Coverage of the campaign to convince the Roman Catholic Church to compensate victims of the Canadian Indian residential school system.
2022	The Globe and Mail	"Hockey Canada’s Secret Funds", coverage of the revelations that Hockey Canada was secretly paying out millions of dollars in compensation to settle sexual assault claims without publicly disclosing its use of the money.
2023	The Narwhal and Toronto Star	Investigation into the Greenbelt scandal in Ontario.

See also

• List of awards presented by the governor general of Canada

External links

• Home page of the Michener Awards Foundation