We know awards aren’t everything, but we hope that our consistent showing on one of Canadian media’s most important stages demonstrates our commitment to producing quality reporting that holds the powerful in this country to account.

Here are the nominated stories:

Separatism in Canada
By Stephen Maher, with photos by Ricochet’s Future of Journalism fellow Konnor Killoran

For best in the ONLINE MEDIA category, which recognizes quality, digital-first reporting.

During the 2025 federal election, veteran political journalist Stephen Maher travelled across Alberta and Quebec to report on two very different separatist movements, and how they blossomed against a backdrop of Trump’s trade war and threats to Canadian sovereignty.

RCMP formally apologize for violating journalist’s rights, commit to changes in wake of explosive oversight report
By Ethan Cox and Jerome Turner

For best in the SCOOP category, which recognizes quality investigative reporting. This is the first time Ricochet has been recognized in this category.

Senior editor Ethan Cox and journalist Jerome Turner break down a landmark RCMP oversight report on Turner’s unlawful detention while reporting on the pipeline fight in Wet’suwet’en territory in 2020.

The report led to a formal apology from Canada’s national police force, for “unreasonable interference with Mr. Turner’s work as a reporter as he was turned away from the checkpoint, threatened with arrest for being within an exclusion zone, detained and had his movements controlled.”

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That’s why this week we are thanking Simon, Tom, Carolyn, James, and Rhonda for your belief in our mission to fill in the gaps that mainstream media leaves behind with hard-hitting Canadian reporting.

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‘How many more have to die?’: Northern Ontario fires expose delays in human rights complaints for First Nations

By: Jon Thompson

After a child’s death and another home lost, First Nations leaders say delays at the Human Rights Commission are putting lives at risk — and the Auditor General won’t intervene

The fly-in Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation lost another home to fire over the weekend, as the Auditor General of Canada refuses to investigate allegations that the Canadian Human Rights Commission is “slow-walking” complaints over inequitable firefighting resources in northern Ontario First Nations.

The March 28 duplex fire in the community 600 kilometres north of Thunder Bay followed a house fire four days earlier that took the life of KI Chief Donny Morris’s three-year-old grandson.

On Friday, the Auditor General’s office refused a public call by the five-member Independent First Nations Alliance and KI, supported by the 49 chiefs of Nishnawbe Aski Nation to investigate why there has been no progress on an urgent claim they filed with CHRC seven months ago.

“The risk of fires faced by Indigenous peoples in Canada is not an accident of geography or personal behaviour; it is the predictable result of systemic neglect.”

Read the full story here

Stay tuned for this week’s episode of Ricochet’s flagship podcast In Bed with the Elephant for reactions to Avi Lewis’ NDP leadership race win from writer Nora Loreto, activist Judy Rebick, and author Matt Fodor.

Access to information: N.L. failed to make public over 1,000 responses in a single year

By: Justin Brake

This court case could decide the future of press freedom — and police oversight — in Canada

Newfoundland and Labrador is often touted as a leader in Canada when it comes to freedom of information legislation, but new information disclosed, appropriately enough, in response to an access to information request, paints the province in a different light.

After the government responds to an access request, it’s supposed to post its response publicly on its website. After all, the information shouldn’t only be available to the person making the request, but to the public at large. However, figures released by the province show the government failed to make over 1,000 responses public in the 2024-2025 fiscal year alone.

Between April 1, 2024 and March 31, 2025, a spreadsheet produced by the province in response to an FOI request says its Access to Information and Protection of Privacy (ATIPP) Office received 1,741 access requests. Only 727 of those were posted on the office’s website, meaning the government posted fewer than 42 per cent of the requests it received in that time.

Read the full story here

Orange ‘Every Child Matters’ shirts banned from Queen’s Park legislature

By: Jon Thompson

A formal complaint has been submitted requesting clarity surrounding the blanket ban on ‘political statements’ in the Ontario legislature

A northern Ontario MPP submitted a formal complaint to Queen’s Park’s house speaker on Thursday after security wouldn’t allow observers into the gallery wearing an “Every Child Matters” t-shirt, and in another case, a sewn patch of the Transgender pride flag.

Thunder Bay-Superior North NDP MPP Lise Vaugeois sent speaker Donna Skelly a letter requesting clarity on whether the message arising from the discovery of First Nations child grave sites on the grounds of former residential schools should be interpreted as a political protest.

“Every Child Matters is a statement that should not be discouraged, in fact, it is a powerful message of support for those missing and murdered Indigenous children,” Vaugeois wrote, citing similar messaging that is displayed in Queen’s Park’s public reception rooms.

Read the full story here

Ontario Ombudsman’s final act: A new Indigenous plan to confront systemic failures

By: Jon Thompson

A new plan aims to overhaul how the province responds to complaints from First Nations, giving communities a stronger voice, as crises persist from long-term boil-water advisories to overcrowded jails

n the final two weeks of Paul Dubé’s decade-long tenure as Ontario’s ombudsman, he delivered its first Indigenous Services Plan — a promise to improve cultural competency and transform how complaints create systemic change.

Those he consulted to write the plan are cautiously optimistic.

“When we have the privilege to occupy these positions for however long we have them, we have a moral duty, we have a moral imperative to address some of these issues,” Dubé said of the five-year “herculean” process. “And as I look over the landscape of Ontario, I saw no more pressing issue than to contribute to reconciliation and get things moving, in whatever way we can.”

His plan proposes “proactive ombudsmanship,” a commitment to take complaints and other intelligence directly from First Nations people, leaders, and organizations to the relevant provincial agencies

Read the full story here

Like our new look? You might have noticed that we’ve temporarily moved to Substack for our newsletter services. This is just a piece of all the exciting things we have planned for 2026, so we’re eager to know what you all think.

Feel free to share your thoughts either by commenting on Substack or dropping a line to our Audience Editor at sophia@ricochet.media.

Newfoundland student union walks back plan to close radio station amid backlash

By: Justin Brake

‘I wish CHMR the best,’ Memorial University Students’ Union executive says ahead of vote to defund the campus radio station

A student union in Newfoundland and Labrador is walking back its plan to shut down a campus radio station amid widespread backlash. Following a March 18 board meeting, the Memorial University Students’ Union revealed that on April 1 it will vote on a motion to defund and close CHMR-FM, the province’s only campus radio station.

On Monday MUNSU’s director of external affairs said the union is scrapping a clause in the motion that would enable the union to shutter the station. “We will give them the opportunity,” Nathan Gillingham told Ricochet in a phone interview Monday, explaining the union feels it has little choice but to sever funding given the union’s financial woes.

The motion as tabled proposes to close the station by August 28, 2026 and redirect a $2-per-semester media levy to the “operations of MUNSU communications” — a move that may violate union rules. In a social media post, the union says CHMR cost $266,188 to operate in the 2023-2024 fiscal year. The station only generated around $71,500 in revenues, says the post, leaving a deficit of almost $195,000. It is unclear if the station’s continued operation would interfere with plans to appropriate the media levy.

Read the full story here

At the Supreme Court, challenges to Bill 21 expose Quebec’s secularism hypocrisy

By: Zeinab Diab

The law claims neutrality while targeting Muslim women — and entrenching a double standard that protects Catholic symbols and erodes minority rights across Canada

At the Supreme Court of Canada, the challenge to Bill 21, Quebec’s religious symbols ban, has reached a divisive stage.

Public debate risks once again focusing primarily on legal arguments: the scope of the notwithstanding clause (Section 33 of the Canadian Charter), the balance between fundamental freedoms, legislative powers, and constitutional interpretation. These questions are essential. But they also carry a danger: that of transforming a profoundly human reality into an abstract debate.

Since its adoption in 2019, Bill 21 has opened a troubling breach. By preventing some civil servants, including teachers, from wearing religious symbols at work, it has contributed to normalizing the idea that certain rights and freedoms can be suspended in the name of a misguided and populist conception of secularism. This logic has already extended into other legislative initiatives, notably Bill 94 and Bill 9, which expand and reinforce exclusionary measures once again targeting the visibility of Muslim female bodies in educational environments, from early childhood settings to universities.

Read the full story here

Like our new look? You might have noticed that we’ve moved to Substack for our newsletter services. This is just a piece of all the exciting things we have planned for 2026, so we’re eager to know what you all think.

Feel free to share your thoughts either by commenting on Substack or dropping a line to our Audience Editor at sophia@ricochet.media.

Ricochet exists because of you. It survives because of you. And with your help, it will continue to do the fearless journalism this country urgently needs.

That’s why this week we are thanking Aird, Gavin, Chantelle, Rafe and Jason for your belief in our mission to fill in the gaps that mainstream media leaves behind with critical Canadian reporting.

In case you’ve missed our (several) announcements, we’re now a Registered Journalism Organization.

With a little over a month left for tax season, become a monthly donor today and receive a tax receipt for your donation! 

Join the Ricochet community

The RCMP vs. the media: Bracken trial approaches its endgame

By: Justin Brake

This court case could decide the future of press freedom — and police oversight — in Canada

It’s been more than four years since John Brewer, RCMP’s assistant commissioner for British Columbia, led an operation to remove land defenders from a remote area in unceded Wet’suwet’en territory in northern BC. The land defenders, led by members of the Wet’suwet’en Nation’s Gidim’ten House Clan, had reoccupied the area in an effort to enforce an eviction notice from Wet’suwet’en hereditary leaders and prevent construction of the controversial Coastal GasLink pipeline.

Brewer, who tells the court he’s a member of the Lower Similkameen Indian Band, is not here because he helped force First Nations people from their land. He’s been summoned to the B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver because officers under his command arrested and jailed a journalist as part of the Mounties’ November 2021 operation.

The actions of Brewer’s team that day are under scrutiny in a landmark lawsuit filed by photojournalist Amber Bracken and digital outlet The Narwhal against the RCMP — which could go all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, in the process codifying journalists’ and the public’s constitutional right to press freedom.

Read the full story here

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s episode of Ricochet’s flagship podcast In Bed with the Elephant for host Adrian Harewood’s conversation with journalist Justin Brake where they break down the ins and outs of a case that could decide the future of press freedom in Canada.

Is Doug Ford planning to axe elected public school boards in Ontario?

By: Jon Thompson

Critics warn the move would end more than two centuries of local education governance and silence parents, Indigenous communities, and advocates for students with disabilities

School trustees in northern Ontario say the provincial government intends to eliminate their elected public school board positions when the legislature returns this spring.

Lakehead District School Board trustees are rallying with local union leaders and parent advocacy organizations in Thunder Bay, claiming the majority-Progressive Conservative government will introduce an omnibus bill as early as this month that would put an end to more than 200 years of locally accountable education governance.

“Our concern is that they’ll come back and just dissolve or eliminate the trustees from all boards – it’s our biggest concern,” says Lakehead board chair Leah Vanderwey. “When you listen to Minister of Education [Paul] Calandra, he says he hasn’t heard any argument against eliminating trustees.”

In the four months since Ontario passed Bill 33, which enabled the education minister to overrule the Education Act and take direct control over local boards, allegedly due to mismanagement and fiscal unsustainability, Calandra has imposed supervisors to rule over eight of the province’s English boards.

Read the full story here

This week on In Bed with the Elephant

Host Adrian Harewood sits down with acclaimed Canadian writer and essayist Jeet Heer to discuss Donald Trump’s impact on Canada and the rest of the world.

Listen wherever you listen to podcasts.