By Anna Mehler Paperny – Investigative Journalism Bureau
Prisoners are not popular.
Hidden solitary: Canada’s growing use of prison isolation
By Anna Mehler Paperny – Investigative Journalism Bureau
It is Nov. 5, 2024. Over the course of half an hour, a hand-held camera follows Joey Toutsaint as prison guards forcibly remove him from a cell, then lead him through a hall, across a yard and into another building. The camera captures him pleading.
Freedom of information? Here’s what Ontario’s government doesn’t want you to know
By Anna Mehler Paperny – Investigative Journalism Bureau
What communication did Ontario Premier Doug Ford have with developers who could have benefited from his removal of Greenbelt protections before he walked that back?
What briefing notes did Ford receive related to Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport, which he wanted to expand?
What was in his calendar between Feb. 5 and April 21, 2026?
And what briefings did he get for a June 2025 meeting with U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra?
These are just some of the things that Ontario’s government won’t tell the public.
When help means losing choice: The reality of rural mental health care
By Anna Mehler Paperny – Investigative Journalism Bureau
Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare’s two cottage-country hospitals are not built for mental health care.
Behind the reporting: How, and why, we dug into medical coercion
By Anna Mehler Paperny – Investigative Journalism Bureau
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 are deemed too crazy to decide to leave hospital, too crazy to consent – or withhold consent – to treatment.
And thousands of times a year, they challenge those medical designations at the arms-length body that adjudicates such challenges – the Consent and Capacity Board.
As Canada’s new First Nations water bill is tabled, lawyer decries ‘legal gymnastics’
By Anna Mehler Paperny – Investigative Journalism Bureau
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.
Ontarians contesting involuntary care face low likelihood of success, IJB analysis shows
By Anna Mehler Paperny and Dori Seeman – Investigative Journalism Bureau
Heather Lafleur sought to convince a trio of strangers she shouldn’t be injected with powerful drugs against her will.
Behind the Reporting: Exposing a government shift on First Nations water
By Anna Mehler Paperny – Investigative Journalism Bureau
You turn the tap. You drink. You cook. You wash.
Drinkable, usable tap water has become so elemental in the lives of people in wealthy countries that its use is reflexive. But thousands of people in Canada lack it. They live in First Nations communities, many of which have had to go without drinkable water for decades.
Canada’s government is playing legal hardball with First Nations over drinking water
By Anna Mehler Paperny – Investigative Journalism Bureau
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government is playing legal hardball with First Nations fighting for clean drinking water — and First Nations are fighting back.
Canada is terrible at tracking maternal deaths
By Anna Mehler Paperny and Emma Jarratt – Investigative Journalism Bureau
The first blood clot was about the size of an avocado.
