In 1979 fifth estate host Ian Parker reported on the controversial Canadian practice of exposing mine workers to aluminum dust filtered directly into their locker room. It was believed that the dust would coat their lungs and protect miners from the dangerous effects of silica dust. The process had been banned in England, Sweden and South Africa and many scientists claimed the process was ineffective and potentially toxic.
Report on the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Karen Silkwood, who was killed in a car accident while on her way to meet a New York Times reporter to whom she was to give evidence that Kerr-McGee, an Oklahoma uranium processor and the company she worked for, was violating nuclear safety standards. Silkwood, along with union reps began collecting evidence on the deplorable safety standards in the early 1970s. The company was so intertwined with government that when the case went to trial, they couldn't find an Oklahoma judge that was impartial. Karen Silkwood eventually learned that she had been contaminated with plutonium and she was barred from working in the area where she'd been collecting evidence. An investigation was launched into how she'd been contaminated: by herself accidentally, intentionally or if the company had done it to her. All that was concluded from the trial was that she had not contaminated herself intentionally. Regardless, it is still a mystery what caused Silkwood's car accident. There are two differing accounts of how she crashed - a car either pushed her from behind until cornered into a concrete wall, or she fell asleep at the wheel. Either way the folder with the evidence she was bringing to a reporter disappeared and has never been recovered.
During the Cold War, the CIA funded a series of secret brainwashing experiments at a prestigious psychiatric clinic at McGill University. No method was too bizarre, including using LSD, hypnosis, prolonged periods of induced sleep, and electrical shocks to the brain. Patients were given the treatment without explanation or consent, and even decades later complained that they had never completely recovered. In 1980, the fifth estate exposed the magnitude of the human tragedy with this episode in which two Canadians told their stories publicly for the first time. Bob Logie was admitted to Allen Memorial hospital at age 18 to treat psychosomatic leg pain. He was repeatedly given LSD as a test subject without his consent. Logie also received an experimental therapy called depatterning. He was exposed to massive doses of electroshock therapy and kept asleep for up to a month at a time. Tape messages were played repeatedly while he slept. “I feel like I’ve been completely used. I feel like my mind has been completely invaded. I suppose if guinea pigs have feelings they’d feel like I do,” Logie told the fifth estate host Adrienne Clarkson. Logie said the effect of the treatments stayed with him and that as a result anxiety built up and he couldn’t hold down a job for long. No one knows how many patients were exposed to the program of chemical and electro-shock treatments at Allen Memorial. But documents and testimony have revealed that the Montreal experiments were part of a series of psychological projects given code names such as MK Ultra and run by the CIA in a quest to understand how to brainwash people. The American spy agency launched the experiments after the Korean War, when soldiers came home criticizing the American way of life. The CIA was convinced that the Communists had found the key to brainwashing and set out on an elaborate but secret attempt to use any chemical or psychological means to discover how to work with it.
From 1981, Eric Malling reports on the ordeal of hockey player Mike Robitaille. The then defenseman for the Vancouver Canucks stood up to the hockey establishment and won an important court decision related to injuries received while a player. He claimed that he was required to play hockey with an injured spinal cord. In the late 1980s Robitaille became a hockey broadcaster covering the Buffalo Sabres. He retired from most of his broadcasting duties in 2014, after 25 years of covering the Sabres in various capacities.
Steve Podborski - now the chef de mission for the Canadian team at the Sochi Olympic Games - was on a winning streak when the fifth estate`s reporter Ian Parker profiled the young downhill skier in 1981. Podborski was one of the `Crazy Canucks`, Canada’s daredevil downhill skiers who rivaled the European racers who traditionally dominated the sport. At the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, he became the first North American man to win an Olympic medal in the downhill event, with a bronze medal - representing half of Canada`s total medal count that year. The fifth estate’s Parker went to Podborski`s home in Toronto to interview his parents, both avid skiers, and to the Craigleith ski club to meet the coach who first recognized his talent. Podborski talks about recovering from a serious leg injury, and the pressures of fame and sponsorship. He did not win the World Cup race in Aspen, Colorado that Parker mentions at the end of the program. But just one year after it aired, Podborski became the first - and still the only - North America to win the World Cup season title for downhill racing. In 1982, he was also made an Officer of the Order of Canada. Two years later, at the age of 26, he retired from the sport. After retirement, Podborski continued to play a prominent role in the Olympics, working as a commentator for American television networks for winter Olympics between 1998 and 2006. He was also on the bid committee for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, focusing on international relations. Now he is playing a leading role at Sochi, as the chef de mission by the Canadian Olympic Committee for the 2014 games. As chef de mission, Podborski will be the team leader and spokesperson for Canadian athletes at the Games, and will work with the COC to prepare them for the Olympic environment.
On July 10, 1978, 19 year-old Eric Wilson left his Ottawa home and set out alone in his van for Boulder, Colorado where he was to attend a summer course. Four days later, he called from Nebraska and told his brother he'd had trouble with the van, and promised to call the next day at five o'clock. That was the last the Wilsons ever heard from him. Assuming Eric's disappearance was temporary, law agencies in Canada and the U.S. refused to assist in a search, leaving the Wilsons no choice but to hire an expensive private detective and former New York City policeman Jim Conway. Beginning with the scant evidence of foul play uncovered by the U.S. authorities, Conway eventually pieced together the details of Eric's disappearance, which led to the arrest and conviction of known offenders Raymond Hatch and Bertram Davis who had murdered Eric in cold blood. Conway had managed with sheer determination to gain the truth from witnesses where Peter Wilson and his father had failed in their search to find Eric. Unfortunately, Hatch and Davis did not receive the life sentences Eric Wilson's family fought for. Instead Hatch served only 13 years and Davis only two as a result of plea-bargaining deals used to reduce costly trials and numbers in overcrowded prisons. Program awards include: New York - International Film and TV Festival; gold medal in investigative reporting category (1981); American Film Festival - 1st prize (blue ribbon), documentary category (1982); ACTRA awards, best TV program of the year (1981); Banff International Television Festival - best socio-political documentary and best documentary script (1981); Ohio Awards - achievement of merit award (1982) and Anik Awards - best documentary (1981); Academy Award for best documentary feature (1983). Hosted by Ian Parker and produced by acclaimed documentary filmmaker John Zaritsky.
In 1982, the fifth estate’s Hana Gartner sat down with one of Montreal’s most notorious hitmen to discuss how he got away with murder - and how he became a police informer. Donald Lavoie was involved with 27 murders during his ten-year career as a hired killer for gang leader Claude Dubois. “I found it so easy,” Lavoie told Gartner. “A man’s life was so easy to take away. “Once you kill once, the second is nothing.” Lavoie was never convicted for his killings, but police did arrest him for extortion and convinced him to become a police informant. With Lavoie’s help, officers were finally able to arrest Dubois. The interview took place in a special detention wing of the Quebec police force building in Montreal, where Lavoie was living under police protection. He and Gartner discussed his wife and children, his life of crime and what remains on his conscience after leaving the gang behind. Gartner also visited Montreal’s anti-gang squad, where she spoke with detectives Richard McGuiness and Julien Gigerd about Lavoie's notorious past
In this 1984 report Bob McKeown reports on a growing number of Canadian men who are choosing their marriage partner from a catalogue. The piece focuses on the story of Korean Yune Heue and Calgarian Ken Penny. Penny first saw Yune Heue in a catalogue entitled 'Lotus Blossoms,' one of many introduction magazines that matched Asian women with North American men. Heue travels to Calgary to meet her future husband. McKeown interviews proprietors of several introduction agencies to learn what motivates both potential brides and North American men to use mail order bride services.
From 1985, our investigation into the federal government's rejection and subsequent release of almost one million cans of partly decomposed tuna from the Star-Kist Tuna Canada Ltd. plant in New Brunswick.This public disclosure, reported by former fifth estate host the late Eric Malling, precipitated a political controversy and the resignation of Minister of Fisheries John Fraser. The tuna in question was first rejected as unfit for consumption in standard Fisheries Department inspections. After its unsuccessful appeal, Star-Kist threatened a plant closure and massive layoff if the tuna was not released. N.B. Premier Richard Hatfield had it re- tested at the Research and Productivity Council (RPC) in Fredericton, which was paid $35,000 by the N.B. Job Protection Branch to conduct the tests. Not surprisingly, the RPC found the tuna acceptable. A third assessment, by Fraser's own inspection team, recommended that the tuna only be sold outside of Canada, and only with a cautionary label. In an interview, Fraser defends the release of the tuna in Canada, pointing to the public's right to a fair hearing in the face of possibly unfair government actions, and to the legitimate right of a provincial government to become involved in such a case.
In this piece from 1986, Hana Gartner reports on the Canadian soccer team's successful qualification for the World Cup Tournament, despite the collapse of professional soccer in Canada and the unwillingness of indoor soccer league teams to release contracted players for training. Includes interviews with players Bruce Wilson, George Pacos, Terry Moore, David Norman, and Bob Leonarducci, coach Tony Waiters, Tacoma Stars manager John Best, and Pele.
Hana Gartner examines circumstances surrounding the trial in Jerusalem of John Demjanjuk, accused of being 'Ivan the Terrible,' the notorious and brutal Nazi prison guard at the Treblinka concentration camp in 1942-43, when up to 6,000 Jews a day were gassed to death. The trial started in November of 1986, and lasted almost a year and a half. The program focuses on the efforts of defense lawyer Paul Chumak to establish that there is reasonable doubt as to whether after 45 years Demjanjuk can be definitively identified as Ivan the Terrible. Also dealt with in the program are the deep emotions raised by the case, allegations that the Israeli judges are under intense pressure to convict him, and the concerns of North American Ukrainians that the Soviets have fabricated a crucial SS identity card in order to discredit the Ukrainian émigré community. Demjanjuk was convicted of committing crimes against humanity in 1988 but the verdict was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1993, citing new evidence that he was not 'Ivan the Terrible'. In 2009 Demjanjuk was deported to Germany, to stand trial for allegations that he had been a guard Nazi concentration camps in Poland and Germany. In 2011, Demajanuk was convicted of being an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jewish people during World War II and was released pending an appeal of the ruling. Demajanuk died in German in March of 2012, before his appeal could be heard.
It is a closed religious society with traditional values. At the turn of the century thousands of Mennonites left Canada for Mexico and the area around Cuauhtémoc. At the time of our 1992 piece, their ways were changing in their society as alcohol and economic problems grew and were faced with a bigger issue, a flourishing drug trade. Immigration and border officials in Canada and the United States said at the time there was a Mennonite Mob smuggling tons of drugs into both countries.
On May 9th 1992 an explosion ripped apart the Westray Coal Mine in Pictou County Nova Scotia killing 26 miners. The Fifth Estate and the Journal co-produced this story about the tragedy. The mine was opened the year before despite misgivings that the geology of the area was unstable and prone to large volumes of methane gas. The Federal Government was reluctant help the private company starting the mine after numerous reports cited geological concerns. But after heavy lobbying the mine opened. From the beginning miners complained of safety issues, rock falls, high methane gas levels and large amounts of coal dust. The company's output and quality of coal were disappointing. Inspectors visited the mine 49 times. Critics claim inspectors didn't take the conditions seriously enough and that the company was negligent. Government officials say it's not at fault. But the miners say even if the mine were to reopen they would never go back.
After over 20 years the brutal dictatorship of Siad Barre in Somalia ended in 1991, engulfing the country in civil war and famine. Many Somalis fled their homes and thousands of refugees came to Canada. Most had legitimate refugee claims, but some had been accused of war crimes back in Somalia. Victor Malarek tells the story of three men Abdi Ali Nur Mohamed, Mohamed Hassan Ismail Farah and Col. Yusuf Abdi Ali 'Tokeh', who had been accused of brutality, torture, beatings, and executions in Somalia. Malarek explores how the men were able to slip through the cracks of the Canadian immigration system, and how their presence was affecting the Somali community in Canada.
It chronicles the Citizens for a Free Kuwait campaign efforts to spin public relations sentiment in the United States in favor of the Gulf War, focusing on the story of Nurse Nayirah, who was, in fact, Nayirah al-Sabah, the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the United States Saud Nasir Al-Sabah. Her infamous testimony about Iraqi soldiers removing babies from incubators, which was widely disseminated, was a result of coaching by PR firm Hill & Knowlton.
From 1993. Violence is surging the streets of Haiti. The military and mobs rule the country while the democratically elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide remains in exile. Thousands have died in the violence following a military coup and the military has installed its own prime ministers in the interim, Jean-Jacques Honorat and Marc Bezin. Now tens of thousands of Haitian refugees are fleeing to the United States. The Fifth Estate examines how much of the problems in Haiti are the fault of the U.S.
The Trouble with Evan is a two-hour special edition of the Fifth Estate. It reveals how much harm can be done to a child by the people who love him the most. For 14 weeks cameras were placed in the home of a family in Hamilton, Ontario whose 11-year-old boy has been a problem for them since he was in kindergarten. The cameras capture the troubling, abusive and at times loving family relationship. Evan cannot control his behavioral problems. He shoplifts, smokes, sets fires, extorts money, bullies, and runs away from home. His mother, Karin and stepfather Michael try to find ways to control their son. There is yelling and screaming, threats, verbal and physical abuse. They also try new techniques taught to them by therapists and parenting classes. The life of Evan is placed alongside the stories of a group of young offenders undergoing an innovative therapy treatment program called Portage, at a correctional centre in Elora, Ontario. They talk of childhoods scarred by abuse, lack of communication and lack of attention. There is fear these traits could be carried over to their adulthood and passed onto their children.
‘Karla Homolka,’ first aired by the fifth estate in November of 1997, is a searing investigation into a plea bargain – later dubbed ‘the deal with the devil – struck between Ontario Crown attorneys and Karla Homolka, who was ultimately convicted of manslaughter in one of Canada’s most notorious and grisly murder cases. In 1995, Homolka’s former husband Paul Bernardo was convicted of the kidnap, rape and murder of Ontario teenagers Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy and sentenced to at least 25 years in prison. Bernardo was classified as a ‘dangerous offender,’ meaning it is unlikely he will ever be set free. In exchange for pleading guilty to manslaughter and testifying against Bernardo, Homolka was given 12 years in jail – a far lighter sentence than many Canadians believed, and still believe, she deserved. The fifth estate episode features never-before seen police interview tapes of Homolka, which show her version of events but also betray her shocking callousness about the crimes. Homolka had testified at Bernardo’s trial, but the first time the public saw or heard from her was in this documentary. The episode has an interview with one of Homolka’s psychiatrists, who spoke on television for the first time about the ‘battered wife syndrome’ diagnosis that was put forward by the defense. The team made Homolka out to be an innocent victim of a murderous lover. But video tapes of the crimes, found after the plea bargain, showed her to be a more active accomplice. The fifth estate conducted a detailed examination of the case, and the plea bargain, and raised many serious questions about the conduct of the Ontario crown in making that deal. Karla Homolka was released from prison in July, 2005. She has attempted, with mixed success, to keep out of the public eye. She changed her name and found work in a suburban hardware store outside of Montreal. But she went back into hiding after her boss revealed her location to the p
In this 1999 piece we look at the public battle raging over genetically modified food. We explore the dispute between Canadian grain farmers and the multinational company Monsanto, the world's leading manufacturer of genetically modified seeds.
It was December 6, 1989 - the last day of classes before midterm exams at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique. Around 4 p.m., a man entered a classroom with an assault rifle. “He ordered the men - the students and the professors - to go on the right side of the class, and the girls on the left side,” said Adrien Cernea, one of the teachers in class at the time. Fourteen women were shot dead in all. The gunman, Marc Lepine, then took his own life. In 1999 the fifth estate conducted an investigation into Lepine’s life, and just what it was that led him to pick up a gun and attack complete strangers. But the gunman’s plans extended beyond women he had never met. Lepine also left behind a list of other women he’d planned to kill - many of them well-known in Quebec. Francine Pelletier, host of the CBC’s fifth estate, was on that list. Pelletier delves into Lepine’s past, speaking with his aunt, friends and roommates, and discovers factors that may have led him to act as he did. Pelletier also also sits down with relatives of Lepine's victims. Jean-Francois Larivée lost his wife, Maryse Laganière. They’d been married only three months. “I didn’t spend time hating him, trying to kill him in my dreams or making him pay for what he did,” Larivée told Pelletier. “I believe that the external influence - maybe friends, his father - things happened in his life to make him very aggressive towards people, and especially women.” More than ten years after the painful tragedy, the fifth estate takes you, along with the victims’ families, to Place du 6-Décembre-1989 - the Montreal park commemorating the 14 women killed that day.
It was a hot, muggy evening in 1959 when 14-year-old Steven Truscott gave his schoolmate Lynn Harper a ride on his bicycle near an air force base outside Clinton, Ontario. Two days later, the girl’s body was found in a wooded grove near the town. She had been raped and strangled. After a trial that lasted only 15 days, Truscott was convicted of murder and sentenced to be hanged, becoming Canada’s youngest death-row inmate. His death sentence was commuted, but the schoolboy spent a decade in prison before being paroled in 1969. The case of Steven Truscott was the most famous chid criminal case in Canadian judicial history, but Truscott himself disappeared into an anonymous existence, living under an assumed name and shunning all publicity for three decades. Then, in a 2000 episode of the fifth estate, Steven Truscott broke his 40-year silence for the first time, coming forward to maintain his innocence. The fifth estate’s investigation highlighted serious problems with the forensic evidence and showed that police were too hasty in laying charges, ignoring vital testimony of certain key witnesses and not allowing for the possibility of other potential suspects. Following the documentary and a book on the case, Truscott, his family and supporters launched a campaign, with help from lawyers from the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, to get the federal justice minister to re-open the case. On Aug 28, 2007 – 48 years later his original trial – the Ontario Court of Appeal unanimously overturned Truscott’s conviction, declaring the case “a miscarriage of justice” that “must be quashed”. The Ontario Government awarded him $6.5 million in compensation for his ordeal. Truscott now lives in Guelph with his wife of more than four decades, Marlene, who was instrumental in the legal effort to bring about his acquittal.
American Vice-President Dick Cheney has walked the corridors of world power for three decades. Cheney's remarkable life story involves the relentless accumulation of power in every form. Elected for a second term, he continues to be one of the most powerful and well-connected men in the world. The fifth estate will show how he accomplished this, what it involved in terms of costs for others and what history's judgement could be.
With unprecedented behind-the-scenes access, the fifth estate followed five figure skaters, each with a dream of making the Canadian team before the 2006 Olympic Winter Games: Jeff Buttle, Emanuel Sandhu, Christopher Mabee, Joannie Rochette and Lesley Hawker.
We trust the people who sell us and check lottery tickets to be honest. But for some, the temptation to steal a small slip of paper worth hundreds, thousands, and sometimes millions of dollars, can be too strong. There are numerous stories, from all over North America, about legitimate lottery winners being cheated out of their winnings in just such a way. This is the story of two retailers at one store who cheated an unsuspecting winner out of his lottery winnings and the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission who fought him when he tried to get back what was rightfully his.
Since the U.S.-led invasion four years ago, the fifth estate has covered Iraq and the war on terror from virtually every angle--the military, media, intelligence, politics--revealing aspects of the story that you didn't find anywhere else. Now, as the White House warns about the latest threat in the region, this time from Iran, it's worthwhile looking back to examine the deception, suspect intelligence, even lies, that convinced the world of the rightness of targeting Saddam Hussein. The political decisions behind the invasion "The Lies That Led To War" is drawn from these stories: In 2003's "The Forgotten People", the fifth estate examined the human rights arguments used to make a case for war. We looked at the sale of technology by the US to Iraq during the 1980's despite the fact that this equipment could be, and was used eventually, in military operations by Saddam Hussein against Kurdish civilians. After the gassing of the Kurds in 1988, American business with Iraq actually increased. In the widely acclaimed "Conspiracy Theories" and the "Unauthorized Biography of Dick Cheney", which aired in 2003 and 2004 respectively, we looked at intelligence failures leading up to 9/11, Dick Cheney's power within the White House and his Halliburton connections, as well as the links between the Bush family, the Saudi Royal family and the Bin Ladens. Selling the war in Iraq In 2005's "Sticks and Stones", we turned our attention to the American media and how they covered the ongoing war in Iraq, public dissent, as well as the increasingly hostile tone between left and right in American discourse. Now, "The Lies That Led To War" provides context to the events of the previous six years, showing how political, diplomatic, media spin - which sometimes crossed the line into outright lies - have been used by the those in power to further their own agendas.
The launch of Brian Mulroney's volume of memoirs, from his boyhood in Baie Comeau, through his years in power as Prime Minister, was the publishing event of this year. But, in more than 1,000 comprehensive pages of anecdotes and information there is one notable name missing - Karlheinz Schreiber - the German dealmaker at the center of the darkest chapter of Mr. Mulroney's life. In Brian Mulroney: The Unauthorized Chapter, Linden MacIntyre and a fifth estate team report new revelations about the relationship between the two men as well as details about the attempt to cover the trail of the $300,000 the former Prime Minister received from Schreiber. Schreiber goes on the record to talk about a story from inside the world of Canadian politics.
In the 2008 episode ‘Downhill Racer’, the fifth estate’s Bob McKeown spent time with Dave Irwin, a downhill skier once renowned for his daredevil style, who was struggling to recover from a crash that left him with a serious brain injury. At the height of his racing career in the 1970s and 80s, Irwin was one of the ‘Crazy Canucks’, an elite group of racers who took on a sport long dominated by Europeans, and became among the fastest in the world. Irwin competed in the Olympics twice, and in 1975 he won a World Cup race, beating out the favourite, Franz Klammer, on his home mountain in Schladming, Austria. But Irwin’s success came at a cost - he suffered two severe concussions on the World Cup racing circuit, first in 1976 then in 1980 just before the Lake Placid Olympics. At the time, the long-term and cumulative effect of those concussions on his brain was not understood. Then in March 2001, during a training run for a skier-cross event outside Banff, Alberta, he fell again - and this time, it changed his life forever. His knee drove into his forehead, compounding his previous concussions and putting him in a coma. After three days, he woke up, but his memory was destroyed. He did not remember his children, his family, his friend or his fiancee, Lynne Harrison, who he’d met just ten months before his accident. In the years before the fifth estate’s story about Irwin, Harrison had been his constant companion, therapist, and friend, slowly helping him make the comeback of his life. Now, almost 13 years after that last fall, Irwin continues his recovery in his home in Canmore, Alberta. Harrison says she still notices progress in his short-term memory and mood. Now, when he returns from daily visits to a local coffee shop, she says he can remember more details about who he met there, and what they talked about. “Hurting your brain affects your whole life and the lives of everyone around you,” Irwin said. “Doesn’t matter if
A look at the life of Chris Benoit, a Canadian-born wrestler whose life took a tragic turn after he murdered his family and took his own life.
He was just an ordinary guy who stole almost a million dollars. Why?
The latest episode in the long, strange and troubling story of ex-NHL player agent David Frost.
On a rainy night in Kingston in October 2003, third-year Royal Military College cadet Joe Grozelle simply vanished.
An old cold case is warming up.
A story of love and murder in post-Katrina New Orleans.
Bob Gainey's long fight to reveal the truth about his daughter's death at sea.
Giving power to the people. Germany's green revolution and the man who's leading it.
What's killing the professional football players?
When faced with economic hardship, they turned to their most valuable export -- themselves.
Your backstage pass to political theatre.
The price an entire family pays when one member is wrongfully convicted of murder.
Why did the Mounties pursue an innocent man, while someone else got away with murder?
What happens when someone's virtual fantasy takes over their real life.
He was sentenced in the killing of four Mounties. But, his story has never been heard. Until now.
An Alberta teen addiction rehab centre and its controversial treatment methods.
She preyed on the lonely, then married and buried them.
Hockey's unwritten law of fighting and the men who live by it.
When a video gaming obsession turns to addiction and tragedy.
It's been called a "community centre for junkies". Shut it down or keep it going?
Looking for answers, but to which questions?
An investigation into the deaths of Chris Benoit and his family.
Benny Hinn may be the most popular personality in the Christian world today. Thousands pack arenas to see him heal the sick and the afflicted. Tens of thousands more watch his television program. In this episode Bob McKeown investigates Benny Hinn’s “miracles” and his ministry, which collects millions of dollars every year from devoted flock.
An investigation into the murders of four Mounties in Alberta.
The men and women who work at NATO's military hospital at Kandahar air base.
Twenty-five years ago, Bob Mckeown and a fifth estate crew stunned the country with an investigative report that showed that many of the wildlife documentaries we'd grown up watching on television (remember the famous footage of the lemmings going off the cliff or some of the memorable moments from shows like Wild Kingdom?) were staged for the television cameras. As well, they revealed that animals often died during the making of movies; all for the sake of the entertainment value. Now, Bob McKeown and an investigative team have returned to the subject to find out what has changed since the fifth estate's first Cruel Camera documentary. What they found may astonish you.
Disturbing allegations about our safety in the air. How well is our government protecting our safety and security?
Learning lessons about the economic downturn, the hard way.
A young Ottawa woman's suicide leads to an international hunt for an online predator.
He had it all and lost it. Now, Theo Fleury finally may have found himself.
They went off to war like heroes and returned with invisible wounds.
When a bus ride home turned into a night of terror.
What happens when a small town thrill-seeker is lured into B.C.'s billion dollar marijuana business
Eight years after 9/11, why are doubts growing about the official record of that day?
Ashley Smith was a troubled 19-year-old when she choked herself to death with a strip of cloth at Grand Valley Institution in Kitchener, Ontario. Her death made national headlines and led to a scathing report by Canada's federal prison ombudsman. Now, through exclusive access to prison video exposing Ashley's treatment in custody, the fifth estate shares the story of this young woman's harrowing life and the circumstances surrounding her death.
The collapse of a financial giant and its Canadian connection.
Billions have been spent on airport security. But, are we any safer?
Over two decades he bilked investors of $50 million. How did he get away with it for so long?
Part one of a three-part series: How the fifth estate covered the first decade of the 21st century.
Part two of a three-part series: How the fifth estate covered the first decade of the 21st century.
Part three of a three-part series: How the fifth estate covered the first decade of the 21st century.
A string of wrongful murder convictions... and the man who prosecuted them.
A helicopter ride to an oil rig, a crash and 17 deaths. New details about what may have caused it.
She's 13 and has a failing heart. Hannah Jones said "no" to the transplant that will save her life.
Hockey's unwritten law of fighting and the men who live by it.
He's Rich. He's powerful. But what kind of a boss is Peter Nygard?
The shocking case of Colonel Russell Williams. This unbelievable story has captured the country's attention, leaving people to wonder: What really happened? Who is the man behind the headlines?
Linden MacIntyre's personal essay on how the cycle of sexual abuse that plagued small communities in Nova Scotia years ago continues to haunt them today - in new and unexpected ways.
Why did Mark Harshbarger end up dead on a family hunting trip to Newfoundland?
The secret plan to detain thousands of Canadians.
In a special edition of the fifth estate, Bob McKeown decodes the shocking confession of Colonel Russell Williams. From his initial interview to the full declaration of guilt, the fifth estate deciphers one of the most compelling confessions in Canadian history.
With news that a Canada-wide arrest warrant has been issued for convicted sex offender and former junior hockey coach Graham James, the fifth estate presents an updated broadcast of The Fall and Rise of Theo Fleury, containing new details and footage. Originally broadcast in October 2009, Theo Fleury's candid and emotional conversation with host Bob McKeown marked the first time the star hockey player and current star of Battle of the Blades went on the record to talk about the dark secrets that haunted him during his glory years in the NHL and the staggering fall from grace that cost him millions of dollars, his family and almost, his life.
Who really killed Abdinasir Dirie? One Somali family's story of tragedy and broken hopes.
Hana Gartner takes a closer look at the death of Ashley Smith, and reveals exclusive video footage Corrections Canada didn't want Canadians to see
More than a decade after the murder of Fatima Kama, a suspect is finally arrested. But is the case really closed?
Will one young man's courageous decision to come out affect a sport that is so secretive about sexuality?
Were they murdered? Abducted? Or are they living new lives. Tracking the trails of three Canadians who disappeared without a trace.
The personal toll of tragedy: Canadian stories of Haiti's earthquake.
Reporter Bob McKeown's investigation into Nadia Kajouji's tragic death led the fifth estate on an international hunt for an Internet predator. McKeown now returns to Nadia's story as an alleged "Cyberpath" is about to face justice in a precedent-setting case.
Who's killing the Rizzutos? The war against Canada's first crime family.
Online Robin Hood or international criminal: Who is the real Julian Assange?
It's a moment few Canadians will ever forget: the death of a 21-year-old Georgian luger during a Winter Olympics training run. It was ruled driver error. Now, we have shocking new revelations some don't want you to hear.
Hate the crime, love the con. What motivates a woman to stand by her man -- even when her man stands behind bars?
The G20 from a different angle. Unforgettable footage, captured by ordinary people. The sights and sounds of powerful personal stories.
What stories lie behind those headlines about the countless number of Canadians who go missing every year — or worse — are presumed dead? In most cases, tales of loved ones gone missing lead to and from places of tremendous tragedy and deep sadness. Sometimes, though, their stories surprise us with twists and turns that even the closest of friends and relatives never imagined. In "Missing," the fifth estate presents three very unique stories about Canadians gone missing.
White collar criminals waltz away from hard time.
In a particularly personal broadcast, the fifth estate's Bob McKeown traces the career of, and his friendship with, the always fascinating, charismatic, and confounding Stephen Reid.
In the fifth estate's season premiere, we reveal new information that challenges the official story of the mission to shoot and kill the world's number one terrorist
Years later, the crash of Swissair 111 in 1998 remains one of Canada's greatest tragedies. Now new disturbing information from an insider who suspected it might have been murder, raising questions about the official cause of the disaster.
It began with what was supposed to be a second honeymoon, a chance for two tempestuous people -- the world boxing champion from Montreal and his beautiful Brazilian wife -- to heal their troubled marriage. It ended in Brazil with one of them dead and a question. Was it a tragic love story or a murder mystery?
After a decade of disasters at sea, the fifth estate investigates Canada's troubled Search and Rescue fleet and hears from the survivors who lived to tell, and the insiders who tried to save what was once a organization admired around the world.
Inside the brutal secret world of Moammar Gadhafi. As the Libyan dictator vows to fight on to the last bullet -- startling new information is emerging.
A family murdered, a son and his friend convicted, and the confession that could set them free.
Diana Swain investigates sexual abuse in Scouts Canada.
How did an experienced hunter mistake her own husband for a bear -- and shoot him dead? Although acquitted, questions still remain.
Every fall, hundreds of teenagers from remote aboriginal reserves in Northern Ontario fly into the city of Thunder Bay looking to get a high school diploma. But in recent years, that struggle has been tainted by tragedy. Seven of those students have died sudden and unexpected deaths.
An aspiring filmmaker working on an all too convincing screenplay about murder, turns fiction into fact by killing for real.
The chilling final chapter in the fifth estate's investigation into the true life mystery of how a Canadian hockey player, missing for fourteen years, ended up frozen in a glacier crevasse in Austria.
Each year millions of Canadians set off on what they hope will be the vacation of a lifetime. But what happens when things go wrong, and that fantasy trip turns into the holiday from hell?
An investigation into sexual harassment allegations at the RCMP. The inside story of women who signed up to serve and protect and now claim Canada's pre-eminent police force failed to protect them.
'the fifth estate' unveils a new chapter in the murder of Jassi Sidhu, with startling revelations about those who planned and paid for the killing, and how the murderers got away.
The fifth estate investigates shaken baby syndrome. For decades, the diagnosis virtually guaranteed convictions, shattering the lives of thousands of parents, babysitters and families. Now new evidence questions whether the syndrome even exists and whether some of those convictions may have been wrong.
They are pathetic, weird and sometimes dangerous; 'the fifth estate' searches for the truth behind the lies told by some of Canada's most memorable and imaginative con artists.
Bob McKeown presents the latest chapter in the bloody war that has decimated Canada's first family of crime.
A minute-by-minute reconstruction of the Italian cruise ship disaster, with first-hand accounts from the survivors and the rescuers, along with the stories of those who perished.
How the four women found murdered in a Kingston canal lived as virtual prisoners in their own home.
The new chapter in the explosive allegations against Scouts Canada. Are they ready to share what they know with the police?
Are they chasing extremes dreams or are we pushing them over the edge? A look at the life and death of freeskier Sarah Burke and other top athletes who seek fame and fortune and risk life and limb to compete in high performance sport.
Canadian kids and their parents risk everything to chase NBA dreams. Bob McKeown reveals the huge money -- and the scams -- at play for those trying to break into pro basketball.
The OxyContin epidemic: a pill that promises temporary relief has cost many Canadians a lifetime of addiction. the fifth estate investigates one of the most successful marketing campaigns in pharmaceutical history.
A call for help unanswered: why did the Canadian Forces refuse to send the search and rescue helicopter that could have saved a teenaged boy lost in a Labrador blizzard?
the fifth estate recreates a real-life kidnapping minute-by-tension-filled-minute and lets viewers decide what to do to catch the perpetrators each step of the way.
It was May 19, 2012 and a young and determined Canadian was proudly standing on top of the world after an agonizingly slow climb up Mount Everest. Shriya Shah-Klorfine had reached the summit. But in the hours that followed, things would go dreadfully wrong and she would perish, like hundreds before her, high up in Everest's "Death Zone." Since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's first ascent of Everest almost 60 years ago, it has been an irresistible fascination for aspiring mountaineers. Hundreds make the attempt every year, and many don't make it. This year was no exception as hundreds made their way to the summit even as worrying signs pointed to trouble. Among them was Shriya Shah-Klorfine, the cheerful and energetic Torontonian. She had never climbed a mountain before, and despite warnings from her friends, husband, and seasoned Everest sherpas, she was climbing the world's highest peak, determined to succeed. In the season premiere, Bob McKeown travels to Nepal and pieces together what happened with exclusive never-before-seen video of Shah-Klorfine's final hours on Everest. the fifth estate uncovers startling new information about her deadly climb into the icy oxygen-thin expanse of Everest known as the Death Zone.
As the nearly 180-year-old Kingston Penitentiary that has housed some of Canada's most notorious inmates prepares to close its gates for good, Linden MacIntyre weaves together the stories of three of its most famous inmates. "Kingston Pen: Secrets and Lies" is the story of convicts trapped in a cycle of violence, of miscarriages of justice, and psychopaths of incredible charm.
Exclusive new revelations about the troubled F-35 program It could yet prove to be the most expensive defense purchase in Canadian history -- $25 billion and counting. The military promises it's the best fighter jet available, but some critics are saying it's a turkey hatched from a bad idea: a do-it-all plane that might not do anything well-at-all. Was Canada pressured to buy the F-35 fighter jet? Will the jet ever deliver on its promise of being the top gun in the sky? Did the government cover up the true costs to win an election? With secret documents and exclusive interviews with Air Force insiders, Gillian Findlay pieces together the troubling story of the F-35. From Lockheed Martin's first prototype and bungled development process to Canada's decision to buy the fighter jet without an open competition, "Runaway Fighter" raises serious questions about a procurement system seemingly run amok and a jetfighter critics say will never live up to its spin.
Family members say she preyed on the lonely, then married and buried them. Now the so-called Black Widow has been charged with attempted murder after the the suspicious sudden illness of another husband.
Diagnosed with ALS, one woman's public fight to meet death on her own terms. Gloria Taylor was the first Canadian ever to win the right to ask a doctor for help in dying, when and how and where she wished. "The Life and Death of Gloria Taylor" documents her struggle with mortality as she fights publicly to change the law over the course of what would be the last year of her life. Doomed by ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), Gloria Taylor became dependent on medical technology. Her fight for life was futile, and she could only hope for what she called a dignified ending. the fifth estate's Linden MacIntyre first met her more than a year ago as she battled with a disease that has no cure, and had just begun another struggle in British Columbia's Supreme Court to have the right to decide the time and manner of her death. She agreed to let the fifth estate follow her throughout that struggle, the private highs and lows, and the personal indignities throughout the final year of her life. In her many conversations with the fifth estate, Taylor maintained that she didn't want to kill herself and she didn't want anybody else to do it for her. It was just an option she wanted, a last resort. "The Life and Death of Gloria Taylor" chronicles her perseverance, her final victory in court, the backlash that threatened to take her victory away and in the end the peaceful death she had always wished for.
They have the courage to stand up and speak out when no one else dares, yet the popular perception of whistleblowers is they are doomed to be victims of reprisals. But when the fifth estate caught up with some of its more memorable whistleblowers, we found out their lives can take twists and turns no one ever expected. These cases offer an ironic insight into what was supposed to be a new era of transparency and integrity in Canada. To date, not a single case has been prosecuted under Canada's Public Servant Disclosure Protection Act, and the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner was dismissed in disgrace. It was the late '90s when the fifth estate first caught up with Drs. Shiv Chopra and Margaret Haydon. The two Health Canada scientists had serious concerns about a new synthetic drug that promised to transform dairy farming by increasing milk production in cows. Chopra and Haydon went public with their concerns and allegations that the manufacturer had offered regulators a bribe, and used questionable tactics as part of a campaign to get the drug approved in Canada. They would eventually both be both fired by Health Canada for insubordination and have spent years trying to get their jobs back. Bovine Growth Hormone was never approved in Canada. "To serve and protect." It's the motto of numerous police forces, and the declaration of duty which underpins the decision made by so many Canadians to take on a career in law enforcement. For as long as Victoria Cliffe can remember, she's known she wanted to be a police officer. But when she came forward to allege she'd been sexually harassed and assaulted by a superior officer, she became the target of a smear campaign. She's paid a high personal price for speaking out, but today she says she's still just as proud to wear the RCMP uniform. And a decade ago, Holly Brewer told the fifth estate an incredible story of a young girl pitted against her religion. Growing up as a Jehovah's Witness in New Hampshire, Bre
Lance Armstrong was an inspiration to millions - he overcame a deadly disease and was hailed as one of the world's greatest athletes - but insiders knew the truth. the fifth estate examines the widespread use and abuse of doping in international cycling and how Lance Armstrong kept this dark secret for years.
Two years ago, thousands of lives were lost and the landscape of Japan was changed forever by a tsunami that saw more than five million tonnes of debris swallowed up by the ocean. Mark Kelley reports on the Second Wave tsunami headed for Canadian shores, and a remarkable human drama that links our country with Japan.
He's been called a geo-vigilante, an eco-terrorist, or alternatively a visionary who simply wants to save the world. For years, American businessman Russ George has nurtured a controversial idea: to fix global warming by seeding the ocean with iron. Thumbing his nose at U.N. conventions and possibly Canadian law, George teamed up with a Haida village on B.C.'s West Coast and carried out the biggest iron fertilization project to date.
Cynthia Vanier had seemingly hit the big time in business, politics and international intrigue, working with Canada's largest engineering firm, SNC Lavalin, to protect billions of dollars worth of projects in Libya. That work led her to cross paths with one of the world's most notorious family names -- Gadhafi. But as events unfolded, she became a part of a fiasco so complex that she'll likely never fully understand it, nor recover from its impact on her life. On this week's the fifth estate, Linden MacIntyre tells the story of Cynthia Vanier and how she claims she was duped into a risky mission in Libya, and is now spending her days in a shabby prison in southern Mexico fighting allegations of terrorism, human trafficking and criminal conspiracy.
Bob McKeown hosts the fifth estate's sweeping cross-country investigation into Canada's hospitals and what they don't want you to know.
We’ve heard about the dangers of eating too much fat or salt. But there has never been a warning about sugar on our food labels - despite emerging research that suggests the sweet stuff is making more of us fat and sick. Gillian Findlay reveals ‘The Secrets of Sugar’ in the fifth estate’s season premiere
Who made that shirt you are wearing? When Mark Kelley went looking in Bangladesh he found some shocking answers.
When a body was found in a roadside ditch outside Mexico City, it seemed like just another murder – one of tens of thousands of violent killings in that country each year. But the victim was in fact the hard-working mother of two and the branch manager for Canadian-owned Scotiabank. The death of Maru Oropesa revealed the risks that Canadian banks and their employees face in one of the most corrupt countries in the world. From one murder in Mexico, the fifth estate’s Bob McKeown follows the money trail to secret accounts in Switzerland, and into the underworld of Mexican money laundering.
How do you move three enormous elephants 4000 kilometres? Very very carefully and bring lots of hay.... When the fifth estate joined the convoy taking 3 Canadian elephants overland to the PAWS sanctuary in California it was bound to be an incredible journey filled with tension, drama and unpredictability. The good news for Toka, Thika and Iringa is that the long battle over their welfare appears to have a very happy ending.
The controversial WikiLeaks founder gets the Hollywood treatment in the new movie 'The Fifth Estate' but the real fifth estate on CBC-TV tracks the inside story of the man in his own words, his secrets and his scandals. How did he get started, what was the global impact of his whistle-blowing website and what cost have whistle-blowers paid for leaking secrets? The rise and fall of Julian Assange - not the Hollywood fiction, the real fifth estate story.
Crack cocaine. Alcohol. Friends who have criminal backgrounds. Just over a year ago, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford stood next to Police Chief Bill Blair promising to fight gang crime. Now the two most powerful men in Canada's largest city are locked in a struggle only one is likely to survive. Gillian Findlay has more on the man who has become the world's most controversial mayor - and the real story behind that first notorious video.
With never-before-seen videos and online chats, the fifth estate tells the real story of what happened to Amanda Todd, the B.C. teen haunted by one revealing photo on the Internet. The blackmail and the sexual extortion that drove her to her death - and the new breed of online predators who threaten other young people online.
When national tragedies occur they naturally trigger painful soul-searching. Whether it is the murder of JFK or the dreadful events of 9/11, Americans have searched long and hard for answers. In both cases a national consensus emerged over time about the single gunman who shot JFK... and the reasons the towers collapsed on 9/11. But some still question the so-called 'official version' of history. They passionately believe in other - often radical - explanations. And they think there might be conspiracies to hide the real truth.
North Korea is among the world's most mysterious and secretive countries. The little we know comes from desperate souls who risk everything escaping overland in search of a new life. Many are captured in China and sent back home to an uncertain future. But a few somehow manage to make it all the way to Canada. The Last Great Escape is the story of two courageous individuals who fled a life of privation and fear and survived to tell the tale. Their stories come to life in special animation designed for the fifth estate.
In the past few years, the federal government has cut funding to more than 76 world renowned research institutes and hundreds of programs. Now scientists have become unlikely radicals, denouncing what they call is a politically-driven war on knowledge. In The Silence of the Labs, Linden MacIntyre tells the story of scientists - and what is at stake for Canadians - from Nova Scotia to the B.C. Pacific Coast to the far Arctic Circle.
The federal government has made it a priority: to toughen laws that allow people who commit violent acts to be found ‘not criminally responsible’ due to mental illness. The question: Is it for reasons of public safety or public opinion? In “The Man Who Hears Voices”, Bob McKeown interviews Jeffrey Arenburg, who speaks out for the first time since he was found not criminally responsible for killing a popular Ottawa sportscaster.
In ‘Walk the Line’, Mark Kelley has the astonishing story of former Montreal police investigator Benoit Roberge, once known for putting bikers behind bars, but now accused of selling police information to the Hells Angels - and insight from other officers who have walked that thin line between cop and criminal. A joint investigation by Radio-Canada's Enquête and the fifth estate.
Linden MacIntyre tells the surprising story of what happened to some survivors of the perilous voyage of the Black Dragon – a ship packed with Chinese migrants who risked death for a better life, only to face deportation after washing ashore off the coast of BC in 1999.
Gillian Findlay gets inside the ultra-orthodox Jewish community of Lev Tahor, now facing allegations of child abuse, and uncovers troubling facts about the past of its leader, Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans.
Linden MacIntyre traces how disgraced Conservative Senator Mike Duffy's larger than life ambition and questionable expenses ballooned into a political scandal that could take down the Senate.
When two Quebec sisters turned up dead in a Thailand hotel in 2012, authorities suggested everything from drugs to food poisoning. But an updated investigation by the fifth estate's Mark Kelley points to new evidence that a highly toxic pesticide used to control bedbugs in some hotels in Asia may have caused their deaths.
It’s a question you would think medical science would have answered long ago – when are you dead? But in “Dead Enough” the fifth estate explores how the standards for when and how people are declared dead can vary from province to province and even from hospital to hospital. Bob McKeown looks at how, in the rush to meet the need for life-saving organ transplants, some doctors are worried that we may be pushing the ethical boundaries.
This season, the fifth estate was flooded with tips from viewers, asking our team to investigate stories important to you. We listened, we did our research, and now in 'Your Tips, Our Stories' hosts Mark Kelley and Bob McKeown have three stories - of deceit, a suspicious death, and corruption - built on your suggestions.
Even after a story airs on television, the fifth estate does not stop investigating. In our season finale 'After the Cameras Went Away', Gillian Findlay reveals the latest on the controversial religious sect Lev Tahor, Mark Kelley checks in with a survivor of the collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh, and finally, Bob McKeown finds out how the Toronto Zoo elephants are adapting to sunny California.
On a special commercial-free edition of the fifth estate The Fear Within, a special investigation into Wednesday's attack in Ottawa and the wider events behind it. Two soldiers killed in a week. What was behind the attacks - and what went wrong? Plus startling new revelations about young Canadian men making their own journey to jihad. Join hosts Bob McKeown, Mark Kelly, Gillian Findlay and Linden Macintyre as the International Emmy Award-winning show returns for its 40th season.
It was a deadly defect in an ignition switch that led to the recall of millions of GM cars like the Cobalt and the Ion and the confirmed deaths of almost 30 drivers, with close to 200 more being investigated. In the premiere episode of the fifth estate’s 40th season, Bob McKeown investigates what and when did GM and Transport Canada know about the problem -- and reveals startlingly new information about fatal crashes in Canada
26-year-old Emma Fillipoff disappears from the streets of Victoria in 2012 and has never been seen since. Was it murder, suicide -- or did she want to hide? Mark Kelley follows a mother’s determined journey to look for her daughter – and looks at how hard it is to find many of 60,000 people who are reported missing every year in Canada.
He was only five years old when his adoptive parents decided they didn't want him anymore … so they gave him away to a complete stranger – on the Internet. In a fifth estate investigation called “A Boy Named Moses,” Gillian Findlay looks at the unregulated practice of what is euphemistically called “rehoming.”
They were just witnesses to a murder, pressured by the police to change their story until the wrong man was jailed for a crime he did not commit. Linden MacIntyre takes you inside “The Interrogation Room” with disturbing police videotapes that reveal an investigation gone terribly wrong.
An investigation into the downfall of writer, musician and broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi.
The name of Amanda Todd became synonymous with cyber-bullying and loss after the B.C. teenager committed suicide. Mark Kelley of the fifth estate reveals the never before told story of her accused online stalker, the global police hunt for him and troubling questions about why the suspect wasn’t stopped before Amanda took her own life.
He casts a long shadow over globe. Russian leader Vladimir Putin has outlasted three U.S. presidents and is on track to stay in power until 2024. But a joint investigation by the fifth estate and PBS’ Frontline reveals an even darker side to one of the world’s most powerful leaders: Allegations of criminal activity dating back to his early days as a top official in St. Petersburg; ties to organized crime and money-laundering activities; and a secret personal fortune said to be in the billions.
When cops pretend to be criminals to get answers, the line between confessions and lies is blurred.
He is one of Canada’s wealthiest businessmen and a respected philanthropist. But when Michael DeGroote invested millions in a dream venture of Caribbean casinos, it led to a nightmare of death threats and revenge plots and the involvement of a leading Mafia Godfather.An explosive year-long investigation by the CBC and the Globe and Mail.
Everyone knows that marijuana is illegal. So why does Canada seem to be awash in pot? You can buy it openly in a surprising number of ways and places. The system the federal government set up to give people access to medical marijuana is broken. Could it be that something’s happening out there and no one told Prime Minister Stephen Harper? Mark Kelley exposes some real Pot Fiction.
The fifth estate updates dramatic developments in previous stories about a crumbling casino empire in the Caribbean, the death of a Canadian skier, a North Korean defector and the fate of the Costa Concordia captain.
Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy never expected he would go to jail just for doing his job. But in his first ever television interview since release, Fahmy describes 400 days of utter hell, some of which he spent locked up with hardened prisoners and violent jihadists. This week he sat down with the fifth estate's Gillian Findlay in Cairo and told his whole story - from the horror of conviction, to his disappointment in Canada's prime minister, to what he thinks will happen when his new trial
​It's a multi-billion dollar battle for your belly. Millions of people are joining the anti-wheat revolution. Kellogg's, the world's largest cereal maker, has seen its biggest drop in sales since the 1970s. Food companies are selling off their struggling bread divisions. It's all because best-selling health evangelists say that wheat is causing everything from fat bellies to schizophrenia. But do they have science on their side? Mark Kelley takes a hard look at what's driving a movement that is dramatically changing the way we eat.
It has been another brutal winter for much of Canada. In Labrador, it's the second coldest winter on record. The extreme cold is a reminder of how precarious life can be for people who live in remote regions and who rely on Canada’s search and rescue service when things go wrong. In late February, a Labrador teenager died after he walked away from his remote village and got lost on the ice. No one reported him missing for days so it’s doubtful even the best rescue service would have made a difference. But his death was a powerful reminder of 14-year-old Burton Winters, who got lost in a blinding blizzard but might have been saved if Search and Rescue had sent a military helicopter. Our story then raised serious questions about Canada’s search and rescue system – questions that three years later remain largely unanswered.
It’s the untold tale of prescription drug abuse in professional sport. An investigation by the fifth estate discovers a shocking story of the rampant over-prescription of drugs by some team doctors in major sports leagues.
He was the first judge in Canadian history to be convicted of murder. Now from behind bars at a maximum security prison where he is serving a life sentence for killing his wife, Jacques Delisle reveals for the first time what he says really happened in a candid interview with fifth estate host Mark Kelley -- and makes some startling revelations about the case.
Chazz Petrella had an idyllic childhood in Cobourg, Ontario - four siblings, loving parents, a hobby farm. But that all changed when his rages became too much for his family to handle. He was diagnosed with mental illness at age ten and was soon on the case-loads of nine agencies and services - including residential placements. Despite all of this care, Chazz committed suicide just after he turned 12. Why did a boy who seemed to have access to best of Ontario's child and youth services die?
A woman - protected by a publication ban and known only as 'NS' - who went to the Supreme Court to fight for her right to wear the niqab; a career criminal, known as the 'Gentleman Bankrobber,' who just couldn't quit robbing banks; and the rise and fall of Senator Mike Duffy, who goes on trial next week.
A daughter, a niece, a friend. Underage girls forced into prostitution, sexually exploited by pimps praying on their vulnerability. Who are these teens? Mark Kelley sits down with four young women from Edmonton and finds out how they were targeted, recruited, and groomed into the sex trade. The fifth estate also follows the police and community and outreach workers as they race against time – trying to prevent the young girls becoming the next murdered and missing women
When the Fifth Estate went on air forty years ago there was nothing like it on Canadian TV. On the night of September 16, 1975 Adrienne Clarkson signed on with a shocking story about a plane crash in the High Arctic called Death at 100 Below. It would set the tone for the next four decades. Since then, our teams have literally been everywhere on earth, shooting stories that have changed laws, brought criminals to justice, and set the wrongfully-convicted free. Along the way you might say we’ve made many friends and a few enemies. On the occasion of our 40th birthday we thought it was time to investigate ourselves for a change – let you in on some of our adventures and misadventures over the years.
One of the largest decisions weighing on the shoulders of prime minister-designate Justin Trudeau is what role, if any, should Canada play in the war against ISIS. And how will Canadians know whether their efforts are having the intended results? Do we really know what our troops are doing in Iraq? Do we even know whether Coalition airstrikes are hitting intended targets?Bob Mckeown reports from the front lines of Canada's war in Iraq and Syria.
Theirs is a reputation forged in fire -- built on bravery, dedication and danger. But privately, there’s a dark side; a burning secret inside so many fire halls across the country. Female firefighters who spoke to the fifth estate say they are being bullied and harassed on the job. Despite this they keep fighting, and across the country young women are signing up to become firefighters, driven by the fire within.
As many as three out of four Canadians use natural health products. From herbal remedies to minerals, vitamins and other supplements, it’s a billion dollar industry that includes everyone from Big Pharma to Mom and Pop operations. They're products packed with promises, but what’s actually in the bottle? Could we be taking too much? And could they actually be harmful to your health?
It took the University of British Columbia more than a year and a half to act against a grad student, despite mounting complaints of harassment or sexual assault by at least six women on campus. The women say Dmitry Mordvinov, a 28-year old PHD student in the history department, committed a wide range of offensive acts against them from inappropriate touching to sexual assault. Mordvinov was quietly expelled and told the fifth estate he's appealing. The fifth estate takes you inside the story of the women’s fight to have their allegations taken seriously. Right after we reported the details of our story online UBC issued a "Response to the fifth estate program" and a public apology. "I want to apologize to the women in these cases who feel they have been let down by our university," Martha Piper, 
interim president and vice-chancellor, said in a statement issued online.
A special fifth estate investigation – with teams across the globe: Gillian Findlay in Turkey, Mark Kelley in France and Adrienne Arsenault in Belgium. How Europe plans to dismantle the deadly terror network and what the Paris attacks mean for Ottawa's ambitious plans to bring in tens of thousands of refugees. One famous family's story of hope and endurance.
The troubling story of two teenaged brothers from Ottawa that caught everyone's attention. They were the sons of Canada’s consul-general in Miami. So how did these two Canadian teens get caught up in the dark side ofMiami's drug scene? One dead in a drug deal gone wrong, the other charged as his accomplice – and now behind bars and in front of the courts, facing the potential of life in prison. With crime scene pictures, courtroom video and exclusive interviews the fifth estate takes you inside one mother's struggle to save the one son she has left.
Neil Bantleman and his wife were in search of adventure when they went to teach at a prestigious private school in Jakarta. But then came the horrifying accusation from a parent who believed her boy had been sexually abused by staff at the school. It set off an never-ending nightmare for the two Canadians. Last April, Neil Bantleman was convicted of sex assault. Though he won on appeal, he now awaits the ruling of Indonesia's top court and prays that one day they will be free to leave Indonesia and put to rest the terrible nightmare.
An investigation into the murders of three women, who were killed within hours of each other near the small town of Wilno, Ont. The murderer was acquainted with the victims and had a history of violence.
An investigation of doctors who've been accused of crossing ethical or legal boundaries with female patients.
A look at stories the show first investigated decades ago: a miner's daughter searches for answers about a dangerous powder; a famed bank robber meets a surprising fate; and an accused war criminal deported from Canada ends up at the center of a precedent-setting court case in the U.S.
A Canadian gold mine in Africa faces controversy when it partners with a brutal government. Mark Kelley investigates the price of doing business with a dictator.
An investigation into the 2011 murder of Richard Oland at the hands of his son Dennis who was sentenced to life in prison.
A look at unusual groups in Canada, including people who promote a "miracle mineral solution" of bleach they claim cures many ills.
A look at Donald Trump's campaign to become the Republican nominee for U.S. president.
A man challenges a Nova Scotia law that allows parents total guardianship over adult children who are deemed mentally incompetent. Also, a Toronto homicide detective recounts a haunting homicide case.
Coverage of the sexual-assault court case against TV personality Jian Ghomeshi.
Three tales of stolen treasures: A hunt across two continents for the true owner of a Modigliani masterpiece that may have been looted by the Nazis during World War II. The first television interview with one of Canada’s most prolific art thieves, John Mark Tillmann -- he stole an estimated 10,000 items and the Mountie who tracked him down called him a “kleptomaniac with taste.” And on the frontlines with Canada’s little-known wildlife cops, who are tackling a $30 billion illegal trade in everything from reptile parts, plants, tusks and ivory.
Canadian officials supplied Syrian torturers with interrogation questions for three Canadians who were detained and tortured in Syria and Egypt during the post-Sept. 11 crackdown on terror suspects. Documents obtained by the fifth estate show Canadian officials not only knew Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin would likely be tortured at the hands of Syrian intelligence officers, they supplied them with interrogation questions. Two separate federal inquiries found Canadian authorities played a role in the torture of Canadians abroad and the trio -- none of whom was ever arrested in Canada for suspected terror offences -- filed a $100-million lawsuit against the government in 2006. Earlier this year, their lawyers won a lengthy court battle with the RCMP and CSIS to gain access to nearly 18,000 pages of heavily redacted documents. CBC News obtained exclusive access to the documents. In “The Torture Files,” a joint investigation by the fifth estate and CBC’s The National, Terence McKenna explores just how far CSIS and the RCMP went in their collaboration with the brutal Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad that resulted in the torture of three Canadians. The treasure trove consists of internal memos, briefing notes from field agents to their superiors, inter-agency communications, emails, reports and even a memo that shows at least one RCMP officer on the case might have had serious doubts about their targets. Watch Terence McKenna's report on The National on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and Friday night at 11:30 PM on the fifth estate. The Torture Files also airs Sunday at 7 PM ET on CBC News Network.
Big Tobacco is trying clean up its image, moving into the booming e-cigarette business which continuing to peddle the deadly tobacco products. This has left public health officials in Canada, the U.K. and the US Five million Canadians still smoke. Could e-cigarettes help wean them over to a safer nicotine delivery device? Many ex-smokers say 'yes.' E-cigarettes are their salvation. Health Canada is on the cusp of deciding how e-cigarettes should be regulated. Mark Kelly heads to England -- a country that has taken bold steps in embracing the e-cigarette as a safer alternative. Will Canada? And what will this mean for our e-cigarette industry? Until now, e-cigarettes with nicotine have not been endorsed by Health Canada. And that's kept Big Tobacco out of the Canadian market. Will new regulations open the doors for a tarred industry to join in the e-cigarette revolution?
In recent months, tens of thousands of desperate souls have been saved from certain death in the frigid waters of the Mediterranean. Recently, the crew of the Red Cross MOAS Responder agreed to let The Fifth Estate come onboard to join in one of their rescue missions. As our cameras rolled, on a single day, hundreds of migrants were plucked from listing wooden boats and rubber dinghies. The CBC's Nahlah Ayed chronicles the huge international effort to save migrants who seek a better life in Europe but often risk death getting there.
They are images that shocked America and were shared around the world – disturbing cell phone videos taken by bystanders of police shooting black men in America. They became political fodder for an ugly presidential campaign. To capture what is really going on during these confrontations, police-worn body cameras are increasingly seen as the answer: a way to curb the killings - and police the police. But can the police-worn body cameras also distort the picture? Do they sometime give us an incomplete version of what really happened? Mark Kelley investigates what happens when police are “caught on camera” in the U.S. and Canada.
It was a tale all too common - a young Indigenous man drowned in Thunder Bay. Stacy DeBungee was last seen alive by some friends on the evening of October 18, 2015. What happened that night was a mystery, but three hours after finding the body the next morning Thunder Bay police issued a press release saying they found nothing suspicious about the death. It was the same rush to judgement they had been accused of in many other deaths of young Indigenous people. So the fifth estate went looking for answers and found several people who were there that night – but they had never been properly interviewed by the police. Gillian Findlay investigates.
On November 16, 1969, the body of a young woman was found along Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles. She had been stabbed 157 times. The body was never claimed. The name of the murdered woman would remain unknown for the next 46 years -- her case was simply known as “Jane Doe #59.” Nearly half a century later, three childhood friends from Montreal identify her as their long lost friend – Reet Jurvetson. Now the Los Angeles and Montreal police are trying to piece together the final weeks of Jurvetson’s life and the fifth estate helps uncover new clues that might help unlock a decades-old mystery.
A tale from the shadier side of the stock market - from the streets of Montreal, but with a cast of characters right out of a Hollywood movie. A joint investigation by the fifth estate and Radio-Canada’s Enquete program digs into the often dubious Montreal-based penny stock promotion business and raises questions about how Quebec’s financial market regulators failed to stop certain promoters who were allegedly cheating thousands of investors across North America.
It was a murder that shocked a nation. Tim Bosma, a church-going husband and young father had gone on a test drive with two men who said they wanted to buy his truck. Dellen Millard and Mark Smich were later found guilty of his murder. Now Bob McKeown and the fifth estate team unravel what happened on that fateful spring night – with witnesses who speak for the first time, never-before-seen video and an in-depth look into the background of Dellen Millard.
Giving chronic alcoholics an hourly dose of wine - a bold but controversial way to deal with alcoholism. Mark Kelley visits an Ottawa treatment centre to meet the residents and the care workers involved in a program that has attracted attention from around the world.
We pay more for prescription drugs than almost every other country in the world - and rising drug costs are taking a toll on Canadians.
An ugly and controversial U.S. election campaign got even uglier - and more bizarre - after the election was over. In recent days Donald Trump has faced a storm of questions.
Richard Oland of the Moosehead brewing family was bludgeoned to death. His son Dennis is convicted of the brutal murder, but then wins his appeal and is set free.
On January 29, 2017, a young man in Quebec enters a mosque and fires his rifle into the crowd - killing six worshipers. On the same weekend, tens of thousands gather across North America to protest what they see as President Trump's discriminatory bans on Muslim immigrants and refugees. Do these events point to a more fearful future? Do they suggest more dangerous and precarious times ahead for Muslims in North America?
The fifth estate takes a walk on the wild side. Bob Mckeown presents portraits of people who experience the animal kingdom in very different ways.
A CBC investigation reveals how lawyers across Canada have misappropriated and mishandled clients' money to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.
It may seem bizarre to put the words “Mennonites” and “Drugs” in the same sentence, but for years some members of the God-fearing religious community has been smuggling narcotics from Mexico into the United States and Canada
A story of money, secrecy and greed: a tax dodge for the wealthy dreamed up by one of the biggest accounting giants in the world.
It grew in just a couple of years from a hashtag to a powerful movement that has taken on police shootings of black people and is defiantly challenging the political establishment. The Fifth Estate takes you inside the powerful Black Lives Matter movement, with Janaya Khan, the Toronto activist who has become its international ambassador.
They come in the dead of night, in the bitter cold - refugees seeking haven in Canada. Hundreds have crossed the border from the United States in the last couple of months alone. Every year, Canada receives several thousand people claiming asylum. But once they are here, what really happens to asylum seekers? The Fifth Estate’s new co-host Habiba Nosheen looks at the hopes, the fears and the long legal battles to get to stay in Canada.
Eight deaths of elderly patients under her care. Nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer is arrested for murder. Charged with eight counts of first-degree murder and four counts of attempted murder. What happened? Revelations about her and her life from close friends, neighbours and the nurse’s own words.
In a season finale of The Fifth Estate, the youth of Cross Lake, a northern Indigenous community, share their hopes and dreams about growing up in a northern Indigenous community that has been plagued by suicides.
It's a dark tale of people vanishing, mystery, and suspicion of murder: Nearly two decades ago in a secluded part of Ontario's cottage country, four elderly people disappeared without a trace. Police spent years searching for bodies, clues and answers. To this day, the seniors have never been found -- and no one has been held accountable for their disappearance.
t’s a fact that pit bulls, with their powerful jaws, can kill and maim. Google ‘pit bull attacks’ if you dare. But are pit bulls born bad or do humans make them that way? Therein lies an emotional – sometimes vicious - debate. On one side, traumatized families and public safety advocates. On the other, a powerful group of lobbyists who say pit bulls are the most misunderstood breed of dogs and are no more dangerous than any other pets.
They are crimes a regime wants to keep secret: tens of thousands of Syrians have “disappeared” in the past six years of civil war, swept away to government prisons and detention centres to be interrogated, tortured and worse.
He pulled off a first-ballot victory to become the new leader of the NDP, becoming the first visible minority to head a major political party in Canada.
It seemed so perfect, so scientific - a hair test that could objectively determine whether parents of young children were abusing drugs or alcohol. But it turns out the 'Motherisk' hair testing was flawed, and improperly administered all across Canada over twenty years. The results were devastating. Families broken up, children seized and irrevocably adopted out. The Fifth Estate tracked down parents who share stories for the first time on Tainted Tests: Broken Families. Mark Kelley reports. A joint investigation with the Toronto Star and CBC Radio’s The Current.
He was an undercover officer working on the streets of New Jersey before he started working with the FBI. In June of 2012, he got a call from his bosses. They wanted him to check out men they believed were involved in a terrorist plot to blow up a Canadian passenger train. Tamer Elnoury, who is an Arabic-speaking Muslim, was perfectly positioned to infiltrate a group of suspected terrorists. In an exclusive Canadian TV interview, an elaborately disguised Elnoury sits down with Habiba Nosheen and explains the life of an undercover agent, and the terror plot he foiled.
It's a story of dark money, dirty politics and powerful people. ​When Donald Trump gave TransCanada the nod to build a pipeline that would carry Canadian crude oil to the gulf of Mexico, it seemed like liquid gold for the Alberta-based company. But a group of angry farmers and activists in mid-western American states are trying everything they can to stop the 'ugly Canadians' from digging a pipeline and running oil through their beloved farmlands. But is anyone listening? Bob Mckeown investigates TransCanada’s influential allies in Washington and the deal to build Keystone XL.
So, your favourite band is coming to town and you are desperate to get tickets. You go online but can’t seem to get through…and when you do, the tickets are all gone…but then they pop up on a different site at a vastly inflated price. What happened? You may have just lost out to a super-scalper, possibly assisted by ‘bots’ that scoop up tickets online faster than any human can. The Fifth Estate delves deep into the incredibly lucrative world of online ticket sales with the story of a Canadian Super Scalper – as revealed in the Paradise Papers.
More than five decades after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November, 1963, for many people there remain troubling questions about the official story: Was Lee Harvey Oswald the killer? Did he act alone or was it a conspiracy? Now, thousands of once-secret classified documents about the Kennedy assassination have finally been made public. Can those recently-released records explain the inexplicable -- and what’s in the thousands of assassination records they still refuse to release? When The Fifth Estate first broadcast its investigation into the JFK assassination back in 1983, it was the most watched show in the program’s history. Now Bob McKeown updates that story, with new interviews with some of the leading investigators of the JFK mystery: what did they find in those files, and what questions do they still have?
On a late September day in 2015, three women were brutally killed in Renfrew County, Ontario. And now 59-year-old Basil Borutski stands convicted of those crimes, the details of which he revealed in a rambling five hour interrogation in which he cast himself as victim. The truth is that Borustki had been well-known to police for years. How did the system that’s supposed to protect women go so disastrously wrong? Gillian Findlay investigates, with revealing interviews with family members, friends of victims and witnesses ... and excerpts from the Borutski confession.
There have been 10 suspicious deaths since 2009 at London, Ontario's Elgin Middlesex Detention Centre, often just known as EMDC. Some by suicide, others from drug overdose and even brutal murders. EMDC has gained a reputation as one of Canada's most notorious and deadliest jails, so much so that even some correctional officers fear for their lives behind those walls. Habiba Nosheen investigates why so many inmates keep dying inside this institution and why more isn't being done to keep staff and inmates safe. And in a face to face interview with a man who murdered his cellmate, she tries to find out what is going on inside what some people call, the devil's playground.
When it comes to gambling, Canadians have plenty of skin in the game. Last year, we spent about $13 billion on legal, government-run gambling. That's more than we spend on movies, hockey tickets, and Tim Horton’s -- combined.
It sounded like a bad Hollywood horror movie. Patients at a psychiatric hospital subjected to intensive shock treatments, LSD and drug-induced comas. But for hundreds of Canadians, it was an all-too real nightmare. They were brutal experiments on human guinea pigs -- funded by the Canadian government and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
He was a rich kid who stood to inherit millions from his father's aviation business. But he was into self gratification - the kind that came from throwing wild parties and engaging in petty crimes like robbery and drug-dealing. And into his life walked Laura Babcock, an impressionable young woman and an aspiring actress. The deeper she got drawn into Millard's web, the more dangerous it became. In the summer of 2012, Laura Babcock disappeared, never to be seen again. Last month Millard was convicted of killing her, just as he had been previously of murdering a young man named Tim Bosma...This is the story of the murderous ways of Dellen Millard.
Rocked by allegations of sexual harassment, Soulpepper -- one of Canada’s most famous theatre companies -- promised “renewal and change.” But a fifth estate investigation into how the company handled past allegations of sexual harassment raises troubling questions about secrecy and transparency with its staff.
As Canada prepares for legal pot, the federal government plans to spend as much as $80-million to train 750 police officers to smoke out high drivers. But how sound is the test? A Fifth Estate investigation raises serious questions, showing it can lead to false arrests, is prone to police bias and, according to one scientific expert, is no better at detecting high drivers than “flipping a coin”.
Barry Sherman was Canada’s top pharmaceutical executive, worth over $4 billion dollars. His wife, Honey was a philanthropist who raised millions for charities. They were loved and admired for their success and generosity. But Barry also had a long list of enemies which had grown over time as he battled rivals in courtrooms and boardrooms, always determined to win, whatever the cost… So when the couple were found strangled in their Toronto home in December, the whispers began. Did someone really hate them enough to kill them? Was it a professional hit, an act of bitter vengeance from someone known to the Shermans, or was there another explanation? The Fifth Estate uncovers new leads in the mystery of the Sherman murders.
It was a strange thing to do - go backpacking in war-torn Afghanistan in 2012. But Joshua Boyle and wife Caitlin Coleman were keen on adventure. Instead they would be picked up, locked up and held hostage for five years by the Taliban. Caitlin would give birth to three children in captivity. While their release in October ended one hideous nightmare, their lives in Canada have come with daunting new challenges. Habiba Nosheen talks to Caitlin Coleman about her years as a hostage, and her early months of freedom.
Secret audio tapes and an exclusive television interview with an industry whistleblower reveal a shady practice that is industry-wide. A Fifth Estate investigation shows how Costco pressed one generic drug company for illegal payments to stock their products -- undermining government attempts to protect consumers.
It was news of an alleged serial killer that shocked a community, a city and a country: In early 2018 Bruce McArthur was charged with six counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of missing men from Toronto's gay village. But the case is far from closed and as the police continue their investigation, the death toll is expected to rise. The allegations are that McArthur spent years masterfully covering his tracks. McArthur denies all the accusations.
Why are there no seat belts on school buses? The Fifth Estate asked that question and discovered a flawed Transport Canada study which argued against seat belts.
The Trouble With Uber - Gillian Findlay reveals how Uber has come, conquered, and compromised road safety in many Canadian cities. Finding Jennifer - the second part of our investigation.
Murder in the Jungle - Mark Kelley investigates what really happened when a young man from B.C. was lynched in Peru this year. Muslim Adoption Ban - Habiba Nosheen digs into Ottawa's ban.
Unnecessary Risk - Years before Humboldt, Transport Canada was warned that without seatbelts on coach buses, people will die in an accident. The warnings were ignored.
Bob McKeown investigates a controversial Filipino church with thousands of Canadian members. / Do parents really benefit from storing their baby's cord blood in a private bank?
AI-manipulated video has become so sophisticated that words can literally be put into people's mouths. It's war. On one side, the NY Times. On the other, POTUS.
GIllian Findlay investigates a permanent birth control device. And in High Impact: Kathleen Wynne's views about seat belts on school buses have changed.
It's illegal in Ontario and drives up the price of generic drugs across Canada. So why are pharmacists engaging in it? Polygamy is against the Canadian Criminal Code.
With a new Congress having taken office, the talk of impeachment in the air. Soleiman Faqiri was a troubled young man. He suffered from mental illness.
The Lone Wolf: It was characterized as a lone wolf incident. But was it really? Ghost Immigrants: It's a small, relatively modest house in Calgary. So why was it listed as the residence for 60-people.
A young woman from B.C. was killed during a visit to India in the year 2000. Her mother and uncle allegedly planned it because she married a poor Indian rickshaw driver.
St. Anne's Indian Residential School, in Northern Ontario, was a place of horrific abuse and crimes against children that occurred over decades. | Who are the people who helped Rahaf Mohammed?
An investigation into the number of OPP officer suicides; a follow-up on the story of art thief John Mark Tillmann.
The story of Ramiro Cristales, who was sent to Canada after news leaked in Guatemala of his survival; the story of the unsolved murder of Stefano Savoili.
In August 2012, two young men were on an ATV at a cottage near Haliburton, Ont., when it crashed into a steel gate, leaving one dead and the other unscathed. What happened that day has become the subject of an almost seven-year investigation by four different police forces. Now the father of the one who died is taking on the OPP — determined to expose what he believes is a bungled investigation and trying to clear his son’s name as having caused his own death. | In July 2011, Richard Oland was found bludgeoned to death at his office — a killing that shook New Brunswick to the core, given the family’s stature in the province. His son, Dennis, was eventually convicted of murder. But he won on appeal based on an error in the trial judge’s instructions to the jury. Now he’s being retried, and his fate is in the hands of one judge and no jury. Bob McKeown, who reported on the case in February 2016, revisits the story.
Genealogist Cece Moore tracks a Canadian cold case with a new and controversial technique that could potentially revolutionize crime fighting. Bob McKeown investigates.
Dozens of Canadians have returned home after joining terror organizations abroad. Others are waiting in detention camps in Syria. The federal government says it has a plan to keep the public safe.
A young journalist in 1970s Montreal goes undercover to work inside a Quebec youth detention centre, and exposes cruel and negligent treatment of young girls.
Jayme Poisson digs into a new Canadian study that tries to solve the mystery of what caused dozens of Canadian and US diplomats in Cuba to become sick.
People in Regina are caught between the growing violence among Indigenous gangs and the police in one of Canada's most dangerous neighbourhoods.
Alexandre Bissonnette went into a mosque in Quebec City and gunned down six people in 2017. Is he a terrorist or a mentally-ill young man turned monster? Mark Kelley investigates the path of a killer using the people closest to him and real life Mindhunter profilers, to discover mass shooters are always hidden in plain sight.
Cristiano Savioli travels from Italy to remote Cortes Island, B.C., in search of his father's killer. He wants to know why his father's murder nine years ago has not yet been solved, and he is offering a $10,000 reward. CBC obtains police reports that say investigators have a suspect, but there's been no arrest. And what Cristiano discovers is that some in the small, close-knit community don't seem to want the murder solved.
Did Ashley Smith’s death end solitary confinement? The tragic death of inmate Ashley Smith in 2007 was supposed to change everything for mentally ill patients in prison. Canadians were horrified to see the video of her suicide with prison guards looking on that The Fifth Estate fought to make public. The inquest into her death called for 104 recommendations including eliminating solitary confinement. We investigate the case of Joey Toutsaint, an inmate with serious mental illness who, by his own count, has spent nearly six years (2580 days) in isolation in prison.
There are new developments in the cold case that has shocked and captivated Canadians. The Muskoka murder mystery (The Fifth Estate) and The Cat Lady Case Podcast (CBC Uncover) told of the disappearance and presumed killing of 77-year-old Joan Lawrence and three other senior citizens in Ontario cottage country more than 20 years ago. The lead police investigator sits down with The Fifth Estate for the first time, talking about developments in the case in a special episode updating the investigation. Police spent years searching for bodies, clues and answers but none of the four missing people has been seen since, none of their bodies were ever found and no one has been held accountable for their disappearance. The Fifth Estate has reported on police documents describing the theory that Lawrence was killed to prevent her from reporting theft and fraud related to the so-called retirement properties where she was living. Police say in all, 16 people living on the properties had money stolen.
In a Canadian exclusive, Caitlan Coleman tells the dramatic story of her relationship with estranged husband Joshua Boyle. The home-schooled, Star Wars-loving woman spent five years in captivity with her husband in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and other locations in the region, giving birth to three children while held captive. After their escape and return to Canada, Coleman alleges her husband became her captor. The 19 charges against Joshua Boyle include assault, sexual assault and unlawful confinement. He has pleaded not guilty to all 19. The Fifth Estate investigation follows the Coleman vs. Boyle court case and presents the experience through the eyes of the alleged victim. A verdict in the case is scheduled for mid-December.
In an investigation into clergy sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church in Canada, The Fifth Estate follows abuse survivors on their quest for accountability. They are demanding that church officials reveal secret files — information on who the abusers are or were, who knew about it and what was done. In the United States, judicial investigations are exposing details of the church's secret archives there. More than 6,800 credibly accused clergy members have been identified by the church itself. And yet in Canada victims say there is no such list. The Fifth Estate investigation focuses on the diocese of Vancouver where the archbishop has vowed to be more open
Even in 1990 he was a polarizing force, bragging about his signature move, the sucker punch. Bob McKeown revisits the famous Fifth Estate interview Eric Malling did with Don Cherry. It's a one-two punch of hockey and politics that reminds us that times have changed but Don Cherry hasn’t.
Behind the facade of glamour and wealth, the wives of some retired hockey enforcers are in their own fierce fight. They want the NHL to acknowledge that there's a link between fights and head injuries on the ice and long-term effects like degenerative brain disease. And they want more support for the players and their families living through those effects. Women like Jennifer Belak and Kelli Ewen — whose husbands Wade Belak and Todd Ewen took their own lives — are part of that fight. So is Ela Carcillo. She is married to recently retired player Daniel Carcillo, who says he wonders if he will become one of the sad statistics. The Fifth Estate reveals the real lives of enforcers' wives — and takes Canadians on the journey of three women demanding change in the NHL.
Before Jane Goodall began her study of chimpanzees, there was Anne Innis Dagg. She's a Canadian and the first to conduct scientific studies of giraffes, or any large mammal, in the wild. She was a young researcher, working on her own in Africa in the late 1950s. Her observations about the behaviour of giraffes laid the foundation for all future giraffe studies. In the 1970s, despite her extensive qualifications, she was denied tenure at several Ontario universities, which effectively ended her giraffe research and academic career. Instead of giving up, Anne became an activist for women’s rights, especially in academia. She taught part-time and published books but didn't get the support or recognition she deserved until the scientific community rediscovered her and raised her profile. Now there's a film about her life, and several universities are trying to make up for their rejection. She’s received many awards and will soon hear whether she will be a recipient of the Order of Canada.
The law says anyone born in Canada is automatically a Canadian citizen. Nearly 5,000 babies were born to non-residents of Canada in 2018-2019, according to the latest statistics. That's up about 15 per cent from the year before, and it continues to grow. The Fifth Estate investigates the shadow industry of "birth tourism" facilitating this growth; agencies that help women come to Canada just to have a baby and leave with a Canadian passport and all the privileges that come with it. The mothers pay $30,000 to $70,000 to travel from other countries, get coaching on getting through immigration, comfortable housing, access to top-notch doctors and hospital care in Canada. Host Erica Johnson digs into the impact of birth tourism on one city, Richmond B.C., and the implications for the health-care system.
The Fifth Estate takes you inside a secret world that many people have no idea even exists — the world of activists willing to risk their personal security to confront organized hate groups known as the far right. Host Gillian Findlay goes on a virtual ride-along with undercover members of a loose collective known as Antifa, who are willing to go to extreme lengths
An autopsy tells the story of the dead, but can also determine the future of the living, especially in criminal cases. Concerns raised about autopsy findings in some cases in Alberta prompted the provincial Justice Ministry to commission an expert panel to conduct a review. The Fifth Estate has discovered that review led to questions about autopsy findings used in some murder cases, including whether there were even any murders at all. The answers may have changed the outcome for people sent to prison and led to possible miscarriages of justice. But no one appears to have told the people most affected. What was the role of the Alberta Ministry of Justice?
Toronto-raised Benny Hinn has been one of the most high-profile and controversial Christian televangelists in the world for more than three decades. His international crusades and "miracles" on stage have become legendary. His recent apparent renunciation of asking for money for blessings is the subject of debate and skepticism. The Fifth Estate revisits the Benny Hinn story it started 10 years ago. The public has had little chance to get inside the tight-knit world of the Pastor Benny ministry. Until now. His nephew, Costi Hinn, has broken with the family and written a tell-all book about his experience with what is known as the prosperity gospel.
Eight years ago, a review of autopsies signalled to Alberta's Ministry of Justice that it had a big problem on its hands. In Part 1 of The Autopsy, The Fifth Estate revealed how an expert pathologist review shook the foundations of murder cases in Alberta and that the provincial government kept that information secret for nearly a decade. In Part 2, The Fifth Estate tells the inside story of how senior Alberta government officials ultimately abandoned their probe into miscarriages of justice while prisoners were left to serve out their time. The months-long investigation reveals additional questionable cases that Alberta Justice kept under wraps and examines who knew what and when.
Boeing used to represent the gold standard in aircraft safety, but critics say it has lost its way in the pursuit of profit. We tell the story of two fatal crashes involving the 737 Max 8 jet: the Ethiopian Airlines crash last March that killed 157 people and the Lion Air disaster in October 2018 that killed all 189 on board. We explore why experts say those disasters were preventable. The story is told by pilots, legislators, Boeing insiders and the families of the people killed. But the biggest revelations come from Boeing itself, through internal messages and emails showing Boeing officials knew about the potential for a catastrophe well before the two crashes occurred.
A former front-line investigator with CP Rail's own police force alleges that his investigation into the deadly derailment of Train 301 was shut down after just a month by his company. “I was ordered to stop investigating,” said Mark Tataryn. Through exclusive interviews with a witness, a CP Rail conductor and the families of the three dead crew members, we have pieced together the terrifying final moments of the runaway train, which suffered brake failure and killed everyone on board.
Fifteen students, one instructor and one RCMP officer are on a mission to put a name and identity to 15 lost individuals. The Fifth Estate follows Cpl. Charity Sampson on a journey to the New York Academy of Art with 15 replica skulls in a last-ditch effort to identify remains found in British Columbia and Nova Scotia between 1972 and 2016. Over a five-day period, the students in a forensic sculpture workshop reconstructed the faces of the 15 unidentified men. It's a program that has had success in the United States. Since we started this story, one of the men, whose body was found in Nova Scotia, has been identified as a New Brunswick man.
In 2015, retired Catholic priest Paul-André Harvey from Quebec's Chicoutimi diocese pleaded guilty to 39 charges of indecent assault and gross indecency. Most of his victims were girls between the ages of eight and 10. Harvey was sentenced to six years in prison. But before Harvey died in prison, the defrocked priest did something extraordinary — he provided a confession for his victims to use in a class-action suit against the Catholic Church. He claimed that church officials were aware of his crimes for years. When complaints surfaced, Harvey says he was simply moved. Records show between 1963 and 2002, Harvey was moved to a new parish 12 times. Now a class-action lawsuit with more than 100 claimants shines a spotlight on who knew what and raises difficult questions about how clergy abuse is prosecuted in Canada. The Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada’s Enquête investigate Harvey’s story and ask why no charges have ever been brought against church superiors in Canada for covering up clergy abuse.
For nearly 20 years, Toronto police have maintained that John Connelly died by suicide after he jumped off his 10-storey apartment building in 2001. His parents have been on a mission ever since to disprove the official cause of death and open a homicide investigation. But as Bob McKeown reports, the Connelly family has reached the end of the line: authorities stand by their decisions, the case remains closed and the law says they are not able to sue police over the investigation. The Fifth Estate brings John Connelly’s mystery back to life — and more of the story the Connellys want you to know about.
The Fifth Estate presents a comprehensive inquiry into this year's mass shooting in Nova Scotia, chronicling 13 hours of mayhem that constitute one of Canada's deadliest events.
“Bitter Harvest” tells the stories of workers who are rarely given a voice, with unprecedented access into their lives and their struggles. They may be foreign workers, but this is very much a Canadian story. And, if you shop in a grocery store, you are part of their story, too
Cameron Ortis was once the RCMP's top intelligence officer. But today he is in custody, facing charges of revealing secrets to unauthorized people and plotting to leak even more. The Fifth Estate's Bob McKeown tells the inside story of how his alleged crimes came to light, a remarkable tale that involves a Mexican drug cartel, Australian biker gangs and a world of gambling, money laundering and encrypted phones. It's a story that features a successful Vancouver company that made its fortune selling phones to the criminal underworld, and an American who styles himself as Robin Hood, but who eventually went to the FBI with a story that ultimately revealed secrets being offered for sale at the highest levels of the RCMP. Also: Dave Seglins brings us the latest details into our investigation of the crash of CP Rail Train 301, which killed three people last year in British Columbia. It's a crash that was investigated by CP's own police force. Now there are calls for the federal government to step in and to bar rail company police forces from investigating their own companies.
Exclusive interviews and videos reveal how Canadian fashion mogul Peter Nygard kept his secrets for decades. Nygard currently faces sex trafficking charges, which he denies.
The Fifth Estate's Mark Kelley takes a close look at the political scandal involving Prime Minister Trudeau and the WE Charity, including an interview with co-founders Craig and Marc Kielburger.
An officer from the Niagara Regional Police Service had been shot multiple times... by a fellow officer. And somehow, the victim survived. It was November 2018. I always wanted to know the story behind the shooting. What I didn't know then is, two years later, I would spend months looking into the incident for The Fifth Estate. What we uncovered was a story even bigger than the sensational shooting. It's a story that touches on the secrecy and shortcomings of the police discipline process in Canada. A story of missed warning signs and a lack of accountability that comes at a defining time in our history, with red hot public protests demanding a better system of policing the police. And rather than simply focusing on a problem, this is a story that offers solutions.
For-profit foster care. It’s a term that raises fundamental questions for our child protection system. Should the care of children at risk be a public responsibility or a private business opportunity? And which comes first, care or profit? On The Fifth Estate tonight, Fatal Care investigates that essential issue through the tragic events which came to a head on Feb. 19, 2019 at a private, for-profit foster home in Barrie, Ont. On that terrible night, 15-year-old David Roman was stabbed to death, but everyone in the house was a victim. That includes foster brothers Evan and Nick, who witnessed it all, and 24-year-old Jordan, the foster parent caring for a household of troubled teens with little training. It also includes 14-year old James, now charged in David’s death. And we’ll also introduce you to the company which made profit from the Barrie foster home, the serious questions about how they conducted business, and the lack of oversight by government officials. In our second story of the episode, reporter Judy Trinh tells the troubling story of the Ottawa Police Service and its culture of sexism. You’ll hear from female officers and civilian employees who have endured everything from harassment to rape at the hands of their male colleagues.
The Fifth Estate is drilling into one of the biggest financial frauds in Canadian history - a story my colleague, producer Harvey Cashore, has been doggedly pursuing for years. We have been piecing together clues Harvey has collected to try to find money that was stolen from pensioners and everyday investors- revealing where it might have been hidden. When Harvey reached out to the reputed ringleader of the fraud, convicted in the crime and now out on parole, and asked him for an interview... well, we didn't expect a response. But Lino Matteo sat down with us to explain how he saw the fraud unfold. It's a rare and sometimes uncomfortable conversation and a fascinating peek into the criminal mind. In our second story of the episode, Asha Tomlinson hosts "Black on Campus," telling stories of Black Canadians who say they've been targeted by university administrators because of their race. And activists say anti-Black racism is plaguing the long hallways of higher learning.
One of the greatest Hollywood movies ever is “One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest”, starring Jack Nicholson as a man who trades his term in prison for time in a mental institution because he believes it will be easier for him. Instead, he finds himself trapped in a psychiatric ward where patients are bullied and abused by staff using physical intimidation, massive doses of medication and invasive treatments such as electro-shock. The film was styled as a dark comedy. But over the years, The Fifth Estate has done a number of investigations which reveal that what's gone on in some Canadian psychiatric hospitals is no laughing matter. Tonight’s episode shows another troubling example we’ve uncovered. “Treatment or Torture” is the twisted tale of bizarre experiments in the 1970s and 80s at two Ontario hospitals for the criminally insane. The experiments were creations of influential psychiatrists at the time. In particular, the so-called research led by Dr. Elliot Barker of the Oak Ridge Psychiatric Hospital at Penetanguishene, Ontario, whose radical ideas eventually were replicated at the St. Thomas Psychiatric Hospital in St. Thomas, Ontario. Incredibly, Barker's plan was to send criminally-insane male sex offenders from Oak Ridge to direct the treatment given to female psychiatric patients at St. Thomas, literally a case of inmates running the asylum. Tonight you'll meet the controversial Canadian psychiatrist who believed he had a secret cure for psychopaths and the patients, both men and women, who experienced that real-life “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.” In our second story of tonight’s episode, Vik Adhopia shows us how Canadian women who believe a birth control implant led to sometimes years of extensive pain, are fighting for a measure of justice and compensation. Thousands of Canadian women received the implant called Essure, which was marketed as a permanent birth control device. It was
When police don't knock," looks at how often police in Canada are using no-knock raids. Who decides when they should be used, and who is answerable for the innocent people sometimes caught in the crosshairs of a mistake? For our second story of tonight’s episode, "Broken honour: sexual misconduct in the military," with Tom Murphy. In a program called Operation Honour, the Canadian Armed Forces pledged to stamp out sexual violence that had reached crisis levels in its ranks. Our investigation reveals how military police and justice officials fell below the standards of the civilian world, and how the man at the top, Gen. Jonathan Vance, touted the program’s success even though it secured few criminal convictions. Former insiders call for sexual assault investigations to be taken out of the hands of the military.
Genetic genealogy is the newest frontier in police work, and detectives in Toronto say they are using the technique to hunt a killer responsible for two unsolved murders in 1983. It's the same technique that allowed police to identify the real killer of nine-year-old Christine Jessop, who was abducted from Queensville, Ont., before being raped and killed in 1984 — a case that resulted in the years-long wrongful conviction of Guy Paul Morin. Now they have turned their attention to the 1983 unsolved murders of 22-year-old Erin Gilmour and 45-year-old Susan Tice. Both women were sexually assaulted and stabbed to death in their beds, four months apart in 1983. In our second story, we ask the question: can parents turn their child into a chess genius? Since the hit Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit" captured worldwide attention, many parents have wondered how their son or daughter could become the next Beth Harmon. Terence McKenna explores the very different kinds of outcomes in his documentary, "Recipe for Genius."
In our season premiere of The Fifth Estate, Bob McKeown shows you what happened to the Canadian government's first effort to secure a domestic vaccine, why the agreement crashed behind the scenes and why some say the deal with a company linked to the Chinese military is one Ottawa should never have even considered. Bob's interview with the CEO of that company took a turn that caught us by surprise. You'll want to see what happened. The pandemic has also meant millions of businesses large and small have staggered or shuttered. But not Amazon. Locked in their homes, Canadians pressed “buy now” relentlessly, and Amazon is building more warehouses all over this country as a result. But at what cost to its employees? Next week, Mark Kelley will take you inside Amazon for a look at the human cost of convenience. Hint: When was the last time you logged 45,000 steps in a single shift at work? And, as Afghanistan descends further into the regressive world created for it by the Taliban, some of those who worked with the Canadian military and believed Canada would help them get to safety are living in fear that the Taliban will get to them first. Later this month, Gillian Findlay will show you in real time with extraordinary access how military veterans and private money in Canada are working to get thousands of Afghans to safety, as questions mount about why Ottawa hasn't taken the lead.
In the blur of stories this year about COVID-19, one in particular, a story involving e-commerce giant Amazon, caught our eye. An Amazon warehouse in Brampton, Ont. was ordered to close temporarily last spring. Staff were told to stay home and isolate themselves. We learned there had been 600 COVID-19 cases at the plant since the fall of 2020. That's when we decided to look closely at Amazon and its handling of COVID-19. Yes — Amazon is a huge employer with thousands of staff in Canada alone. People were bound to get sick. But, we also knew that because of the pandemic, business skyrocketed as more and more people shopped from home. In fact, Amazon’s own company figures show that net profit worldwide grew by a staggering 84 per cent in 2020. Our big question became: Was there a human cost to that convenience?
“They just came in front of our house, and they open[ed] fire and they [shot] our house but fortunately nobody got hurt. The bullets hit the bars, the steel bars.” That was the reality for former Canadian military interpreter Abdul Jamy Kohistany along with his wife and two kids, back home in Afghanistan. Like tens of thousands of other interpreters, mission staff and their families, living in fear of reprisal for helping Canada during the war, they are now seen as traitors and the enemy by the Taliban. That’s why he and his family, like so many others, flooded the Kabul airport this summer desperate to get out of Afghanistan after the Taliban took control. To hear the Canadian government’s account of it, those horrific scenes of people trampling over each other, the desperation and the death that unfolded there over the summer was simply a tragedy — an unforeseeable event that culminated after a faster than expected takeover of the country by the Taliban. But what we heard from political insiders and veterans was that the Canadian government knew well in advance that these former military workers’ lives were in danger. The Fifth Estate obtained emails sent by a Liberal MP to his cabinet colleagues, including former Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino, as far back as February 2020. Before that, Liberal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen was warned in at least September 2019. Yet we’re told the government did nothing until it was too late. While the Canadian government has now gotten about 2,000 Afghans and their families out of the country, veterans groups estimate there are still about 20,000 stuck behind. Sitting, waiting to be hunted by the Taliban. Given the government’s comments during this crisis about how committed they are to the Afghan people, I was surprised to learn how the bulk of the work to protect Afghans has fallen on a group of Canadian veterans and volunteers working around the clock to prov
While this is a story about a cluster of people living in New Brunswick with a “neurological disease of an unknown cause,” in many ways, it’s really a story about people trying to get answers and help from their health-care system and the provincial government. Back in April, in collaboration with CBC New Brunswick investigative journalists, The Fifth Estate started to delve into a story about a neurological syndrome nobody could explain. A cluster had been identified and 48 New Brunswickers were part of it. As our research progressed, we met many people along the way: families, individuals in the cluster and the neurologists they went to in hopes of understanding their debilitating symptoms: muscle spasms, memory loss, brain fog, anxiety. One of those people was Steve Ellis. After not seeing his father, Roger, for 10 months because of a COVID-19 lockdown, he was going to drive from his home in Nova Scotia to Bathurst, N.B., to visit his dad. It was an important trip: for the past two years, his father was rapidly declining from a neurological condition and time was of the essence. “It's running out,” Steve told us. “And it's running out not only for my dad, but for everyone else who's dealing with this.” Roger had been identified as one of the 48 people in the cluster. When my colleague, Karissa Donkin, and I contacted Steve and asked if we could film his journey to Bathurst, we knew it was a tall request. But we wanted to illustrate the urgency and anxiety families face on a daily basis when faced with the unknown. There are no cures for neurological diseases, and for the individuals in the cluster and their families, they only have to look at the experiences of others to see their own possible future. Tim and Jill Beatty have already lost their loving father, Laurie, who brought people joy. And then there’s Gabrielle Cormier. She’s only 20 and is becoming a prisoner in her own body. For more than two
Reading judge’s decisions becomes a frequent part of a journalist’s job. Not all of them make you sit up astonished at what you’re reading. So, when the wording is as strong as what’s used in the decision regarding the systemic and decades-long abuse of students that took place at Grenville Christian College, it’s hard not to wonder: What more is there to know? In 2020, a judge ruled in favour of the roughly 1,400 students who filed a class-action lawsuit alleging life at the Ontario boarding school, which closed in 2007, was not only tough but also brutal, with seemingly endless examples of physical and emotional abuse meted out as punishment. The school didn’t operate far from public view. The Anglican Church flew a flag there. And the school had ties to another religious group based in the United States called the Community of Jesus. The school had at one time counted prominent Canadians among its board. Six months ago, we set out to answer the question: How could this have gone on so long? We methodically began calling people connected to the school, including lawyers, police officers, journalists, former teachers, administrators and more than 30 former students. We developed confidential sources and people who had never spoken publicly agreed to share their stories with us. Two people in particular took the courageous decision to share their stories on camera. Grace Irving and Michael Phelan had never spoken publicly about what they endured. They told us they did it because they wanted people to know what really happened behind the imposing stone walls of a school that was for many years their home. Our research also revealed allegations of sloppy police work, written warnings ignored by the Anglican Church and strong connections to a mysterious and abusive Christian cult in Cape Cod, Mass. And what of the role of the man who was the school’s final headmaster? He had been a teacher there for years. And what questions were asked of him b
Mark Kelley and I are sitting in the back of a taxi in Nairobi, Kenya, when we suddenly receive urgent texts, followed quickly by phone calls, from the CBC office in Toronto. The Fifth Estate’s Executive producer Diana Swain tells us she has just received an official document from the Ministry of the Interior of Kenya, dated Sept. 13, 2021, and stamped “Assistant County Commissioner.” The letter contained unfounded allegations that Mark, our camera crew and I had committed crimes while filming our documentary about the Canadian-based WE Charity’s projects in Narok County, Kenya. For some reason, the letter was cc’d to the WE organization. The letter claims we trespassed on government property, a “criminal offence” in Kenya. Fearing for our safety, Diana tells us to immediately head to the airport. CBC’s security team has instructed us to check in every 20 minutes until we are out of the country. How did it come to this? Along with other news organizations, The Fifth Estate began looking into WE Charity in the summer of 2020 after the Trudeau government awarded the organization a controversial contract to manage a $500-million volunteer grant program for students. This spring, our research turned to the charity’s overseas projects. For years, WE Charity had been asking kids across North America to raise money for its schoolhouse projects overseas. We had what we thought was a simple question. Did the number of donations that WE Charity collected in North America from children and wealthy philanthropists to build badly needed schoolhouses in rural Kenya match up with the actual number of schoolhouses that were constructed? Getting the answer proved to be far more difficult than we might have imagined. WE Charity would not provide us that information, citing privacy concerns. So we built our own spreadsheets and combed through publicly available information to find out how many donors were told they had fully funded classrooms. We
What you will see tonight on The Fifth Estate is a departure from what we normally do, in that it is not the product of months of meticulous research. It is in fact the culmination of a week’s work — driven by our teams’ collective shock at the images of catastrophic flooding in British Columbia over the past several days. We shared the sadness of seeing thousands of homes lost, people displaced and five people killed in mudslides. Highways, rail lines, and dikes: damaged. Livestock and livelihoods: devastated. Instead of our planned episode for this week, we quickly changed course and focused our attention on the catastrophe. Tonight we examine what happened and, as Mark Kelley says in his script, whether we should’ve all simply seen this coming. That’s because of what we’ve found documented in reports that date back as many as six years, warning that the dike protecting the Sumas Prairie was “too low,” “substandard” and “likely needs to be updated.” And that the provincial and federal governments have invested much less in flood mitigation in the past two decades, leaving municipalities and First Nations unable to pay the millions of dollars required to repair the dikes that protect their communities. We also ask why residents of Washington state, who were exposed to the same vicious rain storm, got a warning to sandbag their property and get livestock to higher ground; a warning that most in B.C. didn’t get.
More than 125 women, including 60 Canadians, have now accused disgraced multimillionaire fashion mogul Peter Nygard of rape and sexual assault, but it wasn't that long ago he was celebrated in his hometown. When I lived in Winnipeg in the 2010s, his face and company were everywhere, whether it was his photo in the newspaper cutting the ribbon for a new store with local leaders, events he held to promote his latest donation to cancer research or countless billboards he rented and plastered with youthful musclebound images of himself. Then, in 2010, The Fifth Estate broadcast its first investigation into Nygard, showing widespread allegations of workplace abuse, sexual harassment and sexual misconduct against him. And still, as recently as 2018, 1,800 of the city’s who’s who came out to celebrate his company’s 50th anniversary at a massive gala. The local paper described it as a party that would “rival any Hollywood bash.” The city’s current mayor, Brian Bowman, and the province’s current premier, Heather Stefanson, both attended. So in 2021, when one by one, the women who recently reported allegations of sexual assault against Nygard in Winnipeg started to hear their cases wouldn’t be prosecuted, they told us they weren’t totally shocked. And then The Fifth Estate broke the story in October about charges Nygard was about to face in Toronto. That raised even more questions about the lack of charges in Winnipeg. We knew we had to dig deeper into his past in his hometown. Our investigation reveals, for the first time, in all eight cases referred to prosecutors in Winnipeg, no charges will be laid. In our story, you will hear from four of the eight women, and we document a pattern of Nygard avoiding prosecution in his hometown going back more than 50 years. Nygard denies all of the allegations against him. But at this point, Nygard has faced sex trafficking charges in New York and sexual assault charges in Toronto. So … why not in Winnipeg?
Thousands of former interpreters and military staff (along with their families) who worked with the Canadian Armed Forces have been stuck in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover this summer. They need help to escape. When we interviewed then-Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino in October, he assured us, and most importantly the veterans and volunteers working around the clock to get former interpreters and their families out of Afghanistan, that money was coming to help fund their operations. But no government money has come since that promise. Two months later, the risk for those who fought alongside Canada against the Taliban is as great as ever. Just last week, the Canadian government, along with 20 other countries and the European Union, issued a joint statement expressing concerns over reported killings and enforced disappearances of former members of Afghan security forces that have been documented by Human Rights Watch and others.
The Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation was the first community to identify what are believed to be the graves of children at the site of a former residential school. The Fifth Estate shows how the community is dealing with the traumatic discovery and talks to survivors about the impact on them, as the First Nation tries to lead the way for other communities coping with a similar tragic history.
Since a Fifth Estate story last November about abuse endured by students of a now-closed Ontario private religious school and its connection to a U.S.-based cult, there have been several new developments. Prompted by our reporting, another person has come forward to allege abuse by a son of the former headmaster.
The Fifth Estate will show how months of planning, some secretive but much of it in the open, drew convoys to Canada’s capital, leading to an unprecedented weeks-long occupation of part of Ottawa. Host Gillian Findlay talks to the early organizers and asks why police so quickly lost control.
Frustrated parents say they should be able to force their opioid-addicted kids into care. But, in B.C., the province with the highest rate of opioid deaths, the laws say kids can deny care and insist doctors don’t tell their parents if they are hooked.
One in three Canadians rents their home. While much of the focus has been on the rising price of buying a home, rental prices are skyrocketing, too. The Fifth Estate examines what’s driving rental prices up, and some people out, of their homes.
A joint Fifth Estate/Enquête investigation shows Canada still routinely ships plastic waste to developing countries, often illegally mixed inside containers of paper recycling. We ask Canada’s environmental activist-turned environment minister what he’s prepared to do about it.
Hockey Canada is on the defensive over allegations that some members of its gold-medal winning World Junior team in 2018 took part in a group sexual assault, and the organization didn’t do enough to hold players accountable. The Fifth Estate examines the national shame inside Canada’s game, and the disturbing history that suggests this was not an isolated incident.
Amid the ongoing fight to protect British Columbia’s forests, The Fifth Estate examines how the province has become a leading exporter of wood pellets being burned to fuel energy needs in the U.K., where some activists and politicians say both the U.K. and Canada have made a mistake in supporting the industry.
The Fifth Estate goes undercover in India to reveal the pitch made to some students planning to attend Canadian colleges and the reality that awaits when they arrive.
The Fifth Estate investigates the murky world of human smuggling after a family of four from India, including an infant, froze to death in January trying to cross from Manitoba into Minnesota.
The Fifth Estate reveals how much money the Mormon church has raised in Canada and where much of it has gone. Some former members in Canada and elsewhere say it’s led them to leave the church. Host: Mark Kelley
The Fifth Estate reveals what happened when Russian soldiers who’d retreated from a Ukrainian village were tracked down by journalists, including a surprising confession.
The Fifth Estate examines the case of a Canadian government worker who was caught working with Netwalker, a criminal ransomware group that extorted victims around the world for millions in bitcoin. Host: Marie-Maude Denis
Classified documents found in Donald Trump’s Mar-a-lago home are the subject of a criminal investigation in the United States. But The Fifth Estate reveals the find also set off alarm bells in Ottawa. Host: Steven D'Souza
To the families of two women slain in Toronto in 1983, the killer seemed like a ghost who vanished without a trace. The Fifth Estate takes you inside the remarkable search for a suspect. Host: Mark Kelley
The FBI says four Iranian dissidents living in Canada and the U.S. were being secretly surveilled by the Iranian government. The Fifth Estate examines how far the regime is going to keep dissidents quiet. Host: Gillian Findlay
The Fifth Estate explores the sudden spike in sports gambling ads and whether Canada’s rush to get into the game is a bad bet. Reporter: Bob McKeown
The Fifth Estate examines the practice of medically assisted death in Canada amid concerns about who is being offered help with dying and why? Host: Gillian Findlay
In partnership with Radio-Canada’s investigative program, Enquête, The Fifth Estate examines troubling claims that a Canadian billionaire had a long history of paying teenagers for sex. Host: Mark Kelley
More on allegations that members of Hockey Canada’s 2018 world junior team took part in a group sexual assault. Unpacking a history that suggests a pattern of abuse and financial misrepresentation. Host: Bob McKeown
Bob McKeown goes behind the rhetoric about Chinese police stations in Canada to reveal that far from being caught unaware, the Canadian government and the RCMP have long co-operated in China’s hunt for supposed fugitives in this country.
An icon’s claims to Indigenous ancestry are being called into question by family members and an investigation that included genealogical documentation, historical research and personal accounts. Host: Geoff Leo
Critics say a controversial RCMP unit in B.C. acts as a de facto private security force for resource companies. Leaked documents show industry leaders provided direction to RCMP bosses. Host: Steven D'Souza
A man convicted for his role in the 1975 coup and murder of the first family in Bangladesh lives in Canada. In an exclusive, the current prime minister says she wants him brought to justice. Host: Mark Kelley
The CRA is being tricked into issuing tax refunds for bogus business. When the CRA realizes it has been duped, the players have vanished, along with the money - hundreds of millions of dollars. Host: Bob McKeown
Actor Nathan Chasing Horse is set to stand trial in the U.S. for alleged sexual abuse inside his ‘cult’ known as The Circle. Survivors in Canada say their reports have been ignored. Host: Mark Kelley
Smugglers left the Patel family to cross the Canada/U.S. border on foot during a snowstorm. The Fifth Estate’s pursuit of the men Indian police allege were behind the deadly journey. Host: Steven D'Souza
In the decade since Bangladesh’s deadly Rana Plaza garment factory collapse, promises to improve wages and factory safety have backslid - including by some Canadian companies. Host: Mark Kelley
Hate groups are targeting kids on social media. They are groomed to self-harm, plan violent attacks and end their lives. Police often can’t act until the crimes cross over to the real world. Host: Ioanna Roumeliotis
Thirty years into UN climate talks, the world is hotter than ever. Provinces battle the feds over fossil fuels and frustrated activists escalate their tactics, all while the heat grows deadly. Host: Susan Ormiston
A look at what’s driving sky-high food prices in partnership with APTN Investigates.
A U.S. indictment bolstered Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s claim that the killing of Canadian Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar was carried out by India. Bob McKeown reveals exclusive details.
A pitch to turn the Maritimes into an apple-growing capital, with influential supporters, was an easy sell to investors and would-be foreign workers. Those who bought in say it was a scam.
The 2023 implosion of the Titan submersible shocked the world. On the trail to find out how an experimental sub was ever allowed to take passengers to one of the most unforgiving places in the ocean
Local news is disappearing, so we asked viewers for their stories. One person pointed us to Dawson Creek, B.C., where residents feel besieged by killings and a wave of disappearances. Many residents say the RCMP has evaded accountability. Until now.
Canadian animation pioneer Daniel Langlois was known for films like the Matrix and Jurassic Park. When the millionaire and his partner were killed in Dominica last December, it exposed a web that extends into politics and corruption.
Billionaire Frank Stronach stands charged with 18 counts of sex crimes. The Fifth Estate has found further claims from the last several years Mark Kelley takes the allegations directly to Stronach.
Donors and political action committees could use the war in Gaza to swing the U.S. election. Netanyahu seems to back Trump's candidacy while the 'uncommitted' voting block jeopardizes the Democrats.
A judge recently found that two protesters involved in convoy blockades in Coutts, Alta., were ready “to engage in a war with police.” With exclusive access, we hear from the men in their own words.
Vancouver’s Sky ECC promised confidentiality to customers with its encrypted cellphones, which were a hit with criminals but also the target of an international police sting. The investigation that brought thousands of criminals, and Sky, down.
We debuted in 1975 with a goal of holding power accountable, which remains a core tenant decades later. As Canada’s flagship investigative documentary program turns 50, we go behind the stories.
Why getting your pet's prescription filled at a pharmacy isn't an easy option in Canada
The library in Valleyview, Alta. is caught in the crosshairs of an international movement. Books stolen, its funding cut. At its heart: a group of queer teens and a movement that would see 2SLGBTQ+ identity removed from public view.
It was a sensational heist — $20 million in gold stolen from Canada’s busiest airport. On a chase that spans the globe — from India to Dubai to rural Pennsylvania, we make surprising discoveries about the gold, guns and the suspects still at large.
Donald Trump’s tariff war has people on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border in a panic. From behind the scenes of inauguration day to the oil fields of Alberta — is there a plan behind the chaos? Project 2025 provides the blueprint.
Tens of thousands of taxpayer accounts hacked as CRA repeatedly paid out millions in bogus refunds”
“A Sister’s Promise,” documents Meggie’s journey as she hits the streets of east London searching for tips in her sister’s case. We’re there as the 62-year-old woman tracks down people of interest and grills them about what they know about Sonya’s death.
A global network of online predators coerces teens to self-harm, maim animals, and plot violent acts.
For 50 years, The Fifth Estate has exposed the wrongdoings of the most powerful people. But with few organizations still committed to this kind of work, what does the future hold? Some answers from an esteemed panel of investigative journalists.
