CAJ award winners announced

The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) handed out its annual awards at a gala dinner in Vancouver during its national conference.

The Hamilton Spectator‘s Steve Buist won the Don McGillivray Award for Investigative Journalism for his series “A Pig’s Tale.” Buist recently won the Ontario Newspaper Awards’ journalist of the year award for the same series, which he produced along with photographer Barry Gray.

The CAJ’s President’s Award went to a group of lawyers, including Paul Schabas, Brian Rogers, Peter Jacobsen and John Norris. The lawyers have represented the CAJ, media outlets or media organizations in a series of cases that have “redefined the journalists’ rights.” The cases include Quan v. Cusson, which established the new ” public interest responsible journalism” defence and the source protection case of former National Post reporter Andrew McIntosh (which is now before the Supreme Court of Canada).

This year’s Code of Silence Award went to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, for “its dizzying efforts to stop the public from learning details of fatal failures in food safety.”

Read the full list of winners here.