The Advent of “Canada’s ProPublica”
Public records in North America can be a pain to locate for journalists. Government archives are often disjointed because information is contained in many different locales, some of which are hard to track. But a new journalism initiative in Canada is aiming to change how journalists can access public records.
ProPublica was established in New York City in 2010 for the express purpose of consolidating data in one easy-to-access place, but this new initiative from Canada, the Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF), is the first of its kind for Canadian journalists. The IJF seeks to “expand the breadth, depth, and long-term financial sustainability of investigative journalism in Canada.” “Think of us like ProPublica meets OpenSecrets,” said Zane Schwartz, editor-in-chief of the new database.
The IJF builds public databases from disparate sources and consolidates the information into one place. They also include data from other investigative newsrooms and conduct their own investigations–meaning they act as both newsroom and public resource. “Before [launch], all of this data was required by law to be public, but you might literally need to go to a government archive to access it,” Schwartz said. “You almost certainly would have had to go to a government website where the data will be stored, let’s say, alphabetically by politician name. Really simple things like, ‘Who’s the biggest donor?’ or ‘How many people donated to x party in y year?’ were all but impossible to answer.”
Since 2021, IJF has raised $800,000 for protecting public interest. “I’m incredibly grateful to the funders we have because they funded an idea, right? We came to them and we said, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if any Canadian could see who the largest donor to their politicians are?’” Schwartz said. “And they said, ‘Yes, that would be amazing. Let me give you money to go out and make it happen.’”
In its few short weeks of existence, the IJF’s “follow the money” approach has already pinned down members of the Liberal Party who have broken their promise to the public by allowing lobbyists to attend cash-for-access fundraisers.
“The IJF compared the guest lists of 120 fundraiser events since 2019. Lobbyists and company representatives of lobbying groups attended at least 51 of them,” the organization recently reported. “These lobbyists represented, collectively, about 790 organizations as some lobbyists work for consultancy firms and can represent dozens of clients at a time. One lobbyist working for Sandstone Group, for example, had 60 clients when he attended fundraisers over the past four years.”
In the coming years, IJF seeks to diversify its functions. Schwartz stated that organizational goals include building more public databases that include financial disclosure forms (i.e. stock ownership and trading) filed by politicians, and to collaborate with newsrooms on the local level to further interpret the implications of these data points. “We know that we don’t know everything about Canada,” Schwartz said. “There are reporters all across this country who would see a name and say, ‘Oh, that’s a huge real estate developer in my town. The fact that they donated is really significant.’ Then they can use the data to ask pointed questions.”
For now, the IJF’s data is free to access for simple searches and journalists, but in the future may contain a subscription fee for users who wish to use the information available on IJF to make money or to receive instant, real-time alerts when new information becomes available. This valuable resource will no doubt see the beginning of more transparency in Canada’s provincial and federal activities.
