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Each week the fifth estate brings in-depth investigations that matter to Canadians – delivering a dazzling parade of political leaders, controversial characters and ordinary people whose lives were touched by triumph or tragedy.
“Where the story doesn't end with the headline”
1976
2010
The shocking case of Colonel Russell Williams.
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.
A story about love, death and a family searching for truth.
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.
Abuse and cover-up behind our prison walls. Stories from the people who saw it everyday.
More than a decade after the murder of Fatima Kama, a suspect is finally arrested.
One hockey family's painful loss and the politics of gays in sports.
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.
Inside the world of WikiLeaks: with unprecedented access.
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.
The G20 from a different angle. Unforgettable footage, captured by ordinary people. The sights and sounds of powerful personal stories.
A dictator's final fight against his own demise.
Locating the truth about Canadians lost to their families and friends.
White collar criminals waltz away from hard time.
Bob McKeown traces the career of and his friendship with the always fascinating, charismatic and confounding Stephen Reid.
Linden MacIntyre examines how evidence can acquit as well as convict.
2009
Disturbing allegations about our safety in the air.
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.
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.
Over two decades he bilked investors of $50 million.
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, he's larger than life. But what kind of boss is Peter Nygard?
2011
The fifth estate reveals 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.
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.
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 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 boy lost on the ice, and how Canada's Search and Rescue service failed to bring him home.
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.
1976
Rene Dahinden is searching for sasquatch.
1999
On December 6, 1989, 14 women were shot dead at a university in Montreal. The gunman Marc Lepine's hate crime left behind a profound and painful human tragedy. The real mystery of the crime, however, was about what in Lepine's life had led him to pick up a gun and attack complete strangers. In this piece from 1999, the fifth estate explores Lepine's past and discovers many factors that may have led him to act as he did.
2008
He was just an ordinary guy who stole almost a million dollars.
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.
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.
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.
It's been called a "community centre for junkies".
2015
The story of Amanda Todd's accused online stalker and the global police hunt to find him.
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.
2019
Explores what it means to be young, Muslim and growing up in the West during these unsettled times.
In 2017, Alexandre Bissonnette went into a mosque in Quebec City and gunned down six people. Is he a lone-wolf terrorist or a mentally-ill young man turned monster? In the documentary Dear Mr. Bissonnette, Mark Kelley investigates the path of a killer using the people closest to him and real life Mindhunter profilers, to discover mass shooters like Bissonnette are always hidden in plain sight.
2020
2015
Marc and Jean Wabafiyebazu, caught up in Miami’s dangerous drug scene. It might never have generated attention. The Fifth Estate co-host Bob McKeown talks about the troubling story of two teenaged brothers from Ottawa.
2024
A viewer tip leads to Dawson Creek, B.C., where residents feel ignored during a crime wave.
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 influence the U.S. election
A judge has ruled that two protesters involved in convoy blockade in Coutts Alta, where willing
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.
The cost of owning a pet has skyrocketed as big business moves into vet care.
Now more and more libraries find themselves on the front lines of a culture war, with battles over books, bans and the freedom to read. The attacks on libraries started in the U.S. and, like a slow-burning brushfire, they've been moving north, the flames fanned by pressure groups who feel libraries should not have books about sex education, gender identity or stories
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.
This week is The Fifth Estate’s second investigation into 764, a satanic neo-Nazi network targeting vulnerable kids online and forcing them to harm their pets, themselves and others — and even take their own lives.
2025
A data breach at B.C.'s Interior Health involving tens of thousands of employees' most sensitive information is for sale on the dark web; health-care workers' identities are repeatedly stolen while the agency denies the breach ever happened.
We're in the occupied West Bank on the trail of millions in Canadian tax deductible charitable donations. We reveal funds are supporting Israeli settlements deemed illegal under international law.
Investigation into for-profit, privately owned residential substance use treatment facilities across Canada that, according to the investigation, operate with little government regulation or oversight, which critics say puts the lives of patients at risk.
We return to small-town Dawson Creek, B.C., where residents feel besieged by violence and murder. The RCMP failed to meet the deadline it set for answers, so we return to investigate yet more killings and reveal what is behind this crime wave.
Canada’s opioid crisis has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people, costing the health and justice systems billions. Many health providers say there were solutions that could have helped. We reveal how politics got in the way.
Smash-and-grabs are going viral on social media, but the culprits remain unknown; revealing how adults are playing the system by luring kids into violent crime with lifelong consequences.
Lobster is a billion-dollar industry on the East Coast; who gets to trap and when is tearing communities apart; the federal government is being blamed for doing too little to help ease tensions.
A vacation to Quebec's Mont Tremblant turned into a nightmare. Last February, 22-year-old Liam Toman vanished without a trace. All that remains of his last moments are CCTV footage and his wallet.
Reports of Black boys going missing have gone viral on social media; so have theories about what is happening to them; investigating who or what is luring these boys to remote communities.
An international search is underway for a Canadian who allegedly stole millions in crypto; we go from Hamilton, Ont., to Bosnia looking for a man with academic promise who may have turned criminal.
Designed to protect law enforcement and health-care workers, spit hoods have been linked to deaths; banned in parts of the world, in Canada, they're used countrywide, sometimes even on minors.
Online extremist content is influencing real-life violence. To creators, it's free speech; it's also big business. We go from Nashville to Calgary to eastern Europe on the trail of two Canadian companies that help creators turn hate into profit.
Threats to annex resource-rich Greenland shook Canadians. We reveal an American firm closely linked to Trump has secured a controlling stake in a massive rare earth mining project in Quebec.
In November 2022, the body of a Chinese dissident was found near Gibsons, B.C. Was it a simple drowning or the result of a Chinese secret police operation? A former spy details how China uses covert means to threaten and intimidate.
A small ostrich farm in rural B.C. became the centre of an international firestorm in the lead-up to a controversial cull after a bird flu outbreak. Was it necessary or government overreach? Locals say there's more to the story.
Cricket Canada is under fire amid allegations of corruption and fixing, even at the World Cup. We investigate claims of mistreatment of players and infiltration and death threats by organized crime.
Streaming availability information not available
2012
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.
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. Linden MacIntyre first spoke to Melissa Friedrich when she was in jail in Florida, and then again on the phone last year after she moved back to Nova Scotia.
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.
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.
The journey of three young men born into one world. Six years later, they're trying to escape into another.
Linden MacIntyre reveals for the first time the extraordinary tale of how seven ordinary guys suddenly struck it rich -- to the tune of $12.5 million.
In the trade they call elephants Charismatic Mega Fauna -- huge majestic animals that help the industry draw millions of people each year. The fact is that Zoos and Aquariums are big business, generating more revenue than all professional sports leagues in the U.S. and Canada combined, according to industry insiders. Yet all is not well with the gentle giants in Canadian zoos. A heated controversy has erupted over what to do with zoo elephants when they are ready to retire.
Mark Kelley tells the story of two friends on the adventure of a lifetime in a small plane who crashed into the icy waters of the Canadian North.
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.
Mark Kelley reveals the story of a secret group of online investigators who tracked accused killer Luka Magnotta for almost two years and warned police he was dangerous and had to be stopped.
On January 13, 2012, the Costa Concordia set sail onto the Mediterranean with captain Francesco Schettino manning the ship and more than 4000 people on board. But within hours, disaster would strike as the cruise liner crashed into rocks on the coast of Italy. In one of the worst cruise disasters in recent memory, 32 people would die, and the 114,000 tonne vessel would take more than two years to dismantle.
Canadian naval intelligence officer Jeffrey Delisle and his secret life as a Russian Spy. Linden MacIntyre has an exclusive interview, and tells the full story of the biggest security breach in Canadian history.
Nik Zoricic was one of the fastest members of the Canadian ski cross team and had dreams of representing Canada in the 2014 Sochi Olympics. His promising career was tragically cut short when he crashed near the end of a World Cup race high in the Swiss Alps last year, in what course officials termed a freak accident. But as Mark Kelley learns, the first death in ski cross competition history may not have been so unpredictable. In the days leading up to that last race athletes raised alarms warning that the final jump was exceedingly dangerous and that race organizers were pushing the limits and didn't heed the early warning flags.
The true story of how the CIA tracked the world's most wanted terrorist.
The tragic shooting of 20 children and six teachers at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut stunned people on both sides of the border. Somehow it seemed worse than other recent mass shootings - perhaps because of the age of the children, or the popular military-style assault rifle used, the AR-15. Many hoped it would be a chance to find common ground in a nation bitterly divided over gun rights and gun control. Instead, the sales of firearms soared and the National Rifle Association's membership swelled.
They are marked by their ability to kill without passion and without remorse. Some are called psychopaths - a term that evokes nightmare images of murderers and monsters. But the label can also apply to men and women who are successful, intelligent, charismatic, charming and amusing - and so all the more dangerous. This week on the fifth estate, Linden MacIntyre looks at what makes a psychopath through the fifth estate's close encounters with of four of Canada's most frightening criminals.
For Anna Ratté, growing up just outside Prince George, British Columbia was an idyllic childhood. But on August 18, 1997, that family was torn apart when Wendy Ratté suddenly vanished. Days and then months passed, with no word from her mother. Seventeen-year-old Anna Ratté began a long, difficult search for answers. It was years before Anna began to suspect that her father Denis was not telling her everything he knew.
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.
2021
2013
We’ve heard for years about the dangers of eating too much fat or salt. But there have never been recommended limits for sugar on Canadian food labels, despite emerging research that suggests the sweet stuff may be making more of us fat and sick. Has the sugar industry been hiding an unsavoury truth from consumers?
A lot of our clothes bear the label ‘Made in Bangladesh’. But before the deadly collapse of a garment factory there last April, most of us never thought about the people who make them. After clothes bound for Canada were found in the rubble of Rana Plaza, Canadian companies reacted with surprise - how could such a tragedy happen?
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, 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.
A year after her death, most people remember Amanda Todd from her YouTube video, holding up hand-written pages describing how one mistake in front of a webcam led to her torment by bullies at school and online. But beyond that viral video, the fifth estate reveals a more complex and disturbing story about what happened to the B.C. teenager driven to suicide in October 2012 – not just bullying, but the deliberate sexual extortion of a 15-year-old girl by online predators.
Whether it's the assassination of JFK or the events of 9/11, when national tragedies occur they trigger painful soul-searching. 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.
Scientists across the country are expressing growing alarm that federal cutbacks to research programs monitoring areas that range from climate change and ocean habitats to public health will deprive Canadians of crucial information. In the past five years the federal government has dismissed more than 2,000 scientists, and hundreds of programs and world-renowned research facilities have lost their funding.
An unprecedented view into the life of Jeffrey Arenburg. He was found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder for the death of Ottawa TV sportscaster Brian Smith in 1995 and is now fuelling debate around the issue of what happens to these offenders once they are released.
The night of September 14th, 2013 north of Montreal, police set off on a manhunt for notorious Hells Angels hitman Rene “Balloune” Charlebois who had escaped from his minimum security prison earlier that evening. When police tracked him to a remote chalet just under two weeks later, they found Charlebois’ body after an apparent suicide. A third party provided Quebec’s provincial police with Charlebois’ final words: a series of audiotapes that he asked be made public if anything were to happen to him. The tapes feature conversations, which, if proven authentic, will bring down one of Quebec’s most respected biker cops and rock the Montreal Police force.
It was a desperate gamble – more than 130 Chinese migrants spent months in squalid conditions below the deck of an old fishing boat, risking their lives for a chance for a better life in America. But those dreams were defeated when the crew of the ‘Black Dragon’ left them stranded on a remote island off the coast of British Columbia in 1999.
Life in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community of Lev Tahor is supposed to be simple: the rules for dress, diet, schooling, marriage and worship are clearly defined and closely followed. But last November, in the middle of the night, about 200 members of the sect fled their homes in Quebec to start a new community in Chatham, Ontario, amid allegations of child neglect. Now the sect is fighting to keep more than a dozen children that a Quebec court ordered removed from their families. Their ongoing legal battles are raising an old dilemma: when does a group’s right to religious freedom get trumped by society’s obligation to protect children?
Even as a youngster growing up in Prince Edward Island, he had ambitions to make it big on Parliament Hill. Eventually, Mike Duffy’s knack for talking politics on radio and TV brought him close to the seat of power in Ottawa, until as a newsman he seemed as famous as the people he covered. Now the disgraced Conservative Senator has become the embodiment of what many Canadians see as a wasteful institution, and a lightning rod for those who want the Senate abolished.
As many young Canadians head off for spring break holidays, do they face unexpected and potentially lethal dangers – in their hotel rooms? When two Canadian 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 points to new evidence that a highly toxic pesticide used in holiday hotels in Asia to control bedbugs may have caused their deaths. And host Linden MacIntyre digs into the mystery of two other young tourists who died suddenly while travelling in Vietnam.
It’s a question you might 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. Host 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 we have three stories built on your suggestions. Bob McKeown uncovers the disturbing past of a man who promised love to at least ten women across Canada, but delivered only deception. Mark Kelley follows up on a viewer’s request to investigate the mysterious death of a young blind woman in Halifax, and learns that a key witness in the police investigation has changed his story. And we went looking for the worst case of small town corruption, and found one - south of the border, in Dixon, Illinois.
Even after a story airs on television, the fifth estate does not stop investigating. Mark Kelley checks in with a survivor of the collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh and Bob McKeown finds out how the Toronto Zoo elephants are adapting to sunny California.
