Unbuckled: School Bus Safety
Harvey Cashore, Bob McKeown, Kimberly Ivany, Aileen McBride, Saman Malik, Doug Husby, Lisa Mayor
CBC’s The Fifth Estate

In Spring 2018, CBC’s The Fifth Estate launched a major investigation to find out: were school buses really safer without seatbelts? Transport Canada, the federal regulator, had assured parents for decades that school buses did not need seatbelts, repeatedly touting their own 1984 study that showed they might even make them more dangerous.

School buses transport more than 2 million children to school each day across Canada and numerous deaths and more than ten thousand injuries have occurred in school bus accidents in the intervening years.

The Fifth Estate’s five-month investigation exposed serious flaws in the science behind Transport Canada’s 1984 study and revealed that Transport Canada had already concluded in a 2010 follow-up study — that they did not disclose to the public - that school buses without seatbelts had “failed” important safety tests in side impact and rollover crashes.

And yet, Transport Canada’s study had become the “most widely cited” study in North America, paving the way for an absence of seatbelts on school buses not just in Canada but also across the United States.

Records obtained by The Fifth Estate show that Transport Canada had initially wanted to put seatbelts on school buses and had even set a date for the rule to take effect in the late 1970s. But after some “aggressive” lobbying by school bus operators and school boards, the proposed seatbelt law was withdrawn. The top concern: the “cost-benefit ratio due to the low number of accidents involving school buses,” according to a 1985 Transport Canada document summarizing the plan to withdraw the seatbelt requirement on school buses.

Today, numerous U.S. federal and state regulators and safety organizations like the National Safety Council have turned their backs on the 1984 Transport Canada study, leaving the Canadian government increasingly isolated in its official anti-seatbelt stance. A growing number of U.S states — making up 40% of the population — now require three-point seatbelts on their school buses.

The Fifth Estate constructed a database of dozens of scientific studies and academic journals on the topic, meticulously amassing a 124-page chronology of events that detailed facts and statistics of those studies and their findings. 

They discovered that Transport Canada’s seminal study was at odds with numerous, yet less publicized, academic studies and journals repeatedly demonstrating that seatbelts prevent injuries and save lives on school buses.

And then, in an on-camera interview, a Transport Canada engineer admitted for the first time that she believed seatbelts should be installed on school buses.  

The reaction to the story was enormous across the country, in school boards, in classrooms, and in Ottawa. For the first time, Transport Canada issued a statement on its website — acknowledging that seatbelts on school buses do prevent injuries. And the Transport Minister has formed a task force with the provinces to look at implementing seatbelts on school buses across the country.

Honourable Mention

The Fix
Toronto Star
Moira Welsh, Randy Risling

We all know, but we try not to think about it. Nursing homes are sterile, lonely places, where none of us would ever want to be. Moira Welsh spent 15 years writing about Ontario nursing homes for the Toronto Star, starting with a 2003 series uncovering abuse and neglect that led to new long-term care inspections and legislation. But problems continue to persist because it’s an institutional system that forces residents to live according to a strict daily schedule, and staff to be focused on tasks, not people.

In The Fix, Welsh and Risling got to tell a very different story about one Peel nursing home that took a gamble on fun, life and love. They showed that the most dangerous story they could tell is how simple it was to change.

In 2016, Welsh learned that Peel Region’s long-term care leaders wanted to improve the lives of their residents with dementia by taking a chance on a British nursing-home specialist and his Butterfly program. Welsh convinced Peel’s wary leaders to let her follow the 12-month program that promised a full transformation of culture, staff behaviour and the emotional happiness of residents.

Welsh and Risling were given full access to the Redstone unit. Their early reporting revealed the daily monotony and human neglect experienced by people living in long term care. Workers rushed from task to task, clocking in each one, too busy to make any emotional connection to the people in their care. As the Butterfly program unfolded, they documented the struggles that come with transformational change, but significantly, they showed that residents and staff blossomed when they were encouraged and allowed to live and work with freedom, emotional connection and purpose. The changes made a huge impression on family members as well.

Readers reacted with joy, saying the stories prove that long-term care can offer life and love. Toronto Mayor John Tory asked the city to consider similar changes for city-run nursing homes and the council voted unanimously to examine Butterfly-like programs. After reading the Star story, dozens of other homes and politicians have visited Redstone. And the inspiration reached beyond Ontario too.  A home in Atlanta, Ga., that followed Peel’s lead, shared the Star story with families and U.S. organizations. In Canada, the powerful seniors lobbying association CARP is now pushing provincial governments to help homes adopt emotion-focused programs like Butterfly. In Ontario, the two long-term care associations are lobbying the provincial government to find money in its 2019 budget to help the 630 homes adopt emotion-focused programs.

All these hopeful efforts to transform long-term care were inspired by the Star’s investigation into the positive. The Fix is a fresh, compelling narrative of risk, possibility, awakening, and most importantly, the importance of human connection.

Honourable Mention

Sidewalk Toronto
Amanda Roth, Zane Schwartz, Murad Hemmadi, Sean Craig
The Logic

We are only beginning to grapple with the rise of Big Tech.

In October 2017, all three levels of government joined Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., to announce plans to create a smart city on 12 acres of Toronto’s eastern waterfront called the Quayside.

For the next eight months, the coverage of Sidewalk Toronto was celebratory and reactive. That was until The Logic, an innovation-focused online media platform, launched, in June 2018. Two days later, reporter Amanda Roth published her first story on the project, revealing that several Sidewalk Labs-affiliated companies stood to benefit from the Waterfront project and that they had already begun lobbying government officials extensively to do so. Her reporting resulted in strong blowback from the company’s public relations firm, who demanded retractions.  But, The Logic was not intimidated.

Roth, Schwartz, Hemmadi and Craig went on to publish more than a dozen exclusive stories on the Sidewalk Toronto project over the next five months including: the firings of key personnel, internal concerns over the handling of data privacy, and the land value of the real estate involved. Of particular note, The Logic became the first news organization in recent history to confirm a provincial auditor-general audit in the midst of the investigation.

The Logic’s stories all relied on the key tenets of outstanding reporting: the slow and delicate cultivation of confidential sources, including several brave whistleblowers; the tedious work of poring over corporate filings, real-estate holdings and access-to-information requests; the rapid response and initiative needed in breaking-news coverage; and finally, the dogged determination to get a story published when faced with intimidation, questions over credibility by crisis management firms, and hostility.

The Logic’s reporting has informed the public about critical issues surrounding Big Tech in Canada—including data privacy, intellectual property and governance, along with the larger social, economic and cognitive forces at play. They compelled increased attention and scrutiny from public officials, especially the rare value-for-money audit examining the use of public funds. As Toronto grapples with the costs and benefits of prime waterfront land in the hands of private development, The Logic’s exclusive and relentless reporting has brought greater accountability to the process and they continue to pressure Sidewalk Toronto for greater transparency.