2026 Canadian Hillman Prize Winner
Loretta Hicks, editor
Jonathan Castell, senior videographer on Tax Hack: Identity Theft
Ousama Farag, principal photographer on The Denial Machine
A years-long fifth estate investigation found that government agencies that Canadians count on to support them, turned on them instead.
Hackers infiltrated the computer files of government agencies and stole the identities of unsuspecting citizens, turning their lives upside down. CBC’s the fifth estate produced a two-phase report involving secrecy, coverups, denial of responsibility, and victim blaming.
The first incident involved a serious security breach at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). An inside source told the fifth estate that a network of scammers had routinely duped the CRA into paying hundreds of millions of dollars in bogus tax refunds to imposters. The whistleblower said the Agency was keeping the public in the dark.
The impact of those security breaches was particularly devastating for the everyday Canadians whose accounts were frozen and who were unable to access their proper tax refunds and credits that they desperately needed for essentials such as rent, groceries, medical prescriptions and mortgage payments.
The fifth estate discovered that the CRA failed to investigate the imposters, and wrongly demanded the victims pay back the stolen money. In a leaked memo, CRA officials expressed fear that if the extent of these security “gaps” became public, “Canadians will lose trust in the Agency.”
CBC interviewed victims from across Canada and even tracked down some of the fraudsters. They discovered that third-party tax preparers such as H&R Block and others were connected to these data breaches.
As a result of this investigation, the federal Finance committee held special hearings where Members of Parliament demanded to know why the Commissioner of the CRA, Bob Hamilton, launched internal investigations – described as “witch hunts” – into the identities of the fifth estate’s whistleblowers rather than address the issue at hand.
In the spring of 2025, CBC launched the second phase of their investigation after receiving a tip from an anonymous source, a self-described former criminal who said they now wanted to help victims of identity theft. The source provided the fifth estate with a list of 28,000 medical workers whose identities had been stolen in 2009 from British Columbia’s Interior Health (IH) agency and was still available for sale on the dark web. IH runs hospitals and medical facilities and is one of the largest employers in the province.
Fraudsters could purchase the data and use the stolen identities to set up fake credit cards, obtain bogus bank loans and hack into CRA accounts to file fraudulent tax returns.
Interior Health dismissed employees who suspected a breach of its systems, and the agency’s executives declined interviews. Their refusal to take responsibility paved the way for the scammers to continue their crime sprees for more than a decade.
More victims came forward to share their horror stories and are now pursuing a class action lawsuit, on the grounds the B.C. government agency had a duty to take this more seriously, and to accept responsibility.
Kelowna nurse and identity-theft victim Ashley Stone recalls that her colleagues were “absolutely panicking” as they tried to deal with credit agencies and accusations that they had committed fraud. Confirmation from the fifth estate that her own name was in fact on the list of 28,000 stolen identities was, she said, vindication after being gaslit for so many years. At the same time, she acknowledges, “It is never going to end. I could be 80 years old and still be dealing with this.”
Harvey Cashore (producer/director) is an award-winning producer with CBC’s flagship program, the fifth estate. Cashore has spent three decades holding power to account. His reporting has included revelations that a former Canadian Prime Minister received cash envelopes in hotel rooms from a European “greasemoney” account, that the Canada Revenue Agency offered a secret settlement to wealthy Canadian families exposed using an offshore tax “sham” set up by a major Canadian accounting firm, and that the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation knew its store clerks were wrongly claiming customers’ major lottery wins and failed to alert the public. Cashore is the author of “The Truth Shows Up,” his 15-year journey covering the Airbus affair along with his colleagues at the fifth estate. Cashore is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and has been involved in major global stories such as the Paradise Papers and Luxembourg Leaks. Cashore has been part of teams that have won the CAJ’s Don McGillivray Award for best investigative journalism, the Hillman Prize, and the governor general’s Michener Award for public service journalism.
Mark Kelley (writer) loves a good story. His passion for giving a voice to those stories has taken him from Cape Spear, Newfoundland, to Old Crow, Yukon—from Dhaka, Bangladesh to Sydney, Australia to Defiance, Ohio. He is an International Emmy award-winning journalist and a six-time Gemini/Canadian Screen Award winner. Mark has been a co-host of the fifth estate for 13 years and has covered some of the biggest news events around the world in his 35 years at CBC News.
Eva Uguen-Csenge (investigative journalist) is a Toronto-based investigative journalist at CBC’s the fifth estate. Her journalism career began in Vancouver where she spent over six years as a local news reporter and video journalist with CBC/Radio-Canada covering everything from seniors’ care to COVID-19, immigration, domestic violence, wildfires and floods for anglophone and francophone viewers. Since joining the fifth estate in 2023, Eva has investigated the assassination of a prominent Sikh activist in Canada, the influence of the war in Gaza on the 2024 U.S. election, and the Canadian government’s response to the opioid overdose crisis.
Daniel Leblanc (journalist) is a reporter with more than 25 years of experience in investigative journalism and federal politics. He is a past winner of the Michener Award, the Charles Lynch Award and three National Newspaper Awards.
Allya Davidson (executive producer) is a multiple Emmy, RTDNA and Canadian Screen Award-winning investigative journalist. She is the executive producer of CBC News’ flagship investigative documentary program, the fifth estate, which is in its 51st season. Allya has produced documentaries for VICE and CTV’s W5, and internationally for Channel 4 (UK), ZDF (Germany), Four Corners (Australia) and PBS Frontline. She is passionate about mentoring BIPOC journalists and advancing equity in the field. Allya gave the inaugural Al Hamilton Lecture at Toronto Metropolitan University in the Spring of 2024; her lecture’s contents are now part of first-year journalism syllabi at TMU. Davidson photo credit: Angelyn Francis
Emmanuel Marchand (senior producer) is a Senior Producer with the fifth estate. He has also held leadership roles in the CBC’s Investigative Unit as well as Radio-Canada’s Enquête. He has been the producer/director of several high-impact documentaries in Quebec and Canada; notably on organised crime, corruption, and the abuse of Indigenous women and children.