Thanks to Maria Kestane and @thebigstory.bsky.social for having me on earlier this week to talk about my reporting on the Maplehurst inmate abuse scandal, which continues to have ramifications in the courts. lnk.to/bigstory

The Big Story

An in-depth look at the issues, culture and personalities shaping Canada today.

lnk.to

The Big Story@thebigstory.bsky.social · 2w ago

In 2023, 200 inmates at Maplehurst Correctional Facility were subjected to strip searches, zip ties and pepper spray. Since then, multiple sentences have either been shortened or thrown out, including a first-degree murder case. Brendan Kennedy of @thestar.com joins us to discuss lnk.to/bigstory

Star #exclusive: Prosecutors appear to have dropped several charges against the main targets of the Project South police corruption probe as the Crown moves to take the most serious allegations to trial. @bkstar.bsky.social, @j-pags.bsky.social, and @aobrien.bsky.social have the latest:

Prosecutors appear to drop some charges against Toronto cops, others as most serious allegations in corruption case head to trial

Indictments filed in Superior Court are missing numerous offences listed against the officers and others when investigators announced the Project South arrests in early February.

thestar.com

The Toronto jail official who police say was targeted in a murder plot potentially over his drug enforcement testified Wednesday in an unrelated court case that he was always vigilant in trying to prevent contraband from entering the facility — but never abusive. www.thestar.com/news/crime/t...

Toronto jail official targeted in murder plot tells court ‘our job is to keep the institution safe’

Toronto official who police say was targeted potentially over his drug enforcement testified in court in a case unrelated to Project South.

thestar.com

The Toronto jail official targeted in the botched assassination that sparked the Project South investigation into police corruption is being accused of overseeing abusive practices against inmates, including forcing inmates to have bowel movements in front of guards. www.thestar.com/news/investi...

Tyrant or upstanding professional? Starkly different portraits emerge of Toronto jail official targeted in Project South botched killing

Toronto jail official targeted in botched killing that sparked the Project South probe into police corruption accused of trampling inmates’ rights.

thestar.com

Doug Ford's government has rewritten so many of Ontario's environmental laws since winning the 2025 election that it can be hard to keep track of all the changes. Here's our comprehensive guide to Ontario's environment under Ford's third majority: thenarwhal.ca/ontario-elec...

Bill 5 and a lost climate plan: Ontario’s environment in Ford’s third majority | The Narwhal

From killing the Endangered Species Act to fast-tracking mining approvals, the Ontario government spent its eighth year in office rewriting rules for the environment

thenarwhal.ca

My latest. This story is based on FOI documents released before the Ford government changed the law. Under the new rules, the province will now be able to keep records like this secret.

Toronto Star@thestar.com · 2mo ago

Star Investigation: As a Ford government staffer, he helped get through permits for a controversial gold mine. Now he works for the company as a lobbyist. New from @emmamci.bsky.social:

🚨Journalist request 🚨: is anyone on here an Ontarian who has moved to Alberta relatively recently who wants to talk about how the separatism chatter is landing as a newcomer? Would love to chat if so! Send me an email! aboyd@thestar.ca

Describing what Harris Mohamed and other inmates suffered at Maplehurst in Dec 2023 as "horrific torture," another Ontario judge has tossed criminal charges due to the "vengeful" attack by guards. Here's a un-paywalled gift link to read the full story: www.thestar.com/gift-redeem?...

EXCLUSIVE: In the wake of the pandemic, the Ford government set the target of one proactive inspection a year at every long-term care home. But our analysis of thousands of inspection reports reveals less than 40% of LTC homes received a proactive inspection in 2025. thelocal.to/ontario-long...

The Ford Government Is Failing to Meet Its Own Long-Term Care Inspection Goals | The Local

Exclusive analysis of more than 17,500 long-term care home inspection reports reveals a provincial inspection regime failing to meet its own accountability goals, with seniors who lack family advocate...

thelocal.to

The children of a couple killed in a botched hit allegedly ordered by Ryan Wedding have filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Peel police. They allege officers knew their family was in danger but failed to warn them during a visit just four days earlier. Full story here: shorturl.at/Wc7KH

Ryan Wedding and the murders in Caledon: Lawsuit claims Peel police failed to warn this family about the hit men looking for a trucker named Bobby

Shortly before the murders of Jagtar Sidhu and Harbhajan Kaur Sidhu, a pair of Peel police officers knocked on their door looking for a man named “Bobby.” Days later, it

thestar.com

Details of how Ontario police are using ODITs are so secret that the office behind the deal "is making the Crown and local police sign an agreement to potentially drop major prosecutions rather than reveal the name of the company that made the tool."

Ed Tubb@edtubb.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Really smart reporting from Betsy Powell. Ontario police are using ODITs that essentially allow them to take over a smartphone, read encrypted messages, remotely turn on microphones and cameras, etc. Incredibly powerful surveillance software. And they refuse to say even the name of the vendor.

One lawyer called the extent of the discipline for the Maplehurst prisoner abuse scandal "grossly inadequate" given what transpired at the jail. “I think it’s a total farce, to be honest." The province refused to tell us whether any staff were disciplined, but we obtained docs they filed in court.

Toronto Star@thestar.com · 3mo ago

#Exclusive: Ontario has refused to answer questions about its handling of the Maplehurst inmate abuse scandal — the Star found out who got disciplined The latest from @bkstar.bsky.social

How much is Canada spending to fight First Nations in court, you ask? We ATIPd the legal costs for four drinking water cases - and were told this information was secret.

More than a decade after pledging to end long-term drinking water advisories, the feds are presiding over a ramping-up of legal acrimony in First Nations' fight for water. And First Nations are fighting back. "It's litigate or go home," one lawyer told me. ijb.utoronto.ca/news/liberal...

Liberals are playing legal hardball with First Nations over drinking water - Investigative Journalism Bureau

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government is playing legal hardball with First Nations fighting for clean drinking water — and First Nations are fighting back. Interviews and hundreds of pages o...

ijb.utoronto.ca

Liberals are playing legal hardball with First Nations over drinking water. They're pulling the plug on settlement talks, seeking to overturn First Nations' victories and using tactics their own guideline advises lawyers against. ijb.utoronto.ca/news/liberal...

Liberals are playing legal hardball with First Nations over drinking water - Investigative Journalism Bureau

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government is playing legal hardball with First Nations fighting for clean drinking water — and First Nations are fighting back. Interviews and hundreds of pages o...

ijb.utoronto.ca

NEW: Official government documents written and saved in Google Docs are no longer covered by Ontario’s freedom of information laws, the province has decreed, as its transparency clampdown continues to roll out. #Onpoli globalnews.ca/news/1184611...

Premier’s office files saved in Google Docs excluded from Ontario transparency requests | Globalnews.ca

Global News was engaged in an appeal to get access to some nine documents created by staff in Ontario Premier Doug Ford's office and stored in Google's cloud service.

globalnews.ca

"unlike the Americans, who have gone decades without tracking their gold supplies, the Canadians have known that they were getting it from a country where cocaine trafficking, paramilitary violence and the gold trade are intertwined." www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/w...

Canada Says Its Gold Is Traceable and Clean. So We Traced It.

nytimes.com

We don't talk enough about incarcerated people - about their rights, about how they live, about how to rehabilitate them. And we certainly don't talk enough about the ways Canada renders Indigenous people unfree. bsky.app/profile/mehl...

Anna Mehler Paperny@mehlerpaperny.bsky.social · last yr.

Canada's mass incarceration of Indigenous people is worsening and an insidious driver is the stickiness of Canada's carceral system - when people should get a shot at freedom, but often don't. www.reuters.com/world/americ...

🧵Ontario's jails are operating way over capacity, new data shows, with the province-wide average at 130 per cent. Some are as high as 160-plus per cent. Here's what the data we obtained via freedom of information shows, and how the government is defending it. #OnPoli

A veteran Toronto police detective pleaded guilty yesterday to assault causing bodily harm for surprise-tackling a man in a homeless shelter, breaking his ribs & rupturing his spleen. The cop thought the man had committed a sexual assault, but it was the wrong guy. www.thestar.com/news/crime/a...

A Toronto cop mistook this man for a suspect. The violent encounter left him with broken ribs and ruptured spleen

Det. Const. Christopher Merritt pleaded guilty to the 2024 assault and will serve no jail time — a sentence his victim feels is insufficient.

thestar.com

The Maplehurst inmate abuse scandal led to the collapse of a murder case. Now, other serious criminal charges will likely be tossed. Meanwhile, Solicitor General Michael Kerzner has remained conspicuously silent. On the fallout from Justice Conlan's decision: www.thestar.com/news/investi...

The Maplehurst inmate abuse scandal led to the collapse of a murder case. Now, other ‘serious’ criminal charges will likely be tossed

The Ford government, which has been largely silent on the jail staff's conduct, had a “serious lack of proper oversight" over Maplehurst, judge said.

thestar.com

I would read Anna write about watching grass grow, so I highly recommend her fascinating - and funny! - piece on her latest attempt to overcome treatment-resistant depression: deep brain stimulation. Great presentation, too.

Anna Mehler Paperny@mehlerpaperny.bsky.social · 9mo ago

I got experimental brain surgery. www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...

The torturous abuse of inmates was only part of why an Ontario judge threw out 1st-degree murder charges last week. His ruling makes clear the decision was as much about the attempted coverup & how jail staff further lied in court. I took a deeper look at those lies: www.thestar.com/news/investi...

Inside the many lies told by Maplehurst jail officials trying to cover up the ‘torture’ of inmates

The deceit ranged from serious attempts to conceal what happened, to absurd, easily disprovable lies that left an Ontario judge stunned.

thestar.com

I got experimental brain surgery. www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...

Opinion: Could a device implanted in my brain cure my depression? I was ready to find out

Over the past 14 years, I’ve often fantasized about some scan revealing the locus of my mood disorder. Now, we were as close as we’d likely ever get

theglobeandmail.com

Joey Votto, writing in the @thestar.com, about the last time the Jays were here. "My memory is of a dark living room, a wood-grained box TV & the bang of a screen door. My parents, my younger brother & I were sitting around the television with the rest of the city." www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

Joey Votto: The 1993 Blue Jays changed my childhood. The 2025 team is poised to do that for a new generation

To say the early '90s Blue Jays were impactful during my life would be an understatement. It’s hard for me to see players from that roster and not become giddy

thestar.com

Ontario judge throws out first-degree murder charges against three former Maplehurst inmates, saying the collective punishment they suffered in jail was akin to torture, and the jail's attempts to cover up what happened amounted to egregious state misconduct. www.thestar.com/news/investi...

Ontario judge throws out murder charges over Maplehurst jail guards’ abuse of inmates and attempted coverup. ‘The unthinkable has come to pass.’

The stay of murder charges marks the most serious consequence of the prisoner abuse scandal, which continues to imperil criminal cases across Ontario.

thestar.com

A thread of recent @thetrillium.bsky.social reporting on the Skills Development Fund. #onpoli

Canada's government presented no evidence justifying making bail harder to get in its briefing today. @cancivlib.bsky.social's Shakir Rahim says the data isn't there.

NEW: ‘Mr. X’ claims Minister David Piccini tipped him off about Greenbelt removals John Mutton made the claim in an interview with the integrity commissioner and then on a podcast. The minister denied it through a spokesperson. www.thetrillium.ca/news/politic...

‘Mr. X’ claims Minister David Piccini tipped him off about Greenbelt removals

John Mutton made the claim in an interview with the integrity commissioner and then on a podcast. The minister denied it through a spokesperson

thetrillium.ca

Statement from the president of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s trip to Egypt: “It is unprecedented that Canadian media be entirely excluded from a Canadian prime minister’s foreign trip.”