Robert Fife — 2026 Hyman Solomon Award for Excellence in Public Policy Journalism

In the halls and reception rooms on Parliament Hill, politicians aren’t the only ones who have power.

So does Robert Fife, author, investigative journalist and the Ottawa Bureau Chief for The Globe and Mail. With unprecedented economic challenges facing Canada and an untested Prime Minister in Mark Carney, Fife is arguably the country’s most experienced political reporter at a time when diminished mainstream media outlets are hard-pressed to hold politicians to account.

“People are afraid of me,” he acknowledges with a laugh. When he walks into a room, a gathering often scatters. When he calls some civil servants, “you get dead silence, and you have to say, ‘Oh, no, no. It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m calling you about your expertise on some file.’”

Among his most notable scoops is the SNC-Lavalin affair that led to the resignations of two senior cabinet ministers, the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister and the Clerk of the Privy Council. The Senate expense affair in 2012-2014 was another story that dominated the headlines, resulting in the resignation of Stephen Harper’s chief of staff and significant reform of Senate expenses.

“The most important thing as a journalist is to shut up and listen,” Fife says of his investigative skill, which has earned him several prestigious awards as well as the nickname, Fife the Knife.

Stories come to light not only from sources but also from intuition. “I can’t tell you what makes me able to say, ‘Oh, that’s the story.’ I just seem to know it and feel it.”

Fife came to journalism “by accident” he explains, having graduated from the University of Toronto in history and political science. Unsure what to pursue, he followed advice to work at Newsradio in Ottawa for the summer. “I got the bug,” he says simply. Never having taken a journalism course, he characterizes his work as “like a trade. You learn it on the job.”

“I always feel I want to be their voice. I want to be the voice of people who have no power.”

A “moral compass,” acquired during his childhood in Chapleau, a small town in northern Ontario, guides his judgement. “People [there] work very hard. They pay their taxes. They’re honest people. And I always feel [that] I want to be their voice. I want to be the voice of people who have no power.”

From the start of his career in the late 1970s, working for United Press and The Canadian Press, Fife broke consequential stories about ministers in Brian Mulroney’s government. His first big one was the tainted tuna scandal in 1985 when it was revealed that the fisheries minister interfered with inspectors’ reports about spoiled tuna at a plant in New Brunswick. The minister’s resignation, new laws and stronger food quality regulations were among the results.

Known for mentoring young journalists, Fife counts Gerald McNeil, a firebrand journalist at The Canadian Press in the 1980s, as his greatest influence. “He was always saying, ‘You’ve got to question people in power. Don’t become one of those people that are stenographers.’” Read the gossip columnists, McNeil advised, in order to understand the tight, inter-connected world of the elite. McNeil also encouraged Fife not to vote in federal elections in order to remain objective. “If you cast a vote for somebody, you’re not really being objective,” Fife explains. He votes in provincial and municipal elections but hasn’t cast a ballot in a federal election for almost 40 years, having worked for almost all the media outlets in Ottawa.

He headed up the Ottawa Bureau at The Sun, then the National Post, followed by CTV National News where he was also host of CTV’s Question Period. He joined The Globe and Mail in 2015. His stories are neither partisan nor personal. “If you see something wrong, write it. But people aren’t evil. They are capable of good one moment and bad another moment. I always try to say, ‘Never make it personal.’”

That job is harder now, Fife acknowledges. He has witnessed the gutting of newsrooms as advertising dollars go elsewhere. “I feel terrible about it. And it’s worse because our Freedom of Information laws are 50 years out of date. I would think that probably 75 to 80 percent of government is not properly covered anymore.”

Media delegitimization efforts, similar to MAGA trends in the U.S., have also had an effect. “I hear from lots of people in Canada that they don’t know who to trust.”

“People aren’t evil. They are capable of good one moment and bad another moment. I always try to say, ‘Never make it personal.’”

But now is the time for Canadians to be paying attention. “Aside from the budget [in early November] is the fact that we’re in a very serious trade war. It does not look like we’ve got an end in sight of that. It could actually get worse when they open CUSMA. We’re already at 7 percent unemployment. I think it’s very possible we could be at 10 percent. The economy is slowing, and young people are going to be even more challenged by AI, and people can’t afford homes. We still have three years and three months left of Donald Trump, and there’s no low with that guy … I fear for the world, and we don’t seem to have any FDRs or Churchills in the wings that can help us through this.”

“It will be hard for [Prime Minister Mark Carney] to sustain himself,” he continues. “He’s not a magician. He can’t bring jobs overnight. He can’t diversify trade overnight … And I think we have to watch him … He’s a technocrat. He’s more in the mold of the Chrétien Blue Liberal, which is money and trade [are] more important than standing up for certain issues.”

Despite the high stakes of this political moment, Fife finds reason for optimism from young people who are committed to journalism and his belief that “at the end, we pull ourselves out of the worst kind of crises and get back on track.” Fife is 71. Retirement may come next year — ‘may’ being the operative word. “I love my job,” he says. “You’re never bored. There’s always a crisis around the corner.”