Two Globe and Mail journalists have received the Ross Munro Award, which recognizes excellence in national defence and security reporting, for their coverage of foreign interference in Canada.
Ottawa bureau chief Robert Fife and senior parliamentary reporter Steven Chase have spent years reporting on allegations of Chinese interference in Canadian elections and, last year, also wrote on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s claim that India was involved in the assassination of a Sikh activist in British Columbia.
Globe and Mail Ottawa bureau chief Robert FifeSUPPLIED
Globe and Mail senior parliamentary reporter Steven ChaseThe Globe and Mail
The award is presented by the Ottawa-based CDA Institute, which was founded in 1987 by the Conference of Defence Associations with an aim of advancing debate about national-security issues.
The Ross Munro Award recognizes “professional excellence and objectivity” in defence or national-security reporting.
The work by Mr. Fife and Mr. Chase last year included stories, based on top-secret and secret intelligence reports, that detailed how Chinese diplomats and their proxies worked to back the re-election of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and defeat Conservative politicians considered to be unfriendly to Beijing, and how Beijing targeted a sitting Conservative MP and his Hong Kong-based relatives.
In September, The Globe published a story revealing that the Canadian government had credible allegations that agents of India were behind the assassination of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar outside a temple in Surrey, B.C. The Prime Minister detailed the allegations in Parliament 15 minutes later.
“These two reporters dealt with sensitive issues responsibly to ensure the public more fully understands what is going on in the country,” said The Globe’s editor-in-chief, David Walmsley.
“We are delighted the judges rewarded this work, which required brave independent reporting in the finest traditions of The Globe and Mail.”
The award is named after Robert Ross Munro, a reporter with The Canadian Press who was the agency’s lead war correspondent in Europe during the Second World War and later covered the Korean War. He later became a newspaper publisher.
A Globe journalist last won the award in 2006, when columnist Christie Blatchford was recognized for her work writing about the Canadian Forces.