Featured Investigations

Featured Investigations

Majok Thon Mawut’s case is believed to be the first time the Ontario government defied the Canada Border Services Agency by refusing to hold an immigration detainee in one of its jails.

Caged by Canada

When Ontario said ‘no.’ Inside the only known case where the province defied Ottawa’s request to house an immigration detainee in a max-security jail

The nearly two-year detention of an African immigration detainee was found to be “dehumanizing” and “degrading.”

Caged by Canada

Ontario continues to house immigration detainees in jails even as other provinces put an end to ‘truly shocking’ practice

Caged by Canada

‘Alarming’ number of jailed immigration detainees have mental health problems, Star analysis finds

Developers skipped the bill on necessary repairs to a Toronto shelter for women and non-binary people fleeing violence, city alleges

Star Investigation

Late-night texts, secret jobs, constant fear: Inside an undocumented worker’s life in the shadows and a new federal program that could change her life

Billionaire Murders: Ep 9

Succession

Star Investigation

Ontario’s top pathologist was accused of abusing his power. Now, judges say the bitter dispute never should have made it to their court

Death in a Small Town

Nathaniel McLellan, the youngest of four boys born to Rose-Anne and Kent McLellan, collapsed at his home daycare on Oct. 27, 2015.

Death in a Small Town: Part 1

What really happened to Nathaniel? The babysitter said he collapsed. Then all eyes turned to his parents

Kent McLellan, left, photographed near his Parkhill home on a road where he enjoyed walking with Nathaniel, and Rose-Anne McLellan at the intersection where she picked up Nathaniel from the babysitter.

Death in a Small Town: Part 2

As Nathaniel clung to life, his parents asked if he’d survive. What they didn’t ask would soon be held against them

Death in a Small Town: Part 3

The police said they had information on Nathaniel’s death. Instead, they separated his parents and warned: ‘We are pursuing a manslaughter charge’

Death in a Small Town: Part 4

Frustrated with the police investigation into Nathaniel’s death, his mother turned detective. What she found raised questions about the official probe

Death in a Small Town: Part 5

More than five years after Nathaniel died, the police investigation is open. The Star’s own investigation examines numerous apparent flaws

Star Investigation

Arrest made in 2015 death of toddler Nathaniel McLellan

Barry and Honey Sherman

Barry and Honey Sherman.

The Sherman Murders: Kevin Donovan answered your questions about the final episode of ‘The Billionaire Murders’ podcast

The hunt for the killers of Honey and Barry Sherman. Kevin Donovan, investigative reporter and the host of The Billionaire Murders podcast, returns Mon. May 15 to answer your questions about the latest episode.

Sherman murders Q&A recap: Kevin Donovan teases final episode of ‘The Billionaire Murders’ podcast in reader live chat

Billionaire Murders: Ep 8

Perfect storm

Latest Investigations

A protester outside Myanmar’s embassy in Bangkok, Thailand. The military junta’s 2021 coup has cast Myanmar into a deep humanitarian crisis.

Star Investigation

Energy companies got rid of their stakes in a Myanmar gas field accused of funding war crimes. So why did a Canadian-owned firm buy in?

The purchase by an MTI Energy subsidiary raises questions about the effectiveness of Canada’s sanctions against violent regime, observers say.

Chronic stress is a recognized work injury. So why does Ontario’s WSIB reject more than 90% of claims?

Star Investigation

Threatened. Humiliated. Blacklisted. Inside the culture of fear that muzzled and penalized women who exposed abuse at Canada Soccer

Star/IJB investigation

She found out she’d been breathing a cancer-causing gas for over a decade. So why won’t Canada’s health-care system let her get her lungs tested?

Star Investigation

Drug approval under the microscope as two doctors allege Health Canada received flawed evidence about blood medication

A GTA dance troupe rose to fame on ‘Canada’s Got Talent.’ Behind the scenes, dancers say their leader was abusing his power to get some of them to sleep with him

They were supposed to be on the job. Instead, Ontario workplace inspectors dined in restaurants while billing taxpayers for overtime, probe reveals

Star Investigation

An expert opinion sent two parents to jail for their daughter’s death. Now the case has fallen apart and Ontario’s top pathologist is under scrutiny — again

Star Investigation

A controversial blood drug. Funding from Apotex. Accusations of a whitewash. Why this scientist has spent decades fighting Toronto hospitals

The ROM collected millions in wage subsidies during COVID-19 closures. Now, the Canadian government wants the money back

Star Investigation

The B.C. solicitor general ordered a probe of alleged RCMP misconduct in Prince George. Here’s why Indigenous leaders say it’s flawed.

Star/IJB Investigation

The hidden hate on campus: We tracked incidents at colleges and universities and found a growing problem

Star Investigation

TMU said it increased security after a string of campus sex assaults. Now, some students and staff feel misled

Break the Floor

Advocates say that in the wake of revelations of abuse everywhere from Hollywood to USA Gymnastics there have been increased allegations in the professional dance community.

Star/AP investigation

Break the Floor founder, celebrity dance instructors face sexual misconduct allegations as the prominent company’s crisis deepens

Gil Stroming, the founder of Break the Floor, announced in an internal message that he is “passing the torch” to a new owner and stepping down as CEO.

Star Investigation

The CEO of Break the Floor — where famous dance coaches were accused of sexual misconduct — says he is selling the company

Star investigation

Choreographer Nick Lazzarini pulled from dance company tour following Star investigation

Unchartered

A Torstar investigation has found dozens of cases over the last decade where police misled courts to obtain search warrants that were later found to have violated the Charter rights of people facing charges.

Unchartered: Part 4

Unjust invasions happening across Canada as police mislead courts, bungle warrants and violate suspects’ rights

Toronto Police Service is reviewing the conduct of officers in nearly 100 cases after a Torstar investigation exposed court decisions that found police seriously violated the rights of the accused.

Torstar Gets Action

Toronto police reviewing officers’ conduct in nearly 100 cases following Torstar investigation into Charter violations

Podcasts | This Matters

Rights wronged: How police are violating people’s Charter rights

Suspended

Ontario Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney’s office blocked the release of information about a controversial program that routinely suspends the licences of safe drivers based on alleged health conditions.

We asked the Ontario government about its controversial licence suspensions. Staff prepared answers. Then they were told to withhold them

Ontario Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney has declined requests for interviews about licence suspensions under the province’s controversial medical condition report system.

‘You lose your job, you lose your livelihood’: NDP will push for reform of Ontario program that has unfairly stripped drivers of their licences

Six things to know about Ontario’s controversial medical condition report system

Operation Transparency

The vast majority of nerve blocks in Ontario are performed in 99 private pain clinics, an industry dominated by several big chains, including Toronto Poly Clinics, Pain Care Clinics, InMedic Pain Management Centres and The Centres for Pain Management.

Operation Transparency

Chronic pain management is big business in Ontario – and these four private clinic chains dominate the industry

The number of doctors offering nerve block injections to treat chronic pain is ballooning. Ontario needs to rein in the costs and develop guidelines to ensure this procedure is being used appropriately.

Ontario must fix excessive use of pain blockers

Ontario pain doctor billings ‘shocking,’ Doug Ford says after Star revelations

Tainted Water

Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof and her son Lukas, 11, outside his school, the Beverley School, in Toronto. The school, which serves students with developmental and physical disabilities, had six of its eight water quality tests in 2019/20 record lead levels higher than Health Canada’s maximum acceptable level.

Search our Database

A third of Ontario schools still have dangerous levels of lead in drinking water – two years after the province pledged to fix it. Search our database to see the results

‘Are you using that water?’: Lead testing pulls back curtain on extent of problem in Nova Scotia schools

‘Are you using that water?’: Lead testing pulls back curtain on extent of problem in Nova Scotia schools

Liberal MPs call on government to tackle ‘national public health crisis’ of lead in drinking water

Grassy Narrows

Supporters of Indigenous logging blockaders in Grassy Narrows march in Toronto in the annual Grassy River Run in 2019.

‘We will never give up on defending our land’: Ontario declares 10-year logging ban in Grassy Narrows

Supporters of Indigenous logging blockaders in Grassy Narrows march in Toronto in the annual Grassy River Run in 2019.

ContributorsOpinion

Grassy Narrows resistance to logging an inspiring example to us all

Star Investigation

For generations, Grassy Narrows residents have used the land for hunting. Now, it’s in the middle of a lawsuit between Canadian mining corporations

The Price of Oil

Global demand for oil will peak in the mid-2030s, according to the World Energy Outlook report, put out by the International Energy Agency.

For the first time, global fossil fuel demand is on track to peak. Here’s when

Saudi Aramco’s oil field in Shaybah, Saudi Arabia. The latest OPEC+ production agreement requires considerable sacrifice from the Saudis, squeezing output to the lowest since 2011 and potentially offering its U.S. shale rivals the lifeline of a price bump.

OPEC+ bid to save oil industry overwhelmed by demand crash

Oil nears three-month low as rally on Saudi attack fizzles

The Implant Files

Textured breast implants have been linked to a form of lymphoma called breast implant associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL) as well as a range of other autoimmune-like symptoms including cognitive issues, fatigue and muscle pain.

Star Gets Action

Health Canada moves to ban textured breast implants

Dawn Criss of Alberta acquired a rare form of cancer associated with her breast implants. She was one of four Canadian women — along with a Canadian researcher — who appeared before the FDA panel Monday urging a ban on textured breast implants they say are sickening women.

The Implant Files

‘Please take textured breast implants off the market.’ Cancer survivors among Canadians urging FDA hearing to ban devices

The Implant Files: Part 5

‘My entire body was shutting down.’ Breast implant recipients say doctors gloss over risks

Panama Papers

A few weeks after Christmas 2020, Valerie Gitt, right, seen her with 82-year-old mother, Alice, learned they were being evicted from their Progress Residential-owned home in Rutherford County, Tenn.

Secret money. Elite Canadian families. And a corporate landlord accused of pandemic evictions

Marking the biggest journalistic collaboration in history, nearly 12 million documents leaked to the Washington D.C.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) were shared with more than 600 reporters in 117 countries, including journalists at the Toronto Star and CBC in Canada.

Explainer: What are Pandora Papers, which leaders are mentioned and why hasn’t Canada laid a charge on offshore tax havens?

This man helped set up hundreds of offshore firms for rich clients. His case shows how Canada has ‘turned a blind eye’ to cracking down on offshore tax schemes

Motherisk

Joyce Hayman, pictured with her lawyer James Lockyer, had her name cleared last month in appeals court some 23 years after being wrongfully convicted of drugging her child based on unreliable evidence from the now closed Motherisk program at Sick Kids.

ContributorsOpinion

Decades after Motherisk wrongful conviction, we’ve cleared a woman but fixed nothing

Joyce Hayman with her lawyer, James Lockyer, moments after her acquittal by the Ontario Court of Appeal on April 12, 2021.

Motherisk: Key events in a decades-long scandal that tore apart families in Canada

Star Gets Action

Woman wrongfully convicted over flawed Motherisk evidence acquitted by Ontario court

Medical Disorder

STAR INVESTIGATION

Canada's medical watchdogs know more about bad doctors than they are telling you

Star Investigation

Regulators expect doctors to tell the truth about their past. Here’s what happens when they don’t

Star Investigation

Senator calls for national bad doctor registry in wake of Star investigation

From the Archives

Dancers say they were sexually harassed or groomed by famous choreographers and the dance company failed to protect them

Star Investigation

Dancers say they were sexually harassed or groomed by famous choreographers and the dance company failed to protect them

Police officers across Canada are violating people’s rights with alarming frequency. Disturbing, unreleased video exposes cops stepping outside the law

Unchartered: Part 1

Police officers across Canada are violating people’s rights with alarming frequency. Disturbing, unreleased video exposes cops stepping outside the law

Star Investigation

The Four Seasons Private Residences in Toronto is one of the most prestigious condo developments in the country. So why have a third of units sold for a loss?

STAR INVESTIGATION

I went undercover in a Toronto factory where a temp worker died. Here's what I found

Star Investigation

When a third member of this family died in the same house, police could no longer see it as a coincidence. This is how authorities failed the Harrisons

Star Investigation

After a Brantford officer confesses to murder, new questions are raised about the final moments in two young men's lives

Star Investigation

Inside the TTC’S $1B streetcar deal with Bombardier