Grant LaFleche

Investigative Journalist
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada
I am a veteran investigative journalist and associate producer with the Fifth Estate at the CBC. I was previously with the Hamilton Spectator, Toronto Star and St. Catharines Standard, in Ontario, Canada. I have been nominated for 30 Ontario Newspaper Awards and five National Newspaper Awards, five Canadian Association of Journalists Awards, and the Michener Award for public service journalism.

About

Grant LaFleche

Journalism
Writing
Narrative writing
Research
Investigative journalism
data analysis
data visualization
Podcasting
Photography
Video/sound editing
Interviewing

Grant LaFleche is an award-winning investigative journalist, and associate producer with the Fifth Estate at the CBC. He was formerly at the Hamilton Spectator in Hamilton Ontario, and was previously a member of the Toronto Star's investigations team while working with St. Catharines Standard in Niagara, Ontario.

Since he started at the Standard in 1998, Grant has been nominated for 30 Ontario Newspaper Awards, where he has been twice nominated as the journalist of the year. He has also been nominated for five National Newspaper Awards, the Canadian Journalism Foundation Jackman Award for excellence in journalism and five Canadian Association of Journalists awards.

He has also been nominated for the Michener Award for public service journalism, the Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize gold medal for public service journalism.

His 2017 investigative series, The Wolf in Priest's Clothing, won the Ontario Newspaper Award for feature writing and the National Newspaper Award for local journalism.

His two-year investigation into corruption at Niagara's regional government played a major role in triggering an Ontario Ombudsman’s investigation into the Niagara Region and impacted the 2018 municipal election. That series won two Ontario Newspaper Awards, a National Newspaper Award for investigative journalism and a Canadian Association of Journalists Award. It also earned LaFleche and The Standard a Michener nomination.

LaFleche was a member of the Toronto Star investigative team, focusing on long-term, hard-target investigative projects for a year-long secondment before joining the Spectator.

With the Spectator, LaFleche has exposed the secret life of a Hamilton paralegal who lived online as a notorious neo-Nazi, showed how the "freedom convoy" has taken aim at the transgender community, and revealed a long-running identity theft and fraud scheme at a local retirement home. He also lead a Metroland joint-paper investigation into the dramatic rise in hate crimes in Ontario.

LaFleche joined the Fifth Estate, Canada's award-winning investigative news documentary program at the CBC, in July 2024 as an associate producer.