Elizabeth McSheffrey is a journalist from Ottawa with diverse experience in print, television and radio. She currently works in Vancouver as an online reporter with Global News.

In the last 10 years, Elizabeth has worked in a variety of media development and reporting roles across Canada and Africa. She has also worked as a parliamentary journalist and a program instructor for Journalists for Human Rights.

Her work has been published all over the world, covering everything from Al-Shebaab terrorist attacks to the multi-stakeholder negotiations that saved British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest. She is most proud of her contributions to the three largest collaborative journalism investigations in Canadian history: The Price of Oil, Tainted Water and Clean Water, Broken Promises. For samples of her work, click here.

Stories with impact

Last year, Elizabeth won two RTDNA’s for her work on what a papal apology could mean to residential school survivors in Canada, launching a year of coverage that took her to the Vatican and across the country on Pope Francis’ reconciliatory pilgrimage. She was also a co-finalist in the Eastern Region’s investigative excellence category for work exposing the chronic underfunding and underpayment of First Nations water operators, prompting Ottawa to  voice its commitment to improving their pay and working conditions.

The series built off her work in 2019, when she co-won an Atlantic Journalism Award  for exposing the widespread risk of lead in Nova Scotia drinking water, leading to an unprecedented utility deal to replace lead pipes in private homes for free. In the same year, her deep dive into chronic health and safety risks on construction sites led the Nova Scotia government to create a new safety initiative, and earned an Eastern Region RTDNA award nomination.

In 2018, Elizabeth was a co-finalist for three national journalism excellence awards for the Price of Oil, a series that drove legislative change on air pollution in Ontario, and exposed regulatory infractions within Canada’s lucrative oil and gas industry. She was also part of the team nominated for a prestigious Michener Award for a series investigating conflict of interest within Canada’s federal energy regulator, which contributed to the eventual demise of the largest pipeline proposal in the country.

Elizabeth earned her Bachelor of Journalism degree from Carleton University and has guest-lectured at Moi University in Nairobi and Queen’s University in Kingston, on international journalism and business and human rights, respectively. When she’s not working (and when she’s working), she enjoys coffee, puns and filing access-to-information requests.