The Halifax Examiner was founded by investigative reporter Tim Bousquet. Before starting the Examiner, Bousquet exposed corruption and misspending in Halifax for seven years as the news editor of The Coast altweekly. He uncovered the waste of millions of dollars in the Commonwealth Games bid fiasco. He revealed the dirty details of Halifax’s concert scandal. When no one would say what had happened to the sewage plant in 2009, he explained how it had broken. Bousquet’s 2012 article “A trust betrayed,” about Mayor Peter Kelly’s impropriety in handling the estate of a family friend, was named the best investigative news reporting of that year in the country by the Canadian Association of Journalists; as a result of the article, Kelly declined to run for reelection. In 2013, Bousquet investigated the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of a promising young woman in 2010; after “Holly Bartlett’s unlikely journey” was published, the police department announced it was reviewing its investigation.
Bousquet is responsible for fearless investigative reporting that makes a difference, and the Halifax Examiner continues that tradition. It is an independent, adversarial news site devoted to holding the powerful accountable.
Testimonials
“Bousquet has had more journalistic impact on the community than most well-staffed, well-funded newsrooms. His research leads to his personal conclusions, which open issues to public discourse.”
—Costas Halavrezos, former host of CBC’s Maritime Noon, present-day spice merchant
“Tim Bousquet is crusty, smart, diligent, determined and contemptuous of pomposity and dishonesty.If those sound to you like the qualities of a first-rate investigative reporter, you’re right — and we’re lucky to have Bousquet’s laser gaze directed at the dark corners of our own complicated little city. Hang on! This should be an exhilarating ride.”
—Silver Don Cameron, Host and Executive Producer of The GreenInterview.com, author, academic, former CBC reporter, former executive of the Writers Union of Canada.
“Tim is a dogged, tenacious reporter, a guy who combines old-school, shoe-leather muckraking with an open-minded, intellectual curiosity about the ways that journalism is evolving in the Internet age. He is, hands down, Nova Scotia’s best investigative journalist, as his track record of blockbuster scoops shows. He’s single-handedly influenced politics in Halifax and the province at large, holding the powerful accountable for their transgressions and blunders, and bludgeoning transparency out of a government that prefers to conduct its business within a cozy insider’s world. By subscribing to the Examiner, you’ll not only be supporting an essential contribution to civic life, but you’ll also be at the coal face of some of the most interesting and useful journalism in town. I can’t wait to see what Tim comes up with next.”
—Matthieu Aikins, reporter in Kabul, Afghanistan and winner of the Polk Award and the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism for uncovering evidence of war crimes in Afghanistan.