Annabelle Olivier
Annabelle Olivier connects decisions in Quebec’s school system to their impact on students and parents, with a focus on accountability, privacy and the politics around education. She is a digital journalist with CBC News, covering education and related public policy issues. Her background includes digital production work at another major Canadian broadcaster, which informs a precise, online-first reporting style.
Data breaches and digital privacy in schools
Olivier’s recent coverage of a mass email sent by the Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board at Rosemère High School shows her attention to how administrative mistakes can turn into serious privacy breaches. She reported that the email to parents included an attached spreadsheet with hundreds of parents’ names, birth dates, places of birth, social insurance numbers, home addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and emergency contacts. Her piece detailed how parents quickly tried to reach school board officials, how the board urged recipients to delete the email and attachment, and how written confirmation was requested to show the data had been removed. She also tracked the board’s pledge to report the incident to Quebec’s access and privacy authority and its promise to investigate and strengthen internal processes. Through this work, she treats school data handling and digital security as core education issues, not technical footnotes.
Students caught in institutional disputes
Olivier reports closely on what happens when institutional conflicts and labour disputes spill into classrooms.
In her coverage of LaSalle College, she highlighted students who said they felt used “like a bargaining chip” after classes were suspended, focusing on cancelled or delayed programs and uncertainty about when courses would resume. The story follows the students’ practical concerns: tuition already paid, time lost, and the risk that promised credentials will be delayed or disrupted. She presents the dispute through the students’ voices, while keeping sight of the decisions by administrators and staff that leave learners without clear information or timelines.
This emphasis on disrupted study plans and the real-world costs of institutional negotiations distinguishes her education reporting from generic coverage of labour actions.
Education on the campaign trail
Olivier brings the same concrete lens to election coverage, treating education as a central campaign issue rather than a background theme. In one campaign piece, she reported how education, immigration and cost of living dominated a day on the trail, tracing how parties framed school-related promises alongside broader affordability concerns.
Another article examined how Quebec’s school system, including its three-tier structure, moved into the spotlight during the campaign, with parties positioning reforms and investments as responses to longstanding inequities in access and quality. Her campaign stories link policy platforms to specific questions about funding, school choice and the structure of public and private education, rather than stopping at general rhetoric.
This makes her coverage useful for understanding how proposed laws and budgets could change the daily experience of students and families.
School spaces and community tensions
Physical school infrastructure is another recurring thread in Olivier’s work. She has reported on the proposal to turn the Sanair racetrack in Saint-Pie into a high school, capturing tensions between the desire for new education spaces and the identity of communities tied to existing venues. The piece shows how a plan to repurpose a racetrack pits educational needs - more classroom capacity, modern facilities - against concerns over noise, traffic, and the loss of a long-standing local site. Olivier lays out the positions of residents, education officials and other stakeholders, treating the question of where schools are built as a political and social decision, not just a technical one. Together with her work on privacy breaches and student unrest, this land-use coverage rounds out a portfolio that follows schools as institutions embedded in communities and wider systems.
Across these stories, Olivier’s distinguishing trait is the way she ties system-level themes - data governance, funding, campaign pledges and infrastructure - to the immediate realities of parents and students. Her reporting is grounded in specific incidents and clear descriptions of what happened, but consistently asks what those incidents mean for how education is organized and delivered in Quebec.
She works in digital formats, structuring her pieces for online readers while maintaining a focus on detailed, verifiable facts drawn from documents, statements and interviews.
4 more education journalists.
Abby Russchen
Abby Russchen ties education, community institutions and individual stories together, showing how policies and decisions register in people’s lives. She reports for CBC on education and community life, working across text, video and photography for different CBC platforms. Her education coverage centres student achievement, provincial and national test results, classroom technology and the forces shaping learning conditions, connecting policy language and expert analysis to observable changes in performance. She treats AI, screens and digital tools as part of the education beat, focusing on their impact on student well-being. She also reports on community institutions and local services, from bank closures and changing city status to small-business growth. Her human-interest features follow people, public memory and recognition, and her long-form background supports detailed, fact-grounded narratives across formats.
Alexa Phillips
Alexa Phillips reports on education as a financial system, tracing who pays, who benefits and who bears the risk when policy changes reshape schools and universities. She covers education policy, funding and regulation for The i Paper, with a consistent focus on money, power and their impact on students and staff. Her reporting follows fees, budgets and reform into classrooms and lecture halls, using concrete figures to show how tax changes, funding mechanisms and loan reforms translate into course cuts, job losses and access. Phillips brings wider experience on public services and regulation, including work on gambling oversight and healthcare access, so education sits in a larger accountability story. She writes straightforward, reported news pieces that combine policy detail, financial data and case studies, built from official records and regular call‑outs to readers affected by the systems she covers.
Alexandra Holyk
Alexandra Holyk is a multi-skilled journalist at CTV News who reports on education and youth issues through the daily lives of students, families, and local communities. She covers school and campus decisions, student safety, youth behaviour, and neighbourhood incidents, with a focus on how they affect the people directly involved. Her work includes stories on graduation choices, concerns about Black students in a school board, federal research funding at the University of Waterloo, and students who helped after a cyclist collision. She also covers vandalism and other local disruptions around schools and neighbourhoods. Holyk pitches, researches, shoots, writes, edits, and presents stories for broadcast and digital platforms. Her previous work includes video journalism for provincial coverage, along with reporting for campus and regional outlets and major Canadian newspapers and business media.
Cameron Kilfoy
Cameron Kilfoy reports on how institutional decisions play out in everyday life, with a steady focus on policy, accountability and the people affected. He covers education within a wider public-policy beat, especially Memorial University decisions and student experience, showing how rules and oversight protect or fail students and other residents. At CBC he blends breaking news, explanatory pieces and community features, grounding complex choices in clear examples of impact. His reporting tracks child welfare and oversight in foster care, environmental risk and wildfire recovery, emergencies such as a commercial flight’s emergency landing, and energy projects, regulation and housing. He also writes culture and sport features that tie events and teams to community identity. He uses direct language, concrete detail and a mix of official voices, experts and first-hand accounts to show how decisions made in institutions reach classrooms, homes and neighbourhoods.