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, returning to stories where rules, systems and oversight either protect or fail students and other residents. His work for the CBC combines breaking news, explanatory pieces and community features, often grounding complex decisions in clear, concrete examples of impact.
Memorial University decisions and student experience
Education stories in his recent work centre on Memorial University and how its policies are defined, communicated and enforced.
He has reported on a government move to expand the definition of residency for university students, explaining how new criteria bring military and police families under the policy and what that means for access and fairness. In covering an engineering acceptance error affecting more than a hundred students, he focuses on what checks and balances are put in place after the mistake and how institutional responses address the shock and uncertainty for those who thought they had secured a place.
Across these pieces he treats the university as an institution whose decisions need plain explanation and scrutiny, but he stays close to the students and families who live with the consequences.
Child welfare and institutional oversight
Cameron extends that accountability lens to stories about children and youth in care. In his coverage of alleged abuse in foster care that went undetected for years, he lays out how oversight systems functioned in practice and where they failed to identify risks to children. The reporting tracks the findings of the child and youth advocate, the response from government, and the implications for how complaints, monitoring and investigations are handled. He uses specific cases to show how policy and procedure can leave vulnerable people exposed, pressing on what will change rather than treating official reports as an endpoint.
Environmental risk, emergencies and recovery
Another thread in his work is the way communities absorb and respond to environmental and safety threats. In a set of wildfire stories, he looks at how a major fire reshaped local understanding of risk and the long tail of recovery efforts.
One piece details government commitments a year after destructive wildfires, measuring promises against the reality of rebuilding and the needs of residents and businesses.
Another examines how a particular wildfire “changed the conversation,” using interviews and expert commentary to show how people now think differently about preparedness and climate-related dangers. His coverage of an emergency landing by a commercial flight takes a similar approach, outlining what happened, how officials handled the incident and what it reveals about protocols and infrastructure.
The emphasis is on clear chronology and the human experience of disruption, rather than on technical detail for its own sake.
Energy projects, regulation and community life
Public policy and large projects are a regular part of Cameron’s brief. He has reported on a major hydro and wind power initiative, breaking down the contract terms with the help of an academic expert and exploring the long-term economic and environmental stakes. Follow-up coverage captures political and community reaction, including caution from opposition parties and Indigenous leadership about proceeding without full detail, and concern over who benefits and who carries the risk. In a piece on a new “red tape reduction” portfolio, he looks at attempts to streamline regulation, balancing arguments about economic growth with questions about resourcing and the safeguards that keep people and the environment protected. His reporting on transitional housing units opened by a non-profit organization applies the same interest in systems to the ground level, showing how funding, support services and policy choices translate into beds, supports and stability for people who need housing.
Culture, sport and storytelling
Alongside institutional coverage, Cameron writes regular features on cultural events and local sport that reveal how policy and place shape community identity.
His story on a women’s rowing team at a major regatta follows the athletes through a championship win dedicated to a late coach, capturing how tradition, mentorship and collective effort work in a small but resonant setting. A piece on a longtime musician’s attachment to a street festival explores why performing in that space matters, tying individual career history to the role of public festivals in city life.
He has also profiled an Australian filmmaker whose documentary work is shaped by narrative traditions from the region, using that lens to show how local storytelling travels and influences creative work elsewhere. These features share the same straightforward style as his policy reporting, but the focus shifts to the emotional and cultural texture of everyday life.
Across his body of work, Cameron writes in a direct, uncluttered way, keeping sentences tight and details concrete. He relies on a mix of official sources, subject-matter experts and first-hand accounts to build stories that explain what is happening and why it matters.
Whether the subject is a university policy, a complex energy deal or a community festival, he returns to the intersection of institutions and people, and to the question of how decisions made in boardrooms and legislatures show up in classrooms, homes and neighbourhoods.
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.
Annabelle Olivier
Annabelle Olivier ties system-level themes in Quebec’s school system to the immediate realities of parents and students, treating education as a lived experience rather than an abstract policy field. She is a digital journalist with CBC News, covering education and related public policy. Her work spans data breaches and digital privacy in schools, institutional conflicts and labour disputes that disrupt study plans, education on the campaign trail, and school infrastructure and land use. She reports on incidents like mass emails exposing sensitive parent data, suspended classes that leave students feeling like bargaining chips, and proposals to turn racetracks into schools. Her background in digital production at another major Canadian broadcaster shapes an online-first reporting style, grounded in specific incidents, clear descriptions, and detailed, verifiable facts drawn from documents, statements and interviews.