Nadeer Hashmi
Nadeer Hashmi reports on how funding decisions, policy changes and environmental pressures play out in the everyday lives of schools, farmers and small communities for CBC News. His recent work sits at the intersection of education, local infrastructure and resource development, showing how provincial and national debates translate into concrete trade‑offs in central and northern regions. He combines written features with on‑camera explainer pieces, often anchoring stories in one rural community to illustrate wider systemic issues.
Rural schools and strained education funding
Education stories are a recurring strand in Hashmi’s reporting, with a focus on how rural schools cope with tight budgets and shifting enrolment. In one feature, he documents a rural Alberta school that is moving to a four‑day week and losing a teacher because of funding challenges, using the school’s schedule change and staff reduction to show how budget pressure reshapes daily life for students and families.
In a related video piece, he covers how that school nears a funding cutoff, presenting the school board’s concerns to the provincial government and highlighting the tension between provincial formulas and local realities.
His education coverage also extends beyond K‑12, contributing to reporting on an Alberta panel’s proposed post‑secondary funding model and expectations that institutions remain neutral while upholding freedom of expression and intellectual diversity. He has explained how federal political promises around trades training are received by educators in the Northwest Territories, situating local pre‑trades programs within national campaign rhetoric.
Across these pieces, he treats education as an essential public service under fiscal and political pressure, grounding policy stories in the specific programs, schedules and staffing decisions that communities must adjust to.
Central Alberta communities, infrastructure and local governance
Hashmi frequently reports from small towns and regional hubs, tracing how decisions on policing, transportation and provincial autonomy affect residents. He has covered long lineups in central Alberta for a petition pushing provincial independence, framing the scene through the turnout at local signing locations and the arguments people offer for pursuing more provincial control. In another story, he reports on an Alberta town considered too small for its own police service that is weighing the addition of provincial sheriffs, focusing on how local officials and residents weigh safety concerns against costs and jurisdictional questions.
His coverage of a new “community connector” trail near a lake looks at efforts to make cycling safer, linking the project to broader questions about active transportation, tourism and community planning. These pieces share an interest in how local authorities and residents navigate limited resources and overlapping responsibilities, with Hashmi often using the vantage point of a single town or corridor to examine broader questions about governance and public services.
Agriculture, environment and resource projects
Agriculture and environmental risk form another major thread in Hashmi’s work, particularly in central Alberta.
He has reported on how a “super” El Niño pattern could mean less snow and less moisture for farmers, explaining what that shift in precipitation means for soil conditions and crop planning in the region. In a pair of stories from Canada’s largest honey‑producing area, he follows beekeepers who are bracing for U.S. honey tariffs and advocating for a “buy Canadian” movement, drawing out the economic stakes for producers and the role of trade policy in local livelihoods. Environmental health emerges again in his coverage of rising Dutch elm disease cases, where he shows how municipalities are on alert and what tree removal and monitoring efforts look like on the ground.
He also reports on Canada’s largest carbon capture project breaking ground in central Alberta, situating the development within local industry, climate policy and community expectations. Across these assignments, his reporting links climate patterns, trade measures and large‑scale industrial projects to specific farms, towns and municipal responses, emphasizing the practical implications of environmental and economic change.
Local impacts as the through-line
Hashmi’s coverage is tied together by attention to how large structures - funding formulas, trade regimes, climate systems and political campaigns - land in particular communities.
Whether he is following educators adjusting calendars and staffing, beekeepers responding to tariffs, or towns considering new law‑enforcement arrangements, he keeps the focus on practical consequences rather than abstractions. His reporting role at CBC News includes both regional feature writing and field reporting, and he has previously produced news features for a community television outlet before joining the network. Taken together, his work offers a consistent view of public services and local economies under pressure, making him a fit for stories that hinge on concrete impacts in schools, municipalities and resource‑dependent communities.
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.