In order to lift the veil on unknown realities, our Bureau of Investigation has sometimes had to use clandestine procedures. Our journalists went incognito in an Amazon distribution center, a sorting center, a textile factory and even a residence for seniors in the midst of a pandemic.
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When obtaining information from sources is insufficient or when confirmation of allegations is otherwise impossible, investigative journalists resort to a technique of “undercover”.
It consists of entering a place more or less clandestinely to document what is happening there, sometimes with the help of hidden cameras.
Sorting center and Amazon
It is thanks to this type of equipment that we were able to reveal in 2019 that recycling sorting centers “masked” bales of paper to thwart Indian customs.
Archival photo
Our infiltration into a sorting center in 2019 uncovered questionable environmental and commercial practices.
Our reporter, who spent six days as a sorter in a center in Châteauguay, notably had to remove the visible plastics from these bundles so that they looked less contaminated and were placed at the front of the containers.
This type of low-paying job is often occupied by people with precarious status, who will be reluctant to act as whistleblowers.
It is for this reason that we have also been hired by the American giant Amazon.
Archival photo
Our journalist, Dominique Cambron-Goulet, in an Amazon warehouse in 2020.
Our journalist worked there for five weeks in the fall of 2020. We were thus able to reveal the constant surveillance by cameras of the employees, the monitoring of performance in real time, but also to report the existence of an employment contract with clauses which cannot be legally applied in Quebec.
Risks
The choice to resort to incursion is not taken lightly, as it may involve safety or health risks.
In the spring of 2020, when the COVID pandemic hit very hard in Quebec’s seniors’ residences, our journalist, Marie-Christine Noël, became a beneficiary attendant in an intermediate resource for a while after obtaining privileged access from The direction.
Archival photo
Reporter Marie-Christine Noël was able to testify in the field about the reality of beneficiary attendants during the pandemic.
His foray made it possible to relate the daily life of caregivers during this first wave of the pandemic, which proved to be particularly deadly: the fact of working with the fear of the virus, of rubbing shoulders with death on a daily basis, all health precautions.
These testimonies were obtained thanks to his work carried out inside the residence.
Marie-Christine Noël knows infiltrations very well. For the Bureau of Investigation, she became, for example, a weight management practitioner, to reveal the dangerous world of natural products, and a substitute teacher in primary and secondary school.
So many reports from the field that require preparation and courage, but which are essential to show realities that would otherwise remain hidden.