Zak Vescera
Zak is a Vancouver-based journalist who loves digging into a big story. He focuses on stories about British Columbia with a focus on white-collar crime. Zak twice won the Hon. Edward Goff Penny Memorial Prize for Young Canadian Journalists for his work at The Saskatoon StarPhoenix, including deep dives on the province’s toxic drug crisis and the provincial government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to joining the Investigative Journalism Foundation, he worked at The Tyee, where he investigated workplace deaths, union drives and working conditions for migrant farmworkers in British Columbia. His reporting has also appeared in The Guardian, CBC and VICE. When he’s not reporting you’ll find him jogging, taking film photos or running a game of Dungeons and Dragons.
Stories by Zak Vescera
Canada’s spy agency now shares intel with corporations — thanks to a push from TC Energy
10 min. readDocuments reveal Canada’s biggest corporations successfully lobbied the federal government for changes that enable access...
Oil giant broke deal to deactivate thousands of pipelines and faced no penalty, documents reveal
Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. failed to deliver on a promise to deactivate thousands of inactive...
BC Greens call for regulator reform over secret exemption given to oil company
The BC Greens say secrecy around BC Energy Regulator compliance and enforcement is ‘completely unacceptable’
17 government inspectors, 170 companies and more than 9,000 potential infractions: inside B.C.’s oversight of the oil and gas sector
Notes made by regulator officers during thousands of inspections that were marked in compliance with...
B.C. quietly allowed an oil and gas giant to sidestep rules for more than 4,300 pipelines
B.C.’s energy regulator has the power to grant exemptions — without notifying the public. Experts...
44 ‘serious’ leaks reported at B.C. oil and gas sites in the past year
Hydrogen sulphide, methane and potentially contaminated water leaks from natural gas wells in B.C. were...
