About The Fifth Estate
The Fifth Estate brings you Canada's top investigative stories. From across the country and around the world, Fifth Estate journalists dig deeper to get you the stories that matter.
The Fifth Estate is Canada's premier investigative documentary program. Hosts Bob McKeown, Mark Kelley and Steven D'Souza continue the show's tradition of provocative and fearless journalism, which began in 1975.
The team exposes wrongdoing in all corners of Canada and holds those responsible to account. The stories deliver a dazzling parade of political leaders, controversial characters and ordinary people whose lives were touched by triumph or tragedy.
Where to watch The Fifth Estate
CBC Television
Fridays at 9 p.m., 9:30 p.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador.
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Email: fifthtips@cbc.ca
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Mailing address:
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P.O. Box 500
Toronto, Ont.
M5W 1E6
Tapes and transcripts:
For video copies or transcripts of specific Fifth Estate episodes, please visit the CBC help centre.
Meet the hosts
Bob McKeown has had a career unequalled in broadcast journalism. In more than four decades at three major networks in Canada and the U.S., he's reported from 70 countries and 12 war zones and been recognized with dozens of major journalism awards.
McKeown made his CBC debut at 20, as a recent graduate of Yale University. He had returned to his hometown of Ottawa to play with the Canadian Football League's Rough Riders when the local CBC Radio afternoon show invited him to do sports commentary three times a week at union scale, $35 a piece.
He spent five years freelancing for the CBC and playing in the CFL. An all-star and Grey Cup champion, McKeown eventually retired from football and took a full-time CBC job, doing morning radio and late-night TV news in Ottawa, then Montreal.
In 1981, at age 30, he was chosen to join Adrienne Clarkson and Eric Malling as a host/reporter of the CBC's flagship investigative broadcast The Fifth Estate. For the next decade, McKeown travelled the world, covering revolutions in Eastern Europe, civil wars in Africa and Latin America, the rise of China and the fall of the Soviet Union.
In 1990, he made another adventurous career move, accepting a job as a CBS News correspondent based in New York. Within months, he made international news from the front lines of the Persian Gulf War, beating Allied forces into Kuwait as Iraqi occupiers fled. People magazine wrote, "McKeown and his CBS crew survived land mines, artillery and Iraqi snipers to get the best story of the war."
After five years at CBS, he moved to Dateline NBC, where he reported extensively on 9/11, tracked down war criminals, covered hurricanes and tornadoes, broadcast live from the wreck site of the Titanic and was bitten by a shark — on camera.
McKeown returned to Canada in 2003 and rejoined The Fifth Estate, where his stories have continued to resonate with Canadians. Those range from his groundbreaking coverage with producer Tim Sawa of dozens of rape accusations against Winnipeg businessman Peter Nygard to the investigation of why there are no seatbelts in Canadian school buses, which won the 2019 Hillman Foundation award for public service journalism in Canada.
Mark Kelley, a co-host of The Fifth Estate, loves a good story.
His passion for giving a voice to compelling and controversial stories has taken him to Dhaka, Bangladesh, where his investigation into deadly garment factories where workers made clothes for Canadians was honoured with an International Emmy award.
Kelley was part of an investigation into the questionable evidence used to convict a Quebec judge of murder that led to his release from prison. Kelley was also part of a team that won the Canadian Association of Journalists' Human Rights Reporting award for an investigation into the labour conditions of migrant farm workers in Ontario.
His journalistic journey began more than three decades ago as a reporter for CBC Radio in Quebec City. Later, he became a TV reporter for The National in Montreal and host of CBC News Morning, where he was live on the air during the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
He was a host of CBC News: Disclosure, where he was part of an investigation that led to a review of body-checking rules in Canadian amateur hockey. He hosted Connect with Mark Kelley and joined The Fifth Estate in 2012.
Steven D'Souza joined The Fifth Estate as a new co-host in September 2022.
D'Souza is a veteran reporter and foreign correspondent, well known to CBC audiences for his impressive range of work including coverage of two U.S. presidential elections and investigative work that stretches back to his time as a local reporter in Toronto. Most recently he co-hosted CBC's consumer investigative program Marketplace.
He began his CBC News career in 2000 as a reporter and video journalist based in P.E.I. and Toronto. As a correspondent based in New York City, D'Souza covered a range of events including Donald Trump's years in the White House, the papal conclave in Rome and the World Cup in Brazil.
In his role on CBC's special coverage teams, he has navigated live reporting from the G20 protests in Toronto and the riots that followed the death of George Floyd, earning D'Souza and the team a Canadian Screen Award.
He also won recognition while working with CBC Toronto for a series of investigative stories on drug trafficking in the South Asian community.