Electronic ballots for the CAJ BC Regional Director election have now been emailed to all eligible voters in the region. The election period will run from April 3 to 8 and the successful candidate will be announced on April 10. Candidates for the election are listed below.

As per CAJ bylaws, nominations are open to all voting members in good standing. If you are in the BC region and your membership is up to date but haven’t received a ballot, please let us know immediately at elections@caj.ca.

Please email any election-related questions to elections@caj.ca.

Schwartz, Zane
Schwartz, ZaneCandidate

I’ve served as National Chair of the Canadian Association of Journalists since 2018. I’m an award-winning investigative reporter and the Editor-In-Chief and Chief Executive Officer of the Investigative Journalism Foundation. I founded and lead the CAJ’s annual diversity survey, co-lead our mentorship program, and play a key role in freeing jailed journalists and other press freedom fights. I helped architect the CAJ’s B.C. Supreme Court victory in the Fairy Creek case, which created a strong precedent for media access during ongoing police operations. I am a (brand new) human father and a (still somewhat new) Aussiedoodle father.

I’ve had the pleasure of serving as the National Chair of the CAJ since 2018. The last time I was up for re-election, in 2020, I promised to launch a diversity survey and a mentorship program if you trusted me with another term. The diversity survey is now three years old (we got a record number of journalists to fill it out in 2023!), and we’ve paired over 400 reporters through the mentorship program. If re-elected this time, I will continue to strengthen our mentorship and diversity survey offerings. At the national level, I will expand the CAJ’s legal advocacy so we go to court more often to fight publication bans, protect confidential sources, get charges against journalists dropped and challenge the police’s attempts to stop journalists from reporting on them. At the British Columbia level, I will organize local in-person meet-ups as well as foster more online community, so all the journalists in our province can get to know each other better, learn from each other, and work together to create a more vibrant and supportive West Coast network of reporters.

Shokoohi, Kimiya
Shokoohi, KimiyaCandidate

I am a science journalist who has reported from four continents. My work can be found across the BBC, CBC, and numerous publications. I was a part of the BBC’s World 2020 project, covering West Africa. Prior to that I was on the international sport circuit, having covered 7 Olympics in all. https://www.kimiyashokoohi.com/

Raised and educated in British Columbia before pursuing further media studies in California, I have since lived and worked across four continents. Among the highlights were launching an international sports platform for modern audiences with the Olympics, and expanding programming continent-wide from my post in West Africa with the BBC. I would like to be your CAJ representative for Canadian Journalists working abroad. When journalists go abroad, we often lose our connections to the communities back home. In this post, it is of interest to me to ensure Canadian journalists stay connected as well as have the resources they need in case of emergencies.

There are no current board of direction position openings or active elections for open positions. Our next general election will occur in the coming spring. Stay tuned here for full details.