Luc Sabourin Wins the 2024 Peter H. Bryce Prize

The Centre for Free Expression (CFE) announced today that Luc Sabourin is the 2024 winner of the Peter Bryce Prize. The Prize is awarded annually to recognize and honour an individual who served the greater good by courageously speaking up about wrongdoing or abuses of public trust. 

The Prize, along with a $10,000 cash award made possible by the generosity of the Zita and Mark Bernstein Family foundation, will be presented at a virtual ceremony on Thursday, May 9, at 7 pm.

Mr. Sabourin is a long-time federal civil servant responsible for handling top secret documents within the Department of National Defence before moving to Canada Border Services Agency

In announcing this year’s winner, CFE Director James L. Turk, said that Mr. Sabourin had exposed serious wrongdoing at the Canadian Border Services Agency, including the destruction of hundreds of passports retained in the CBSA’s secure area as they were essential to investigations and prosecutions of individuals thought to be engaged in criminal activities.

Mr. Sabourin also exposed efforts to hide the illegal destruction by falsifying the Agency’s Lost Stolen Fraudulent Database, recording the destroyed passports as having been returned to the issuing agency.

The reprisals against Mr. Sabourin for speaking out about the wrongdoing were bold and devastating. These included intense workplace harassment that led to a diagnosis of PTSD and his departure from the Agency on medical leave. Harassment included putting hand sanitizer in his coffee, not enough to cause lasting harm but a potent warning of how vulnerable he was. His life was also endangered by leaking his name and address to known mobsters, and CBSA refused to process his medical pension which was authorized by Health Canada in 2018. He only started receiving it in 2022 when Members of Parliament began asking questions about his case.