VANCOUVER - The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has won the Canadian Association of Journalists' Code of Silence Award for 2008 for its dizzying efforts to stop the public from learning details of fatal failures in food safety.

"The judges were sick with awe at the intestinal fortitude the Canadian Food Inspection Agency gatekeepers have shown," said CAJ President Mary Agnes Welch. "It was clear that the CFIA's guard dogs found something they can really sink their teeth into."

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has delayed and extended, ad nauseam, requests related to the Listeria outbreak that killed 22 Canadians and triggered hundreds - perhaps thousands - of illnesses.

Requests filed for inspections records on the Toronto-area Maple Leaf plant at the centre of the outbreak took nine months to produce and communication records with the company are still embroiled in delays. For one of the biggest public health issues to face Canada in recent years, details behind the cause of the outbreak, the apparent delay in warning Canadians and the agency's handling of the aftermath remain filled with unanswered questions.

The ignominious Code of Silence Award, handed out Saturday night at the CAJ's investigative journalism awards banquet, dishonours the country's most secretive government, department or agency.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office, which won the award last year, earned an honourable mention this year for continuing to muzzle civil servants and cabinet ministers, blackballing reporters who pose tough questions and building a pervasive spin machine designed to police and staunch the flow of information.

"The judges had to make a gut-wrenching decision but are confident that Prime Minister Harper and his secrecy apparatus will mount a bolder effort for next year," Welch said. "We wish him the worst of luck in his endeavours."

The award was accepted by CAJ director Fred Vallance-Jones on behalf of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which sent no one to collect it.

The other nominees for the CAJ Code of Silence Award were:

- Fort Erie's Economic Development and Tourism Corporation for spending nearly $750,000 in taxpayers' money yearly with no open meetings or transparency.

- Canada's human rights commissions, federal and provincial, for their efforts to censor speech that merely "offends." Given enormous powers by the state, even to issue gag orders for life, human rights commissions and tribunals are not bound to give an accused the same rights they'd get in a court of law.

- The RCMP, its partner organization the Canadian Police Research Centre and police forces across Canada that refuse to divulge information about Taser use.

- The Yukon government, which is staunchly refusing to disclose the salaries of top civil servants even though nearly every other province does so as a matter of routine.

- Human Resources and Skills Development Canada for charging the Toronto Star $6,500 for data on labour market opinions, the government approvals needed before an employer can hire foreign workers.

- Alberta's Ministry of Children and Youth Services for failing to provide journalists and the opposition with access to quarterly reports of the Child and Youth Advocate. Accessing the quarterly reports requires a slow, expensive freedom of information request.

- The Ontario government for waging a four year battle to keep secret its spending on outside lawyers and consultants in civil corruption cases. The Toronto Star first made an access request in March, 2004 and finally received documents showing Ontario spent $23.4 million including $12.1 million on one legal firm.

The CAJ is The Canadian Association of Journalists is a professional organization with more than 1,300 members across Canada. The CAJ's primary role is to provide public-interest advocacy and quality professional development for its members.