Two organizations have filed a formal request for Ontario’s Chief Electoral Officer to launch an investigation into an election advertising blitz by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), Canada’s largest oil and gas lobby group.

At the time of the incident, residents in the town of Unity, Sask. said the overwhelming smell wafted in from outside. More than six months later, the Saskatchewan Ministry of Energy and Resources has come out with its findings about what made them sick.

The political implications of a new oilpatch advertising campaign has prompted at least one political insider to call it “a warning shot” from one of Canada’s largest and most powerful lobby groups for the upcoming federal election.

The federal government is failing to protect Canadians from toxic refinery emissions pumped into the air at rates far above those in the United States, opposition politicians said Thursday in response to a Toronto Star/Global News/National Observer investigation. Federal MPs said they were shocked and troubled by the findings.

The average Canadian refinery produced less oil while emitting substantially higher rates of sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides compared with the U.S. average in 2014, the data shows from a joint investigation by National Observer, Global News and The Toronto Star.

National Observer is co-nominated for the special report The Price of Oil, an investigation involving reporters from three newsrooms, journalism schools at the University of Regina, Ryerson University, Concordia University and UBC, the Michener Foundation and the Corporate Mapping Project.

Journalism students from the University of Regina, who partnered last year with National Observer, the Toronto Star and Global News in an unprecedented investigation, have won an award for a documentary about the money and influence of the oil industry in Saskatchewan.

National Observer will be honoured by the Hillman Foundation on March 28 in Toronto along with its media partners, the Toronto Star and Global News and four journalism schools - Concordia University, Ryerson University, the University of Regina and the University of British Columbia - for their unprecedented investigative series, the Price of Oil.

Residents have long pushed for access to real-time air quality information. But some say the newly-public data doesn’t actually tell residents when the air they’re breathing could be unsafe.

“Overwhelming” one resident called it. “Disgusting,” said another who inhaled the smell wafting through this western Saskatchewan town of 2,500 on Jan. 2.

A joint investigation by the Star, Global News, National Observer, the Michener Awards Foundation and journalism schools at Ryerson and Concordia universities revealed a troubling pattern of secrecy and potentially toxic leaks in Sarnia, Ont.

Federal researchers have drafted a proposal that suggests hydrogen sulfide gas, which can kill a person in high concentrations, is a non-toxic substance under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Hydrogen sulfide, also known as sour gas, can leak from the wellheads, pipes, tanks and flare stacks of the oilfields.

Two years after Saskatchewan government and oil and gas industry officials discovered a string of 'serious infractions' related to dangerous hydrogen sulfide gas, Jeff Crawford, an unsuspecting oilpatch worker swallowed a toxic soup containing the substance. His life has never been the same.

Ontario is giving a $100-million grant to a Sarnia-area petrochemical company currently under investigation by the province’s environment ministry. Alberta-based Nova Chemicals, which operates three plants in the Sarnia region, is being investigated over allegations it didn’t properly report a Nov. 8 incident at its site in Corunna, south of Sarnia.

Saskatchewan Energy Minister Nancy Heppner dismissed The Price of Oil investigation's findings, while inside the Ministry of Environment, a Saskatchewan official praised it as "thorough and impressive."