Since the 1970s, there have been repeated news reports of contract cheating companies operating openly in cities across Canada, including a television news story from CTV Edmonton, entitled “Essays for Sale”, that won the Radio-Television News Directors Association Dan McArthur Award for in-depth and investigative journalism (RTNDA Canada announces, 2006 Prairie Regional Award Recipients, 2007). Journalists began sounding the alarm about the commercial term paper mills in Canada in the 1970s in articles published by major newspapers, including in the Calgary Herald (Buchwald, 1972 Dallos, 1972) and in Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail (O’Toole, 1974 Screening out the cheat, 1972 Would have to keep records: A bill to stop essay sellers, 1972 Wright, 1974). I conclude with a call to action about what can be done to advance contract cheating advocacy, education, policy, and scholarship in Canada. Next, I discuss what Canadians have been doing in recent years to catch up to other countries and how our efforts are becoming more systematic and organized across the country. Following, I detail how the industry has grown and discuss why Canada continues to lag behind other countries in terms of research and advocacy. First, I provide a historical overview of the industry in Canada, including a failed attempt to make contract cheating illegal in Canada in the 1970s and a subsequent landmark case to lay criminal charges against an essay mill in the 1980s. In this chapter, I synthesize what is known about the contract cheating in Canada. In what is perhaps the most extensive and detailed history of the contract cheating industry in Canada, Buerger ( 2002) dedicated an entire chapter of his doctoral thesis to the topic, going to extensive lengths to conduct archival research, review legal documents and interview individuals involved in the industry, including key informants in a sting operation against an essay mill dealer in Toronto in the 1980s. There is ample evidence to show that commercial contract cheating was also active in Canada. The proliferation of early industry in the United States (US) in the 1970s is well-documented, leading to a naïve and erroneous assumption that early term paper mills flourished in America but that Canada was spared. It is essential to recognize that the contract cheating industry is global and operates on a massive scale, and has been estimated to be valued at $15 Billion USD (Eaton, 2021).

Canadians may be more familiar with phrases such as “term paper mill” or “essay mill”, but the global community has recognized that the term “contract cheating” is more accurate, since it covers the outsourcing of all kinds of the academic work, encompassing both text-based and non-text based assessments, including for example, computer coding assignments (Lancaster & Clarke, 2017). To begin this chapter I point out that although the term “contract cheating” has been widely used internationally for more than a decade (Lancaster & Clarke, 2007), it is still gaining traction in Canada.

There are multiple reasons why Canada lags behind including the lack of: (a) widespread media coverage (b) advocacy and education by quality assurance bodies and (c) research funding and support. Less is known about contract cheating in Canada compared with other countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom (UK), where contract cheating research and advocacy have matured since the early 2000s (Bretag, 2016, 2019 Lancaster & Clarke, 2007 Newton, 2018 Newton & Lang, 2016 Rogerson & Basanta, 2016). In this chapter, I present an overview of contract cheating in Canada, exploring its history and the extent of the problem today.

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