Ontario is giving its highest honor more to those who deserve it, but sometimes a name seems to creep on the list by mistake.

The province has presented 29 new recipients with the Order of Ontario and they include more working for causes overseas, including War Child Canada and Doctors Without Borders, which both provide much needed humanitarian aid in conflict zones.

In the early years after the awards were established in the mid-1980s those helping distant causes were less noticed, so the province is growing more outward-looking. Too many early awards also were given politicians, who already had their rewards.

An exception that can be quibbled with on some grounds is Paul Godfrey, president and chief executive officer of the National Post, who earlier ran the Toronto Sun.

The awards committee says it gave one to Godfrey because of his leadership in municipal government (in Toronto) and help creating the Herbie Fund, which pays for operations to save the lives of children around the world.

Godfrey also was a shrewd businessman who became wealthy and while running the Sun was a godfather in Ontario’s powerful, governing Progressive Conservative party and adviser to its leadership.

Writers on that paper knew of this relationship and some may have been encouraged to follow their boss’s lead and be similarly partisan.

The National Post also is an unceasing advocate of extreme right politics and Godfrey would never have won an award for encouraging independence and neutrality in journalism.

This still is not as questionable as an earlier award of the Order to another media tycoon, John Bassett, who promoted his political views, also Conservative, and personal interests insatiably while running the former Toronto Telegram and CFTO TV.

As one example, Bassett was part owner of Maple Leaf Gardens in the 1960s and wanted to build an overhang above the streets to accommodate several thousand more spectators and rake in more money.

An unusually independent Conservative minister of municipal affairs, Wilfrid Spooner, refused, took photographs with his box camera to show it would block out the sun and Bassett ran a vitriolic campaign against him in the Tely that contributed to his defeat next election.

Godfrey also is in a long line of those in news media who have been given Ontario awards over the years, which raises the danger journalists may curry favor with government to win one.

This is considerably more likely at the federal level, where Liberal and Conservative governments successively have appointed journalists who wrote about their activities to the Senate, where they have drawn large salaries for little work and been able to spend much of their time basking in warmer climes.

Journalists who write about the Ontario government are tempted less, because the Order of Ontario provides no cash, but some may be generous to government solely for the prestige.

Ontario has given the vast majority of its awards to worthy recipients in fields including philanthropy, medicine, education, law, business, the arts and sport.

The province appointed someone once by mistake, at least if you accept the province’s explanation, which is not easy.

It sent a letter in 2003 to Marguerite Ritchie, president of the Human Rights Institute of Canada, notifying she had been awarded the Order for remarkable achievements that enriched the province.

Soon after, it wrote again saying the first letter had been sent by an administrative error and she had not been awarded the Order.

Dr. Ritchie suspected the province took back the award because she had written to Conservative premier Ernie Eves, complaining that policies promoting bilingualism in Ottawa were hurting its English-speaking residents, which was not an issue a provincial government would want to get involved in.

The rights activist had enough status that she already had been awarded an Order of Canada, so she was the sort of person who might have been on the list in Ontario, but this is an exclusive club and not all who deserve it get in.