Front Burner

This week, some of the biggest financiers in the world will be gathering in downtown Toronto along with Prime Minister Mark Carney and the country's premiers for an investment summit.  The summit is part of Carney's plan to spur $1-trillion worth of investment in the country over the next five years. Senior business writer Peter Armstrong talks to Jayme Poisson about what's on offer, to whom,...

As the trade war between Canada and the U.S. continued to deepen this week, U.S. commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke ahead of a fourth round of negotiations between the two countries later this month.  Today, we look at the view from Mexico, the other partner in the CUSMA trio. What are the big table stakes in Mexico’s negotiations with the US? What...

Many economists say the bond market is the most important financial market in the world. It sets the baseline for almost everything Canadians borrow: mortgages, car loans, lines of credit. And right now, it’s looking pretty weird. 30-year U.S. Treasury yields are the highest they’ve been since 2007, in the runup to the great financial crisis. The U.S. now spends more on interest payments than they...

The U.S. announced a new string of bans and tariffs against Canadian products, set to go into effect later this month. This came after Canada imposed counter-tariffs against billions of dollars of American imports. As the trade war ramps up, we look to both sides of the border to see where it's all heading and what it would take to get back to the negotiating table.   Politico's Ottawa Bureau...

This week will mark 25 years since the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Those attacks, by al-Qaeda, killed nearly 3000 people. What followed that tragedy was the 'War on Terror', characterized by a series of foreign wars and domestic security measures. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, detention and torture at...

The Mile Zero Murders investigates the baffling wave of disappearances and murders in the small town of Dawson Creek, B.C., a community struggling with a deadly local drug trade. Host Timothy Sawa explores missing person cases like that of Cole Hosack and Renee Didier, pursuing leads from grieving families, reluctant authorities and the drug dealers themselves. The question that drives this series...

In her piece for the Atlantic, “The end of reading is here”, Rose Horowitch makes the case that across the board in the U.S. – people are reading less. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, fewer than half of all American adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022. Horowitch speaks with host Jayme Poisson about how this decline in reading has a dramatic effect on not only o...

In just over a month, Quebecers will head to the ballot box. And, until recently, this election seemed like a foregone conclusion: the Parti Quebecois, running on a promise to hold another independence referendum, had been ahead in the polls for the better part of three years. Then, the Canada-U.S. trade talks collapsed, and Quebec’s political future suddenly looks uncertain. The governing Coaliti...

After a vote this weekend, the far right could take power in a part of Germany for the first time since WWII. Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is far ahead in the polls in a state election in Saxony-Anhalt. They're promising massive changes to immigration, education, and what they call "patriotic cultural policy." Their rise is testing the country's firewall strategy, which was designed to stop pa...

Protein was once mostly associated with body builders and elite athletes, but today it's advertised everywhere from cereal boxes to fast food restaurants. It's just one facet of a broader phenomenon: many are referring to apps and gadgets to count their steps, count calories, and check if they actually had a good night’s sleep.  But are our attempts to enact self-care actually making us self-...

This weekend, U.S. President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated video of an army of geese with orange hair, holding machine guns, defending what he's now calling "Lake America." It's just the latest provocation in this new phase of the trade war we've entered.  Today, Parliamentary bureau senior writer Aaron Wherry joins guest host Jason Markusoff to discuss the Carney government's plan to w...

For most of its history, the WNBA existed on the margins of American professional sports. Its players were outspoken on race, gender and LGBTQ rights, while the league struggled for the money and attention enjoyed by men’s sports. But today, the league has never been more popular. Women’s basketball has entered a new era of mainstream attention, driven in part by stars like Caitlin Clark. But that...

When trade talks between Canada and the U.S. broke down last week, one of the issues that reportedly came up was Canadian streaming rules that require platforms like Netflix to make Canadian and French-language content easier to find in Canada. Prime Minister Mark Carney said that Canada would not compromise on protecting French culture. But U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said language w...

On Tuesday, in the ongoing trade war with our southern neighbour, Canada released details on counter-tariffs that will be imposed on a wide range of American products, matching the $28-billion worth of Canadians goods that have been tariffed since the weekend.  It comes after days of heated rhetoric between US President Donald Trump, his officials and Canadian leaders, namely Ontario premier...

U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening yet more tariffs, saying he’ll increase levies on cars, trucks and steel to 50% on January 1. This latest announcement comes as new tariffs came into place on Saturday on a number of Canadian goods worth $28 billion after trade negotiations fell apart. Peter Armstrong, CBC’s Senior Business Reporter, is back on the show to talk about what moving forward w...

On Friday, Canada's trade talks with the U.S. fell apart less than an hour before the deadline for new tariffs hit. While there had been positive signs earlier in the week, Prime Minister Mark Carney says the U.S. proposed new terms in recent days that were "uneconomic, unfair" and "called into question the reliability of any deal."  Former Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole is a member of the...

On Thursday, Canadian trade representatives were in Washington for more talks amid a tentative trade deal with the U.S.  Coming out of the meeting, Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said that they were "very close" to reaching an agreement. Today, CBC senior parliamentary writer Aaron Wherry and Abacus Data CEO David Coletto are here to parse through what we know so far about the imp...

In 2020, the politics of racial justice appeared to be everywhere: the killing of George Floyd sparked one of the largest protest movements in American history, and progressive ideas about policing, prisons, racism and inequality moved into the political mainstream. But many of the central demands of the millions who took to the streets were ultimately not met. Six years later, some of the politic...

Late Tuesday night, U.S. President Donald Trump announced he would pause the implementation of the 50 per cent tariffs on a range of Canadian goods for three days, saying the two countries had reached a tentative agreement. Shortly after, Prime Minister Mark Carney put out a statement that read, in part: "Substantial progress has been made, although there is important work still to be done." Host...

This past weekend, Israeli strikes killed at least 11 people in southern Lebanon, according to the country’s health ministry. It was the deadliest attack since a fragile ceasefire was reached in June, meant to halt fighting between Israel and Hezbollah – though attacks continued.  On top of airstrikes and drone attacks, residents and emergency workers in the region are accusing Israeli forces...

During Pete Hoekstra's tenure as U.S. ambassador to Canada, he has called Canada’s federal election campaign “un-American”, amplified one of Donald Trump’s “51st state” posts, and reportedly unleashed an expletive-laden tirade on an Ontario trade official. Now, a petition calling on him to be expelled from the country has gathered nearly 200,000 signatures. Today, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, the Canad...

Prime Minister Mark Carney's message on immigration is all about control. He has repeatedly talked about how new arrivals are down. And deportations are up, too. Today, part two of our documentary on how Canada's political class changed course on immigration, how it happened so quickly, and what it means for the country now as our population shrinks for the first time in Canada's history. For tran...

It wasn't too long ago that much of Canada's political class was united in their embrace of immigration to help grow the population and with it, the economy. Now, many of those same politicians are singing a different tune as it's regularly stated as fact that Canada's immigration consensus is broken.   Today, part one of a two-part documentary on the political 180 on immigration, how it happ...

For more than a decade, Nigel Farage has been one of the most influential people in British politics. His anti-Europe crusade was key to securing Brexit. And up until recently, it seemed quite possible that his right-wing populist party, Reform UK, could win the next general election.  Then, Andy Burnham took over as the new Labour prime minister. And a string of financial scandals appeared t...

When Bashar al-Assad fled Syria in December 2024, it brought a sudden end to a family dynasty that had ruled the country for more than fifty years. The collapse of his government also prompted a new wave of reporting into the lives of the Assads — and particularly Bashar’s wife, Asma al-Assad. Before she became Syria’s first lady, Asma was Emma Akhras, a British-born investment banker from West Lo...