The Decibel

Westview Centennial Secondary School in the northwest of Toronto is celebrating the graduating class of 2022. On Thursday, about 180 students are crossing the stage to get their diplomas. While this is a common rite of passage for teens across the country, these students had anything but a normal high school experience. The pandemic meant online learning, no sports, taking care of younger siblings...

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on Friday, abortions were immediately outlawed in several states. But this week, the procedures were allowed to resume in Texas , Louisiana and Utah . While this is seen as a win for pro-choice advocates, these measures are only temporary. And, it’s only a matter of time before abortion will likely be illegal in more than half of...

A woman alleges she was sexually assaulted by eight Canadian Hockey League players in 2018. The public did not hear about this until 2022, after TSN broke the news that Hockey Canada settled a civil lawsuit with the woman. Now the government has cut off funding for the national organization until more details of their investigation are provided to a parliamentary committee. So, how is it that an a...

The superstar K-pop group BTS announced recently that they are taking a temporary break as a group and pursuing individual projects. This moment was a big deal for their millions of fans worldwide, the company that brings in billions of dollars managing them and for South Korea, which considers its members cultural ambassadors for the country. Hannah Sung, co-founder of Media Girlfriends , host of...

Today, Pride celebrations in big cities include parades and parties which attract millions of participants around the world. But for many smaller cities and towns across Canada, public Pride events are relatively newer, smaller and sometimes hard-won.  Chelle Turingan is the co-director of the documentary Small Town Pride . They join us to talk about the joys and challenges queer folks face in sma...

Feb. 14, 2022, marked the first time the government has had to invoke the Emergencies Act. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did so in response to the continuing trucker convoy protests. And in doing so, he also automatically launched a review into that decision. The committee looking into the government’s justification for using the Act is about to take a summer break, but in the last few months it h...

Monkeypox, an endemic disease for a number of Central and West African countries, is having its largest outbreak outside of that region. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are over 2,500 cases of the disease in 37 countries .  Canada’s share of that is 168, as of June 17th when numbers were last released by PHAC. Yap Boum from Doctors Without Borders tells us abo...

British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira went missing in the Amazon on June 5. They are now confirmed dead and multiple people have been arrested . They both spent decades working in the area, reporting on and working with local Indigenous communities – work that many people in the country say has become more and more dangerous. Lucy Jordan , Brazil corresponde...

For many months now, people have been calling on the federal government to do something about skyrocketing prices. Last week, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland unveiled the Liberals’ plan to tackle inflation , which is now creeping up to nearly 7 per cent . But is it enough? And what tools does the federal government actually have to help correct prices in grocery stores and at the pump? Bill Cur...

Mykola Kuleba is the former children’s ombudsman of Ukraine and he’s now the head of an organization called Save Ukraine . He’s been co-ordinating evacuation missions all over the country – and right now, those are focused in the eastern region. He’ll tell us what that work looks like, and what kind of toll, being in the middle of a war zone, is taking on the country’s most vulnerable. Hosted by S...

Cryptocurrencies have taken another dive this week. And this crash follows seven months of declines, even for the big names in the game. Bitcoin, for example, is down more than 60 per cent from its peak in November. And on Monday, a crypto trading platform froze all activity , further rupturing the price of a lot of digital currencies. Globe and Mail columnist Tim Kiladze explains why even with su...

They’re the front line in defending British Columbia from flooding – but no one can agree who’s responsible for them. Dikes, levees, whatever you want to call them, we need them. But there are over 100 in B.C. that are “orphaned” – and when the next flood comes, the people behind them could be in trouble. The Globe’s Justine Hunter toured one of these “orphan dikes” with flood-management engineer...

Ontario’s proposed Highway 413 would cut through the habitat of several species at risk in the province. Critics are concerned it would harm local waterways as well, far beyond the actual highway itself, highlighting the ongoing push-and-pull between the federal and provincial governments across Canada, and between species protection and development. Science reporter Ivan Semeniuk is back to walk...

When it comes to the issue of salary gaps, some experts say one solution is to make salaries more transparent. In 2021, the federal government introduced new legislation that would do just that: the Employment Equity Act requires federally regulated companies to disclose salary data. June 1st was the deadline for employers to submit their first rounds of data. Erica Alini , the Globe’s personal fi...

Siphe November is one of the most talented ballet dancers of his generation. At just 23, he’s the National Ballet of Canada’s youngest principal dancer and only the second black principal dancer in the company’s 70-year history. His ballet technique, the passion he brings to his performances and his magnetic pull both on stage and off make him a worthy star. With his popularity on Instagram , his...

Last year, a heat dome in B.C. led to the deaths of 619 people . It’s the deadliest weather event in Canadian history. Temperatures rose to above 40 degrees and stayed high even at night. On Tuesday, the province’s coroner service released a report with recommendations to prevent deaths in the future. Frances Bula is a frequent Globe contributor who reports on urban issues in British Columbia. She...

Boris Johnson has been called the Teflon prime minister, because no scandal seems to stick to him. He has a long history of being at the centre of scandals, dating back to his time as a journalist when he was fired for fabricating a quote. As a politician, he’s been criticized for lying several times but he has somehow managed to get out of all of those unscathed. Globe’s Europe correspondent Paul...

As we learn more about Canada’s worst mass shooting, the families of the people killed are so frustrated with how the inquiry’s going that they’ve started to boycott the proceedings . Senior RCMP officers have been spared cross-examination as they detail the series of missteps they made in April, 2020. The Globe’s Greg Mercer has been following the inquiry, and he tells us how the RCMP didn’t beli...

You may know Rollie Pemberton by his stage name, Cadence Weapon. He’s the Edmonton-born rapper, who won the Polaris Music Prize in 2021, is known for his music with a political bent. Though he’s long been a writer of poetry – he was Edmonton’s poet laureate in 2009 – he’s now adding a new title to his list of accomplishments: non-fiction writer. In his new book, Bedroom Rapper: Cadence Weapon on H...

Canada abolished the death penalty in 1976. Now, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that it is unconstitutional for the state to jail someone for life with no reasonable hope for parole. That includes mass murderers, like the man who pled guilty to killing six worshippers at Quebec City mosque in 2017 . The recent ruling has raised questions about where the rights of prisoners and victims’ fami...

On Wednesday, a jury sided with actor, Johnny Depp in his defamation case against his ex-wife, Amber Heard. The verdict follows a six week-long trial (which aired live on Court TV) that captured the public’s attention. It spawned hashtags with billions of views on TikTok, memes and even a skit on Saturday Night Live. During the trial, intimate and often ugly allegations about Heard and Depp’s rela...

On May 26, Canada’s Minister of Employment, work force Development and Disability Inclusion, Carla Qualtrough said the Liberal government plans to retable the Canada Disability Benefit before the end of June. Disability advocates had been calling on the federal government to table this bill since it was introduced last summer. The legislation would help support people living with disabilities and...

Netflix recently reported their first loss of subscribers in over a decade. In the first quarter of 2022, 200,000 accounts left the company. That was just in the first quarter of this year – they’re forecasting a drop of 2-million more subscribers in the second quarter. Netflix is not alone. While streaming services and subscription services more broadly (like fitness apps, grocery delivery, and m...

Today we decided to take a bit of a reprieve and head down to a park, very early in the morning, to hear the dawn chorus – the symphony of birdsong that happens at daybreak. Since the pandemic started, more and more people have taken up birding as a way to escape the day-to-day and engage with the natural world. Globe columnist Marcus Gee found that he too has been enjoying the relaxation that bir...

It’s been one year since Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc First Nation announced they had found 215 unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Dr. Kisha Supernant is one of the people at the forefront of the effort to look for unmarked graves. She’s a Métis archaeologist and chair of Unmarked Graves Working Group with the Canadian Archaeological Association. She explains how she does...