Front Burner

The late Canadian author Alice Munro remains one of the best-known fiction writers in the English language. She won a Nobel prize for her work, and was celebrated for her intimate portrayals of the lives of women and girls.  But for decades, Munro hid a dark secret: her husband had sexually abused her youngest daughter when she was a child, and Munro stuck by him — even after her daughter sto...

The Canadian men's soccer team is set to take on Lionel Messi and Argentina, the current holders of the World Cup and No.1 ranked team in the world, in the semi finals of the Copa America soccer tournament.  The game is arguably the biggest match in Canadian soccer history. James Sharman is a longtime soccer journalist and host of The Footy Prime Podcast. He'll share how this marks the culmin...

On Friday, in an exclusive interview with ABC news anchor George Stephanopoulos, U.S. president Joe Biden insisted that only the “Lord Almighty” could get him to quit. But as calls for him to step down grow following a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump, how long can he hold on — and what might it do to the Democratic party? CBC Washington correspondent Paul Hunter joins us to talk...

The U.S. Supreme Court’s latest ruling grants presidents the ability to break the law without fear of criminal prosecution as long as it counts as an “official” act. It’s the latest in a string of wide-ranging decisions, from abortion to corporate deregulation, that critics say are reshaping America. We take a look at some of those cases with University of Michigan law professor and co-host of Cro...

After his centrist coalition suffered a humiliating loss to the far right in European elections early last month, French President Emanuelle Macron called snap elections for France’s own Parliament in hopes of pushing back. Instead, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally continued their momentum and won the first round of voting last Sunday. So will Macron’s election gamble backfire? Why are the far right...

A landslide caused by a heap leach failure at the Eagle mine site in the Yukon has been called a “disaster” by some local residents. Hundreds of workers are currently laid-off and there’s a chance that it has leaked cyanide and/or other heavy metals into the river, endangering the nearby environment and wildlife. Meanwhile, Victoria Gold, the company that owns and operates the mine, is facing char...

A little over three years ago, a roaring, rapidly spreading wildfire burned through Lytton, a B.C. town of around 200 residents. It essentially burned to the ground. And even though at least $239 million dollars have been promised or poured into the recovery – rebuilding has been slow, and people are frustrated. CBC Vancouver reporter Yvette Brend just returned from Lytton. She tells us about the...

It was the biggest gold discovery in history...until it wasn’t. In 1995, Canadian mining company Bre-X announced to the world it had found a significant amount of gold deep in the jungles of Indonesia. Stock prices soared as investors worldwide fought to stake their claim. But when Bre-X’s chief geologist mysteriously fell from a helicopter over the jungle, the story of the billion dollar discover...

It was déjà vu all over again in Atlanta, Ga., on Thursday night as Donald Trump and Joe Biden squared off in the first presidential debate of the 2024 campaign. Biden will be looking to secure a second term in November, while Trump will be looking to take the office back for a second term of his own. And indeed, much of the debate focused on rehashing both men's records in office — to varying deg...

When Alex Cyr was growing up on Prince Edward Island in the early aughts, the capital Charlottetown was a pretty quaint and homogeneous place. But in 2024, the city looks very different. In the last few years, the provincial government has made it easier for immigrants to flock there – and they have, more than any other city in the country. The city is younger and more diverse, and it’s solved a l...

The last time a Conservative won a federal vote in the riding of Toronto-St. Paul’s, it was 1988. The Soviet Union was still together. Brian Mulroney was Prime Minister. The territory of Nunavut wouldn’t be created for more than a decade. But on Monday, in a by-election in the riding, the Conservatives took the Liberal stronghold riding back for the first time in over thirty years.  Does this...

Canada announced last week that it has added Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to its list of terrorist organizations under the criminal code. It now joins the United States as the only Western countries to do so.  Unlike most groups on Canada’s terror list, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is an official arm of the Iranian government. The designation is something some Iranian Can...

After going down three games to zero against the Florida Panthers in the Stanley Cup final, the Edmonton Oilers won the next three games in a row to tie the series. It’s a feat that’s only been accomplished twice, and both times were in the 1940s. Can the Oilers complete one of the greatest comebacks in pro sports in game seven tonight? After a long cup drought for both Edmonton and Canada, what w...

Calgarians are still rationing water more than two weeks after a catastrophic pipe break — and the city says they’ve got at least two more weeks to go before it’s fixed. There’s still much we don’t know about why this pipe broke down, but what experts do know is that other Canadian cities should be gearing up for similar crises. Huge amounts of their infrastructure — from roads to subway cars to s...

Simone and Malcolm Collins are pronatalists: they believe many countries are headed toward a catastrophe of shrinking population, and that we need to have more babies to save them. Other supporters of the movement include Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. By choosing embryos with the genetic traits they want, are they practicing eugenics? Is their push to boost babies in rich countries really d...

 If price is one of your top reasons for why you haven’t bought an electric car, China is looking to solve that problem. Chinese consumers can buy high quality electric cars for as little as $10 -thousand USD and Chinese carmakers are looking to expand their reach globally. But American and European governments are hoping to put a stop to it with high tariffs to give local manufacturers a fig...

On the weekend, more than 90 countries held a conference in Switzerland billed as a “peace summit” for Ukraine. But Russia was not in attendance. The summit failed to reach a consensus on a final statement. And the way forward on a peace process remains totally unclear, with Russia and Ukraine drawing intersecting red lines on territory and security. So after over two years of war, what do Ukraini...

Over the weekend, tens of thousands marched in the streets of Tel Aviv to protest against the Israeli government. This particular protest was calling for early elections and a hostage deal now. Demonstrations similar to the one over the weekend have been a regular occurrence across Israel for months now. Today on Front Burner, Amir Tibon on how representative these protests are of broader Israeli...

In 2014, a U.S. brainwave scientist claimed he could increase people’s creativity and cure their traumas. And he got permission to experiment on Indigenous children in Canada, offering an all-expenses-paid trip to Victoria, B.C. But a decade later, some study participants say the testing they went through — which included staff attaching electrodes to their heads and being asked to talk about the...

Everyone knows who Céline Dion is. You can’t forget her incredible power ballads, her iconic outfits at the Met Gala or her quirky conversations with journalists and fellow singers alike. But what fans didn’t know for years was Céline was suffering from stiff-person syndrome. It was causing her body to tense up and spasm, making it hard to use her famous vocal chords. She went public with the diag...

Over the past few months attacks that hit Jewish schools, community centres and synagogues have shaken Canada’s Jewish community. For some Jewish-Canadian parents, there is now a question of whether it’s safe to send their children to Jewish schools. “Right now, it's a bit fraught to be very Jewish out in the broader world,” says Kim Werker, a Jewish-Canadian mother with a 13-year-old son.  W...

We dive into the wild story behind The Epoch Times, a fringe conservative newspaper turned right-wing propaganda machine with ties to a mysterious dissident Chinese meditation movement.  What are its aims? How did it become one of the biggest pro-Trump ad spenders and a destination for the likes of Candace Owens and Conrad Black? And what will happen now that its CFO is charged in a $67-milli...

A new report accuses parliamentarians of aiding foreign governments to interfere in Canadian politics, which some national security experts say would amount to ‘traitors’ at the heart of our democracy.   Will we ever get the names of the MPs in question? How has it already created a chill between parliamentarians and their colleagues? And if the primary goal of interference is to destabi...

An interest rate cut of a quarter of a percent might not sound like much. But as the first cut in four years following the COVID-19 pandemic and all the economic upheaval that followed, it's a big deal. And it could be the first of several in the months ahead. But what does that mean for you? How does that affect your ability to afford things like a mortgage, a car, groceries, or growing your busi...

Tent encampments have been around in Canada for a long time. But since the pandemic, the number of camps have grown drastically as Canadians struggle with soaring housing prices and homeless shelters often operating at full capacity. Meanwhile, cities have gotten more aggressive in removing these camps — claiming they’re lawless, unhealthy environments. So how did the city of Vancouver end up with...