Front Burner

Toronto-area MP Han Dong is denying allegations that he worked against the release of ‘the two Michaels’ in 2021. His denial comes in the wake of a story from Global News that alleges Dong advised a senior Chinese diplomat in Toronto to delay the release of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, two Canadians being held in Chinese detention. Meanwhile, calls for a public inquiry into foreign election...

Sam Bankman-Fried wasn't like other crypto moguls: he drove a Toyota Corolla, he was an advocate for government regulation, he said he would give billions away to charity. That is, until he lost it all in what has been called “one of history’s greatest-ever destructions of wealth.” In episode 1 of Front Burner’s first spin off podcast series — The Naked Emperor — host Jacob Silverman, co-author of...

Front Burner is a daily news podcast from CBC that explores the big stories of the day with curiosity and an open mind. Hosted by award-winning investigative journalist Jayme Poisson who takes you deep into the narratives shaping Canada and the world.

Twenty years ago this week, a US military campaign called ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ began in the skies over Iraq’s capital, Badgdad. Overnight, cruise missiles were launched, and by the next morning coalition forces, led by the United States, were on the ground beginning their invasion of Iraq. Today, Mustafa Salim, a reporter with the Washington Post’s Baghdad bureau, reflects on the 20-year lega...

Thousands of protesters hit the streets of Paris with renewed anger this week, as an unpopular raise to France’s retirement age became law. President Emmanuel Macron’s government announced plans to shift the age from 62 to 64 in January. Since then, demonstrations across France have included strikes from rail workers and garbage collectors, leading to piles of trash growing in Paris. On Monday, hi...

In the last two weeks, four banks in the United States and one in Europe have either found themselves teetering on the brink or completely collapsed. In response, other private banks and governments all over the world have rushed to try to contain the potential financial contagion. On Sunday, the central banks of Canada, the US, Asia and Europe all agreed to increase money available, which in turn...

It’s been less than a year since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and now abortions are banned in 13 states. And in several other states, abortion is prohibited after a certain length of pregnancy. But now the new frontier in the legal fight is all about the abortion pill as a Texas judge weighs arguments from anti-abortion groups who are suing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (F...

They devour farmers’ crops, breed rapidly and can tunnel beneath the snow to survive: feral pigs have taken residence on the Canadian prairies and are wreaking destruction. Today, Megan Evans, the Executive Director of the Alberta Invasive Species Council, takes us through why the surge in swine is so serious, and why efforts to eradicate them have been so unsuccessful. For transcripts of this ser...

The Toronto District School Board has become the first board in Canada to officially recognize caste based discrimination. The caste system is thought to be among the oldest forms of social hierarchy of classification in the world, and has dominated the Indian subcontinent for thousands of years. It can dictate romantic relationships, job prospects, housing, and even lead to violence. Today, repor...

As a kid in the Winnipeg suburb of Transcona, Tyson Smith was obsessed with hockey and the Winnipeg Jets. He dreamed of being a professional goaltender. Decades later, Smith – now known as “Kenny Omega” – has made his way to the Jets’ home arena for a different reason: he’s performing as a professional wrestler. Omega is the headliner for a show with All Elite Wrestling, the wrestling company he h...

On Sunday, a group of U.S. government agencies made the extraordinary decision to ensure that everyone who had money in Silicon Valley Bank would be able to access that cash. The move comes on the heels of Friday’s collapse of the California-based bank following a bank run. Silicon Valley Bank is the second largest bank to fail in the U.S. – the first was Washington Mutual during the 2008 financia...

Last week a US congressional committee began what could be a months-long probe into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Was it the result of a lab leak in Wuhan? And did Dr. Anthony Fauci and his team of experts carry out a cover-up in the early days of the outbreak? These are the questions the Republican-led committee are trying to answer. Today on Front Burner, The Atlantic’s Daniel Enger o...

This week, a federal court judge in Toronto heard arguments from a plastics lobby group and the federal government, in a challenge to a ban on single-use plastics like bags, straws and stir sticks that was introduced last year. On today’s episode, Lisa Erdle, microplastics researcher and the director of science and innovation at the U.S.-based 5 Gyres Institute, describes what’s at stake in the co...

Since the Kearl mine in northern Alberta began production on Treaty 8 territory in 2013, the company has touted technological innovations that they say “enhance environmental performance.” Yet for months, wastewater from the mine’s tailings ponds, containing arsenic, hydrocarbons and sulphides has been seeping into the land. The company that runs the mine, Imperial Oil, first reported the leak in...

Last year, about 39,000 people entered Canada at Roxham Road, an irregular border crossing in Quebec, in search of asylum. It was a record number — and so far this year, the upward trend is continuing. The steady flow of migrants entering Canada at Roxham Road has become a political issue, but how to handle the stream of people seeking asylum at the border is an open question. On this episode, Pau...

In 2016, a handful of American and Canadian government employees working in Cuba came down with mysterious symptoms: nausea, ringing ears, headaches, and minor memory loss. Their illness came to be known as Havana Syndrome. Theories about what caused it have included microwaves fired by Russia, insecticides, and even crickets. Now, a new report from US intelligence agencies rejects the idea that a...

On Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau once again resisted a call that’s been getting progressively louder in Ottawa: the call for a public inquiry into allegations of Beijing’s interference in our most recent elections. Opposition MPs on a Parliamentary committee have already voted in favour of an inquiry into foreign interference, although that motion is non-binding. Meanwhile, a number of rep...

Canada women's national soccer team currently ranks as one of the top ten teams worldwide. Despite their track record of victory, the team’s future success is now at risk. As the FIFA Women’s World Cup approaches, the team’s engaged in a very visible fight with their bosses that has meant strikes, on-field protests, and the resignation of the president of Soccer Canada. The turmoil comes because o...

More than three weeks after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake, aftershocks continue to shake devastated cities in Turkey. Officials say more than 44,000 people have died in the country, and the UN estimates 1.5 million people are without homes. One of the worst-hit cities in Turkey's southeast, Antakya, is largely uninhabitable after entire sections of the city collapsed into rubble. Today, The Sunday Ti...

Recent reports by the Globe and Mail and Global News, relying on Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) documents and unnamed intelligence sources, have detailed different ways the Chinese government has allegedly interfered with Canadian elections. On this episode, Dick Fadden, a former director of CSIS and a former national security advisor to both Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau, walks...

The Colorado River – the lifeblood of the American southwest – is drying up. The river’s basin supplies water to 40 million Americans across seven states, plus two states in Mexico. It’s partly because of climate change, a major drought, and because of century-old rules that govern who has the rights to the water. And it’s a big deal: the Colorado River is a key source of drinking water, power pro...

Loblaw Companies, the country’s biggest grocery chain, reported its finances for 2022 on Thursday. In a year when Canadians felt the squeeze from skyrocketing grocery bills increased by inflation, the retailer posted net earnings of $2.3 billion dollars. Also in 2022, Loblaw spent $1.3-billion on something called stock buybacks, which pulls shares off the market and tends to pump up the prices of...

Microsoft soft-launched its new AI-powered search engine in early February. After years of playing second fiddle to Google, the new Bing seemed to finally have something exciting to offer. More than a million people signed up on a wait list to try out the new feature. But it wasn’t long before some early testers reported that their interactions with the chatbot had taken an unsettling turn. For so...

Late last week, the Globe and Mail broke an explosive story with allegations that China tried to influence the 2021 election here in Canada. Then, on Tuesday, a parliamentary committee that was already studying allegations of foreign meddling in the 2019 federal election decided to widen its scope. Elections Canada, the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and Liberal cabinet minister...

Russia has put at least 6,000 Ukrainian children in camps, according to a U.S.-funded report from Yale University. The report says the children are enduring pro-Russian re-education. Some are being adopted out to Russian families with fanfare from Russian officials, while others are allegedly receiving military training. Meanwhile, Ukrainian mothers have been making long and treacherous journeys i...