Front Burner

It’s been more than a year since Cameron Ortis, the former director-general of the RCMP’s National Intelligence Coordination Centre, was arrested and charged under Canada’s Security of Information Act. The Fifth Estate’s Bob McKeown discusses the bizarre chain of events that led to Ortis’s arrest, including the vandalism of the graves of a high-stakes gambler’s parents.

It's been a month since Joe Biden was voted in as the next president of the United States. But a lot has happened since then. There are the final weeks of Donald Trump's chaotic tenure, the importance of Georgia's runoff Senate race and the tensions that are dividing the Democrats even as they prepare to take power. Today, former CBC Washington correspondent Keith Boag joins us to get us up to spe...

Many world-renowned ballet productions, from Swan Lake to Romeo and Juliet, have graced the stage of the legendary Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow since the 1800s. No matter what wars and revolutions the Russians confronted, the Bolshoi would find a way to stay open. That is, until COVID-19. The theatre closed down for six months this year because of the pandemic. It relaunched in the fall, and it's get...

Last weekend NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and U.S. congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez raised over $200,000 US for charity by livestreaming a game called Among Us on the streaming platform Twitch for nearly six hours. Among Us is a popular space-murder-mystery multiplayer online game. About 100,000 people watched the livestream. Today, CBC senior writer and gaming columnist Jonathan Ore is here to...

On Monday, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced the Liberal government will spend up to $100 billion to support the post-pandemic economy. The priority is, as Freeland says, to do “whatever it takes” to help Canadians, despite the record-high $381 billion deficit. CBC senior parliamentary reporter David Cochrane breaks down the details of the economic update, and tells us what critics had...

As Pfizer and Moderna's vaccine candidates get closer to being approved in countries around the world, many Canadians are wondering when they might be able to get a shot here. Prime Minister Trudeau has said most Canadians could be vaccinated by next September, but the details on when those vaccines may arrive in the country — and how they'll be distributed — remain hazy. The government is also fa...

Last week, after a video of one of his speeches went viral, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had to address a growing controversy over “The Great Reset”. The term means different things to different people. To the World Economic Forum it’s a vague goal to make the world more equal and address climate change in the wake of the pandemic. To Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre it’s evidence of...

Last January, Wuhan became the epicentre of the coronavirus. The Chinese city went under a strict lockdown for almost two months. The conditions were so severe that buildings were sealed off, and barricades erected. Today, the economy is booming again, but many people are still reeling from the trauma brought by the virus and the way it was managed. CBC Asia correspondent Saša Petricic travelled t...

New details revealed by The Fifth Estate question the RCMP's timeline about the worst mass shooting in modern Canadian history. It's been seven months since a gunman disguised as a Mountie went on a rampage, killing 22 people over 13 hours in Nova Scotia, travelling a distance of nearly 200 kilometres. Gillian Findlay joins Jayme to describe the fuller picture of what happened in that time, how th...

In the first wave of the pandemic, Alberta was one of the provinces that seemed to have things relatively under control. Now, the province has daily case rates three times as high as Quebec or Ontario, and ICUs in Calgary and Edmonton have been hitting 90 per cent capacity. But Premier Jason Kenney hasn't addressed the province at a COVID-19 briefing for almost two weeks, and has resisted repeated...

Canada is spending a tremendous amount of money to get the country through the COVID-19 pandemic, but a growing movement says we can shed our old worries about the federal deficit. Modern monetary theory argues that since we control our own currency, the country can create more money and never go broke. Today, Front Burner examines this controversial idea and how it relates to Canada.

Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart wants to decriminalize small amounts of illegal drugs. If he gets his way, Vancouver will be the first Canadian city to do so. The move comes as overdose deaths continue to surge in Vancouver and across the country. CBC Vancouver producer Jodie Martinson has been speaking to drug users in the city. She’ll explain the significance and limitations of the possible chan...

In recent public and media appearances, Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole has talked up the need to fight inequality through labour rights, and lamented the decline of unionization in the private sector. He's also blamed the Liberals for favouring elites over workers, and trade deals over jobs in Canada. These issues have become recurring themes as he introduces himself to Canadians after being ele...

Today on Front Burner, we’re bringing you updates on three stories we’ve been following: the latest vaccine news, a new twist in the Mi’kmaq lobster dispute, and a Canadian company embroiled in a major U.S. voter fraud conspiracy.

The second wave of the coronavirus is battering much of the country right now. Over the weekend, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec all had record-breaking new case numbers. As some familiar issues re-emerge, like deadly outbreaks at long-term care homes, we're talking to Globe and Mail health columnist Andre Picard about what Canadians learned from the first wave, and what lesson...

It was one of the most harrowing attacks in recent Canadian history. Alek Minassian plowed into pedestrians on a busy section of Yonge Street in Toronto with a rented van, killing 10 and wounding 16. Just before his attack on Facebook, he wrote of an 'incel rebellion,' aligning himself with the ideology of involuntarily celibate men who blame women for the fact they are alone. Minassian has admitt...

This week, Britney Spears lost a legal battle to remove her father as her conservator — a court-ordered agreement that has put him and a lawyer in charge of her finances and daily life since 2008. Her conservatorship has spawned #FreeBritney, a sometimes-conspiratorial movement whose adherents believe Spears is essentially a prisoner in her own life. But it has also attracted the attention of the...

For some time now, Ottawa Citizen journalist David Pugliese has been digging into the so-called ‘weaponization’ of the Canadian military’s public affairs branch. He’s recently obtained documents suggesting that the military had wanted to set up this new organization to influence Canadians using propaganda and other techniques. According to the office of the Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, this pla...

This week, as COVID-19 cases continue to climb across the country, there is a glimmer of hope for returning to normal life: a vaccine. Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech say that results from a Phase 3 study of their vaccine candidate look promising and that immunity could last a year. Today, we hear from CBC science and technology reporter Emily Chung on what we know about the Pfizer-Bi...

Joe Biden is now U.S. president-elect. But Donald Trump is still in the White House. And there are no signs of a co-operative transition on the horizon. Today, longtime CBC Washington correspondent Keith Boag returns to explain the uphill battles Biden is facing on everything from the coronavirus response to uniting a divided country.

For 36 years, Alex Trebek hosted the trivia show ‘Jeopardy!’ with gravitas and wit. On Sunday morning, Trebek died of pancreatic cancer. He was 80 years old. Today, we discuss Trebek’s legacy and what he meant to his fans with Andy Saunders, a ‘Jeopardy!’ superfan and the operator of TheJeopardyFan.com.

It’s been an eventful week following the U.S presidential election, as we continue to await the final results. From Trump’s demands to stop the vote count, to the lawsuits contesting ballots in several states, one key theme that’s emerged is that America’s democratic system is being tested. This is an issue that Lawrence Lessig has been studying for a long time. He’s the author of “America, Compro...

Two days after the U.S. election, we still don’t know who the next President of the United States will be as the vote counting continues in key battleground states. Today we are joined by CBC senior Washington editor Lyndsay Duncombe to help us sort through the growing legal battles and the narrowing paths to victory for both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election is still yet to be determined. Vote counting in crucial battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan are still not completed. Today, CBC’s Lyndsay Duncombe and Alex Panetta on what we know after a long night, and what we are still waiting to find out.

Election day in the United States has finally arrived. More than 90 million people have already cast their ballots in advance — a historic high that signals just how consequential many Americans believe this election will be. And while polling shows that Joe Biden has maintained his lead over Donald Trump, in the key battleground states that decide elections Biden has a much slimmer edge. Today, C...