Front Burner

QAnon believers are in turmoil. For years the baseless, wide-ranging conspiracy theory has gained steam, making serious inroads in Canada after exploding in the United States. QAnon believers think a blood-thirsty, child-trafficking cabal is running the world and that Donald Trump will bring justice through a day of reckoning known as “The Storm”. But now, following Joe Biden’s inauguration, many...

For four years, Daniel Dale, a CNN reporter and former Washington bureau chief for the Toronto Star, fact checked every single word that Donald Trump said publicly. Now, he looks back on some of the strangest and most significant lies of Trump’s presidency, and the lasting impact they had on both American politics and our shared sense of reality.

Gov. Gen. Julie Payette has been accused of bullying, berating, and publicly humiliating staff at Rideau Hall. The allegations were substantial enough that an independent workplace review was ordered last year. On Thursday, it was revealed that that review had been completed, and that its findings were scathing. Late in the afternoon, Payette resigned from her position as the Queen’s representativ...

Besides the police presence, the inauguration of Joe Biden on Wednesday as 46th president of the United States was a paired-down affair, thanks to the pandemic and the recent violence at the Capitol. CBC Washington correspondent Paul Hunter covered the inauguration from the roof of the Canadian Embassy. Today he joins Front Burner to report on the meaning behind the day’s pageantry, Donald Trump’s...

More than 350 people currently face trial for their alleged connections with one of Italy’s most powerful Mafia syndicates, the ‘Ndrangheta. The crime group is known for its secrecy. Bosses, accused of murder, money laundering, and drug trafficking, often hide in bunkers in Calabria, even though their business extends around the world. Italy has not held a Mafia trial of this scale since the late...

"There is no place for the far right in our party." That's a quote from a statement released on Sunday by Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole, where he condemns the riot in the U.S. Capitol and paints a moderate picture of the Conservative Party under his leadership. On the heels of the statement, PressProgress revealed that MP Derek Sloan accepted a donation from a notorious white supremacist, leadi...

For sometimes as little as two dollars an hour, some migrant workers in Malaysia say they spend their days producing disposable gloves in sweatshop-like conditions in a factory — and spend their nights in dirty, overcrowded shared quarters. As global demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) surges, it would appear that so has the human cost for those making it overseas, an investigation by C...

In the wake of last week's attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Proud Boys — a group founded by Canadian Gavin McInnes — has been under intense pressure. The FBI is arresting some of its members. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has called for the them to be designated a terrorist group, and the federal government is considering it. Today, how the Proud Boys started, and where they ended up, with Jared Holt —...

"Post-truth is pre-fascism." So wrote historian Timothy Snyder in his 2017 book, On Tyranny. He penned it in the lead-up to Donald Trump's inauguration, and he's been warning ever since: The United States is not exceptional, a coup could be attempted there, too. Now, Trump's presidency is in its dying days. He has been impeached by the House again, this time for "incitement of insurrection." But t...

Last Friday, 16-year-old Ariana Quesada walked into an RCMP station in High River, Alta., to file a formal complaint about the death of her father, Benito, who died eight months ago of COVID-19. He worked at the Cargill meat-packing plant, home to the largest coronavirus outbreak in the country, with at least 950 staff members contracting it last spring. The RCMP have now opened an investigation i...

On Monday, for the second time in his one-term presidency, Democrats introduced an article to impeach Donald Trump. Previously, Trump was impeached but not convicted by the Senate. But following last week's deadly riot at the Capitol building, Democrats are trying to hold Trump accountable. Their tactics also include a resolution urging Vice-President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and re...

U.S. President Donald Trump was permanently banned from Twitter after the platform cited “the risk of further incitement of violence” following the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last week. Facebook previously banned him for the remainder of his time in office, and many other tech companies have followed suit. Today on Front Burner, Julia Angwin joins host Jayme Poisson for a conversation about...

Canada has received more than 430,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. But as of Thursday, only about 45 per cent of those doses have gone into arms. Those numbers are sourced from the COVID-19 Canada Open Data Working Group, made up of public health experts and data scientists from the University of Toronto and the University of Guelph. Provincial governments across the country have been roundly cr...

Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump sowed chaos in and around the U.S. Capitol, forcing lawmakers to flee as they’d gathered to certify president-elect Joe Biden’s victory, after Trump himself encouraged them. CBC Washington correspondents Katie Simpson and Paul Hunter explain how pro-Trump extremists managed to breach Capitol security and storm the complex.

Last spring, Ontario Premier Doug Ford promised to move "heaven and earth" to prevent more long-term care residents from dying of COVID-19. But today, more than one-third of the province's long-term care homes are in an outbreak. More than 960 residents have died since the start of October. And experts say it didn't have to be this way. Today, we're speaking to Dr. Samir Sinha — the director of ge...

On Tuesday, voters in Georgia go to the polls for a pair of pivotal run-off elections that will determine which party has control of the United States senate. Meanwhile, outgoing President Donald Trump pressured and pleaded with the state's election chief to overturn Joe Biden's win in the state, according to a recorded phone call obtained by the Washington Post this weekend. Today on Front Burner...

You’ve probably heard the words “avoid non-essential travel” frequently since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in Canada. But a growing number of provincial and federal politicians haven’t heeded that message. And as more stories emerge about vacations or travelling to see sick family members, many Canadians are furious. Today, Power and Politics host Vassy Kapelos discusses what we know so far...

It’s been one year since Chinese officials in Wuhan confirmed they were treating dozens of cases of a mysterious pneumonia. Since then, we’ve watched the world transform as this new novel coronavirus accelerated into the COVID-19 pandemic, killing more than 1.6 million people and infecting more than 75 million. Today, CBC senior health writer Adam Miller and host Jayme Poisson look back on the lon...

Three years ago, if you were one of the women who had been victimized by Keith Raniere, the man seemed untouchable. Raniere was the leader of the cult-like self help group NXIVM. On October 27th, that all changed. In a U.S. federal courtroom, Keith Raniere was sentenced to 120 years—having been convicted of a slew of crimes. During the trial and sentencing, victims came forward about how the self-...

This holiday season, economists are watching how Canadians spend to see how deeply the pandemic has changed the way we shop, save and even give to charity. But differences in consumer spending have nothing on the tremendous amount of money the federal government continues to spend to get the country through the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the protests of deficit hawks, a growing movement says we ca...

Concerns about deadly outbreaks at long-term care homes continue to be top of mind for many Canadians during this second wave of COVID-19. Today, an encore of a conversation we had with a man who went to incredible and potentially life-threatening lengths to visit his mother at her nursing home in Toronto. Back in April, with the facility on lockdown and a resident with COVID-19, there was only on...

As 2020 comes to a close, we take a look back at the year in pop culture. From TV shows adjusting to the pandemic to the NBA bubble, Elamin Abdelmahmoud and Amil Niazi from the CBC podcast Pop Chat drop by to talk about what movies, TV shows, and music helped us make sense of this unprecedented year.

A new strain of coronavirus in the United Kingdom has triggered border restrictions internationally and in Canada. It’s also sparked many questions. Dr. Isaac Bogoch is an infectious diseases physician and a member of the Ontario government’s vaccine task force. Today, he shares his thoughts on the mutation and explains its potential impact on treatment and transmission of the virus — and even vac...

Suicide prevention lines are dealing with an enormous surge in calls, and crisis centres say COVID-19 is to blame. Crisis Services Canada says that calls between August and October increased 159 per cent compared to last year. That surge is being felt at distress centres across the country, including at the Crisis Centre of BC. Front Burner producer Elaine Chau takes us there and talks to two peop...

As the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine rolls out across the country, and other vaccines await imminent regulatory approval, many public health experts are focusing on the issue of vaccine hesitancy. Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam has spoken out about the "moveable middle" and says it is critical that as many people get vaccinated as possible to protect themselves and others from risk...