The Big Story

Usually, when someone is charged with murder, their name is all over police statements, and then all over the media. But when police neglect to release that information—and some forces have been doing that more and more frequently—the murder itself can go missing. From the media, from the conversation, and eventually from the statistics kept that guide community safety policies. Why have police be...

When Alberta announced last week it would join several U.S. states in offering the chance of life-changing prizes to citizens who get their Covid-19 vaccine, they were chasing a simple truth: For some reason, we tend to value the remote chance of a big reward far more than the certainty of a small one. This is something that governments and companies are proving true right now as they try all sort...

Across Canada, in every municipality, there are people experiencing homelessness. It happens everyday. But what really matters is what happens to those people after they become homeless. Homelessness can quickly become a cycle, a self-fulfilling prophecy, a chronic condition. And in many places policy treats it that way, creating benchmarks for people to clear before they qualify for assistance, o...

The months-long blockade at Fairy Creek is something of a tipping point for the province's NDP government's attempt to balance its environmentalism and its logging interests. Before his party was re-elected, Premier John Horgan pledged to follow a report with recommendations to protect B.C.'s old-growth forests, of which only three percent remain. Almost a year later, none of the recommendations h...

That's not hyperbole. Many Americans (and Canadians, and citizens around the world) hoped that once Donald Trump was out of office, and Joe Biden became president, the country would experience a snap-back towards political normalcy. That hasn't happened. And driven by their fears of being ousted by Trump's base, Republicans around the country are continuing to push the United States towards the br...

It's a gigantic update to Quebec's language laws, which have been part of the cultural fabric of the province for 50 years—and the proposal even goes so far as to update Canada's constitution. But does Bill 96 actually protect French in Quebec? Does it help newcomers learn and use the language? Will it make it easier for badly-needed immigrants to Canada to choose to settle there? And does taking...

Last week the federal government announced a tentative plan to announce a less-tentative plan for a July border reopening in the coming weeks. What we do know: It'll be fully-vaccinated Canadians only who can skip the quarantine, and there will still be plenty of checks and balances. What we don't know: Almost everything else. After 15 months of near total shutdown, there are millions of Canadians...

When Disney+ launched its newest Marvel show, Loki, this week, it came with a marketing campaign: "Wednesdays (when new episodes of Loki will be released) are the new Fridays (when Disney previously released new episodes of Marvel and Star Wars shows)." The campaign means that Disney is choosing not only to release new episodes weekly, rather than all at once, they are actively using the...

This week, Canada's reckoning with its racist history was interrupted by its racist present. A terrorist attack in London, ON killed four members of a Muslim family and left a nine-year-old boy orphaned and injured. Are we finally past saying things like, "This kind of stuff doesn't happen in Canada"? Are we ready to shed the self-image that has been proven false so many times? Are Canad...

Lots of people, when applying for jobs, hope the people doing the hiring can see them as people, instead of as assets that can deliver value for the company. For job seekers with disabilities or neurodivergence, it's just the opposite—they wish that employers could see the real value they'll bring to the business instead of just seeing the atypical applicant they're interviewing. So what happens w...

There have been promises in the past. And committees, and commitments and commissions and no shortage of apologies. But in the wake of the 215 children found buried where a residential school once operated near Kamloops, there's a growing sense among Canadians that none of the past work has been enough. Is this reckoning real? Do Indigenous peoples across the country believe it could be different...

The promise was pretty clear: During his first successful campaign as Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau told LGBT voters that we would end Canada’s longstanding ban prohibiting men who have sex with men from donating blood. At the time, it seemed like a simple promise to keep. A few years later, he claimed it wasn’t so simple. Now, it’s 2021 and Erin O’Toole is criticizing Trudeau for his failure as...

Every time there’s a protest, or dispute, or anything else newsworthy in rural Canada, the media shows up to cover it. And runs into the RCMP. Sometimes, nothing happens. But more often than not, access to the story becomes a story in itself, with the RCMP insisting media aren’t allowed in, or offering access only to “accredited media”. You can imagine where this leads, and probably guess that Ind...

Less than one percent of the 1.8-billion Covid-19 vaccines used so far have gone to low-income countries. And in those countries new variants are emerging that could impact our vaccine efficacy. Canadians spent the first four months complaining about our slow rollout, but we’re soon to be second in the world among countries with the highest percentage of people receiving at least one dose. This is...

Less than two months from now, unless something changes, the postponed 2020 Olympics will begin in Tokyo, Japan. Unless the country’s government listens to both its populace and its doctors, all of whom are urging them not to proceed. Japan has vaccinated less than three percent of its population. A medic this week warned of the Olympics spawning a new ‘Tokyo olympic’ variant of Covid-19. The game...

Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal … Canada truly has some of the world’s biggest and most beautiful Pride celebrations. But it also has some of the smallest. In places like Taber, Alberta (POP: 9,000), Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia (POP.: 500) and Norman Wells, Northwest Territories (POP: 800) communities have begun holding Prides of their own, often marked by some of the same traditions you find in big...

It’s always been this way but … why? When it comes to everything from routine cleaning appointments and checkups to more complicated procedures like abscesses and crowns, many Canadians scramble to pay for their own dental care. Even for those lucky enough to have insurance, many employers’ plans don’t have enough coverage to take care of the really expensive stuff. Is dental care an afterthought...

We asked a whole bunch of questions, and hundreds of The Big Story’s listeners responded. We’re here for a special episode to share some of the most interesting questions and feedback with you — and to tell you what we’re going to do about it! GUEST HOST: Stefanie Phillips, lead producer, The Big Story GUEST: Jordan Heath-Rawlings, host We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for...

This is the story of a Jeopardy! contestant who made a white supremacist gesture on the program. Only he didn’t. But that didn’t stop thousands of people, including several dozen former Jeopardy! contestants from insisting that he had, and hunting ceaselessly for evidence to back up their assumptions. This is a story about what the internet is doing to all our minds. Every day. And what we can lea...

After nearly a century of moving Canadians between rural towns and big cities, Greyhound Canada announced last week it would end all Canadian routes. This is a move that could be devastating for hundreds of thousands of Canadians who lack access to a car and might be stranded without access to medical appointments, connection to family or dozens of other intercity transportation needs. But that’s...

When people started presenting with symptoms, local doctors and scientists wondered if the mysterious neurological disorder might be Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t anything else that we recognize, either. And the symptoms are a long list that run from inconvenient to painful to life-altering and deadly. We don’t know what’s causing it, haven’t been able to treat it and—because...

Hope and optimism are the reasons we sign up for dating apps — even if we know we'll end up in the muck when we get there. We expect some bad dates and ghosting and all the rest, but the reality is that a small percentage of these dates do end in alleged sexual assaults. That's horrific, and often the police are involved. But when the user reports their assailant to the app they met on, what happe...

When Uber first arrived in Montreal, it wasn't legal—but that didn't stop it. And cabbies were angry, but little was being done at the government level, and police were rarely if ever enforcing the law. So one man decided to take the matter into his own hands, waging a war that, while ultimately unsuccessful, left his mark on a city and an industry as an outlaw hero. This is the story of the Taxi...

A comprehensive, Canada-wide study found that Canada has some of the highest levels of radon in homes in the world. Roughly half the homes tested failed to meet WHO standards, and even by Canada's more lenient standards, one in five were above the threshold of what's considered safe. The prairie provinces scored worst in the country—but no region was immune. Long-term impacts of radon exposure can...

About 40 percent of the Amazon packages delivered to Canada come through Ontario's Peel Region. It manufactures almost everything. It's where trucks get loaded up and head out across the country, full of everything. And for months now, it's been on fire with Covid-19. Vulnerable workers in multigenerational homes, without sick days, bringing home the virus and infecting their families. Yet even wh...