The Big Story

When we focus on gender-based inequality in the workplace, we usually talk about money. The wage gap has been a problem since women began joining the work force in large numbers. We’ve acknowledged it, companies have pledged to fix it and governments have passed laws to end it. But it persists. The wage gap has become a shorthand way of referring to inequality at work. But it’s not the only gap. T...

It's been a sign of spring for well over a century—baseball players heading down south to meet their teammates, toss around a few balls and play some meaningless games. In the grand scheme of things, not much about Spring Training matters, but it's still become a symbol of rebirth, and the end of winter, to millions of North Americans. This year, more than ever, we need things to look forward to....

It's tax season! If you took any form of government COVID-19 relief this year, you've probably got all sorts of questions about how that impacts your return. If you didn't, but you worked from home, you might be eligible for deductions you haven't even considered. As tax season begins, the pros are being swamped with questions from anxious Canadians. We asked one of those pros to clarify the confu...

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the single-family rental industry has exploded in the United States, with massive companies buying up as many single-family homes as possible, and renting them out en masse. What that means is that millions of Americans now have megacorporations as their landlords—and that's going about as well as you'd expect. And here's the kicker: One of the largest of these com...

Provinces are rolling out their vaccination plans for the general public, and they all seem pretty similar. After the initial push to vaccinate frontline health-care workers and residents of long-term care facilities, programs will proceed by age groups, starting with the 80+ cohort. It makes sense, as the elderly are most at risk from COVID-19. But what if there was another factor that could guid...

Even without a global pandemic, we're spending less and less time just doing nothing. The urge to check our phone every 20 minutes is the same urge that leads us to online shopping and bread making and ... anything else to distract us from our current predicament. But what if we could learn to turn our boredom into a strength? If we could train ourselves to once again sit quietly in the moments we...

Temperatures are rising everywhere. Severe weather is becoming more common. And climate disasters are becoming an increasing part of our lives. So it can feel like we're hurtling off a cliff. But in the past few years, we've also made incredible progress on reducing emissions, renewable energy and other efforts—so much so that the grimmest of possible futures is much less likely to occur. It can f...

What if your face could serve as your passport and identification? Does that sound convenient, or incredibly creepy and invasive? As advances in technology spread from pilot programs to wider use at borders around the world, there's very little governing what agencies can and can't do with the data they capture. And there's almost no way for us to opt out—at least, if we want to ever visit the Uni...

The social media giant is currently negotiating with the Australian government—which is a big improvement from last week, when Facebook was blocking all links from Australian news media. In Canada, the federal government has indicated it will follow Australia's lead in taxing Facebook and distributing the revenue to struggling news media. Facebook has no plans to let that happen and has shown it w...

You remember it, even if you've forgotten how to pronounce it. Oumuamua was a cigar-shaped object that passed through our inner solar system and mystified plenty of scientists. It didn't fit any of the categories we have for space debris, comets or meteors. So what was it? Where did it come from? When will we find more? A new book by a Harvard University astrophysicist makes the case that Oumuamua...

Today we meet the woman who can win over a crowd of cowboys in one of Canada's whitest places. All while telling jokes about systemic racism. She is one of the only Black women comics in Alberta, maybe the only one in Calgary. But she wields her power on, and off, the stage to make her province a better place. Guest: Adora Nwofor You can watch the documentary on Feb. 22 at 10 p.m. EST on CityTV or...

Remember when flour disappeared for a brief moment as we stocked up for the pandemic? It wasn't because we bought up all the flour in the world. Companies were just struggling to mill it, package it, and transport it to us as quickly as we were using it. Take King Arthur Flour, one of the oldest companies in the United States. It saw sales skyrocket by 2,000 per cent. When demand started to shoot...

In February 2020, RCMP officers raided Wet’suwet’en camps along the route of the $6.6 billion Coastal GasLink pipeline in northern B.C that plans to transport natural gas through Indigenous territory. Police arrested dozens of Indigenous people, including seven matriarchs gathered to pray for missing and murdered Indigenous women, who refused to cede their land for development. The events led to p...

The history of every Canadian city isn't always what we think it is. We stumble upon some of it, on plaques in parks or benches across our cities but a lot of it remains unknown, especially the contributions of Black Canadians. This is the story of Oakville, Ontario, a predominately white, affluent neighbourhood that was shaped by 400 Black people who escaped slavery through the Underground Railro...

In a breakaway from the pains of the pandemic, today we bring you the sappiest Canadian love story we could find. She was a master's student visiting London, searching for someone to see her favourite show with. He already had tickets. It was love at first sight. Ten months later they were engaged. Yes, the pandemic forced them to cancel their big 200-member transatlantic wedding, but a quiet elop...

As new variants of Covid-19 spread around the world, we're all a little worried about the strength of our masks. New guidelines are now emerging from various health agencies around the world recommending that everyone should double-mask: that's a cloth mask over a medical mask. So how do we best do that? Is it a sure-fire way to keep us safe from the aerosol transmission of Covid-19? What's the di...

Earlier this month, Toronto City Council approved a plan to build its own high-speed broadband network. It’s an ambitious idea that will be tried out in three low-income neighbourhoods. The goal: to combat rising internet prices at a time when access to a good internet connection is becoming an essential need. Will it work? Guest: Vass Bednar Host: Fatima Syed We love feedback at The Big Story, as...

In June 2020, Canada established its COVID-19 vaccine task force. The federal government recruited 11 vaccine and infectious disease experts from across the country. The task force helped make more purchasing agreements than any other country in the world, but along the way they also learned the missteps we took in our vaccine strategy. Yesterday we looked at how the Canadian government scrambled...

Canada's efforts to secure vaccines started with a phone call between a trade commissioner in Boston and a senior member of Moderna. In the weeks and months that followed, the federal government has scrambled to secure the most doses per person than any other country in the world. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assured us the vaccines are coming, but they're not coming as quickly as we expected. Is...

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Ryerson's school of journalism emailed students asking how to improve their program. Students responded by creating a petition demanding a Black-Canadian reporting course; over 3,000 people signed in mere hours of its release. It was the first course of its kind but will definitely not be the last. Black educators are hoping the summer of racial reckoning will...

Over the past several years, vulnerable men have been disappearing from communities around Vancouver Island. They walk away, and then they are never seen again. Are they running? Have they gotten lost, and perished in the woods? Is there something more sinister happening? The host of Island Crime: Gone Boys, which launches on Monday, has spent months investigating the case, speaking to the familie...

It could be a sign of the oncoming resource apocalypse. It could be a useful tool to determine the market value of regional water reserves. It could just be an experiment that goes no further than a small part of California. Or it could be the first domino to fall on the march towards commodifying the basics of life. Either way, water futures are now being traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange...

One of Joe Biden’s first actions as President of the United States was to cancel the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. And one of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s first reactions to Biden taking office was to get really mad about that. Alberta had a lot of money invested in this pipeline being built. They were counting on it for a lot of jobs. It’s no wonder Kenney was angry. But, considering tha...

The past 12 months have seen a flood of scientific misinformation on social media. Some of it is lies for profit. Some of it is myths and hoaxes for engagement. And a whole lot more of it is just unintentionally wrong—complex science parsed by scared amateurs in the middle of a terrifying pandemic. But it all gets attention—a lot of attention. A new group aims to meet this bad information where it...

A man in Montreal was found dead in a portable toilet. The shelter he often used had been temporarily closed for overnights due to a Covid-19 outbreak. The Canadian winter puts those without homes in danger every year—but Covid-19 has made it impossible for them to access many of the resources that can be lifesaving. How did the system fail Raphaël André? How are advocates fighting to prevent furt...