The Decibel

In December of 2020 there was a lot of hope in the air as the first shots of the COVID-19 vaccine were administered in Canada. Fast forward a year and more than 75 per cent of the population is considered fully vaccinated with two doses. But with the Delta variant still dominant and public health officials on high alert about the new Omicron variant, another shot of the vaccine is being recommende...

The experts said there’d be about 38,000 jobs added to Canada’s labour force in November. So when Statistics Canada announced that that number was actually 154,000 , people were left scratching their heads. Especially since this news comes at a moment when Canada is facing a labour shortage . So what’s going on? And just how good is this news, actually? Economics reporter for The Globe and Mail Ma...

It has been 32 years since the École Polytechnique massacre, which left 14 women dead and spurred a debate about gun control in Canada. Progress on this file has been mixed, with various pieces of legislation over the decades that have made some efforts to prevent more mass shootings but stopped short of full-on bans of certain weapons . The Globe and Mail’s Patrick White clarifies which guns are...

The debate over the place and importance of the French language in Canada erupted into the corporate world after Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau gave a speech, mainly in English, in Montreal, and afterward said it was “testament” to the city that he hasn’t needed to learn French in the 14 years that he has lived there. His comments caused a cascade of criticism from politicians and ended up having...

Barbados has moved on to a new future after the country declared itself a republic and replaced Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state with its recently elected president, Sandra Mason. The land was colonized by Britain 400 years ago, eventually becoming a slave society where hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans were brought to work on plantations growing tobacco, cotton, and sugar, among o...

A bill first introduced in March 2020 is back in Parliament , as its backers try for the third time to put conversion therapy in the Criminal Code of Canada. And this time, the bill would ban the practice for adults as well as children. Globe Parliamentary reporter Janice Dickson has the latest on the effort to effectively ban the disgraced practice that purports to change people’s sexual orientat...

Last week the world learned about Omicron, the new COVID-19 variant. It was first detected in Southern Africa and many countries quickly tightened restrictions on travellers arriving from the region and imposed travel bans. The World Health Organization declared Omicron “a variant of concern” because of the very large number of mutations that could pose a high global risk of infection surges. The...

Many producers and investors had high expectations that cannabis-infused drinks would offer new and existing users a new way to get high. Some predicted hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales from this type of product. But so far, reality hasn’t lived up to the hype, as THC drinks struggled to break into an extremely competitive and regulated market with only mellow sales. The Globe’s bus...

Last week, two Cineplex movie theatres in Richmond Hill and Oakville Ontario were vandalized. Both theatres were showing the South Indian film, Kurup, and had multiple screens slashed. The mysterious incident is not the first time South Indian movie screenings have been targeted. It’s something that’s been happening since 2015. Joe Castaldo is a reporter for the Report on Business at The Globe. He...

The floods in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley have left much of the area in ruin. One community that has been particularly hard hit is farmers. Damage to farms in the area – which supply about half of B.C.’s eggs, dairy and poultry – has been catastrophic. Thousands of animals have died and many of the properties remain underwater. The Globe’s Andrea Woo describes her experience on the ground in...

Pretty much as soon as the election was over, murmurs began, questioning how much longer Conservative leader Erin O’Toole would lead. Now there’s a new session of Parliament and O’Toole can’t seem to get away from questions about strife within his own party, from issues like the vaccine status of his caucus members to petitions being launched about the timing of his next leadership review . Ian Ba...

Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai disappeared from the public eye after accusing the former vice-premier of China of sexually assaulting her. The accusation was wiped from her Weibo account within an hour. Nothing much happened until tennis stars like Naomi Osaka and Billie Jean King, along with international media and the Women’s Tennis Association , began asking where Peng went a few weeks later. T...

Gender-based violence often doesn’t get reported to authorities, and the signs that someone might need help are easily missed by friends, family and even the person experiencing the abuse. But a hand signal created for people to silently ask for help recently went viral on Tik Tok – and was used by a missing teen who ended up getting rescued in Kentucky. Elizabeth Renzetti is a columnist and featu...

A border between Poland and Belarus which has been at the centre of a geopolitical conflict is now quiet. Thousands of asylum-seekers, many of them fleeing conflict zones in the Middle East, were trapped in Belarus hoping to cross over into Poland. On Thursday , Belarussian authorities cleared the main camps, but it’s not known what will happen to the people still trying to cross into the EU. Mark...

It has been five years since the North American leaders have gathered together for one of their so-called Three Amigos Summits. And while U.S. President Joe Biden is a familiar face to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, some of the current U.S. policies are not so nice to Canada. The Globe and Mail’s Washington, D.C. correspondent, Adrian Morrow , is on the show to discuss what Trudeau will likely be...

Record rainfall has caused flooding and mudslides in several parts of Vancouver Island and southern mainland B.C. Hundreds were trapped in their cars by mudslides, with at least one person killed and thousands evacuated from communities devastated by flooding. Globe environment reporter Kathryn Blaze Baum explains what caused the rainstorm that wreaked havoc on the province and how this summer’s w...

Lee Maracle’s career inspired a generation of Indigenous writers to write about their own experience. The author, poet and activist died last week at 71 years old. Maracle’s friend, the playwright, author and frequent Globe columnist Drew Hayden Taylor , remembers Maracle and her legacy. You can listen to Maracle’s Margaret Laurence Lecture from the Writers’ Trust of Canada here . Hosted by Simple...

A recent Ontario Court of Appeal ruling found that the Crown violated two treaties signed in 1850. The agreements cover a vast part of Northern Ontario, and were originally about sharing the wealth of the land. But the government has been paying the Anishinaabe descendants of that land just $4 per person per year. Sara Mainville is an Anishinaabe lawyer and partner at Olthuis Kleer Townshend in To...

Humans make a lot of noise – in our streets, in the skies and in our seas. All this anthropogenic clamour is not just annoying, it can be detrimental to the health of both humans and animals. But scientists have never really had a chance to study just how much noise we produce and what would happen if we stopped producing it … until the COVID-19 global pandemic sent most of the world into a lockdo...

Retired Corporal Robin Rickards did three tours of duty with the Canadian Armed Forces in Afghanistan, and he kept in touch with Afghans who worked in support roles that he met there. Since the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan this August after the US and coalition forces withdrew, he’s been fielding calls for help fleeing the country. One interpreter Rickards worked with, Abdul Jamy Kohistan...

The price of Canadian dairy products might be jumping early next year and that’s because of the Canadian Dairy Commission. Recently, they announced an unprecedented 8.4% increase for the price farmers are paid for milk, and a 12.4% increase for the price of butter. And those price hikes might well be passed along to you at the supermarket. Sylvain Charlebois is a professor of food distribution and...

There are only a few days left at the 26th annual Conference of the Parties , and negotiators from over 200 countries are still working on trying to hammer out agreements to help reduce global emissions. There has already been a long list of promises made at this summit, but are any of them cause for optimism? Are they building momentum to put pressure on governments to actually implement policies...

Stealthing – the act of someone deliberately removing or not wearing a condom after their partner insists on one – is currently being addressed by the Supreme Court of Canada. The case being reviewed by the Justices will affect the interpretation of consent. Justice writer Sean Fine breaks down the case before the highest court and the two approaches being debated over how to determine what consti...

It’s an enticing promise that’s being sold: Come to Canada as an international student and find prosperity. And it’s being heavily sold to young people in India’s Punjab province , where some Canadian post-secondary institutions aren’t just recruiting but have become household names in villages on the other side of the world. The problem is that life in Canada for these students is often bumpy and...

Over 100 countries – including Canada – made a pledge this week at COP26 to end and reverse deforestation by 2030. It’s a commendable goal that could help meet global climate targets, but Canada also has work to do domestically. Protecting some of the oldest and rarest trees from logging in British Columbia is an ongoing battle. On Tuesday, B.C.’s government proposed to suspend logging in one-thir...