The Decibel

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...

As the global economy revs back up after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, consumer demand is up. Supply chains are bogged down. So prices are spiking and the inflation rate is getting higher – and concern is rising with it . Economics columnist David Parkinson is on The Decibel to unpack what’s happening with inflation and why he thinks that with some time and some patience it’ll settle back d...

Cindy Blackstock , executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring society , has been at the heart of an ongoing battle with the federal government. While working as a social worker in B.C., Blackstock noticed that the child welfare program for First Nations kids living on-reserve received less funding than for kids living off reserve. She, along with the Assembly of First Nations,...

We’ve already warmed the climate by 1.1 C and we’re starting to see the effects with more frequent extreme weather events. On Monday, political leaders from around the globe will address the world to talk about how they plan to tackle the immense challenge of climate change. Dr. Sarah Burch is a climate change researcher and an associate professor at the University of Waterloo. She is on the show...

China’s President Xi Jinping is unlikely to attend COP26, leaving some to wonder how countries will be able to agree on bold moves to lessen climate change without the leader of the world’s highest carbon-emitting country at the table. Over the next two weeks , leaders from more than 190 countries will meet in Glasgow to talk about the state of climate change and how to transition to a low-carbon...

Only nine people in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new cabinet remained in their old jobs. The massive shakeup in the team included putting a climate activist in charge of Environment and Climate Change Canada, a rising star in Foreign Affairs and the first woman of colour at the head of a problem-plagued Defence ministry . But what do all these moves mean? And why should voters care about the pr...

Over the last year, almost a dozen senior Canadian military leaders have been accused of either enabling or perpetrating sexual misconduct, prompting an independent review by a former Supreme Court justice, and many calls for change within the Canadian Armed Forces. But Megan MacKenzie, a professor and the Simons Chair in International Law and Human Security at Simon Fraser University who research...

The largest childhood mass vaccination campaign since polio could soon be underway in Canada. Health Canada recently received a submission from Pfizer/BioNtech to approve COVID-19 vaccines for kids aged 5-11. On Oct. 22 the drugmaker also released data from a clinical trial that showed their vaccine was 90.7% effective for that age group. Following shortly behind, Moderna announced on Oct. 25 that...

The first sign that there was fighting at the highest levels of power at Rogers Communications Inc. appeared in late September. That’s when it was announced that the company’s CFO, Anthony Staffieri, was leaving. Soon afterward, The Globe reported that his departure was connected to an attempt he made to oust Rogers’ CEO, Joe Natale, with the help of then-chair of the board, Edward Rogers. In the...

Cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, created a whole new market – and it felt like a whole new world to journalist and author Ethan Lou. He wrote Once a Bitcoin Miner: Scandal and Turmoil in the Cryptocurrency Wild West . After he started investing in Bitcoin while in university, he ended up making enough money to quit his job as a journalist at Reuters in his mid-twenties. Ethan tells us about his own a...

Dave Chappelle’s latest Netflix comedy special, The Closer, has been getting a lot of criticism since its release on October 5th. That’s because a number of jokes in the standup are about trans people and are being called transphobic. This prompted some Netflix employees to stage a walkout on Wednesday in protest of the special but also because the company continues to stand by the content and the...

On Monday, Albertans headed to the ballot box to cast their votes on a number of things: municipal leaders, the merits of daylight savings and whether the country should get rid of the mention of equalization from the Constitution Act of 1982. But there’s a problem with that last one: Alberta alone can’t actually make any changes to the country’s Constitution. So what was the point of this referen...

People in Iqaluit are in the midst of a water crisis. On Oct. 12 a state of emergency was declared when some of the 9,000 residents in Nunavut’s capital city complained of a suspicious fuel-like odour coming from their taps. Since then, they’ve been told to avoid drinking that water. Recent test results confirmed the water is contaminated with high levels of hydrocarbons consistent with diesel fue...

In the early days of the pandemic, many speculated that being locked down with partners would inevitably lead to a baby boom. Recently, Statistics Canada released preliminary data that points to the opposite. In 2020, more than 13,000 fewer babies were born than in the previous year. Experts were surprised at just how sharp the decline was. Zosia Bielski is a national reporter for The Globe who wr...

A terrorism hoax charge has been withdrawn years after a Burlington, Ont., man told multiple journalists that he had travelled to Syria and worked as an executioner for ISIS. An RCMP investigation then found no evidence that Shehroze Chaudhry, now 26, went to Syria or joined the terrorist organization. Leah West , national security lawyer and professor at the Norman Paterson School of Internationa...

Restaurants in Canada are facing an exodus . Over the past 19 months the hospitality industry has lost 15 per cent of the work force. Labour issues have been plaguing restaurants since the pandemic began and many are scrambling to hire and keep workers on. But this is an issue that existed long before COVID-19. Therese DeGrace worked in restaurants, including as a chef and as a consultant, for alm...

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has yet to set a date for the reopening of Parliament nearly a month after the federal election. Parliamentary reporter Marieke Walsh updates us on what the parties think about their gains, their losses – and their leaders – as they look toward a new session. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of...

Today we're bringing you an episode of City Space , a new podcast from The Globe and Mail about how to make our cities better, hosted by Adrian Lee. The 15-minute city is an urban planning concept that would see neighbourhoods designed so that day-to-day amenities are always just a short walk or bike ride away. And after living 18+ months of pandemic life, where most of us were forced to stay in o...

A deadline to get the COVID-19 jab – or lose their job – is quickly approaching for unvaccinated health care workers in Quebec and British Columbia . Meanwhile, the issue of mandatory vaccinations is also being hotly debated in other provinces such as Ontario. All of this is prompting questions about what could happen to our hospitals and long-term care centres if thousands of workers suddenly are...

On February 23, 2018, Ulla Theoret was murdered along with her son and her mother by a neighbour who was obsessed with her. More than three years later, an Ontario committee that reviews all cases of intimate partner homicides examined what happened to Ulla and her family and provided some recommendations for the province’s Solicitor General. The review was prompted by national reporter Molly Haye...