This Matters

Guest :  Calvi Leon , Staff Reporter In 2002,  Ryan Wedding  represented Canada an Olympic snowboarder. Today, the FBI describes him as a modern-day Pablo Escobar. Alleged to be the mastermind behind a massive, violent drug trafficking empire, Wedding is now the target of a global manhunt with a $15 million bounty on his head. Star reporter Calvi Leon has been reporting on this case  for years , l...

Guests: Toronto Star journalists Sheila Wang and Emma McIntosh A major  joint investigation involving the Toronto Star, CBC/Radio-Canada, La Presse and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has uncovered more than 100 crypto-to-cash operations running across Canada, with many of them unregistered, unregulated, and openly violating anti–money laundering laws. As part of this col...

Guest:   Ghada Alsharif , immigration and work reporter Canada's immigration system is often praised for attracting top global talent, but a new report shows the country is losing many of the highly skilled workers it says it needs most. One in five immigrants are leaving within 25 years of arriving, with the highest exit rates among those with PhDs and professional backgrounds in health care, sci...

Guests:  Toronto Star journalists  Ben Mussett  and  Omar Mosleh A  Toronto Star investigation  uncovered a troubling loophole inside Meta's advertising system. Reporters Ben Mussett and Omar Mosleh found illegal drugs being advertised and sold to Canadians through paid Meta ads on Facebook and Instagram. With one click, the Star was linked to online shops offering cocaine, Oxycodone, MDMA, Xanax,...

Guest:   Megan Ogilvie , Toronto Star health reporter A new study  has found that over a million Ontarians — that's more than one in ten people with a family doctor — live far outside their physician's region, often more than 30 kilometres away. Some are driving hours just to get a check-up. Others may be skipping care altogether because of the logistics. And it's leading to worsening health outco...

Guest:  Bruce Arthur, Toronto Star columnist In a high-stakes war games exercise held in Toronto, top military officials, health-care leaders, and government representatives gathered behind closed doors to game out a scenario few Canadians can ever imagine; war arriving on our doorstep. The exercise, called Canada Paratus, was a joint initiative led by the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the...

Guest : Tonda MacCharles, Ottawa bureau chief   Canada avoided a snap election Monday night as the Liberal government pushed its federal budget through by a two-vote margin, 170 to 168. Support from Green Party Leader Elizabeth May and two NDP abstentions proved decisive after intense pressure and last-minute talks. The close call raises new questions about the stability of the Liberal minority an...

Guest : Richard Warnica, Senior Opinion Writer In this episode, we explore Richard's recent visit to Texas as a vivid microcosm of Trump's current America. He reports on cratering trust in vaccines, increasingly aggressive ICE arrests that are cleaving families apart, and the dismantling of public media meant to help citizens understand their world. His conversations with advocates, lawyers, and l...

Guest:  Ed Keenan, Toronto Star city columnist Toronto has always been a contradiction; a city people fall in love with and get fed up with, often at the same time. This year, the  Toronto Star  explored those many shades in our  Toronto the Better  series, digging into the cracks, complexities, and questions around how to actually make the city better. Now we want you to join the conversation. We...

Guests:  Sean Menard, Toronto-based filmmaker and director of 'Run Terry Run' and Kirsten Fox, a director at the Terry Fox Foundation and Terry Fox's niece. Terry Fox is a Canadian institution. His crown of thick brown spirals, heathergrey 2.5 inch shorts, 'Marathon of Hope' shirt and prosthetic walking leg he fashioned to support athletic capacity are legendary markers of a truly extraordinary hu...

Guest:  Bruce Arthur , Columnist  The Jays didn't win the world series on Saturday, after an extremely close loss to the LA Dodgers in the 11th inning - and the city is still reeling from a heartbreaking final result. Nearly 11 million Canadians tuned in on Saturday to watch the Jays try and take home the trophy for the first time in thirty-two years.  Bruce Arthur, sports columnist at the Star, i...

GUEST:   Katie Daubs , Toronto Star reporter With Halloween landing on the same night as Game 6 of the World Series — and the Jays in it — Toronto is bracing for one of the busiest Fridays of the year. Whether you're heading out with the kids or planning to squeeze in some trick-or-treating before first pitch, you might be wondering: where are the best neighbourhoods to score big on candy? This ye...

Guest:  Ghada Alsharif, Toronto Star immigration & work reporter A new report has revealed that workers in Ontario are being shortchanged by nearly $200 million in unpaid wages. It's called wage theft and, in many cases, workers aren't getting paid even after the province officially orders their employers to do so. Less than a quarter of the money sent to Ontario's Ministry of Finance for collecti...

Guest :  Mike Wilner , baseball columnist & host of  Deep Left Field  baseball podcast For the first time in 32 years, the Blue Jays have a shot at winning the World Series, with Game 1 against the LA Dodgers happening tonight. It's been a long road to get here: waiting for conditions to be just right; to have the right players in place; for hard work and alchemy to strike that optimal balance. Wh...

Guest:  Nicholas Keung, Toronto Star immigration reporter A federal bill that could restore citizenship to people born abroad is drawing renewed political debate over who qualifies as Canadian and what rules should apply. Bill C-3 was introduced after a court found Canada's two-generation limit on citizenship by descent to be unconstitutional. The proposed legislation would allow Canadians born ou...

Guest:   Ben Cohen , Toronto Star City Hall reporter Electric scooters weaving through sidewalks, e-bikes flying through intersections, and mopeds cutting into bike lanes have become a common sight in Toronto. The city is being rapidly reshaped by the rise of micromobility; fast, electric vehicles that don't require a driver's licence or plates and remain only lightly regulated. The result has bee...

Guest :  Mike Wilner , baseball columnist & host of  Deep Left Field  baseball podcast The Blue Jays are currently battling the Seattle Mariners in the American League Championship Series (or ALCS for short), the one that precedes the World Series. Getting this far in the season has Toronto whipped into a lather at the possibility that their team may be within grasp of the big prize. A prize that...

Guest :  Andy Takagi , Toronto Star transportation reporter Many of us know this pain too well: waiting on a very late bus or crawling between subway stations with no idea when we'll get to where we're trying to go. Long commutes can famously take a real toll on your quality of life and Andy Takagi is walking a mile - or, rather, commuting several miles - in the shoes of those who claim to have th...

Guest:  Omar Mosleh, Toronto Star reporter The RCMP says it has dismantled one of the largest dark web drug networks in Canadian history, a GTA-based group called RoadRunna that was allegedly shipping about 400 packages of drugs a week across Canada, including through Canada Post. Seven people from Toronto, Brampton and Mississauga are facing charges after officers seized 75 kilograms of cocaine,...

In honour of the Blue Jays playoff run starting tomorrow, we're sharing an episode from our sister podcast  Deep Left Field . Guest: RUSH frontman and Blue Jays fanatic Geddy Lee The Blue Jays are on the eve of their American League division series against the New York Yankees, which begins Saturday afternoon. We talk to the Jays' most famous fan, the lead singer, bassist and keyboardist from the...

Guest:  Steve Teekens, Executive Director, Na-Me-Res, a Toronto-based Indigenous-run non-profit that provides temporary, transitional and permanent housing Indigenous people make up less than one per cent of Toronto's population, but about 15 percent of the city's homeless. Nationally, they are around 5 percent of the population yet account for more than a third of those without homes. These numbe...

Guest : Ava Smithing, advocacy director at the Young People's Alliance Young people today have been raised with the most powerful tools in human history at their fingertips. Entire childhoods have played out online, with algorithms acting as babysitter, therapist, and mirror through which they see themselves. And now, we're seeing what happens when the first generation raised on smart phones comes...

Guests:  Star journalists Ben Spurr and Mahdis Habibinia The Star's City Hall bureau has been digging deep into the garbage with its Waste Not, Want Not series, examining how Toronto handles its trash and how the choices we make shape our city. In this episode, City Hall Bureau Chief Ben Spurr explains where most of our garbage actually ends up and what options the city has next, with its main lan...

Lately, speed cameras in this city and neighbouring cities have become a symbol and target of people's rage. The Parkside Drive speed camera was erected when this spot saw a horrific and fatal crash in 2021, due to speeding. It is now Toronto's most prolific speed cam and was recently cut down by vandals for the seventh time in eleven months. And earlier this month 16 cameras across the city were...

Guest: Nicholas Keung, Toronto Star Immigration Reporter Canada is quietly but significantly changing course on immigration. As the federal government moves to reduce the number of non-permanent residents, critics warn this may signal a harder shift in policy, with growing efforts to tighten border controls and slow down immigration processing. Questions are mounting about how these changes will a...