This Matters

Guest: Wendy Gillis, reporter at the Toronto Star Imagine someone going through a serious mental health crisis — and calls for help to prevent hurting themselves — and is then seriously hurt by those who responded to the distress call. It happened to a man called Brent Langille in an example of police on the frontlines of mental health calls. But shrinking budgets for mental health programs has le...

Guest: Edward Keenan and Emma Teitel , columnists Mayor Olivia Chow's executive committee met this week for the first time to tackle new tax and revenue options and get something started on affordable housing. The only question is whether the provincial and federal governments will join them. Plus: the Ontario Place spa redesign, the final closure of the Scarborough RT and the thrilling siren song...

Guest: Kate McCullough , reporter at The Hamilton Spectator It is a story out of East Hamilton that has made headlines , but could happen to anyone. A couple who own a home as an investment property have sold, told their tenants to leave because the buyers intend to live there, but the tenants say they can't leave because they find a home in their price range in the costly rental market. The situa...

Guest: Megan Ogilvie , health reporter Health professionals are warning of an earlier than expected fourth wave of COVID-19 and the emergence of yet more fast-transmitting variants. While nothing has changed in terms of how we live with COVID, experts are saying this fourth pandemic autumn will be different from previous waves. This time around Canadians have tools to tackle the virus with high le...

Guest: Matti Siemiatycki, director on University of Toronto's Infrastructure Institute Earlier this month, a scathing report from Ontario's auditor general revealed that Premier Doug Ford's decision to open up land for development in the protected Greenbelt area might have been influenced by well-connected developers who stand to make billions of dollars. In the aftermath of growing calls for resi...

Guest: Melissa Haussman , professor of political science at Carleton University Former U.S. President Donald Trump's legal web is more tangled than ever after his fourth indictment was handed down in Georgia as he ramps up another run for the White House. Trump has 91 criminal charges against him between Georgia, Florida, New York and the District of Columbia and the stakes could not be higher for...

Guest: Jim Rankin and Wendy Gillis , crime and justice reporters Ayaan Farah, a Black woman, was stopped and questioned by the police in 2011. The documentation of that interaction changed her life , as she was suspended without pay from a job she held for years despite having no criminal record. She's now the face of a class-action lawsuit over "carding," a historically controversial and racially...

Guest: Stephanie Levitz , Ottawa Bureau From cabinet appointments to personal style, our federal political leaders are changing and shaking up how they lead as our Canadian perceptions of them are increasingly divided. As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals mark the lowest approval rating since they formed government, Trudeau shook up the front bench (while also making news in his personal li...

Guests: The Toronto Star All-Star Opinionator Panel featuring Matt Elliott, Shawn Micallef and host Edward Keenan On Saturday, Olivia Chow marks one month in the job as mayor, and this week, she appointed her team by selecting the committee Some would-be rivals seemed to get plum jobs, and at least one committee will have an odd couple at the helm. Plus: why a fire alarm during the meeting may be...

Guests: Todd Irvine, arborist and founder of City Forest When a woman was killed by a falling tree branch in Trinity Bellwoods park recently, it struck many as an unforseeable freak accident. But the danger was foreseen by at least one man, and his warnings went unheeded as the Star reported this week . Arborist Todd Irvine has also been warning the city that its maintenance of trees is often maki...

Guest: Deborah Dundas, books editor for the Toronto Star A recent Statistics Canada survey found 1 in 4 Canadians would not be able to cover an unexpected expense of $500 if they had to. Almost half were deeply concerned about their ability to afford rent or housing. It's an important time to talk about class divisions in Canada. And Deborah Dundas wants to do that through her new book "On Class."...

Guest: Kate Allen, Climate change reporter for the Toronto Star The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has dubbed it a "cruel summer." A blistering heatwave is sweeping across North America and Europe with record high temperatures triggering other travesties like devastating wildfires and flash floods with July being declared the world's hottest month on record. Climate change has b...

Guest:  Megan Ogilvie, heath reporter for the Toronto Star More than three years after the COVID-19 pandemic that took tens of thousands of Canadian lives, a group of the country's top medical experts have published a scathing indictment of Canada's COVID response . In a sweeping set of research papers and editorials published in the British Medical Journal, these experts are calling on the govern...

WARNING: This story includes sensitive subject matter, including discussion of gun violence, gender-based violence and intimate partner violence, that could be triggering for some listeners. Guest: Michele Henry , staff reporter It was an unthinkable act of violence: a lone gunman, seemingly angry at fellow residents in his Vaughan condo building, unleashed a torrent of bullets that left five peop...

Guest: Susan Delacourt , national columnist Wednesday's oath-taking ceremony at Rideau Hall marked one of the most significant cabinet shuffles of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau 's eight-year tenure, a move that's being framed as a game changer ahead of a pivotal moment. Seven newcomers were welcomed to the front bench, seven were dropped and almost 30 out of 38 ministries saw big changes. The Libe...

Guest: Noor Javed , staff reporter Ontario's 444 municipalities are often referred to as "creatures of the province," which has certainly proved to be true since Premier Doug Ford took over at Queen's Park. The provincial Conservatives have repeatedly exerted authority over all aspects of local government — slashing Toronto city council , suddenly bestowing strong-mayor powers , cutting developmen...

WARNING: This story contains sensitive subject matter, including suicide and self-harm, that could be triggering for some readers. Guest:  Sheila Wang , investigative reporter A new study has revealed that tons of mercury dumped as industrial waste upstream of Grassy Narrows First Nations decades ago has contributed to the community's youth attempting suicide at a rate three times higher than that...

Guest: Clarrie Feinstein , business reporter Highlighting that those trying to rent while earning minimum wage are fast losing ground, a recent report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives paints a bleak picture of affordability in most Canadian cities. It all comes down to the "rental wage," the hourly wage that would be required to be able to afford rent while working a 40-hour week a...

Guest: Tonda MacCharles , Ottawa Bureau Chief The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is a $4.2-billion dollar national force looking over eight provinces, three territories, 150 municipalities and 600 Indigenous communities. But now, sources say the PMO wants Mounties to be transformed into the "FBI of the North." The idea would pull the RCMP out of the business of front-line, day-to-day contract polic...

Guest: Kenyon Wallace and Diana Zlomislic , investigative reporters A new Star investigation has revealed that owners of some of Toronto's cheapest homes might be paying disproportionately more in property taxes than those living in luxurious mansions. Analyzing roughly 12,000 homes sold in 2016, Star reporters found the burden of this tax inequality is shouldered by those with the least-expensive...

Guest: Lex Harvey , transportation reporter As TTC service cuts and dense Toronto traffic make commuting much harder, an increasing number of people find themselves turning to alternatives like personal electric vehicles, or PEVs for short . There are all sorts of oddball versions on city streets and those who use them say they might be the answer to traffic woes and they are environmentally-frien...

Guest: Sebastian Bron , reporter at The Hamilton Spectator Our health care systems are set up with the expectation someone struggling is functional enough to schedule, travel and arrive at appointments and be in the driver's seat of their care. Not everyone can do that, so St. Joe's mobile mental-health clinic in Hamilton has flipped the model on its head. Nurses and paramedics hit the road by bus...

Guest: Shellene Drakes-Tull , contributing columnist How many racialized people calling it out does it take to fix racism? Toronto Star contributing columnist Shellene Drakes-Tull addressed this head on in a recent column , where she pointed out the Canadian trend to issue a new survey, report or article comes out every few weeks that states what any racialized person has known for years: racism e...

Guest: Katie Daubs , senior writer The City of Toronto manages more than 850 playgrounds , but city-provided information is lacking and children have critical questions. How fast is the slide? Will I vomit on the merry-go-round? Is there a place to play house? Parents also have questions. Is their shade? Is the space accessible? Is a bathroom close by? To get the information, one Toronto dad has t...

Guest: Victoria Gibson , affordable housing reporter Asylum seekers come to Canada hoping to find safety, refuge and the chance to build a better life. Instead, many have ended up sleeping on the streets of Toronto after being caught in a bureaucratic tug of war between Toronto and Ottawa, as the city and the federal governments are pointing at each other on who should fund the responsibility of h...