This Matters

Guest: David Rider , City Hall bureau chief The mayoral byelection is June 26 and already it is looking like this will be the most wide-open competition for the city's top job in years. Candidates of all political stripes and types of notoriety have said they intend to, or are considering, running. The list already includes current councillor Josh Matlow, former councillor Ana Bailão, former Toron...

Guest: Moira Welsh, Toronto Star journalist leading The Third Act project A growing number of older women are facing poverty in Canada. It is a situation that can be brutally isolating as well as physically and emotionally exhausting. According to government data, it is also an issue affecting more women in their senior years than men. Journalist Moira Welsh, author of "Happily Ever Older: Revolut...

Guest: Alyshah Hasham , City Hall reporter Toronto's Gardiner Expressway is a perennial debate from all directions, and just as the mayoral race gets underway, we have arrived at the debate about the $1.2-billion future of the eastern section . Josh Matlow, a city councillor and recently-confirmed mayoral contender to replace John Tory , says going forward would be a "historic mistake" and, along...

Guest: Chay Ornthanalai, associate professor at the Rotman School of Management Silicon Valley Bank was the 16th largest bank in the United States yet, in less than two days, it collapsed and marked the single largest American banking failure since the financial crisis of 2008. Ripple effects from SVB's collapse continue to hit similar institutions, have reached Credit Suisse Group (itself moving...

Guest: Allan Woods , staff reporter Just as Roxham Road in Quebec became a crossing point for thousands of migrants hoping to enter Canada to avoid deportation in the United States, a new northern border phenomenon has people from countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and India using Canada as an entry point to the U.S., often making a perilous journey. Called "southbounders" by the RCMP ,...

Guest: Caitlin Chin, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC The social media app TikTok has attracted billions of users but concerns have grown over its roots in China and countries around the world, including Canada, have banned TikTok from government devices. Now, in the last 24 hours, the Biden administration has escalated a heated debate on TikTok's sec...

Guest: Rob Cribb , investigative reporter and director of the Investigative Journalism Bureau Hate is on the rise on university and college campuses across the country. Wanting data, The Star and the University of Toronto's Investigative Journalism Bureau sent requests to over 80 schools across Canada to find out how they track and deal with racist, homophobic and other hate-motivated incidents. T...

Guest: Matt Juniper, associate partner at PRAXIS Last year, the largest ever global trial of a four-day work week began in the midst of a work culture reckoning and a pandemic. Companies across the world, including dozens across the U.S and Canada, signed up and now, the results are in. Companies are commiting to the four-day work week model. Matt Juniper, associate partner at full service marketi...

Today, we're bringing you an episode of It's Political with Althia Raj .  Althia takes stock of the supply and confidence agreement the Liberals and NDP agreed to last March. In exchange for supporting the Liberal government on confidence matters until June 2025, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh received assurances Ottawa would enact a dental care program for low and middle income Canadians, as well as mo...

Guest: Robyn Paul, Retool the Ring At the end of their education, engineers receive a coveted ring in a ceremony full of symbolism, steeped in secrecy. It is called The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer and it has come under fire for failing to reflect the contemporary views and face of engineering in Canada. Retool the Ring, an informal organization, is part of the drive for that change, claim...

Guest: Alex Boyd , staff reporter The 15-minute city has long been an urban planning ideal, where people lived close to everything they need. It has recently become twisted by those who feel it might be something that could lead to the next lockdown, sparking protests online and in cities across the world, including in Canada. How did a seemingly benign planning theory become so controversial? Thi...

Guest: Victoria Gibson , Affordable Housing reporter Sometimes even beloved neighbours and friends can slip away  unnoticed at life's end, with their memory frozen in time. That's what happened to Charles Parris , 81, of Henry Street in Grange Park. He died at home, remains quietly buried, but worldly belongings remained. For 10 months, his Toronto Community Housing Corp. apartment sat uninhabited...

Guest: Kris Rushowy and Isabel Teotonio , reporters Administrators, teachers and students connected to Oakville Trafalgar High School have been subject to bomb threats (as recently as February), death threats and police activity in recent months after photos of educator Kayla Lemieux made international headlines and left parents unnerved by action from the Halton District School Board. As the situ...

Guest: Megan Ogilvie and Kenyon Wallace , reporters A group of orthopedic surgeons is leasing operating rooms from Ottawa's biggest hospital. It's a controversial move that the company says will help alleviate surgery wait-times in the province. But health care advocates are concerned and want more information about the arrangement. Why is a private corporation operating inside a public hospital?...

Guest: Peter Edwards , crime reporter Canada's list of most wanted fugitives lives at  Boloprogram.org ("bolo" meaning "be on the lookout"). These criminals are being hunted by authorities, both here and around the world. Currently, there is a $250,000 bounty for information leading to the capture of Rabih Alkhalil, a convicted multi-murderer who walked away from a British Columbia prison last Jul...

Guest: Tonda MacCharles , Ottawa Bureau Chief Ottawa is buzzing over news about the possibility of foreign interference in the last two federal elections. While government officials say those elections were free and fair, several reports and specific allegations of such attempts has Parliament looking at the issue. As top security officials testify, Canada's election watchdog confirmed it is launc...

Guest: Megan Ogilvie , Health Reporter Last year, a group of doctors anonymously made serious allegations of abuse of power by hospital leadership at Trillium Health Partners. It triggered an independent investigation and the findings have finally been made public a year later. While the report said there wasn't enough information to substantiate some of the more serious claims, it did lay out a s...

Guest: Raisa Patel is a reporter in the Star's Ottawa Bureau Google has been conducting a secret test that filters out online news results for a small percentage of Canadians as a result of their concerns over Bill C-18, the Online News Act. This has raised the ire of several government officials, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and now the company's top executives have been summoned to ap...

Guest: Jim Rankin, Toronto Star reporter There finally might be a way to track a long-standing dark side of Canada's criminal justice system — the issue of wrongful convictions — through a new database. It's hard to put a number to just how many people are languishing behind bars for something they did not do. The launch of a new database by the Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions could help...

Guest: Alex Boyd is a reporter in the Star's Calgary Bureau. It has been almost two years since Justin Trudeau committed to sharing Canada's vaccines with the world. Two years later, the results are in. By New Years day 2023, Canada had donated the equivalent of 196 million doses. That's four million shy of its 200 million target. Government officials have celebrated the milestone, but there are m...

Guest: Patrick O'Rourke, Mobilesyrup.com Editor-in-Chief Netflix's crackdown on password sharing arrived in Canada this week, with the streaming service warning users who let others mooch off their accounts that they could be paying more for sharing. There are still lots of questions about how this will all work, and whether consumers will pay up or cancel the service in retaliation. This episode...

Guest: Bruce Arthur , sports writer and Star columnist Canada's national women's soccer team is playing in the SheBelieves Cup in Orlando, Fla. this week, an important warm-up event in the lead-up to the World Cup five months from now. Instead of wearing red and white jerseys during our national anthem, the team has been wearing purple T-shirts, emblazoned with the words "Enough is Enough." The pr...

Guest: Charles Burton, Senior Fellow from Macdonald-Laurier Institute When the alleged Chinese spy balloon floated across the United States earlier this month, it ignited a firestorm of concern about Beijing's surveillance program. U.S. President Joe Biden called it a violation of U.S. sovereignty while, after other unidentified objects over North American airspace became of interest, Prime Minist...

This Matters would like to introduce a new podcast from the Toronto Star, by playing episode 1 of " The Billionaire Murders: The hunt for the killers of Honey and Barry Sherman ." Episode 2: The Bodies is available wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts.  Episode 1: The Man on the Inside Where are Honey and Barry Sherman? It's a typical day for these eccentric billionaires but they're not...

Guest: Ali Mustafa, Istanbul-based correspondent for TRT World The United Nations has launched an appeal for $1 billion in aid to help victims in Turkey as the country reels from massive decimation and displacement after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck near the Syrian border and left over 40,000 dead. As hope is running out for survivors, questions have arisen about why the earthquake was so dea...