This Matters

Guests: Rob Hickey and Erin Sheldon, parents of Maggie Hickey The government has given the Hickey family an awful choice. Maggie Hickey has Angelman syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes significant physical and intellectual disabilities. While she is non-verbal and developmentally delayed, she is a happy 19-year-old woman with a group behind her supporting her needs. The arrangement is called...

Guest: Allan Woods, a Montreal-based reporter for The Star Quebec's controversial Bill 21 has been law for three years now, and what's known as the secularism law continues to cause controversies. The most recent one centres on a well known writer and his offence of a picture of an international student on a school's website. As Quebec prepares to enter another provincial election, Bill 21 is sure...

Guest: David Rider, City Hall Bureau Chief Ontario has brought in new legislation to give "strong-mayor" powers to the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa. As it turns out, there are some strings attached. "Strong-mayor" powers generally are supposed to help a mayor cut through red tape and push their agenda through, but now it is clear mayoral powers will be tied to provincial priorities and it's unknow...

Guests: Star reporters Jennifer Yang and Sara Mojtehedzadeh, as well as Anna Seto, a hospital nurse who joined a temp agency during the pandemic A Star investigation has revealed that the use and costs associated with using nurse supplied by temp agencies is skyrocketing. Some hospitals have said the costs have grown over 500 per cent, and some agencies may be taking advantage by increasing their...

Guest: Kristin Rushowy , Queen's Park reporter As children prepare to return to classrooms in the fall, the Ontario government seems to be pushing for some kind of pre-pandemic "normal." Mask mandates have been lifted, there's a push to bring back extracurricular activities and a new "catch-up" plan has been announced to help kids bounce back from COVID related disruptions. The Star's Kris Rushowy...

Guest: Abi Bond, Executive director of Toronto's Housing Secretariat Rents are rising at record rates across the country. While the pandemic brought rent costs down and created higher vacancies, now the rental market is surging because there is a lack of supply. Landlords are also using tactics like renovictions to get tenants out. The City of Toronto recently tabled a new report that looks at way...

Guest: Noor Javed, staff reporter Controversial politicians in Brampton, Richmond Hill and Mississauga have caused several issues for the municipal governments in those communities recently. While the reasons are very different, there has been all kind of political manoeuvring, lawsuits filed and city council meetings disrupted or cancelled. One issue this exposes is the lack of mechanism to punis...

Guest: Dr. Makini McGuire-Brown, chair of International Physicians of Ontario With emergency rooms closing due to staff shortages and a critical lack of family doctors across the country, many internationally trained doctors who have immigrated to Canada are asking why it's so difficult for them to practice medicine here. From a lack of residency positions to programs that help them transition to...

Guest: Ben Spurr, City Hall reporter at The Star. There's a bike fight brewing in High Park. After some park users complained too many cyclists are speeding through the park, police kicked off ticketing blitz. Tensions and activity escalated so much that in one incident, a police car hit a cyclist. Cycling advocates feel that riders are being unfairly targeted and this has been a waste of police r...

Guest: Kayla Bailey, project manager Ontario Building and Construction Tradeswomen Many women working in the trades sector like construction, say they have faced hostility, sexism and harassment on the job often without recourse. It's happened enough that the provincial trades council has made a new committee that seeks to address the issues women face regularly, and also look for long-term strate...

Guest: Matthew Ball, author of "The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything" Many of the world's biggest companies are investing heavily in, and betting big on, the metaverse. There are different visions of what the metaverse might look like depending on who's speaking, but regardless it will be the next big evolution of the internet as how we interact with it becomes more immersive. I...

Guest: Joanna Chiu , staff reporter U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi became the highest-ranking American official to visit Taiwan in 25 years earlier this week. The visit lasted only 19 hours but was long enough to infuriate the Chinese government. Hours after Pelosi landed, Beijing announced unprecedented military drills off the coast of Taiwan. The standoff continued on Friday, with China suspend...

Guest: Anna Barford, Canadian Shipping Campaigner with Stand.earth While cruise ship lines took a hit during the pandemic, business is back in full swing. Cruise ships are floating cities on the water and generate all kinds of waste. Surprisingly, U.S. rules around dealing with such waste are much more stringent compared to Canada where we have lax regulations. According to a recent report from St...

Guest: Olivia Bowden, staff reporter There has been global momentum to end Pap tests for cervical cancer and replace them with less intrusive and more effective HPV testing. As countries around the world and even some provinces in Canada start this transition in reproductive health care, medical professionals say Ontario is lagging far behind. The stakes go well beyond comfort. Star reporter Olivi...

Warning: This podcast contains graphic content Guest: Farrah Khan, manager of Consent Comes First at Toronto Metropolitan University The inquiry into Canada's worst mass shooting has put a spotlight on how survivors of intimate partner violence often face anger and backlash. After Lisa Banfield was brutally assaulted and held captive by her common-law husband one night in April 2020, 22 people wer...

Guest: Jacob Lorinc, business reporter As prices fall and listings get pulled off the market, experts are projecting a historic correction to come for the Canadian housing market. There already was limited supply, but the confounding thing is that with rising inflation rates, housing affordability will remain a challenge for many people despite lower home prices. Now the two big questions are: How...

Guests: Mohammed, Afghan human rights activist, and Nicholas Keung, immigration reporter Nearly one year after the U.S. and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover, thousands of Afghans are still trapped in the country, waiting for Western visas. Many of them are in danger precisely because they were allies of the West and now face repercussions at the hands of the Taliban. While...

Guest: Brandi Morin, freelance journalist Pope Francis is in Canada this week on a pilgrimage of penance, meeting the survivors of the residential school system in which the Catholic Church played a major role — a forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples that destroyed families, cultures and created a legacy of trauma. Brandi Morin, an award-winning French, Cree, Iroquois journalist from Treaty 6...

Guest: Len Tooley, evaluation director at the Community-Based Research Centre With more than 16,000 recorded cases in 75 countries so far, the World Health Organization has declared the monkeypox outbreak as a global health emergency. Five people have died worldwide since the outbreak began in May. Len Tooley is one of the 681 Canadians who have contracted monkeypox in the last two months. He says...

Guest: Richard Warnica, feature writer Toronto Pearson International Airport has just been named the worst airport for delays in the world. The ranking comes after months of media reports of long lineups, cancelled flights, lost luggage and traveller horror stories of being stuck here. It has gotten so bad that polls show people will not travel until some of the problems are sorted out, but no one...

Guest: Larry Savage, professor of Labour Studies at Brock University With organizing efforts underway at Starbucks, Amazon, Apple and many more employers, unions and the labour movement are having a moment. Unions are fighting for higher wages and benefits for workers as workplaces try to return to normal after COVID-19 and sky high inflation makes for a higher cost of living. With a tight job mar...

Guest: Blair Feltmate, University of Waterloo's Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation This week has seen yet another in climate firsts as a scorching heat wave has swept across the globe. As Britain recorded its hottest-ever temperature at 40.2 C on Tuesday, things weren't any better in Europe with sweltering temperatures and wildfires raging across several countries including Portugal and France. H...

Guest: Robert Benzie, Queen's Park Bureau Chief The Ontario government is going to give enhanced powers to the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa. Described as being similar to U.S. style "strong-mayor" systems, it's an idea that has been discussed for years as a way to quickly push the mayor's authority and potentially expedite things like financial matters and appointments. But critics say Premier Dou...

Guest: Alex Ballingall, Toronto Star reporter In recent months, and in the wake of alarming killings like the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, some Canadian politicians say fear of violence has become a regular hazard of the job. We take a look at the tense political climate that's forcing public officials to amp up their security, what this means for the future of polit...

Guest: Marco Chown Oved, Toronto Star reporter A Star investigation has found that Canada's three largest supermarket chains are actually making money from inflation. Grocery prices have been rising faster than overall inflation because of the disruption of labour, supply chain and manufacturing costs, and a war in Ukraine, but there's another factor driving prices up — profit. A deep dive into th...