This Matters

Guest: Kieran Leavitt, politics reporter for the Star The fourth wave in western Canada has become a crisis. COVID-19 patients in Alberta are dying at four times the rate of the national average as the province leads Canada in active cases and deaths. After a sharp uptake when vaccines were first available, Saskatchewan's vaccination rate has stalled and now ranks as the lowest of all provinces. ...

Guests: Robert Cribb & Marco Chown Oved, investigative reporters at the Star In what is being called the largest collaborative journalism project in history, hundreds of journalists around the world have released their findings from The Pandora Papers , which detail the financial details of how the ultra-rich move and hide money around the world in tax havens and through other mechanisms. The find...

Guest: Jacob Lorinc, Toronto Star business reporter Ontario's anti-vaccine movement has expanded. Hundreds of businesses have formed a network to refuse the new vaccine certificate rules, and take a pass on screening for unvaccinated customers. Mayor John Tory says the city has received more than 500 complaints of these violations, but there doesn't seem to be any clarity on implementing Ontario's...

Guest: Erica Ifill, columnist for the Hill Times Green party leader Annamie Paul's resignation came after a defeat in her own Toronto Centre riding but it was a long time coming. After the party's own internal report leaked earlier this year and revealed the extent of systemic racism within, many said that she was set up to fail and the outcome was built into the system from the onset. A study of...

As Canada reflects on National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Star reporter Olivia Bowden wrote a piece titled: How do you teach children about residential schools? Mix history with kindness . Olivia was on the show in August and we are rebroadcasting her episode, as it is as relevant today as it was then. Guest: Olivia Bowden, Toronto Star reporter As Canada goes through the painful process of...

Guest: Alex Boyd, Toronto Star reporter covering COVID vaccination As parents await news on vaccines for younger kids, Pfizer recently announced shots for children aged five to 11 are not far away. While the world awaits for it to be officially approved, there are still questions about efficacy, timelines and rollouts. But with spiking cases among children in the U.S. and other symptoms like "long...

Guest: Jacques Gallant, Toronto Star political reporter Whenever a politician gets into trouble, people look up the steps for recourse but the truth is it's very difficult to remove an elected official from office. Such a mechanism is once again in the spotlight in part due to Kevin Vuong, a controversial politician who recently won a seat as a Member of Parliament for Spadina-Fort York in Toronto...

Guests: Joanna Chiu and Jeremy Nuttall, Toronto Star reporters covering Canada-China relations After nearly three years, Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, have been freed from Chinese detention. With their release coming in lockstep with the resolution of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou's legal case, many former diplomats and analysts say the ordeal was clear evidence of 'hostage diplomac...

Guest: Rosa Saba, Toronto Star business reporter A vaccine certificate system is now the rule of law in Ontario. Customers will have to show proof of vaccination in many public spaces and businesses, like indoor dining at restaurants, gyms and sporting events. After months of debates and doubts from the Ontario government, the passports are being touted as a way for businesses to avoid another set...

Guest:  Will Oremus, tech journalist for the Washington Post It has been a very bad few weeks for Facebook, the world's largest social network, whose platforms also include Instagram and WhatsApp. Through a number of leaked documents, it became public that Facebook has been aware of the negative effects of its platforms on a number of levels. For instance, use of Instagram is said to have a detrim...

Guests: Heather Scoffield and Susan Delacourt, Toronto Star Ottawa bureau Climate, affordability, housing, child care, the economy, health, race relations, guns, reconciliation: today on "This Matters," we look forward to what we can expect from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's third mandate. Heather Scoffield, economics columnist, and Susan Delacourt, national columnist, from the Star's Ottawa bur...

Guests: Gerald Butts, former Trudeau campaign strategist and principal secretary, and James Moore, former MP and minister of industry After calling a $600 million federal election, the results are basically the same — Justin Trudeau will remain Canada's prime minister with a minority government. To unpack everything that went down Monday, guest host Althia Raj is joined by Gerald Butts, Trudeau's...

Guests: Tonda MacCharles , Toronto Star Ottawa bureau, and Clifton van der Linden, CEO of Vox Pop Labs (makers of The Signal, the Star's poll aggregator) Polls suggest opinions are mixed and this could be one nail biter of a federal election. Today, Althia Raj speaks with Tonda MacCharles and Clifton van der Linden, and they take a look at the state of the race as we wait for results to trickle in...

Guest: Lex Harvey, who has been fact checking the party leaders on the campaign trail for The Star Are Canada's leaders being honest on the campaign trail? Fact checking leaders has become en vogue over the past decade, in part due to former U.S. President Donald Trumps regular speeches filled with exaggerations, misinformation and false claims. In the pressure cooker of a campaign, fact checking...

Guest: The Star's political reporter Raisa Patel  Many say race wasn't really a top-of-mind election issue until last week's federal leader's debates, and the conversation remained at surface-level, without getting into what actually is — or isn't — on party platforms to tackle systemic racism. So, what exactly are Canada's electoral candidates saying on how their party will address racism beyond...

Guest: Heather Scoffield, the Star's Ottawa bureau chief and economic columnist Affordability is at a crisis level in Canada. From sky-high housing and rental costs, to childcare, to cellphone bills — the cost of living is putting a vice grip on the finances of middle-class and young Canadians. But it's not a new problem to be tackled in federal elections, rather one that has been at the centre of...

Guest: Alex Ballingall, Ottawa based politics reporter joins to talk climate change in the election. As wild fires burn in Western Canada, it seems like a day does not go by without further news about the climate crisis and the worsening shape of the planet, and the real consequences we are already seeing. Many experts are saying that changes need to be made immediately to tackle the problem, and...

Guests: Host Althia Raj sits down with the Star's Heather Scoffield, Richard Warnica an Jeremy Nuttall After four weeks of campaigning, the federal party leaders head into the home stretch. Polling puts the Liberals and the Conservatives basically neck and neck nationally. But on the ground? What does the contest really look like? Today, we'll take a deep dive into three battleground ridings. Heat...

Guest: Michelle Shephard, a journalist, author and filmmaker who was the Star's national security reporter for nearly 20 years Everyone who is old enough has some kind of memory of where they were and what they were doing on September 11, 2001, when the two towers of the World Trade Centre in New York were brought down by commercial planes hijacked by members of the terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda...

We're almost towards the end of the second year of the pandemic and, not surprisingly, the data shows that we're not at the best version of ourselves anymore. A recent Angus Reid poll has revealed surprisingly low rates of empathy among Canadians. Especially when it's between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. The Star's mental health reporter Nadine Yousif joins to talk about what this new poll...

Guest: Omar Mosleh, Toronto Star reporter After more than a year of COVID anxiety, lockdowns, working from home and helping kids with online learning, this is back to school week in the GTA. But as many parents are sharing their children's day back to school, some are sharing their child's disappointment in being left out. They say their children with special needs and complicated medical conditio...

Guests: Susan Delacourt, Toronto Star national political columnist and Grant LaFleche, investigative reporter for the Star and St. Catharines Standard Forget the election issues. The biggest story of Canada's federal election campaign so far has been the protesters disrupting the rallies of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and the harassment towards other candidates like NDP leader Jagmeet Singh. And...

This is a rebroadcast of an episode first aired on December 2, 2020.  Social media harassment is about more than words. It is violence and it is dangerous. We've witnessed a lot of ugliness during these polarizing and pandemic times, and a lot of it has been directed at women, particularly women of colour. As cyber misogyny has increased steadily, so have challenges to the notion that women's onli...

Guests: Jennifer Yang and Megan Ogilvie, Toronto Star health reporters Back to school is almost here, kicking off the return of morning COVID screening for parents with their kids. With more data now available, the province has recently made some changes for that screening. In particular, runny noses have been removed from the screening guide — a relief for many as the first signs of sniffles prev...

Guest: Rob Ferguson, Queen's Park reporter at The Star After months of debate, Ontario has revealed details of its vaccine passport program. Called late and inconsistent by critics, Premier Doug Ford admitted he was reluctant to bring in such a program due to fears of a "split society." There are still many questions about how exactly the program will work, but with Delta variant case counts risin...