This Matters

Kate Allen, science and technology reporter at the Star, talks to Saba Eitizaz about why race-based data is necessary to find out how the COVID-19 is affecting racialized communities, and the impact of not having this information. The death of Leonard Rodriques—a black personal support worker who was sent home from the hospital despite debilitating Covid-19 symptoms—led to calls from health worker...

Jim Stanford, economist and director of the Centre for Future Work, talks to Adrian Cheung about the big picture of Canada's economy, why re-opening too quickly could lead to further disaster and ideas on how we can begin recovering financially from this mess. Canada's economic numbers are staggering, for all the wrong reasons. In the span of two months, more than three million Canadians have lost...

On the streets of Washington, The Star's Edward Keenan provides analysis on the extremes of the protests as well as the signs of everyday life unfolding around him, as well as seeing democracy in action. To give us a dispatch from Trump's DC, the Star's Washington Bureau Chief shares what's he seen and checks the moods of a divided America. It has been a week of protests and rage in the United Sta...

Kanika Samuels-Wortley, assistant professor and criminologist at Carleton University and Wendy Gillis, Toronto Star's crime reporter, are in conversation with Adrian Cheung, about the events leading to—and following—Korchinski-Paquet's death, how systemic racism and anti-Black violence continues to play a huge role in Canada's policing. The sounds, videos and pictures of the mass protests against...

This Matters will broadcast the Toronto Star's six-part podcast Hustled each Monday, where the Star's labour reporter Sara Mojtehedzadeh takes us behind the scenes of a David vs. Goliath battle between a scrappy group of Toronto food couriers and the app company they work for. EPISODE 3: Oshidashi Technology is at the heart of the battle between Foodora and its workforce. The app company says it's...

Karon Liu, the Star's culture reporter has a conversation with Saba Eitizaz, reminiscing about buffets, their cultural and culinary significance and whether we're about to say a nostalgic goodbye to the traditional buffet. For some, the idea of a buffet can bring back childhood memories of birthdays, Sunday brunches, road trips where you hoped the roadside hotels offer a full breakfast buffet, or...

Peter Edwards is a crime reporter at the Star, who has covered organized crime for years. He has written over 15 non-fiction books on the subject. He joins This Matters to break down the two truck turf wars in the GTA and what happens next. A brazen crime spree has gripped the Greater Toronto Area for almost three years. A turf war between towing companies that has resulted in murders, arson, gang...

If you look at any of the numbers, the Greater Toronto Area's real estate market is in free fall. New homes sales were down by 69 per cent, and several conflicting forecasts say prices could go up 7 per cent or potentially fall 18 per cent. COVID-19 has done what seemed impossible by actually cooling Toronto's white hot market down, in what is usually the high point of buying and selling season. O...

Star reporters Wendy Gillis and Alyshah Hasham talk with Adrian Cheung about how women's police stations could work and how domestic violence remains an urgent public health problem, especially during the pandemic. Canada continues to grapple with a long-standing and disturbing trend of gender-based violence. Canada's Minister for Women and Gender Equity Maryam Monsef calls the current pandemic, a...

This Matters will broadcast the Toronto Star's six-part podcast Hustled each Monday, where the Star's labour reporter Sara Mojtehedzadeh takes us behind the scenes of a David vs. Goliath battle between a scrappy group of Toronto food couriers and the app company they work for. EPISODE 2: Delivery Hero Sara gets a job as a Foodora courier to find out what life is like when your boss is an app. On t...

Alex Boutilier, national politics reporter with the Toronto Star, who covers national security, joins host Raju Mudhar to discuss how CSIS is redefining how it views terrorism. Incel-related terrorism is something that all Canadians became familiar with after the Toronto van attack in April of 2018 which left 10 people dead on Yonge Street. An online movement made up angry, sexually frustrated men...

Kristin Rushowy, Toronto Star's Queen's Park reporter, talks with Adrian Cheung about the cancellation of the remainder of in-person classes in Ontario's schools and what comes next. Everything from students' mental health, how classes might look in the fall based on other jurisdictions, and labour relations is discussed.  Ontario's government has extended the closure of schools until the end of J...

In today's episode of This Matters, we discuss provincial re-opening plans, economic and health risks of opening vs. staying locked down, and the fact that this is a disease that will be around for some time. Saba Eitizaz talks to Dr. Vivek Goel who is the University of Toronto's Vice President Research and Initiatives. He's also a professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and the found...

This Matters introduces the first episode of the Toronto Star's six-part podcast Hustled, where the Star's labour reporter Sara Mojtehedzadeh takes us behind the scenes of a David vs. Goliath battle between a scrappy group of Toronto food couriers and the app company they work for. EPISODE 1: David vs. Goliath A group of scrappy food couriers has just won a major legal battle against a multination...

It's Victoria Day Weekend, which means for many lucky people, it's time to open up the cottage and get summer really going. Traditionally, May Two-Four weekend is all about fun, but as Premier Doug Ford put it in one of his briefings recently, "It's not the party weekend it's been in the past." While all communities have been dealing with the pandemic, cottage country has faced a unique set of cha...

While most are isolating at home, hundreds of thousands of Canadians remain stranded abroad, with their families searching for answers. Canada's foreign affairs minister François-Philippe Champagne calls the work of repatriating them, one of the most complex foreign affairs missions in Canadian history. Adrian Cheung talks to two guests for this episode: Scaachi Koul, culture writer for BuzzFeed N...

To discuss sports re-opening plans, Raju Mudhar is joined by Dave Feschuk, sports columnist at the Toronto Star. This past weekend, UFC 249 took place there, with zero spectators, 1 fighter testing positive for the virus, as well as two of his cornermen, who were pulled from the event, but that didn't stop things. There are more bouts scheduled. The other major sports leagues are also cautiously t...

Saba Eitizaz speaks to two mental health experts about how we can get through this safely, cope with the depression and the anxiety—and whether Canada is ready to deal with the long-term consequences of COVID-19, and an impending mental health crisis. Dr. Laura Hawryluck is Associate Professor of Critical Care at the University of Toronto and an attending physician at Toronto Western Hospital. Dr....

Several provinces, including Ontario, are beginning to slowly re-open parts of society. Restarting businesses is vital for people who need a pay cheque for their families and to give a shot in the arm to a flagging economy. But what if the workplace you're returning to isn't safe? What are your rights as an employee, in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic? Adrian Cheung talks to Sara Mojtehedz...

Murder hornets. Murder. Hornets. The Asian giant hornet has quite the moniker, given for its sting and appetite for the offspring of honey bees, and the threat it poses to honey bee populations. News recently emerged that these hornets were in North America. But eight months ago, after hearing about sightings, B.C. beekeepers John and Moufida Holubeshen first tracked, got stung, and then went home...

It was supposed to be a calling card for Toronto's Waterfront. Using high technology and big data to help cut through the bureaucracy and reveal the neighbourhood of the future. Now it's done, just another project that disappeared like so much other vaporware. Sidewalk Labs, a division of Alphabet and sister company of Google, arrived in Toronto with a raft of ideas and plans to help create a new...

The anti-vaccination movement remains a loud and outsized presence, even during a pandemic. Many continue to spread misinformation and are already turning their attention towards any future vaccines for COVID-19, saying they don't want it, and that it shouldn't be mandatory. But as the world depends on medicine and science for an answer to the coronavirus and an end to the pandemic—is the anti-vax...

COVID-19 has exacerbated the fault line within this country's long-term care facilities. Underfunded, overcrowded and with less oversight, these facilities were ripe for the kind of disaster that is unfolding in them across the country. As residents and healthcare workers die, beyond talk about fixing what is happening now, there seems to finally be an appetite from government leaders to try and t...

As many jurisdictions make preparations to reopen, there are several things that are key to the new hopes of finding a way forward to live with COVID-19. Two of the keys that have been touted by governments and public health officials are contact tracing and immunity passports. The first has been an important activity in the fight against virulent illnesses for years, but the big change now is tha...

In today's episode, Saba Eitizaz speaks to Andrea Gunraj, the VP of Public Engagement at the Canadian Women's Foundation, about the horror of victims potentially trapped in self-isolation with their abusers, how they can get help, and how it's our responsibility to help them. There are two versions of this episode. This one and another one in today's feed titled "May days." That version doesn't ha...