This Matters

Guest:  Moira Welsh , journalist  Canada's population is aging fast. Over the next two decades, one in four Canadians are going to be over the age of 65. As experts say our health care system isn't ready, the devastation in long-term care homes during COVID-19 offered a terrifying glimpse into the future. As such, many older adults fear nursing homes and instead struggle to age at home, alone, oft...

This Matters would like to introduce you to another Toronto Star podcast: Millennial Money.   Millennials face an unprecedented financial landscape in modern life. They've been told all along there are financial markers to being a grown-up: owning a home, having kids, travelling, having some kind of social life. But for many, lots of those things feel well out of reach. Returning for its third sea...

Guest:   Robert Benzie , Queen's Park bureau chief  The Ontario Liberals have elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. She is tasked with taking down Premier Doug Ford, whose government is  already labelling her as an elitist , and bringing her party back in from the wilderness after two crushing and consecutive defeats and no official party status. You could say she's got her work cut out for...

Guest:   Emma Teitel , columnist Columnist Emma Teitel joins again for a Toronto politics chat after an extended absence with lots of fresh news to talk about, including the election of a new councillor to replace Gary Crawford in Scarborough. It was a race that will affect council's ideological composition, with a winner who wants to emphasize transit and child care. Meanwhile, Toronto Mayor Oliv...

Guests:  Toronto Star hockey reporter  Kevin McGran , basketball reporter  Doug Smith  and Deputy Sports Editor Patrick Ho Our sports department spent much of a year compiling historical information and debating tough questions on a simple, maybe even silly, question: when you look at jersey numbers, who is the ultimate Toronto pro athlete to have worn each one? It's a fun assignment, but more dif...

Guest: Mark Ramzy , reporter Canada is home to thousands of diaspora communities. It's known as the hub of multiculturalism and diversity, which is sown into the social fabric and even its legislation Data shows that out of the 1.3 million immigrants who arrived in Canada between 2016 and 2021, more than 900,000 had a mother tongue that was neither English nor French . There are almost 400 nonoffi...

Guests: Matt Elliott and Shawn Micallef , contributing columnists So much has been happening in Toronto this week. As encampments are cleared, the mayor and the federal government are fighting over shelter and housing dollars and the city is cancelling plans for public washrooms even as it opens all of its ice rinks. Joined by Shawn Micallef, Matt Elliott issues his first look at how Mayor Olivia...

Guests: Nicholas Keung and Andy Takagi , staff reporters For years, Canada has been a dream destination for young people around the world with a record number of international students arriving in 2023. But that dream is unaffordable for many. As the cost of living keeps rising and tuition remains high for students from out of country, many international students have limited resources and turn to...

Guest: Wendy Gillis , crime and policing reporter Over the past nine weeks, a Canadian courtroom heard disturbing testimonies of how and why 22-year-old Nathaniel Veltman murdered three generations of a Muslim family in 2021. Now guilty for the deaths of Salman Afzaal, his wife Madiha, 15-year-old daughter Yumna and 74-year-old mother Talat, and for the attempted murder of Salman's nine-year-old s...

Guest: Toronto Star reporter Kerry Gillespie The interview today is timed to run 17 minutes and 28 seconds, the exact length of Stouffville 12-year-old Sawyer Nicholson's world-record-breaking 5-kilometer run. So listeners are invited to jog along as they listen and see how their own progress stacks up. Star reporter Kerry Gillespie talks about the tiny running phenomenon, and how she took up runn...

Guest: Sara Mojtehdzadeh , investigative reporter Did you know that a victim of labour trafficking could be right in front of you? Hundreds are working in plain sight, changing our hotel sheets, renovating our houses and growing the food we eat. In an investigative series by reporters Sara Mojtehdzadeh and Rachel Mendlesen called "Work Forced," The Star identified 10 cases across the GTA and south...

Guest: Ghada Alsharif, business reporter Concerns of worker exploitation, especially on farms, are escalating as Canada significantly increases its foreign workforce in order to race towards an ambitious $100-billion food export target. In the momentum to win this race, is enough being done to secure the rights and protections of those migrants who arrive under Canada's Temporary Foreign Workers p...

In our series, " The Kids Aren't All Right ," the Star has been highlighting the many ways in which children are struggling in Toronto. Mayor Olivia Chow joins " This Matters " to talk about why she thinks a lot of these areas stem from housing affordability and about her plan to try to break the logjam on that file. She also discusses her history of advocating for children at the city and what in...

Guest: Dr. Amy Gajaria, psychiatrist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) Wait times of up to two years. There are not enough publicly funded therapists. Emergency rooms are overwhelmed by children in crisis. Ontario's child and youth mental health system is at a breaking point. The Mental Health Commission of Canada reports that mental illness affects more than one million childre...

Guest: Ivy Lynn Bourgeault, Professor in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa Ontario's registered nurses will now be able to independently prescribe some medications such as vaccines, medicines to quit smoking and for pain relief or wound care. The government sees this as an effort to tackle Ontario's acute health care crisis, where more than two mill...

Guest: Noor Javed , city news reporter At the peak of the pandemic, the Ford government turned to Minister's Zoning Orders (known as MZOs) as the speediest solution to the housing crisis and direly needed construction of long-term-care facilities. Former housing minister Steve Clark issued more than 100 MZOs between 2019 and 2023 . But in the wake of the Greenbelt scandal, scrutiny is now shifting...

Guest: Richard Warnica , business feature writer When Toronto hosted a packed WNBA exhibition game in May, hopes were high that the city would soon get its own team, but by then, "the game was already over," writer Richard Warnica says. Local sports powerhouse Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE) had already considered and rejected the idea, mostly because two particular members of the board w...

Guest: Katie Daubs , senior writer As Ontario's schools struggle with resources and ripple effects of the pandemic, experts say students with diverse needs like attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) aren't getting the help they require. ADHD is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders in children, yet there is no official ministry categorization making it difficult to support...

Guest: Jennifer Pagliaro , crime reporter Many parents across Toronto struggle to balance keeping their kids safe and letting them develop a sense of independence. In a city where crime concerns are rising and rising faster for younger people, some weigh on that balance more than others. In one family, their son was shot before he was two years old. For the Star's " The Kids Aren't All Right " ser...

Guest: Kate Allen , climate change reporter Fresh air, trees, grass on bare feet. The sound of birds while playing on a playground. Leisurely swinging in the shadow of a tree. Many of us have childhood memories outside in parks and forests, and research shows this time is key to our physical, mental and social well-being and development. So what about the children being raised in urban centres lik...

Guest: jade guthrie, FoodShare Toronto When kids don't get enough to eat at home or they worry about running out of food, it can affect everything in their lives from their ability to learn and grow, to their ability to be healthy and resilient. Yet food insecurity is  the reality of 1.8 million kids in Canada . In this episode from the Star's " The Kids Aren't All Right " series, guest host Alysh...

Guest : Victoria Gibson , affordable housing reporter Housing affordability and accessibility are only getting worse. For many Canadians, they might be just one bill or unexpected expense away from being unable to afford that month's rent. Renovations, rent, or repair expenses are all factors that have led to more than 600,000 kids growing up in precarious housing across the country. As part of th...

Guest : Megan Ogilvie , health reporter Ever since the COVID pandemic, Canada's health care system is near a breaking point and may take years to fix. Among the issues, experts are worried that many children are not getting needed surgery within the safe medical window. An estimated 17,000 children are on long waiting lists for surgeries that could improve the quality of their lives. Some of them...

Guest: Amy Dempsey, series editor In many different aspects of life, kids in Toronto are struggling right now. Housing is unaffordable, educational supports are lacking, surgical wait times are long and the social safety net is frayed. Amy Dempsey is editor of the series " The Kids Aren't All Right ," which looks at the varied and interconnected ways we're letting down the next generation and what...

Guests: David Rider and Ben Spurr Since her election in June, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow has begun the work she was elected to do — building relationships with councillors and the premier, trying to kick start affordable housing and working to fix the city's budget hole. David Rider, city hall bureau chief, and Ben Spurr, reporter, have talked to her allies, opponents and city experts to evaluate h...