Front Burner

CBC•www.cbc.ca

Front Burner is a daily news podcast that takes you deep into the stories shaping Canada and the world. Each morning, from Monday to Friday, host Jayme Poisson talks with the smartest people covering the biggest stories to help you understand what’s going on. We’re Canada’s number one news podcast and a trusted source of Canadian news.

We cover Canadian news and Canadian politics, Pierre Poilievre, Mark Carney, the Donald Trump administration, the upcoming 2025 Canadian election, provincial politics from Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, and politicians Danielle Smith, David Eby and Doug Ford. We cover Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary as well as other municipalities across Canada.

In this Canadian election year, Front Burner will be focusing more on Canadian politics. We will take a close look at Mark Carney’s first few weeks as Prime Minister-Designate, the Conservatives and Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre as well as other leaders like Jagmeet Singh from the NDP and Quebec’s Yves-François Blanchet from the Bloc Québécois during the 2025 Canadian federal election. The podcast goes beyond Ottawa and digs deeper into major election issues like U.S.-Canada relations, jobs, the economy, immigration, cost of living, housing and rental costs, taxes and tariffs, democracy and technology.

The Front Burner daily podcast covers Canadian news from every province and territory: Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nunavut, Northwest Territories and Yukon. We cover news from major cities like Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton.

When U.S. President Donald Trump declares he wants to make Canada the 51st state, and decides to implement tariffs, Front Burner has an analysis into what is happening. We cover Elon Musk’s DOGE. We cover the latest in technology from the rise of bitcoin and crypto, the future of TikTok, Meta, artificial intelligence, influencers, and more.

Look to our archives to see fact-checked stories about infrastructure, fascism, border security, immigration, Pierre Poilievre, Justin Trudeau, the Republican Party, American politics, Canadian politics, India, China, Trump’s tariffs, Mark Carney, Elon Musk, Toronto, technology, artificial intelligence, international students, healthcare, and inflation. We cover global news like the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, the ceasefire, the Ukraine-Russia war, and the U.S. economy and U.S. politics.

Front Burner is a part of your morning news routine. Whether you’re in Toronto or Vancouver or Washington, this is the news that matters to Canadians. We take a look at the economy and break it down from the budget to interest rate hikes to inflation to recessions to jobs to the cost of living. We look at the policy around housing, Canadian housing supply, and what this means for first-time home buyers, renters, and those with a mortgage. We look at technology, from AI to the manosphere to social media like Meta, Twitter, Facebook, and more. We look at influential newsmakers like Elon Musk and influential technology industries like crypto and AI.

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Episodes

Recapping the high-stakes leaders' debate

As the federal election reaches the homestretch, four party leaders squared off in Montreal Thursday evening in the only English-language debate of the campaign. Liberal leader and polling frontrunner Mark Carney took heat from all sides as the Conservatives' Pierre Poilievre, the NDP's Jagmeet Singh and the Bloc's Yves-François Blanchet kept the barbs coming his way all night. Aaron Wherry is a senior writer with CBC's Ottawa bureau. He breaks down how everyone performed and what we learned fro...

Apr 18, 2025•30 min

A pre-debate state of the race

With just over a week until election day, Canada's main party leaders go head to head tonight in the only English language debate.  So, where does the campaign stand? Is anything shifting? How do people feel about the leaders at the moment? Where are parties drawing their biggest support and losses from?  David Coletto, the CEO of the polling firm Abacus Data, joins the show today to tell us what the latest polls are saying. He will rejoin the show as just one of several special guests...

Apr 17, 2025•26 min

When China and the U.S. fight, who wins?

A big part of Donald Trump’s global tariff regime targets the Chinese economy in a bid, he says, to force the country into a deal favorable to the United States. Despite this, officials in China have been undeterred — claiming that tariffs will hurt Americans more than Chinese, and drawing comparison between the actions of Donald Trump and Mao Zedong’s ‘cultural revolution.’ Chinese officials have also responded to Donald Trump’s tariff program saying, in part: “if war is what the U.S. wants, be...

Apr 16, 2025•41 min

The Conservative kingmaker behind Poilievre

Three terms and a decisive majority under Stephen Harper. Erin O'Toole's leadership run — and subsequent castigation. Pierre Poilievre's meteoric ascendency to within striking distance of the country's top office. What do these things all have in common? Jenni Byrne, the longtime Conservative powerbroker running Poilievre's campaign, who has moved in the party's inner circles since first joining the Reform Party at age 16. Simon Lewsen recently profiled Byrne for Maclean's. He takes us through h...

Apr 15, 2025•28 min

Election! Rallies, reporters, and tax havens

Election day in Canada is only two weeks away. All the major parties have been holding rallies across the country, with some Conservative supporters bringing “Do you believe the polls?” signs to a party event. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is facing scrutiny over limiting media access, and Liberal leader Mark Carney is facing questions about his time working in the private sector and billion-dollar funds he oversaw in tax havens. Rosemary Barton is the CBC’s chief political correspondent....

Apr 14, 2025•31 min

Weekend Listen: The deadliest attack you’ve forgotten. The investigation you never heard.

In the wake of 9/11, anthrax-laced letters unleashed a new wave of terror across the nation. But who was behind the attacks — and why has America nearly forgotten this story? As government buildings shut down and law enforcement scrambled to track the perpetrator, the FBI launched one of the largest and most complex investigations in its history. Untangling a web of scientific evidence and false leads, the case took unexpected turns with lasting consequences. From Wolf Entertainment, USG Audio, ...

Apr 12, 2025•38 min

What did Trump just do to the economy?

U.S. President Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause on much of what he calls "reciprocal tariffs" barely a week after first imposing them — while also implementing a 10 per cent tariff across the board on most countries, and a whopping 145 per cent tariff on China. Markets first soared at the news, then went back into freefall. Members of Trump's cabinet claimed this was the strategy all along. The chaos even brought the stability of U.S. government bonds into question. Justin Wolfers, a profes...

Apr 11, 2025•26 min

The last time the U.S. tariffed the world

On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause on his sweeping global reciprocal tariffs for all countries, except for China. Trump has long expressed his love of tariffs. Just last week, he spoke about how believes the U.S. was founded on tariffs, and that they could have helped the country avoid the Great Depression. Then, referring to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, the President said: “They tried to bring back tariffs to save our country, but it was gone. It was gone...

Apr 10, 2025•23 min

Jason Kenney’s case for a Conservative government

Today our guest is Jason Kenney, the longtime federal Conservative MP and former United Conservative Party premier of Alberta.  Kenney worked closely for many years with now-Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre, and he has been outspoken on the trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump. So today we’re having him on to talk about tariffs, the Canadian election, and tensions within the Conservative movement. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit:  https://www.cbc.ca/radio/...

Apr 09, 2025•36 min

Election reignites pipeline politics

Donald Trump’s trade war has revived calls for the building of east-west pipelines within Canada, as a way for the country to unleash its natural resources and reduce its dependence on the U.S. as its key trading partner. But do the economics of building new pipelines — or the logistics, or the environmental realities — actually make sense here? And what are the parties actually saying about them? Today we’re speaking to Andrew Leach, an energy and environmental economist and an Associate Profes...

Apr 08, 2025•27 min