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

Inside a CIA agent's mission to infiltrate Al-Qaeda

After the events of Sept. 11, sweeping changes were made to U.S intelligence and counterrorism practices as part of the American-led 'war on terror'. Agencies like the CIA started focusing less on traditional forms of espionage, and became more of an organization centred on assassination and hunting non-state actors. As part of that broader effort, a plan was born: what if the CIA were able to conscript a white American man to infiltrate the inner workings of Al-Qaeda?  Journalist Zach Dorf...

Aug 20, 2024•27 min

Will Ukraine's attack inside Russia pay off?

Two and half years after Russia first invaded, Ukraine has launched what might be its boldest counterattack yet: a push into the Kursk region. It's the first military incursion across Russian borders since the Second World War, drawing Russian troops away from key battle zones in eastern Ukraine. Tim Mak, a Kyiv-based journalist who publishes the newsletter The Counteroffensive, explains why Ukraine is betting big on such a risky strategy, and whether it could change the course of this protracte...

Aug 19, 2024•25 min

Cracks in Canada’s temporary foreign worker program

Over the last two weeks, Liberal Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault has said he's considering tightening Canada's temporary foreign worker program. This is amid criticism of its growing use and the conditions facing those who are in it. Since the Liberals first loosened the rules in response to the pandemic in 2021, the program has played a bigger part in our labour market, including with staff at large food and retail chains. Some Canadians believe that that’s suppressing wages and taking a...

Aug 16, 2024•24 min

Israel accused of turning prisons into ‘torture camps’

Israeli prisons have been making headlines in recent weeks, after far-right protesters stormed the gates of the notorious Sde Teiman detention facility to protest the arrest of nine soldiers accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian prisoner. The incident reportedly left the man in life-threatening condition, and it has led to a furious debate within Israeli society, with some defending the use of torture against Palestinian detainees. But the case is far from isolated, according to investiga...

Aug 15, 2024•27 min

Why is ISIS seeing a resurgence?

The arrest of a father and son north of Toronto accused of being in the late stages of planning an attack for the benefit of the Islamic State. A canceled stop in Vienna on Taylor Swift’s Eras tour after the threat of an attack with the main suspect allegedly inspired by ISIS. A deadly attack in March on a Moscow theatre leaving over 100 dead, allegedly committed by members of an ISIS affiliate.  While the Sunni Muslim militant organization hasn’t been in the headlines regularly since 2018,...

Aug 14, 2024•24 min

Canada's news outlets are struggling. Should Ottawa save them?

It’s been a year since Meta banned Canadian news on platforms including Facebook and Instagram, punching a significant hole in how audiences engage with outlets online.   At the same time, the continued descent of the outlets’ revenues has meant mass layoffs and closures, and the rise of news deserts around the country.  Today, two journalists weigh in on whether Ottawa should further intervene and increase its financial support of news media, or whether it should heed worries abo...

Aug 13, 2024•29 min

Is AI a bubble that's about to burst?

ChatGPT took the world by storm when it launched in November of 2022, prompting massive investment in generative AI technology as tech companies rushed to capitalize on the hype. But nearly two years and billions of dollars later, the technology seems to be plateauing — and it's still not profitable. After tech stocks took a hit in early August, concerns are growing in both the tech press and on Wall Street that generative AI may be a bubble, and that it may soon burst. Paris Marx — author of th...

Aug 12, 2024•30 min

Weekend Listen: Putin's Murders from Tortoise

Shortly before Vladimir Putin was re-elected for a fifth term as Russia’s president he eliminated his last possible rival for power, Alexei Navalny, who from all available evidence was murdered in an Arctic labour camp. The deaths of dozens of Putin's opponents, often in mysterious circumstances, have been a hallmark of his time in office. Tortoise’s Giles Whittell sets out to find out why so many of Putin’s enemies have met an early end.This is episode 1 of Putin's Murders from Tortoise. You ca...

Aug 10, 2024•23 min

How anti-migration riots swept the UK

Online rumours and disinformation surrounding the identity of the suspect in a mass stabbing incident that left three little girls dead in a British seaside town led to an explosion of anti-immigrant and anti-migrant riots throughout the U.K. The unrest was led by mostly white far-right groups. As sudden as the riots came, the festering of resentment towards immigrants and anti-migrant rhetoric has been circulating online and throughout British politics for years.  Freelance journalist and ...

Aug 09, 2024•28 min

Why are so many Toronto condos sitting empty?

The condo market in Greater Toronto, whether it’s resale or new, is struggling. According to a recent CIBC Economics study, sales have “have dived off a cliff” to their lowest level since the late 1990s. Some condos in Toronto are now sitting empty for six to seven months, despite an ongoing housing crisis in the country. John Pasalis has been looking into why this is happening. He’s the president of Realosophy, a realty brokerage in Toronto. He’ll talk to us about the road that led to this poin...

Aug 08, 2024•21 min

The ‘New Right’ wants revolution. Can J.D. Vance deliver it?

By ideas, dollars and in personal connections, Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance is intimately tied to an amorphous ideological movement known as the “New Right.” Some of its major players, which include billionaires and tech elites, want to gut the US’ institutions and upend democracy in what they see as necessary, radical action to reverse the tyranny of liberalism.  So what is the New Right? How far would JD Vance be willing to go to advance its ideas in the White House? ...

Aug 07, 2024•26 min

Olympic boxing and sex testing’s fraught history

Last week’s boxing match between Italy’s Angela Carini and Algeria’s Imane Khelif lasted just 46 seconds. But it has ignited a firestorm online, and led to a slew of misinformation about Khelif’s sex and gender — leading commentators from Elon Musk to Donald Trump to Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling to allege that the International Olympic Committee is allowing a man to compete in women’s boxing. Those claims are not true. Imane Khelif is a cisgender woman, something both she and the IOC have be...

Aug 06, 2024•31 min

Tested: tracing the surprising 100-year history of sex testing in elite sports

Tested is a new podcast series from CBC and NPR that asks the question, who gets to compete? Since the beginning of women’s sports, there has been a struggle over who qualifies for the women’s category. Tested follows the unfolding story of elite female runners who have been told they can no longer race as women, because of their biology. As the Olympics approach, they face hard choices: take drugs to lower their natural testosterone levels, give up their sport entirely, or fight. To understand ...

Aug 05, 2024•39 min

Weekend Listen: Summer and Simone hit the gold mine

Olympic FOMO is your daily Olympics recap, in 20 minutes or less hosted by longtime radio duo and media best friends Mark Strong and Jemeni. Together they provide a fresh perspective to the Olympic conversation as they chat with athletes, entertainers and celebrities to get their take on the Games. In this episode, Mark and Jem chat about how Simone Biles battles haters left and right and still manages to score gold, and how a Turkish sharp shooter went viral for his hitman vibes. Mark and Jem a...

Aug 03, 2024•12 min

The double-edged sword of political memes

Since US President Joe Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take over as the next Democratic nominee, the US election campaign has been awash in memes. Memes about coconut trees, weirdos, Brat and even intimate relationships with couches.   But as both U.S. and Canadian political parties are learning, the power of the internet is a double edged sword that can energize campaigns or severely backfire. So when do memes work? Why do they fall flat? And what is the risk ...

Aug 02, 2024•31 min

A Hamas leader is assassinated in Iran

On Tuesday, the leader of Hamas’s political wing, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in Iran. The killing is widely believed to have been an Israeli strike, although Israel has not claimed responsibility.  News of Haniyeh’s death came just hours after Israel announced it had killed a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut, Lebanon, which it said was in retaliation for a deadly attack in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights a few days before. Now, the two attacks — coupled with Hamas and Hezbollah’s ...

Aug 01, 2024•24 min

Are we in a 'hidden' recession?

After the Bank of Canada hiked interest rates at an unprecedented pace the last couple of years, there’s been a lot of talk about whether we’ll be tipped into a recession. Now, as rates have finally started to come down, a lot of people are struggling. Unemployment’s gone up, people are accumulating debt, and despite inflation cooling, everything still seems really expensive.  So, it can start to feel like we’re in a recession. But most experts aren’t calling it one. So what is it? BMO Fina...

Jul 31, 2024•21 min

Canada's baffling soccer spying scandal

Canada's women's soccer team went into the 2024 Olympics with their title as defending gold medalists on the line — but they now find themselves mired in allegations of cheating after a team analyst was caught flying a drone over a New Zealand training session. Canada is certainly not the first soccer team to be caught spying on rivals' practices. But why would they try it at such a highly scrutinized tournament? And what could it mean for the future of the sport in Canada as allegations continu...

Jul 30, 2024•27 min

The US and Israel’s ‘special relationship’ — Part 2

This is the second episode in our two-part series on the past, present and future of the US-Israel ‘special relationship.’  In Part 2, we’re going to look at how that relationship affects Americans living in the US — sometimes in surprising ways.  In this episode, we refer to a few previous episodes of Front Burner, which you can find here: The US and Israel’s ‘special relationship’ — Part 1 Apple / Spotify At the McGill encampment: Calls to divest from Israel  Apple / Spotify The...

Jul 29, 2024•35 min

Weekend Listen: Your World Tonight

It’s more important than ever to sort out what’s real, what’s relevant and what’s truly new — and Your World Tonight does exactly that every night, seven days a week, with correspondents around the world. Our colleagues at YWT set the bar on the daily news catch up. Every night, they offer context, analysis, surprise — all in about 25 minutes.  More episodes are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/FJTUitZQ...

Jul 27, 2024•30 min

Canadian treasure Jasper hit by wall of fire

Jasper is a historic resort town in western Alberta's Rocky Mountains, surrounded by towering peaks and vibrant turquoise lakes. But this week, heartbreaking images are emerging from the town and the surrounding national park: buildings turned into charred rubble; trees scorched to the point that they look like matchsticks. Alberta Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis described a "wall of fire" that bore down on the town on Wednesday night, estimated to be up to 100 metres high, with firefighters p...

Jul 26, 2024•24 min

The US and Israel’s ‘special relationship’ - Part 1

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a long-awaited and contentious speech to a special joint session of U.S. Congress. He had been invited by all four top congressional leaders — Democrat and Republican — to speak.  But not everyone was happy about it. More than 80 Democratic lawmakers skipped the speech, and thousands of people protested outside the Capitol.  Netanyahu’s visit comes at a moment when the US’s relationship with Israel, and support for the war in...

Jul 25, 2024•36 min

The drug harm reduction backlash

Vincent Lam is a Canadian addictions doctor and award-winning author who's written a couple of op-eds in the Globe and Mail on the opioid crisis in recent months, and his most recent novel, On The Ravine, is about the subject.  Over 44 thousand people in Canada have died since 2016. Some see safer supply, or the prescription of pharmaceutical-grade opioids to drug users, and supervised consumption sites as crucial parts of curbing this crisis.  Lam talks to host Jayme Poisson about the...

Jul 24, 2024•23 min

Kamala Harris for President?

After President Biden announced that he was stepping down from the 2024 presidential race, he and other prominent democrats threw their support behind Vice President Kamala Harris.  The former prosecutor and senator is no stranger to the campaign trail but hasn’t generally polled well…until now. Is this finally her moment?  Vox senior politics reporter, Christian Paz, joins us to talk about Kamala’s track record as a prosecutor and politician, whether she has what it takes to take on D...

Jul 23, 2024•29 min

Joe Biden drops out. Now what?

After a disastrous debate performance in June, the chorus of questions and doubts have been steadily building — is Joe Biden really the man to beat Donald Trump in this Fall's American presidential election? Biden himself has finally answered: no, he's not. On Sunday, he announced he wouldn't be seeking re-election in November, and nominated his vice-president Kamala Harris in his stead. What's next for the Democrats, and what does it mean for an already chaotic election? Washington Post politic...

Jul 22, 2024•23 min

Donald Trump's Republican Party

It was a Republican National Convention unlike any other in Milwaukee, Wis., this week, taking place just days after an assassination attempt on the party's now-official nominee for president, Donald Trump — an event that loomed large over the proceedings. But beyond that, the convention also offered a glimpse into what is rapidly solidifying as the party's new identity. In 2016, establishment Republicans may have been split on Trump, but at the 2024 RNC, it's clear that this is now the party of...

Jul 19, 2024•28 min

Israel steps up attacks in Gaza

Nine months into the war, Gaza sees one of its deadliest weeks after Israeli air strikes hit several schools and camps throughout the strip and a ground offensive on Gaza City. One of the attacks was an air strike on an IDF-designated humanitarian safe zone in Al-Mawasi, targeting a busy tent camp and market where Israel says two top Hamas commanders were located. Freelance journalist Akram Al-Sattari was there as more than 90 people were killed and 300 were wounded, according to the Gaza health...

Jul 18, 2024•23 min

2024: The year of the election

This is a big year for national elections around the world. More than 80 countries have gone to the polls, or will before 2024 is over. The volley of elections comes as incumbents struggle to remain popular amid economic challenges, high migration rates and surging challengers. We speak with political scientist, author and commentator Ian Bremmer about what’s at stake with so many elections and what social and economic forces are driving change. For transcripts of Front Burner, please ...

Jul 17, 2024•27 min

America's history of assassinations and political violence

At this point, it's still unclear what motivated Thomas Matthew Crooks to climb a nearby roof with an AR-15-style rifle and attempt to shoot former U.S. president Donald Trump. But he is far from the first person to make an attempt on the life of an American president. From the high-profile assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy to attempted assassinations of Ronald Reagan and Theodore Roosevelt, acts of politically motivated murder — whether successful or otherwise — are often ma...

Jul 16, 2024•26 min

Trump assassination attempt: What’s next for U.S democracy?

In the wake of the apparent assassination attempt on former U.S. president Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, we look at the potential for an event like this to ratchet up further political violence, and how pivotal this moment could be for a democracy already in crisis. Vox senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp is our guest. His forthcoming book, The Reactionary Spirit, looks at global challenges to democracy. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit:  ht...

Jul 15, 2024•26 min

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