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

A reporter in Gaza’s year of survival

Al Jazeera reporter Hani Mahmoud is currently based in Deir al Balah, in central Gaza. He’s spent the last year reporting on Israel’s war against Hamas in the territory. Hani has told the stories of families displaced by the war, struggling to access food and water, and grieving relatives who have been killed, while living those hardships himself. One year into Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, more than 42,000 people have been killed, according to local health authorities. It’s estimated that...

Oct 15, 2024•28 min

Split Screen: Thrill Seekers | It was a multi-million dollar media experiment. Would you fall for it?

A TV crew offers 12 ordinary people the chance to take part in the adventure of a lifetime. But there’s a catch. The audience knows everything but the contestants are kept in the dark. As the cameras roll, no questions are allowed. Split Screen: Thrill Seekers is a new 6 part series that exposes how a TV show left contestants struggling to trust what’s actually real. Host Nick van der Kolk (Love + Radio) asks: does reality TV only succeed when it exploits those involved? He talks to the set desi...

Oct 14, 2024•35 min

Front Burner Presents: The Flamethrowers Ep. 3

Welcome to the world of conspiracy and paranoia. A horrifying act of domestic terrorism brings right wing radio some unwanted attention, which pushes one fan of the supernatural away from politics, while a pair of anti-government broadcasters dig their heels in. This is episode 3 of The Flamethrowers, the story of how radio energized and then radicalized a conservative base. This series was originally produced in 2021. Hosted by Justin Ling.  More episodes are available here ....

Oct 12, 2024•47 min

Inside controversial Trump biopic ‘The Apprentice’

'The Apprentice' premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and received an eight minute ovation. The film follows a young, awkward, ambitious Donald Trump during his bid for respect among New York City's elite, and his formative relationship with notorious NYC lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn. But in the time since its Cannes debut, team Trump has unleashed a pressure campaign to keep the film from the public. Dan Bekerman is a producer of 'The Apprentice', and joins us for a discu...

Oct 11, 2024•30 min

Birth rates are declining. Should we be worried?

Canada’s fertility rate just hit a record low: 1.3 babies per woman, placing us among some of the lowest birth rates globally.  While discourse around declining birth rates has been dominated by the likes of Elon Musk and Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance, it’s not just tech billionaires and social conservatives paying attention to this issue. Governments around the world have tried to enact policies to encourage their citizens to have more children, in most cases to no avail. So why is ...

Oct 10, 2024•22 min

A terrifying hurricane is headed toward Florida

Floridians are packing up and evacuating their homes as Hurricane Milton, one of the biggest hurricanes ever recorded, bears down on Tampa Bay. A major hurricane hasn't hit the region in more than 100 years, during which time the city has grown massively in population and built up significant residential developments along the waterfront — all as climate change has made hurricanes bigger, stronger and more frequent. Thomas Mantz, president and CEO of Feeding Tampa Bay, tells us what's happening ...

Oct 09, 2024•26 min

A dispatch from the perilous Darién Gap

NOTE:  In yesterday’s episode, we promised to bring you a conversation with a man who’s spent the last year in Gaza, both living through and reporting on Israel’s military campaign there. We were logistically unable to bring you that today, but we will do so as soon as we possibly can. For decades, the Darién Gap, a jungle crossing straddling the Colombia and Panama border, was considered impossible to cross. Today, it’s a path that many migrants take, risking their lives, to try and make i...

Oct 08, 2024•26 min

‘Time stopped on October 7th’

‘Time stopped on October 7th.’ Jonathan Dekel-Chen was a longtime resident of Nir Oz, an Israeli kibbutz near the Gaza border. Nearly a quarter of the residents there were either killed or taken hostage on October 7th, 2023, when members of Hamas and other armed groups killed around 1200 people, and took 251 Israelis and foreigners hostage. That set off Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza, which has now killed an estimated 41,500 people, according to Palestinian health authorities. Jo...

Oct 07, 2024•33 min

Front Burner Presents: The Flamethrowers Ep. 2

In the second episode of The Flamethrowers, host Justin Ling explores how President Ronald Reagan takes the shackles off right-wing radio and inaugurates a golden era of conservative politics. And Rush Limbaugh — almost by accident — becomes a kingmaker in the Republican party and changes radio forever. The Flamethrowers was originally produced in 2021. More episodes of The Flamethrowers are available here ....

Oct 05, 2024•44 min

A Canadian mission to rescue Afghanistan’s last female politicians

The war in Afghanistan is the longest in both Canadian and American history. The U.S.' withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, signaled not only the end of a 20-year war, but it also marked the re-introduction of a familiar era in the country's history: the return of the Taliban, and the widespread subjugation of women.  Three years into Taliban rule, CBC News chief correspondent Adrienne Arsenault brings us inside a secret mission, led by a group of Canadian MPs, to r...

Oct 04, 2024•24 min

Is China’s economic miracle going bust?

China’s economy has changed drastically in the last four decades. When China started to open up to the world in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, it went from one of the world’s poorest countries, to one of the world’s fastest growing major economies. But now, that same economy is struggling. Home prices are in freefall, retail sales are slowing down, unemployment is up. Things have gotten so rough that last week the Chinese government announced a set of stimulus measures that are meant to give the econom...

Oct 03, 2024•22 min

The gloves stay on in Walz-Vance U.S. VP debate

In most American elections, the vice presidential debates are almost an afterthought — but this has not been a typical election. Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Tim Walz are relative newcomers on the national stage, both making headlines since their selection, and this will likely be the only time they face off in a one-on-one debate. CBC Washington correspondent Alex Panetta breaks down the debate's biggest moments, and what it can tell us about the parties' strategies for the final month of...

Oct 02, 2024•21 min

Death of Hezbollah’s Nasrallah weakens the 'Axis of Resistance'

Last Friday, Lebanon-based militant group, Hezbollah, confirmed that their secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut.  As a significant political and cultural leader in the region, the death of Nasrallah poses a number of questions.  Where does this leave the “Axis of Resistance”, the Iran-led coalition of militias united against Israel, of which Hezbollah is a crucial part? Does this open the door for an Israeli ground invasion in Lebanon? And w...

Oct 01, 2024•28 min

Politics! Liberals’ survival mode, Conservatives vs CTV News, and more

While the Liberals survived the first non-confidence vote tabled last week, the Conservatives are already trying again.  The Bloc Quebecois have issued an ultimatum to the Liberals for their party’s support. The Prime Minister has accused Conservative MP Garnett Genuis of making a homophobic comment during question period. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh confronts Pierre Poilievre after repeated accusations of selling out. And Pierre Poilievre goes after Bell Canada and CTV News over the editing o...

Sep 30, 2024•26 min

Front Burner Presents: The Flamethrowers Ep. 1

Award-winning reporter Justin Ling tracks the rise of right wing radio in the U.S. from fringe preachers and conspiracy peddlers of the 1930s to the political firestorm that rages today. Our story begins with Canadian priest Charles Coughlin — a populist crusader who winds up espousing conspiracy and hate. Right-wing radio flexes its muscle with a boycott of Polish Ham. And the Kennedy government almost wipes right-wing talk off the map.  The Flamethrowers was originally produced in 2021. M...

Sep 28, 2024•42 min

Introducing, Canada’s millennial ‘Jackpot Generation’

Over the next two years, baby boomers will pass a reported 1 trillion dollars down to their heirs, who, in most cases, are their millennial children. This intergenerational transfer of wealth is expected to be the largest in Canadian history.  The nature of homeownership in Canada has changed many times over in the last half century, and these changes have contributed to widening gulfs in wealth and prosperity. Baby boomers came into their adult years through an economic golden age, in whic...

Sep 27, 2024•21 min

As bombs rain down, Israel readies potential Lebanon invasion

On Wednesday afternoon, the Israel Defense Forces released a video of their top commander telling troops on the northern border to prepare for a ground invasion of Lebanon.  The mid-week Lebanese death toll, following Israel’s air strikes that began Monday, is more than 600 people. Hezbollah on Wednesday also shot a ballistic missile towards Tel Aviv for the first time, although it was intercepted and caused no injuries. The Israel-Hezbollah conflict is escalating in a serious way. Today, w...

Sep 26, 2024•22 min

The rise of anti-South Asian content online

 A recent rise in hateful online posts directed towards South Asian immigrants in Canada and cases of South Asians being harassed and attacked in public has many in the community raising the alarm. Jaspreet Dhaliwal, a recent international student turned post-graduate work permit holder, talks about a concerning encounter at a local park. Press Progress reporter, Rumneek Johal, takes us through more examples of hateful online content about South Asians and recent cases of real-life harassme...

Sep 25, 2024•22 min

The debate around involuntary care in B.C.

B.C Premier David Eby says that, if re-elected, he would expand involuntary care for those with severe addiction and mental health issues.  The announcement came just a few weeks after a couple of unprovoked, violent attacks in downtown Vancouver where one man died, and another was severely injured. Many Vancouverites were shaken by what happened, and Premier Eby cited the attacks when he spoke about the need for more involuntary care in the province. But many public health experts and...

Sep 24, 2024•24 min

Rogers’ MLSE deal and its evergrowing power

Last week, telecomms giant Rogers Communications became a majority owner of Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment, putting them at the helm of the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Toronto Raptors. The historic deal ensures a huge chunk of Canada’s sports star power is now all in Rogers’ hands. It’s the latest in a series of major acquisitions after a dramatic family struggle left Edward Rogers at the the helm of the company his father founded. Today, Christine Dobby with Bloomberg Canada talks to gues...

Sep 23, 2024•24 min

Weekend Listen: World Report

Wake up to what's going on in Canada and the world. Each morning, World Report will give you a 10-minute dose of the biggest news stories happening now. Our CBC News colleagues will tell you about the political actors trying to make change, the movements catching fire, and the cultural moments going viral. Start your day with the very latest. More episodes are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/nN5xp_ZK  ...

Sep 21, 2024•11 min

Israel’s historic, deadly cyber attack in Lebanon

This week in Lebanon, a series of attacks targeted personal communications devices — like pagers and walkie talkies — belonging to members of the political and paramilitary organization Hezbollah. At least 37 people were killed and more than 3,000 injured, according to the Lebanese health ministry. Among the dead are at least two children. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, referred to the attack as an ‘act of war’ and a ‘major terrorist operation.’ Israeli officials have said the countr...

Sep 20, 2024•26 min

The empire behind Diddy's sex trafficking and racketeering charges

In November of 2023, R&B singer Cassie sent shockwaves through the hip hop world when she filed a lawsuit against her former boyfriend, producer and mega-mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs. She accused him of years of abuse and sexual violence, and since then a further nine lawsuits have been filed along similar lines. This week, Diddy was arrested in New York City on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering, the latter charge carries a potential life sentence. In the indictment, prosecutors accuse...

Sep 19, 2024•21 min

Is it the beginning of the end for Canada’s carbon tax?

Not long ago it seemed like the carbon tax was a fait accompli in Canada. Two elections were fought where this was a major issue, and the Liberals came out on top in both of them. But now, things are suddenly looking very different. It’s not just Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives hammering the Liberals about “axing the tax,” a growing number of Canadians have negative views of it too. And last week, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh — who has previously voted with the Liberals on their carbon pricin...

Sep 18, 2024•27 min

Who is Trump's second alleged would-be assassin?

Former U.S. president Donald Trump was golfing on his course in Palm Beach, Fla., Sunday afternoon when the Secret Service say they spotted the barrel of a gun in the bushes. It was what they believe to be the second potential attempt at assassinating Trump in just two months. The suspect, arrested after a brief pursuit, was Ryan Welsey Routh: a 58-year-old from North Carolina who's been interviewed in the past about trying to recruit Afghan fighters to join the war effort in Ukraine. Marin Coga...

Sep 17, 2024•20 min

‘Russians at War’ director talks critics and backlash

The inclusion of ‘Russians at War’ in this year’s Toronto International Film Festival has been met with a firestorm of controversy and backlash, including criticism from the Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. The first person documentary follows Russian Canadian filmmaker, Anastasia Trofimova, as she embeds herself with a group of Russian soldiers fighting on the front lines of the war in Ukraine as they grow increasingly disillusioned with the battle.   But after Freeland and other U...

Sep 16, 2024•28 min

Weekend Listen: Peter Nygard’s son on why he’s a fierce defender of his father's accusers

More than 80 women from around the world have accused the fast-fashion mogul Peter Nygard of rape, sexual assault, and human trafficking in incidents across four decades and at least four countries.  He has been charged for sex crimes in three Canadian provinces and the state of New York. He denies it all, and has claimed his accusers are lying as part of a vast conspiracy. In his words, the acts he is accused of are things he “would never do.”  In November 2023, Nygard was found guilt...

Sep 14, 2024•54 min

Who are the AP3 militia?

During the presidential debate this week, Donald Trump once again talked about how he didn’t lose the 2020 election. It’s a false claim that many Americans believe. And some of those believers are getting ready to fight following what they think could be another stolen election in November. ProPublica’s Joshua Kaplan has been reporting on the American Patriots Three Percent, or AP3, and one of the largest active militia groups in the U.S. Despite a wider crackdown on paramilitary groups after Ja...

Sep 13, 2024•25 min

Is Mark Carney waiting in the Liberal wings?

This week, the Trudeau government announced they’ve brought in a new “special advisor” on economic growth: famed former central banker Mark Carney. The appointment has kicked the rumour mill into gear, because Carney’s name has often been floated as a potential successor to Justin Trudeau, if the beleaguered Liberal leader ever steps down. Whether or not there’s any grounding to that speculation, plenty of questions remain: will Carney’s appointment help or hurt the Liberals? And, as the party c...

Sep 12, 2024•22 min

Harris comes out swinging in a crucial presidential debate

Before tonight, U.S. presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris had never met in real life. But they took the stage in Philadelphia, Penn., last night for their first — and possibly only — televised debate of the campaign. Keith Boag, a former longtime Washington correspondent for CBC News, breaks down the biggest moments of the debate and what it could mean for the candidates' campaigns going forward. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit:  https://www.cbc.ca/radio/fron...

Sep 11, 2024•26 min

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