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

Encore: Canada’s millennial ‘Jackpot Generation’

In the next two years, Canadian millennials will stand to inherit as much as one trillion dollars from their boomer parents. Today, we take a look at what this consolidation of family wealth could mean for Canada’s economy, and Canadian society writ large with Katrina Onsted, freelance reporter and producer for the Globe and Mail’s tech business podcast, Lately.

Dec 30, 2024•21 min

Encore: Inside controversial Trump biopic ‘The Apprentice’

The Apprentice is a Donald Trump biopic that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this year and got an extended standing ovation. But it quickly came under fire from its subject. Today, we bring you an encore of host Jayme Poisson’s interview with Dan Beckerman, one of the producers behind the film. He’ll walk us through the film’s complicated journey to theatres, and the challenges of making art about powerful people. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/fron...

Dec 27, 2024•28 min

Front Burner Presents Céline: Understood, Episode 3

Céline Dion is having a moment. It’s not her first. And millions of fans are hoping it won’t be her last. While Céline’s international stardom seems obvious now, it was all so unlikely. This is the third episode of the four-part series from Understood, the anthology podcast that takes you out of the daily news cycle and inside the events, people, and cultural moments you want to know more about. Hosted by Thomas Leblanc.  More episodes of Understood are available at: https://link.mgln.ai/yr...

Dec 26, 2024•32 min

Front Burner Presents Céline: Understood, Episode 2

Céline Dion is having a moment. It’s not her first. And millions of fans are hoping it won’t be her last. While Céline’s international stardom seems obvious now, it was all so unlikely. This is the second episode of the four-part series from Understood, the anthology podcast that takes you out of the daily news cycle and inside the events, people, and cultural moments you want to know more about. Hosted by Thomas Leblanc.  More episodes of Understood are available at: https://link.mgln.ai/E...

Dec 25, 2024•31 min

Polymarket and the rise of political betting

Got some money burning a hole in your pocket? You could go online and place a bet about whether or not Canada will become the U.S.’s 51st state before July, whether or not there will be an election before the New Year, or whether the U.S. will ban TikTok before May 2025. And you could do it all on a website called Polymarket. Polymarket is a “prediction market”  that allows users to spend crypto to place bets on the likelihood of life events. The site is not without controversy.  Polym...

Dec 24, 2024•18 min

What's Trump's place in conservative history?

People talk about Donald Trump as a singular figure. A one-of-a-kind politician who's made conservative history in the U.S. But where exactly does Trump fit in conservative history? In what eras does he stand on common ground? What are the big differences? Is he a revolutionary figure or a natural evolution of the movement? To work though that, we've got Sam Adler-Bell and Matt Sitman. They are the hosts of the Know Your Enemy podcast, which explores the underpinnings of contemporary c...

Dec 23, 2024•32 min

Trump, fascism and a warning from the past

After Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, historian and professor Timothy Snyder wrote a long post on Facebook. Here's how it started:  "Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience." Snyder went on to share twenty lessons about authoritarianism from the 20th century. They would lay the groundwork for his 2017 book On Tyranny. Fast forward to 2024, and Snyder's warni...

Dec 20, 2024•23 min

Trudeau troubles: embattled at home, mocked abroad

The fallout from Chrystia Freeland’s resignation is far from over. As more people demand Justin Trudeau’s resignation he appears to be in no hurry to heed the calls. Meanwhile, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump pokes fun at Canada’s ongoing chaos, reprising his jokes about the country becoming the 51st state. What does the drama in Ottawa mean for Canada’s position as it prepares for a potential trade war with Washington? We're joined by J.P. Tasker from CBC's parliamentary b...

Dec 19, 2024•28 min

Is Israel committing ethnic cleansing in Gaza?

The charge of ethnic cleansing is not, on its own, considered a crime under international law. Experts consider it to be part of the overall charge of genocide.  In this episode we take listeners to northern Gaza and examine the words and actions of politicians, academics and settlements organizations in order to better understand whether Israel is perpetrating a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza.  Our guest is Meron Rapoport, a 30-year veteran of the Israeli news industry who forme...

Dec 18, 2024•41 min

Can Trudeau survive Freeland’s resignation?

Chrystia Freeland's bombshell resignation as finance minister has thrown Justin Trudeau's fragile government into chaos. The decisions that led to this are raising questions about the Prime Minister's judgment, loyalties, leadership and ability to stay in power. Paul Wells and Stephen Maher are our guests.  Paul has a substack under his own name and has written about Canadian politics for decades.  Stephen is a longtime federal politics reporter and author of The Prince: The Turbulent ...

Dec 17, 2024•24 min

Is Canada Post doomed?

Late last week, federal labour minister Steven MacKinnon recommended that Canada Post workers, who have been on strike for more than four weeks, be ordered back to work until May 22, 2025. In the meantime, an inquiry would look into the roadblocks preventing the two parties from getting to an agreement. This labour dispute has led to a lot of debate and discussion about the future of Canada Post. Ian Lee is an associate professor at the Sprott School of Business at Carle...

Dec 16, 2024•21 min

Are we in an economic 'vibe-cession'?

The Bank of Canada cut interest rates again this week. Economists say wages are up, inflation is on target and the stock market is in the green. But most everyday Canadians are living a very different story. One of insanely high grocery prices, impossible housing costs and a suffocating economic squeeze. Recently, Canadian finance minister Chrystia Freeland announced a temporary GST holiday on a bunch of stuff to give relief to people feeling the pinch. But she went on to muse that the economic ...

Dec 13, 2024•20 min

How Trump is fueling a crypto boom

Once crypto-skeptic, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, has had a change of heart over the past year. Especially, after millions of dollars from the cryptocurrency industry poured into his campaign. Now, as he embraces the online currency, even appointing a crypto czar, the price of Bitcoin and other popular tokens reach new heights. Even memecoins are seeing a boost. But what happens if the volatile crypto market sees another crash like it did in 2022? Jacob Silverman, tech journalist and host ...

Dec 12, 2024•26 min

Can Bluesky take out X, aka Twitter?

Since the U.S. election last month, Bluesky – which describes itself as ‘social media as it should be’ – has gained a lot of traction. They now have more than 24 million users, and traffic on the site is up 500% in the United States in the last month. Many users have fled there from X (formerly Twitter) which has seen a sharp decline since Elon Musk bought the platform in 2022. The frequency of bots, partisan advertisements and harassment are often cited as reasons for leaving the social me...

Dec 11, 2024•19 min

The end of the Assad regime in Syria

 On Sunday, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia, where he’s been granted political asylum. This comes after rebels seized Damascus, Syria’s capital city, on that same day. Assad’s fall from power marks the end of 50 years of brutal rule by his family. His father, Hafez al-Assad, a longtime military officer, was known for his iron fist. Joshua Landis is the head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, and a leading expert on Syria. He explains the sig...

Dec 10, 2024•27 min

‘Deny’ ‘Delay’ and a health CEO’s murder

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead in New York City last week. In some communities online, like reddit and tik tok, Thompson’s killing has been met with encouragement and his killer has been lauded as a vigilante, a kind of folk hero.  Part of the reason for that, is the deep dissatisfaction and anger with the state of healthcare in America. The murder has exposed a raw nerve and put renewed focus on troubling practices within the trillion dollar health insurance industr...

Dec 09, 2024•28 min

Drake vs Kendrick and the music industry

Kendrick Lamar’s hit diss track ‘Not Like Us’ accused Drake of being a ‘colonizer’ and a ‘pedophile.’ Now, seven months after the song’s release, Drake has filed a legal petition against Universal Music Group (UMG) for orchestrating a plot to artificially boost the popularity of the song via algorithm manipulation, online bots, and payola, in a bid to undermine him. Is Drake taking on the music business, in the tradition of Prince and Michael Jackson, or is he a sore loser, seeking litigious ret...

Dec 06, 2024•27 min

Politics! Trudeau at Mar-a-Lago, GST holiday

CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton is back to talk about Prime Minister Trudeau’s trip to Mar-a-Lago for a dinner meeting with U.S. president-elect Trump. She’ll touch on how far it’ll go to quell tensions over Trump’s tariff threat, and whether Canada can present a united front against it. Plus, the politics behind the upcoming two month GST holiday, and whether we’re getting any closer to a federal election call. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit:  https://www.c...

Dec 05, 2024•23 min

Who are the fighters reigniting Syria’s civil war?

In a sudden offensive, Turkish-backed rebel forces in Syria have managed to take several villages and towns, including the second largest city in the country, Aleppo, all with minimal resistance from government forces.  Now as they continue to push further south, Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad is left with a diminished army and his main allies are embroiled in conflicts of their own.  Kareem Shaheen is the Middle East editor at New Lines Magazine. He spoke to host Jayme Poisson about...

Dec 04, 2024•25 min

The crisis facing Canada's colleges and universities

At the beginning of this year, immigration minister Marc Miller said the government was looking to rein in the number of international study permits it would be granting, in a bid to take pressure off the strained housing market. But that's been bad news for the post-secondary institutions for which a significant part of their operating budgets come from tuition fees from international students. Colleges in southern Ontario have been particularly hard hit, with many announcing cuts and consolida...

Dec 03, 2024•24 min

Canadian encrypted phones, a mass hack, and 10 thousand arrests

More than 10,000 arrests, a mountain of drugs stopped at the border, and more than a hundred assassination attempts thwarted. Those are just some of the results of a massive police data hacking operation in Europe to disrupt organized crime. And at the center of it all – Vancouver tech company Sky Global – that promised communication couldn’t be hacked by their encrypted phones. Frédéric Zalac, and Radio-Canada’s investigative program Enquête teamed up with journalists from a dozen European medi...

Dec 02, 2024•25 min

Weekend Listen: An attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds

People don’t think Graham Isador is losing his sight. They think he’s an asshole. Short Sighted is an attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds. Written and hosted by master storyteller Graham Isador, the show’s mini episodes are an intimate and irreverent look at accessibility and its personal impacts. Get lost in someone else’s life. From a mysterious childhood spent on the run, to a courageous escape from domestic violence, each season of Personally invites you...

Nov 30, 2024•17 min

Could the Menendez brothers soon be free?

In 1996, after two hung jury trials, brothers Lyle and Eric Menendez were convicted of killing their parents in one of the most high profile trials in American history. The brothers argued they had killed their parents following years of sexual, psychological and physical abuse at the hands of their father, but it was ultimately decided that they had killed their parents in a premeditated fashion, in pursuit of their parents' million dollar estate. They were sentenced to life in prison without t...

Nov 29, 2024•30 min

Will Trump's tariffs crush Canada?

It's time for Canada to pay "a very big price." That was the message from president-elect Donald Trump this week when he announced a 25 percent tariff on literally everything coming into the U.S. from Canada and Mexico. The tariffs will come into effect January 20th, Trump said, and stay in effect until "Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country! " This isn't the first time Trump has threatened to impose major tariffs or followed through on his threa...

Nov 28, 2024•20 min

The case against Google

The second of two major antitrust cases against Google wrapped up this week. Earlier this year, a judge found the company holds an illegal monopoly over the internet search market. Now the U.S. Department of Justice is arguing the same thing about its grip on online advertising. This is all part of a major push of antitrust litigation against tech companies by the U.S. government — Apple, Amazon and Meta are all facing similar cases. What's behind this push to crack down on these companies now? ...

Nov 27, 2024•25 min

Trump and the strongman feedback loop

Argentina’s chainsaw-wielding, “anarcho-capitalist” president, Javier Milei, and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, who has called himself the “world’s coolest dictator,” have often taken cues from Donald Trump. But now, could he be taking cues from them? Today we speak to Tracy Wilkinson, a longtime writer with the LA Times, and Natalie Alcoba, a journalist based in Argentina, about the “right-wing strongman feedback loop” happening between these three leaders — and what it could mean for the U.S. and...

Nov 26, 2024•25 min

Anti-vax update as Canadian measles surges

Routine childhood vaccinations have been on the decline in recent years, with the anti-vax movement rising during the Covid-19 pandemic. But the conversation has shifted. What was once affiliated with left-leaning counterculture has now become increasingly right-wing, with male health influencers leading much of the conversation.  How did the shift happen, and what implications could it have on public health?  Timothy Caulfield is a professor at the University of Alberta, with the Facu...

Nov 25, 2024•26 min

Weekend Listen: What happened to Christine Harron?

Christine Harron, a book-loving teenager from Hanover, Ontario, leaves for school in the spring of 1993 and is never seen again. A suspect emerges, confessing to her murder, but the case falls apart and Christine's family are left without answers. In Season 9 of the award winning podcast Someone Knows Something, David Ridgen, along with Christine's mother, reopen the investigation and come face to face with the man who said he killed Chrissy. Someone Knows Something is the investigative true cri...

Nov 23, 2024•36 min

Politics, Gaza and money collide at The Giller Prize

For the last year, Canada’s premier literary award The Giller Prize has been embroiled in a controversy that has split the Canadian literary community. Last years gala was interrupted by protestors who rushed the stage carrying placards emblazoned with ‘Scotiabank Funds Genocide.’  What they were referring to was the fact The Giller’s lead sponsor, Scotiabank, was a principal shareholder of one of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturers. They also objected to a pair of Giller sponsors invest...

Nov 22, 2024•29 min

Long-range missiles, nuclear fears in Ukraine

Earlier this week, after months of debate and hesitation, the U.S. decided to allow Ukraine to use American made ATACMS missiles on targets inside Russia. Escalations followed, such as Russia signing a new doctrine that lowered the threshold for nuclear attacks. As the tensions ratchet up, there’s still the question of what will happen once Donald Trump takes office.  To break down the gravity of this moment, we talk to David Sanger, longtime New York Times national security correspondent a...

Nov 21, 2024•25 min

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