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

Politics! Mark Carney’s running, tariff fight gets messy

It was another really busy week in Canadian politics. It began with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s trip to Mar-a-Lago to talk tariffs and Canadian oil with Trump and his team, and it rolled into a meeting between Canada’s premiers and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, where Smith did not get onside with her colleagues. The Liberal leadership race narrowed further, and on Thursday, former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney threw his hat into the ring. Catherine Cullen is the host of CBC's The Hou...

Jan 17, 2025•24 min

What’s behind the Israel-Hamas ceasefire?

Israel and Hamas signed a deal for a ceasefire set to begin Sunday January 19th that will see the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israel and the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. The news was met with celebrations in Gaza where Palestinians have been suffering under a brutal Israel offensive since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Tens of thousands are dead, more than a million displaced and much of the strip is destroyed.  Ceasefire negotiations have dragged ...

Jan 16, 2025•21 min

Lessons from the Los Angeles wildfires

Fires continue to burn in Los Angeles as millions of people remain under an extreme fire weather alert. The Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire have already flattened entire neighbourhoods in Los Angeles, leaving nothing but outlines and ash where homes once stood. It is expected that this will all amount to the worst natural disaster in American history in terms of cost and scale. These fires raise major questions about the future of Los Angeles, who is to blame, insurance and just how prepared w...

Jan 15, 2025•25 min

Donald Trump’s billionaire administration

Donald Trump is building the wealthiest cabinet in American history with 13 billionaires set to be part of his administration. That of course includes his vocal backer and X CEO, Elon Musk. But it’s not just the ones joining him in office. A parade of CEOs and business giants have met with him over the past month in Mar-A-Lago including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook and Canada’s Kevin O’Leary. Even in a country where the super rich have always had an outsized role in American life, this ...

Jan 14, 2025•25 min

The Liberal leadership contenders’ uphill battle

A week after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation, a much clearer picture of the Liberal leadership race has emerged. Whoever the candidate ends up being will have the challenge of running both a leadership and a general election campaign at essentially the same time. According to some recent polling by Abacus Data, that won’t be the only challenge. David Coletto is the founder and CEO of the polling firm. He’ll talk about that, how Canadians are responding to Trudeau’s resignation, and w...

Jan 13, 2025•22 min

President Joe Biden’s Final Days in office

Joe Biden will end his reign as President as not only the oldest holder of the executive office, but one of the longest tenured lawmakers in American history. As he enters his twilight in public life, we look at the President’s final few weeks in office and ask: how is Joe Biden likely to be remembered?  President Biden’s final weeks in office include the controversial decision to pardon his son, Hunter, and the passage of the largest single-day grant of clemency in modern American his...

Jan 10, 2025•27 min

Donald Trump threatens to annex Canada

With just under two weeks until he re-takes the Oval Office, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has outlined a mind-map of sorts to, as he says, “make Canada the 51st American state.” He has referred to the border separating Canada and the U.S. as an “artificial line,” called Justin Trudeau Canada’s “Governor” and said Canada would “dissolve” without U.S. assistance. At the same time, he’s not ruling out forcibly incorporating the territory of Greenland into the U.S. and seizing control of the Pa...

Jan 09, 2025•24 min

Grappling with Trudeau’s political legacy

Nearly a decade ago Justin Trudeau rode a wave of hope and optimism — his so-called "sunny ways" — to the prime minister's office, leading a once-flailing Liberal party out of the wilderness. A lot has changed since that time. Not only for Trudeau and his party's fortunes, but for the world — and how many people feel about the kind of hopeful vision that once helped propel people like Trudeau into power. Today we're going to grapple with Trudeau's legacy, and how he may be remembered: the accomp...

Jan 08, 2025•31 min

Trudeau resigns. What’s next for the Liberals?

After months of non-confidence votes and growing pressure, Justin Trudeau has stepped down as the leader of the Liberal Party. He’s still the Prime Minister, for now, after proroguing Parliament until March 24th so that the Liberals can hold a leadership race and find his successor.  Wayne Long, a backbencher from New Brunswick, was among the first voices from within Trudeau’s own party to call for him to step down. Now that it’s finally happened, he talks to us about what the “internal bat...

Jan 07, 2025•25 min

Is Justin Trudeau about to resign?

For the last couple weeks, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has apparently been thinking about his future. At the same time, he faced new calls to resign: from his colleagues, the country and political rivals. Will he make it through the day, the week or the election? Tim Powers shares his thoughts on Trudeau’s political future. He’s the chair of Summa Strategies, managing director of Abacus Data, a former Conservative adviser and a regular columnist at the Hill Times. For transcripts of Front Burn...

Jan 06, 2025•24 min

Encore: Is high finance killing Hollywood?

What is the point of Hollywood? There are two obvious answers, right? To make good stuff that entertains people. And to make money for the big studios and the people who work for them. Those two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. But writer Daniel Bessner believes increasingly they have been. Bessner spent a year working on a deep dive into how Hollywood has evolved for Harper’s Magazine, called “The Life and Death of Hollywood”. Bessner is also a historian and host of the pod...

Jan 03, 2025•23 min

Encore: The ‘trad wives’ glamorizing life at home

For some time now, there’s been a growing trend on TikTok and Instagram of young women sharing about their daily lives as “trad wives.” “Traditional wives” forego the workplace, extol the virtues of homemaking, and often talk about the ways they “submit” to their husbands.  So why do these women say they’ve chosen a life at home? How does their messaging cross into religion and politics? And is this “movement” a reaction to the burdens on modern women, or a threat to feminism’s progress? We...

Jan 02, 2025•25 min

Front Burner Presents Céline: Understood, Episode 4

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 final 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/n5...

Jan 01, 2025•33 min

Encore: How Murray Sinclair changed Canada

Murray Sinclair — an Anishinaabe lawyer, judge, senator, and, most consequentially, the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation commission — died in November at the age of 73.  Sinclair helped bring to light the stories of thousands of Indigenous residential school survivors and advocated for justice for them. He's been recognized by many as someone who fundamentally changed the country and what Canadians know about ourselves and our history. Today we have a documentary featuring the voices o...

Dec 31, 2024•29 min

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

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