Front Burner

CBC

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.

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Today · 25 min
B.C. Conservative implosion sparks snap election
On Tuesday, B.C. Premier David Eby called a snap election, two years into his term. He said the province needs to show a strong response to American aggression.  This was just two days after the leader of the Opposition, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, resigned, following a tumultuous four months that included a string of firings and defections, leaks from caucus meetings, and allegations of spying.  Eby's critics are calling his timing "cynical" and "profound
Yesterday · 26 min
Why Russia has Europe on edge
Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party won a record number of seats in the country's parliamentary elections. Putin is expected to frame the result as an endorsement of his war with Ukraine. And, according to Ukrainian intelligence, he may mobilize hundreds of thousands more Russian troops before the end of the year.  All of this has Europe on edge. Because Russia hasn't just been targeting Ukraine – but Ukraine’s allies too. In the last few weeks, a Rus
Tuesday · 28 min
How did the Houthis become so powerful?
On Sunday it looked like the United States was about to wade back into its fight with Ansar Allah, or the Houthis, the Iran-backed group in Yemen that has grown into a surprisingly powerful military presence in the region. Saudi Arabia had been asking for support after a series of Houthi attacks and advancements, which brought a major global shipping and oil chokepoint - the Bab el-Mandeb strait - under Houthi control. Iona Craig has been reportin
Monday · 30 min
Politics! Parliament’s 'consequential' agenda
Parliament returns today from summer recess, amid ongoing economic uncertainty and an unresolved trade war with the U.S. Prime Minister Mark Carney told MPs on Friday that this will be "a crucial session of the House of Commons" and vowed to introduce "some of the most consequential legislation not just of this government, but in decades."  CBC's Chief Political Correspondent Rosie Barton joins us to talk about what we can expect in this session of Parliament, and Carney
Friday · 23 min
Should Canada have taken the U.S. deal?
It's been almost a month now since trade talks between the U.S. and Canada collapsed and Mark Carney's government walked away from a deal. Canadian retaliatory tariffs went into effect earlier this month and yet more U.S. tariffs hit this week. A new deal between the two countries is nowhere in sight.  By and large — Canadians support this. But Sean Speer sees this a bit differently: he's wondering if Canada really should have walked away from the table,
September 17 · 28 min
The EU opens the door to Canada
At her State of the Union address yesterday, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, made a historic offer: she wants Canada to become the first “associate member” of the European Union. No one knows exactly what that will mean. Associate membership is a designation that doesn’t currently exist in the EU. But Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson think it could be transformational. They’re two of the journalists who first broke this story in
September 16 · 36 min
Why is Trump so focused on Haiti?
For years, hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in the United States have been protected from deportation under a program known as Temporary Protected Status, or TPS. But, as of August, that protection is over as the Trump administration moves to deport Haitians en masse to a country still facing extraordinary political and humanitarian upheaval. The decision to end TPS comes after years of increasingly hostile rhetoric about Haitian migrants, including the false claim, a
September 15 · 33 min
Why are AI leaders calling for a slow down?
It's been a remarkable week in the world of Artificial Intelligence. Last Tuesday, a researcher resigned from Anthropic, saying AI companies are "racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives." A current Anthropic employee agreed, saying he gives AI more than a 10 per cent chance of causing human extinction within the next 10 years. Then on Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published <a href="https://darioamodei.com/post/we-must-pace-the-f
September 14 · 25 min
Risk and reward at Carney’s big investment summit
This week, some of the biggest financiers in the world will be gathering in downtown Toronto along with Prime Minister Mark Carney and the country's premiers for an investment summit.  The summit is part of Carney's plan to spur $1-trillion worth of investment in the country over the next five years. Senior business writer Peter Armstrong talks to Jayme Poisson about what's on offer, to whom, and considers the question: with all the uncertainty caused by the ongoing trad
September 11 · 25 min
How is Mexico handling the Trump tariffs?
As the trade war between Canada and the U.S. continued to deepen this week, U.S. commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke ahead of a fourth round of negotiations between the two countries later this month.  Today, we look at the view from Mexico, the other partner in the CUSMA trio. What are the big table stakes in Mexico’s negotiations with the US? What kind of tightrope is Sheinbaum walking? And how could whatever happens between
September 10 · 26 min
Is a shaky U.S. bond market good for Canada?
Many economists say the bond market is the most important financial market in the world. It sets the baseline for almost everything Canadians borrow: mortgages, car loans, lines of credit. And right now, it’s looking pretty weird. 30-year U.S. Treasury yields are the highest they’ve been since 2007, in the runup to the great financial crisis. The U.S. now spends more on interest payments than they do on defence. Canadian bond yields are rising too. But, on th
September 9 · 31 min
Canada retaliates and trade war deepens
The U.S. announced a new string of bans and tariffs against Canadian products, set to go into effect later this month. This came after Canada imposed counter-tariffs against billions of dollars of American imports. As the trade war ramps up, we look to both sides of the border to see where it's all heading and what it would take to get back to the negotiating table. Politico's Ottawa Bureau Chief Nick Taylor-Vaisey joins us from Ottawa, alongside Politico's Washington-based
September 8 · 32 min
Trump, ICE and the impact of 9/11
 This week will mark 25 years since the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Those attacks, by al-Qaeda, killed nearly 3000 people. What followed that tragedy was the 'War on Terror', characterized by a series of foreign wars and domestic security measures. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, detention and torture at Guantanamo Bay and countless other prisons, and a mass surveillance s
September 7 · 27 min
Why are people vanishing in Dawson Creek, B.C.?
The Mile Zero Murders investigates the baffling wave of disappearances and murders in the small town of Dawson Creek, B.C., a community struggling with a deadly local drug trade. Host Timothy Sawa explores missing person cases like that of Cole Hosack and Renee Didier, pursuing leads from grieving families, reluctant authorities and the drug dealers themselves. The question that drives this series is the same one that haunts this community: where is the justice? </p
September 4 · 22 min
Is the age of reading over?
In her piece for the Atlantic, “The end of reading is here”, Rose Horowitch makes the case that across the board in the U.S. – people are reading less. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, fewer than half of all American adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022. Horowitch speaks with host Jayme Poisson about how this decline in reading has a dramatic effect on not only our leisure time and the education system, but also the way that we think and structure our societ
September 3 · 26 min
Why Quebec’s election has been turned upside down
In just over a month, Quebecers will head to the ballot box. And, until recently, this election seemed like a foregone conclusion: the Parti Quebecois, running on a promise to hold another independence referendum, had been ahead in the polls for the better part of three years. Then, the Canada-U.S. trade talks collapsed, and Quebec’s political future suddenly looks uncertain. The governing Coalition Avenir Quebec has surged from a distant fourth place, the PQ has shelved its
September 2 · 30 min
Is Germany's firewall against the far right crumbling?
After a vote this weekend, the far right could take power in a part of Germany for the first time since WWII. Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is far ahead in the polls in a state election in Saxony-Anhalt. They're promising massive changes to immigration, education, and what they call "patriotic cultural policy." Their rise is testing the country's firewall strategy, which was designed to stop parties seen as extremist from gaining power. CBC's Jessica Singer speaks with guest host Jason Mar
September 1 · 24 min
Protein-maxxing and the age of self-optimization
Protein was once mostly associated with body builders and elite athletes, but today it's advertised everywhere from cereal boxes to fast food restaurants. It's just one facet of a broader phenomenon: many are referring to apps and gadgets to count their steps, count calories, and check if they actually had a good night’s sleep.  But are our attempts to enact self-care actually making us self-obsessed? Writer and cultural critic John Seml
August 31 · 27 min
Politics! Trade war fallout, byelections
This weekend, U.S. President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated video of an army of geese with orange hair, holding machine guns, defending what he's now calling "Lake America." It's just the latest provocation in this new phase of the trade war we've entered.  Today, Parliamentary bureau senior writer Aaron Wherry joins guest host Jason Markusoff to discuss the Carney government's plan to weather the storm and how their decision to walk away from the deal with the U.S.
August 28 · 30 min
The culture war comes for the WNBA
For most of its history, the WNBA existed on the margins of American professional sports. Its players were outspoken on race, gender and LGBTQ rights, while the league struggled for the money and attention enjoyed by men’s sports. But today, the league has never been more popular. Women’s basketball has entered a new era of mainstream attention, driven in part by stars like Caitlin Clark. But that attention has brought something else with it: the American culture war.<

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