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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.

Front Burner

Last week, two National Guard soldiers were shot in Washington, D.C. after they were ambushed by a lone shooter near the airport. One was killed and the other remains in serious condition. The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was shot and is still in hospital facing murder charges. The picture emerging of Lakanwal is of an isolated, deeply troubled man struggling to support his wife and five kids. 

Lakanwal is a 29-year-old Afghan-national who had served as part of an elite CIA-trained and backed paramilitary group known as the Zero Units. Tasked with carrying out some of the most dangerous missions in the war on terror, the Zero Units have also been accused by rights groups of war crimes in their notorious night raids.

Kevin Maurer is a best-selling author and longtime reporter who spent many years covering the war in Afghanistan. He talks about how this shooting fits into the broader legacy of the war on terrorism and the ripple effects it’s had abroad and closer to home. 

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

National Guard shooting and the CIA’s secret Afghan army

Our guest today has taken a long look at an out-of-fashion principle in higher learning – institutional neutrality. Basically it’s the importance of letting students and faculty say what they want, and not have the administration put its thumb on the scale. In that he sees a whole world of problems facing post-secondary education today, from public and political support to an ongoing court case.

Simon Lewsen is a magazine journalist who teaches part-time at the University of Toronto. His new story in Maclean’s is called “The Battle for the Soul of the University”. 

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Should universities have opinions?

Over the weekend, Donald Trump declared on Truth Social that the airspace around Venezuela should be considered closed. Venezuela’s foreign ministry responded by calling the comments "another extravagant, illegal and unjustified aggression against the Venezuelan people".

Late last week, Trump also said that land action against alleged drug trafficking networks in the country could start very soon.

All of this is happening amidst a serious military buildup in the Caribbean and escalating threats to remove Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro from power.

Is this the buildup to an invasion? And is it really about drugs? Or do Venezuela's massive oil reserves have something to do with it?

Jon Lee Anderson is our guest. He’s a staff writer with The New Yorker, and has written extensively about U.S.-Venezuela relations and U.S. interference in Latin America.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Will the U.S. invade Venezuela?

In a somber speech last week Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned his people that their country was on the brink of a critical choice: either lose their dignity or risk alienating a key partner, America. His speech came after Donald Trump set a deadline demanding the war-torn country accept a unilateral American peace proposal.

That proposal has been internationally panned and called a Russian “wish-list”.

The dire situation Zelenskyy warned of however, did not come to pass, at least not yet.

Zelenskyy says he is now ready to move forward with an American led peace process, but as Trump’s key negotiator plans to head to Moscow the question remains, are the Russians?

To help us understand whether this is the beginning of the end of this war, or just another false start we’re speaking with reporter from The Kyiv Independent Francis Farrell.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Ukraine peace plan,or Russian ‘wish list’?

Sudan’s civil war is now the worst displacement crisis in the world, with more than 12 million people currently displaced from their homes. Earlier this year, the outgoing Biden administration designated the war a genocide. 

This war includes countless proxies fighting over billions of dollars in natural resources, access to key shipping routes along the Red Sea, and control of one of the oldest countries in the world. 

Longtime journalist Michelle Shephard has just arrived from a 10 day reporting trip to the Sudan-Chad border, for The Walrus magazine. There she met families fleeing massacres, and women who crossed the desert on foot to escape sexual violence. She returns with a rare look inside a crisis the world has turned away from.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In Chad, inside camps for Sudan’s refugees

On Thursday Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith are set to announce the outlines of a plan that could set Alberta and B.C. on a collision course.

It’s a potential energy deal that would give Alberta special exemptions from federal environmental laws and offer political support for a new oil pipeline to the B.C. coast, among other things.

That is, if Alberta can get through the significant hurdles of opposition from First Nations and B.C. where Premier David Eby was completely cut out of the talks.

Today we discuss the politics of all this with the CBC’s chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton and Jason Markusoff from our Calgary bureau.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Correction: An earlier version of this episode misidentified B.C. Liberal MP Will Greaves. He represents the constituency of Victoria.

Hatchet buried? The politics of an Alberta energy deal

After meeting on the sidelines of the G20 in South Africa, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have announced they would restart trade talks.

It’s a long way from where the two countries have been for the last several years. Relations blew up in 2023 after former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused agents of India’s government of being involved in the murder of a Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Then, last year, the RCMP publicly accused such agents of being involved in a campaign of homicides, extortions and threats targeting the South Asian community on Canadian soil. Recently, the director of CSIS suggested that the problem hasn’t gone away.

In B.C.’s Lower Mainland, over 100 reports of extortion were made in the last year.

Two CBC reporters who have been covering this issue give us a closer look at what exactly has been happening on the ground in Canada, particularly when it comes to extortion, who might be behind it, and how this all connects to the larger context of a thawing relationship with India.

Baneet Braich is based out of Abbotsford, B.C. And Evan Dyer is with CBC’s Parliamentary bureau.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Gunshots, arson, threats: B.C.’s extortion crisis

At a press conference last week U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi laid out fresh allegations against Ryan Wedding, a 44-year-old Canadian and former Olympian who has been on the FBI’s most wanted list since March.

Wedding is already accused of orchestrating multiple murders, and these new charges add to the drug and conspiracy allegations he’s facing.

We speak to Calvi Leon, a reporter at the Toronto Star who’s been covering this case extensively.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

The hunt for alleged cocaine kingpin Ryan Wedding

Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — the so-called "notwithstanding clause" — allows governments, both provincial and federal, to override sweeping sections of the other rights the Charter grants. It was intended as a last resort to prevent federal and judicial overreach, leaving power with elected officials, accountable to voters. A compromise demanded by premiers like Alberta's Peter Lougheed, the constitution almost certainly wouldn't exist without it.

Since enacted in 1982, the clause has been very rarely used outside of Quebec. But in recent years, politicians have been using it — or promising to — more and more. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has now used it twice in less than month to preempt court challenges on controversial labour and transgender youth laws.

University of Alberta political science professor Jared Wesley explains why governments are increasingly invoking this supposed last resort to achieve their goals, and the tensions it exposes in Canadian democracy.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Is the notwithstanding clause bad for democracy?

For decades there have been allegations that wealthy foreigners traveled into the Bosnian war, during the siege of Sarajevo, to shoot at besieged civilians for sport. That accusation is now the subject of an investigation by the public prosecutor's office in Milan, Italy.

Today, we’re joined by Janine di Giovanni who covered the Bosnian war as a reporter for the Times of London, and lived through the siege of Sarajevo. She’s the author of two books on the war, and has covered 18 wars across her 35 years in journalism. She joins us to talk about ‘sniper tourism’, and the legacy of a defining European conflict. 

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

The ‘sniper tourists’ of Sarajevo

Many First Nations leaders across Canada are furious about two laws just passed by both the federal government and Ontario's provincial government.

The Protecting Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act and the federal Building Canada Act, better known as Bill 5 and Bill C5, are meant to fast-track large development projects and have faced similar criticisms.

Many Indigenous people say the bills stomp on treaty rights and ignore the need to get their consent for development in their territories –– and this could shape up to mean some big battles across the country.

Alvin Fiddler, Grand Chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, a political organization that represents 49 Ontario First Nations, joins the show to unpack the controversy.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Inside Indigenous backlash to fast-tracking mega projects

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