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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.

We’re Canada’s number one news podcast and a trusted source of Canadian news. We cover Canadian news and Canadian politics, Prime Minister Mark Carney, Pierre Poilievre, the Donald Trump administration, 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, the Conservatives and Pierre Poilievre as well as the future of 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 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, 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, the India-Pakistan conflict, 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.

Front Burner

Through the 1960s, the U.S. government waged a war on Black activism, and activism writ large. It was led by the FBI and its longtime director, J. Edgar Hoover.

It was called COINTELPRO and was the FBI’s counterintelligence program created to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” its targets.

With the Trump administration’s crackdown on the American left through law enforcement campaigns and new directives, it raises the question: is a version of the FBI’s counterintelligence program back today? 

Beverly Gage, an historian and the author of G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, joins the show to talk about COINTELPRO, the man who made it possible, and the ways the program continues to loom over American life today.

We'd love to hear from you! Complete our listener survey here.

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

Is the FBI’s secret war on American activists back?

Stephen Maher, a longtime federal politics reporter, is here to talk about Pierre Poilievre’s recent comments that the RCMP covered up for Justin Trudeau so he could avoid criminal charges and whether or not this will hurt or help his upcoming leadership review.

Plus, fallout from carmaker Stellantis’s plan to move a plant from Brampton to Illinois and what it says about the state of trade talks with the U.S.

We'd love to hear from you! Complete our listener survey here.

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

Politics! Poilievre calls out RCMP, auto woes

Former FBI James Comey. Former national security advisor John Bolton. New York attorney general Letitia James. What do they have in common? All are now facing legal action from the U.S. government.

Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of the U.S. nonprofit publication Lawfare, breaks down the Trump White House's campaign of legal revenge against the president's rivals and critics, and where it could be headed next.

We'd love to hear from you! Complete our listener survey here.

Trump's campaign of legal revenge

Over the last 10 days Israel and Hamas have observed a ceasefire that saw the return of hostages and prisoners to Israel, Gaza and the West Bank as well as deliveries of much needed aid to famine-struck Gaza since the deal was reached. 

However, the ceasefire has remained shaky and the possibility of a permanent end to the war is still uncertain. Israel carried out airstrikes throughout southern Gaza after it said Hamas militants fired at IDF troops in Rafah. Hamas has denied this. 

To parse through the events that led to those developments, we talked to William Christou, freelance journalist based in Jerusalem for The Guardian. 

We'd love to hear from you! Complete our listener survey here.

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

The precarity of Gaza’s ceasefire

This year, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader, María Corina Machado.

In the announcement last week, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said Machado had earned the prize for her “struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy". The award comes at a time when the U.S. has taken an increasingly belligerent stance against Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro.

So today we’re talking about Machado, the legacy of the Nobel Peace Prize, its controversial winners, who wins it and who doesn’t.

Jay Nordlinger, the author of Peace They Say: A History of the Nobel Peace Prize, and a writer with the Next Move, a publication of the Renew Democracy Initiative, joins the show.

We'd love to hear from you! Complete our listener survey here.

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

Who gets to win the Nobel Peace Prize?

Marie-Philippe Bouchard has been in her role as President and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada for a little under a year.

Since her appointment, we’ve had a federal election that has spared the public broadcaster from defunding threats for now, but certainly not from a broad sentiment that the CBC needs change and evolution. 

This week, Bouchard unveiled her own five-year vision. Today, she joins the show to discuss the relationship Canadians have with the CBC, and what changes she thinks the public broadcaster needs to make.

We'd love to hear from you! Complete our listener survey here.

CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard

At its peak, Marineland was the second most popular tourist destination in Ontario’s Niagara region after the falls. Visitors could get up close and personal with beluga whales, dolphins and orcas, and watch them perform in elaborate shows. Throw in a side of rollercoasters and other exhibits and you had a family friendly attraction built to last.

But for years, the park has been mired in controversy and allegations of animal abuse. Business has declined to the point that the park is now closed to the public. However, several animals including 30 beluga whales remain trapped there. Marineland says it needs money or a new home for the whales, or else they might have to kill them.

Liam Casey of the Canadian Press has been covering this story for years. He lays out what could happen to the whales, and what it all means for other parks like Marineland.

We'd love to hear from you! Complete our listener survey here.

Marineland’s scandalous decline

Canada's first ever minister of artificial intelligence, Evan Solomon, is spearheading what he's calling a "30-day sprint" to nail down Canada's AI strategy. The plan? To figure out a government approach to the technology in order to boost the Canadian economy.

Today, we wanted to take stock of the state of the industry in Canada, and a closer look at the Liberal government’s strategy. What could it all mean for our jobs, our economy, society, and environment?

Murad Hemmadi, a reporter with The Logic, joins the show.

We'd love to hear from you! Complete our listener survey here.

Canada’s bet on an AI boom

Where did Elon Musk’s epic ambitions begin? In search of clues we return to his sheltered youth in apartheid South Africa, a world engineered for white supremacy. Along the way, we connect the dots between a bizarre White House ambush of South African president Cyril Ramaphosa to teenage Elon’s ego-powered quests in video games. Finally, was his “draft dodge” from military service a moral act or an opportunist’s exit? Know more, now. Understood is an anthology podcast from the CBC that takes you out of the daily news cycle and inside the events, people, and cultural moments you want to know more about. You can find Understood wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/FBxMoM

Front Burner Presents: The Making of Musk, Episode 1

Today, if all goes well, a ceasefire will begin in Gaza.

In phase one, Hamas has pledged to return all of the hostages, living and dead. For its part Israel will release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, while withdrawing troops to an agreed-upon line in Gaza and maintaining majority control of the territory.

Beyond that, the details of Trump’s promise of a “strong, durable, and everlasting peace” are fuzzy, but for hostage families and people in Gaza, it’s a reason to hope. 

Producer Allie Jaynes brings us a documentary that gives an on-the-ground perspective of what these past two years have been like for Gazans — especially for children. We hear from a 12-year-old with a popular Instagram “cooking show,” a girl living in a crowded displacement camp, and a music teacher giving lessons to kids all over Gaza to help them “escape the weight of war through the freedom of music.”

We'd love to hear from you! Complete our listener survey here.

Portraits of childhood in Gaza

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 of three people who knew Murray Sinclair well, about the personal lessons he taught them and how he transformed Canada.

We'll hear from journalist and filmmaker Tanya Talaga; Phil Fontaine, the former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations; and Kim Murray, the Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools.

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available to provide support for survivors and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour service at 1-866-925-4419.

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

This episode originally aired on November 11, 2025.

Encore: How Murray Sinclair changed Canada

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