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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

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 industry.

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

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

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 significance of Bashar al-Assad’s fall, and looks back on the Assad family’s half a century in power.

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

The end of the Assad regime in Syria

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 media platform.

Ed Zitron is a tech journalist who hosts the podcast Better Offline, and writes the newsletter Where's Your Ed At.

He talks to host Jayme Poisson about the rise of Bluesky, what differentiates it from X, and what this all means for the future of social media.

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

Can Bluesky take out X, aka Twitter?

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 of CBC’s The Naked Emperor, joins us to talk about why there’s so much crypto hype right now and what’s at stake if the boom goes bust.

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

How Trump is fueling a crypto boom

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 pain people were feeling might be the result of a "vibecession". Think recession – but you know – only in your head.

Today, so are we in a 'vibecession'? 

Economist Armine Yalnizyan is our guest.

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

Are we in an economic 'vibe-cession'?

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 Carleton University and has studied Canada Post for many years. 

He walks us through the crown corporation’s grim financial situation, how its business could adapt, and its uncertain future.

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

Is Canada Post doomed?

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 Reign of Justin Trudeau.

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

Can Trudeau survive Freeland’s resignation?

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 formerly worked as the head of news at Israel's Ha’aretz newspaper. Today he’s an editor at the Israeli publication Local Call. He joins the show to discuss whether Israel is guilty of committing a program of ethnic cleansing, and the prospect of a ‘Second Nakba’ in Gaza. 

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

Is Israel committing ethnic cleansing in Gaza?

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 bureau and Alex Panetta, a Washington-based CBC News correspondent. 

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

Trudeau troubles: embattled at home, mocked abroad

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 warnings about authoritarianism are being amplified once again. 

He joins the show to look ahead to the next four years of the Trump presidency, through the lens of his latest books: the just-released On Freedom and On Tyranny.

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

Trump, fascism and a warning from the past

What do the Houston Astros, the Saudi state-owned oil company Aramco, the makers of OxyContin and the Quebec government all have in common? They’ve all hired McKinsey & Company, a prestigious management consulting firm that has been around for nearly a hundred years. 

It’s a firm with a client list as long and rich as its history and has a lot of power. McKinsey promotes itself as a values-driven organization, but it’s also highly secretive. 

Today on Front Burner, host Jayme Poisson speaks with Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe, the authors of a new book, called “When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm.”

What happens when McKinsey comes to town?

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