Front Burner

Shares of the video game retailer GameStop soared by 1,000 per cent in less than two weeks, thanks in part to a popular subreddit called r/WallStreetBets. This, at the expense of several Wall Street investment funds that bet against GameStop and lost billions of dollars. Today on Front Burner, business reporter Pete Evans is here to explain the GameStop saga, and what it reveals about the stock market writ large.

Following a massive international investigation led by Australia, an alleged meth kingpin was arrested by Dutch authorities at an Amsterdam airport. Chinese-Canadian Tse Chi Lop is accused of running a syndicate that commands the $70 billion-a-year Asia-Pacific drug trade. He's been compared to Pablo Escobar and called Asia's El Chapo. Today, we hear from Reuters chief correspondent in Southeast Asia, Tom Allard. He's been a leading reporter on the story and he's here to explain how Tse has allegedly revolutionized and dominated the underground industry.

One woman’s story of how two of her loved ones got sucked into conspiracy theories — and how she fought to bring them back from the brink.

Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Moscow, St. Petersburg and across Russia to demand the release of prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny this past weekend. Police used force to break up the protests and detained more than 2,500 people. Navalny is best known for his anti-corruption investigations and was recently the subject of an assassination attempt. After recovering from his poisoning in Germany, Navalny returned to Russia only to be arrested and imprisoned in Moscow. CBC Russia correspondent Chris Brown talks to host Jayme Poisson about the growing movement in support of Navalny, and whether it might actually challenge President Vladimir Putin’s hold on power in Russia.

QAnon believers are in turmoil. For years the baseless, wide-ranging conspiracy theory has gained steam, making serious inroads in Canada after exploding in the United States. QAnon believers think a blood-thirsty, child-trafficking cabal is running the world and that Donald Trump will bring justice through a day of reckoning known as “The Storm”. But now, following Joe Biden’s inauguration, many QAnon followers are devastated and disillusioned — while others are doubling-down. Today on Front Burner, Daily Beast politics reporter Will Sommer joins us to discuss what might happen to QAnon and its followers next.

For four years, Daniel Dale, a CNN reporter and former Washington bureau chief for the Toronto Star, fact checked every single word that Donald Trump said publicly. Now, he looks back on some of the strangest and most significant lies of Trump’s presidency, and the lasting impact they had on both American politics and our shared sense of reality.

Gov. Gen. Julie Payette has been accused of bullying, berating, and publicly humiliating staff at Rideau Hall. The allegations were substantial enough that an independent workplace review was ordered last year. On Thursday, it was revealed that that review had been completed, and that its findings were scathing. Late in the afternoon, Payette resigned from her position as the Queen’s representative. Today, Power and Politics host Vassy Kapelos explains Payette’s resignation.

Besides the police presence, the inauguration of Joe Biden on Wednesday as 46th president of the United States was a paired-down affair, thanks to the pandemic and the recent violence at the Capitol. CBC Washington correspondent Paul Hunter covered the inauguration from the roof of the Canadian Embassy. Today he joins Front Burner to report on the meaning behind the day’s pageantry, Donald Trump’s last day in power, and the most pressing problems facing this new administration.

More than 350 people currently face trial for their alleged connections with one of Italy’s most powerful Mafia syndicates, the ‘Ndrangheta. The crime group is known for its secrecy. Bosses, accused of murder, money laundering, and drug trafficking, often hide in bunkers in Calabria, even though their business extends around the world. Italy has not held a Mafia trial of this scale since the late 1980s — when the Cosa Nostra was under fire for their operations in Sicily and abroad. Today on Front Burner, CBC Rome correspondent Megan Williams on the ‘Ndrangheta mafia, its evolution, and what this trial could mean for their future.

"There is no place for the far right in our party." That's a quote from a statement released on Sunday by Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole, where he condemns the riot in the U.S. Capitol and paints a moderate picture of the Conservative Party under his leadership. On the heels of the statement, PressProgress revealed that MP Derek Sloan accepted a donation from a notorious white supremacist, leading O'Toole to move to oust Sloan from the Conservative party. Today, CBC parliamentary hill journalist Aaron Wherry on why O'Toole felt he had to declare the Conservatives to be "sitting squarely in the centre of Canadian politics" and what it says about him and the party he leads.

For sometimes as little as two dollars an hour, some migrant workers in Malaysia say they spend their days producing disposable gloves in sweatshop-like conditions in a factory — and spend their nights in dirty, overcrowded shared quarters. As global demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) surges, it would appear that so has the human cost for those making it overseas, an investigation by CBC's Marketplace has found. The investigation revealed allegations of exploitation, debt bondage and passport retention from across the disposable glove industry in Malaysia. Marketplace host Asha Tomlinson and producer Eric Szeto join Front Burner to explain why we should be asking where Canada’s PPE comes from.

In the wake of last week's attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Proud Boys — a group founded by Canadian Gavin McInnes — has been under intense pressure. The FBI is arresting some of its members. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has called for the them to be designated a terrorist group, and the federal government is considering it. Today, how the Proud Boys started, and where they ended up, with Jared Holt — a visiting researcher at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab who studies domestic extremism

"Post-truth is pre-fascism." So wrote historian Timothy Snyder in his 2017 book, On Tyranny. He penned it in the lead-up to Donald Trump's inauguration, and he's been warning ever since: The United States is not exceptional, a coup could be attempted there, too. Now, Trump's presidency is in its dying days. He has been impeached by the House again, this time for "incitement of insurrection." But the big lie, as Snyder calls it, that Trump seeded — that the 2020 election was stolen from him — what becomes of that lie now? Today on Front Burner, Snyder explores that question.

Last Friday, 16-year-old Ariana Quesada walked into an RCMP station in High River, Alta., to file a formal complaint about the death of her father, Benito, who died eight months ago of COVID-19. He worked at the Cargill meat-packing plant, home to the largest coronavirus outbreak in the country, with at least 950 staff members contracting it last spring. The RCMP have now opened an investigation into Benito Quesada's death. Today, CBC investigative reporter Dave Seglins on Benito's story and larger questions about corporate responsibility in a global pandemic.

On Monday, for the second time in his one-term presidency, Democrats introduced an article to impeach Donald Trump. Previously, Trump was impeached but not convicted by the Senate. But following last week's deadly riot at the Capitol building, Democrats are trying to hold Trump accountable. Their tactics also include a resolution urging Vice-President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from power. Today on Front Burner, CBC Washington correspondents Lyndsay Duncombe and Alex Panetta explain what might happen next.

U.S. President Donald Trump was permanently banned from Twitter after the platform cited “the risk of further incitement of violence” following the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last week. Facebook previously banned him for the remainder of his time in office, and many other tech companies have followed suit. Today on Front Burner, Julia Angwin joins host Jayme Poisson for a conversation about Trump’s ban from multiple social media platforms and what consequences that might have. Angwin is editor-in-chief of The Markup, an American non-profit that takes on data-driven investigations about the ethics and impact of technology.

Canada has received more than 430,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. But as of Thursday, only about 45 per cent of those doses have gone into arms. Those numbers are sourced from the COVID-19 Canada Open Data Working Group, made up of public health experts and data scientists from the University of Toronto and the University of Guelph. Provincial governments across the country have been roundly criticized for not administering the vaccines they got in mid December quickly enough. Today on Front Burner, Globe and Mail health columnist André Picard and scientist Krishana Sankar, on why the rollout has been so challenging and what can be done about it.

Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump sowed chaos in and around the U.S. Capitol, forcing lawmakers to flee as they’d gathered to certify president-elect Joe Biden’s victory, after Trump himself encouraged them. CBC Washington correspondents Katie Simpson and Paul Hunter explain how pro-Trump extremists managed to breach Capitol security and storm the complex.

Last spring, Ontario Premier Doug Ford promised to move "heaven and earth" to prevent more long-term care residents from dying of COVID-19. But today, more than one-third of the province's long-term care homes are in an outbreak. More than 960 residents have died since the start of October. And experts say it didn't have to be this way. Today, we're speaking to Dr. Samir Sinha — the director of geriatrics at the Sinai Health System and the University Health Network, and the director of health policy research at the National Institute on Ageing — about what Ontario could have done, but didn't.

On Tuesday, voters in Georgia go to the polls for a pair of pivotal run-off elections that will determine which party has control of the United States senate. Meanwhile, outgoing President Donald Trump pressured and pleaded with the state's election chief to overturn Joe Biden's win in the state, according to a recorded phone call obtained by the Washington Post this weekend. Today on Front Burner, CBC Washington correspondent Katie Simpson walks us through the high-stakes races in Georgia, and how Trump's baseless claims of election fraud loom over them.

You’ve probably heard the words “avoid non-essential travel” frequently since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in Canada. But a growing number of provincial and federal politicians haven’t heeded that message. And as more stories emerge about vacations or travelling to see sick family members, many Canadians are furious. Today, Power and Politics host Vassy Kapelos discusses what we know so far and what the public health impacts of these revelations might be.

It’s been one year since Chinese officials in Wuhan confirmed they were treating dozens of cases of a mysterious pneumonia. Since then, we’ve watched the world transform as this new novel coronavirus accelerated into the COVID-19 pandemic, killing more than 1.6 million people and infecting more than 75 million. Today, CBC senior health writer Adam Miller and host Jayme Poisson look back on the long year of COVID-19.

Three years ago, if you were one of the women who had been victimized by Keith Raniere, the man seemed untouchable. Raniere was the leader of the cult-like self help group NXIVM. On October 27th, that all changed. In a U.S. federal courtroom, Keith Raniere was sentenced to 120 years—having been convicted of a slew of crimes. During the trial and sentencing, victims came forward about how the self-professed empowerment “vanguard” had turned some of his followers into sex slaves and branded them with his initials. Josh Bloch investigated Raniere in his podcast UNCOVER: Escaping NXIVM. He joined Jayme to break down the case. This is an encore of their October conversation.

This holiday season, economists are watching how Canadians spend to see how deeply the pandemic has changed the way we shop, save and even give to charity. But differences in consumer spending have nothing on the tremendous amount of money the federal government continues to spend to get the country through the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the protests of deficit hawks, a growing movement says we can shed our old worries about the federal debt. In fact, modern monetary theory argues that since we control our own currency, the government can create more money and never go broke. Today, an encore of our examination into this controversial idea and how it relates to Canada.

Concerns about deadly outbreaks at long-term care homes continue to be top of mind for many Canadians during this second wave of COVID-19. Today, an encore of a conversation we had with a man who went to incredible and potentially life-threatening lengths to visit his mother at her nursing home in Toronto. Back in April, with the facility on lockdown and a resident with COVID-19, there was only one way Brian Corcoran could visit and check-up on his mom, Margaret — get a part-time job on staff.

As 2020 comes to a close, we take a look back at the year in pop culture. From TV shows adjusting to the pandemic to the NBA bubble, Elamin Abdelmahmoud and Amil Niazi from the CBC podcast Pop Chat drop by to talk about what movies, TV shows, and music helped us make sense of this unprecedented year.

A new strain of coronavirus in the United Kingdom has triggered border restrictions internationally and in Canada. It’s also sparked many questions. Dr. Isaac Bogoch is an infectious diseases physician and a member of the Ontario government’s vaccine task force. Today, he shares his thoughts on the mutation and explains its potential impact on treatment and transmission of the virus — and even vaccine efficacy.

Suicide prevention lines are dealing with an enormous surge in calls, and crisis centres say COVID-19 is to blame. Crisis Services Canada says that calls between August and October increased 159 per cent compared to last year. That surge is being felt at distress centres across the country, including at the Crisis Centre of BC. Front Burner producer Elaine Chau takes us there and talks to two people who are working directly with people in crisis. ----------------------------- Where to get help: Canada Suicide Prevention Service: 1-833-456-4566 (Phone) | 45645 (Text, 4 p.m. to midnight ET only) | crisisservicescanada.ca

As the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine rolls out across the country, and other vaccines await imminent regulatory approval, many public health experts are focusing on the issue of vaccine hesitancy. Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam has spoken out about the "moveable middle" and says it is critical that as many people get vaccinated as possible to protect themselves and others from risk. But, since conversations about vaccines can be hard, today we're bringing in an expert to explain how to have more meaningful and productive discussions with people who have questions or fears. Maria Sundaram is an infectious disease epidemiologist who studies vaccines.

The Liberals released a new, long-awaited climate change plan last week that they say will meet Canada's commitments under the Paris Agreement and cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 30 per cent by 2030. The plan includes $15 billion in federal investment and a gradual tripling of the carbon tax. Today on Front Burner, host Jayme Poisson asks Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson about the plan, whether it goes far enough, and who it risks leaving behind.

Canadian fashion mogul Peter Nygard was arrested Monday night in Winnipeg under the Extradition Act. He faces nine charges related to sex trafficking and racketeering in a New York court. You may remember that Nygard has already been accused by dozens of women across the globe of sexual assault, rape and human trafficking. While he has denied all allegations, these charges out of New York are the first criminal charges he will contend with. Today we are joined by Timothy Sawa. He's a CBC investigative reporter who has been covering this story for more than a decade and has a new CBC podcast about Nygard, Evil by Design, out this February.

Pornhub, the Montreal-based streaming giant, is in trouble. They’ve dumped millions of videos from their platform, Visa and Mastercard have cut ties with the company, and they’re facing questions from Canadian MPs. This all happened after a recent New York Times article which exposed the platform’s insidious problem of hosting videos of rape, child abuse and sex trafficking — sometimes even after victims asked for the videos to be taken down. But porn performers say that while they also want to fight abuse and non-consensual content on the platform, they’re now becoming collateral damage in the rush to tackle this serious issue — and that could affect their livelihoods and their safety. Today, we’re speaking to Melissa Gira Grant, a staff writer at The New Republic and the author of Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work, about the changes shaking one of the world’s biggest porn sites, and why sex workers say they need to be included in the conversation.

The Chinese government says the Lop County Hair Product Industrial Park in the country's northwest is a place where people make wigs and other hair products that get shipped across the globe. Others say what’s happening at the park is forced labour, and that it’s just the latest in a pattern of grave human rights abuses committed in recent years against the country’s Uighur Muslim population — including the use of detention camps, mass surveillance and even forced sterilization. The Lop County Hair Product Industrial Park in Xinjiang province is an incredibly secretive, highly guarded place, yet Globe and Mail journalist Nathan VanderKlippe managed to travel there. Today on Front Burner, VanderKlippe discusses what he saw.

On Monday evening, Newsmax TV beat Fox News Channel in ratings for the very first time. Since Fox News accurately called the U.S. election for Joe Biden, Donald Trump has soured on the network in favour of smaller, more controversial outlets. And the outgoing president is urging his political base to join him. Today, CBC senior Washington correspondent Susan Ormiston reports how this fissure is shaking the bedrock of American conservative media, and elevates networks that further promote opinion and conspiracy over real news.

Health Canada has approved the Pfizer-BioNTech after scientists wrapped up a two-month review of the company's clinical trial data. The approval is a crucial step in what will be the largest vaccination campaign in Canadian history. Today, host Jayme Poisson goes through what we know about the vaccine with Dr. Maria Sundaram, an infectious disease epidemiologist based in Toronto.

New restrictions have been announced in Alberta as the province struggles with the highest rate of new coronavirus infections in the country. As hospitalizations rise, we check in with two Edmonton doctors on the front lines of the pandemic, to hear about the impact they're seeing the virus have up close: Dr. Darren Markand is an intensive care unit physician, and Dr. Shazma Mithani is an emergency room physician and the spokesperson for the section of emergency medicine within the Alberta Medical Association.

The wildfire spread of misinformation about COVID-19 on social media is giving critics of Big Tech ammunition in their fight. It comes at a time when Facebook and Google face major antitrust lawsuits in the U.S., and some are calling on Canada to do more to regulate tech giants. Our guest is Taylor Owen, director of the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy at McGill University, and host of the Big Tech podcast.

It’s been more than a year since Cameron Ortis, the former director-general of the RCMP’s National Intelligence Coordination Centre, was arrested and charged under Canada’s Security of Information Act. The Fifth Estate’s Bob McKeown discusses the bizarre chain of events that led to Ortis’s arrest, including the vandalism of the graves of a high-stakes gambler’s parents.

It's been a month since Joe Biden was voted in as the next president of the United States. But a lot has happened since then. There are the final weeks of Donald Trump's chaotic tenure, the importance of Georgia's runoff Senate race and the tensions that are dividing the Democrats even as they prepare to take power. Today, former CBC Washington correspondent Keith Boag joins us to get us up to speed.

Many world-renowned ballet productions, from Swan Lake to Romeo and Juliet, have graced the stage of the legendary Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow since the 1800s. No matter what wars and revolutions the Russians confronted, the Bolshoi would find a way to stay open. That is, until COVID-19. The theatre closed down for six months this year because of the pandemic. It relaunched in the fall, and it's getting ready for a busy Christmas season. Today on Front Burner, CBC Russia correspondent Chris Brown on how the Bolshoi is handling the threat of COVID-19, as Russia deals with one of the highest coronavirus case totals in the world.

Last weekend NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and U.S. congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez raised over $200,000 US for charity by livestreaming a game called Among Us on the streaming platform Twitch for nearly six hours. Among Us is a popular space-murder-mystery multiplayer online game. About 100,000 people watched the livestream. Today, CBC senior writer and gaming columnist Jonathan Ore is here to fill us in on Among Us and Twitch and to explain how left-wing politicians are taking full advantage of these digital spaces. But can this tactic work for others?

On Monday, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced the Liberal government will spend up to $100 billion to support the post-pandemic economy. The priority is, as Freeland says, to do “whatever it takes” to help Canadians, despite the record-high $381 billion deficit. CBC senior parliamentary reporter David Cochrane breaks down the details of the economic update, and tells us what critics had to say about it.

As Pfizer and Moderna's vaccine candidates get closer to being approved in countries around the world, many Canadians are wondering when they might be able to get a shot here. Prime Minister Trudeau has said most Canadians could be vaccinated by next September, but the details on when those vaccines may arrive in the country — and how they'll be distributed — remain hazy. The government is also facing questions about whether other countries could be way ahead of Canada. Two parliamentary reporters — CBC's J.P. Tasker and the Globe and Mail's Marieke Walsh — break down everything we know, and don't know, about Canada's vaccine rollout plan.

Last week, after a video of one of his speeches went viral, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had to address a growing controversy over “The Great Reset”. The term means different things to different people. To the World Economic Forum it’s a vague goal to make the world more equal and address climate change in the wake of the pandemic. To Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre it’s evidence of a “power grab” by “global financial elites”. And to others, it’s part of a baseless and wide-ranging conspiracy theory. CBC senior writer Aaron Wherry has been covering this story in Ottawa. Today he helps us sort the real economics and politics at play… from the conspiracy gaining traction.

Last January, Wuhan became the epicentre of the coronavirus. The Chinese city went under a strict lockdown for almost two months. The conditions were so severe that buildings were sealed off, and barricades erected. Today, the economy is booming again, but many people are still reeling from the trauma brought by the virus and the way it was managed. CBC Asia correspondent Saša Petricic travelled to Wuhan to better understand what life is like there now. He tells host Jayme Poisson about what he heard.

New details revealed by The Fifth Estate question the RCMP's timeline about the worst mass shooting in modern Canadian history. It's been seven months since a gunman disguised as a Mountie went on a rampage, killing 22 people over 13 hours in Nova Scotia, travelling a distance of nearly 200 kilometres. Gillian Findlay joins Jayme to describe the fuller picture of what happened in that time, how the RCMP was one step behind the killer, and how the public was left in the dark.

In the first wave of the pandemic, Alberta was one of the provinces that seemed to have things relatively under control. Now, the province has daily case rates three times as high as Quebec or Ontario, and ICUs in Calgary and Edmonton have been hitting 90 per cent capacity. But Premier Jason Kenney hasn't addressed the province at a COVID-19 briefing for almost two weeks, and has resisted repeated calls for lockdowns from doctors and other experts. It's leading some Albertans to tweet the hashtag #WhereIsKenney. Today, Jason Markusoff of Maclean's Magazine joins us to talk about how Alberta got here, and what happens now.

Canada is spending a tremendous amount of money to get the country through the COVID-19 pandemic, but a growing movement says we can shed our old worries about the federal deficit. Modern monetary theory argues that since we control our own currency, the country can create more money and never go broke. Today, Front Burner examines this controversial idea and how it relates to Canada.

Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart wants to decriminalize small amounts of illegal drugs. If he gets his way, Vancouver will be the first Canadian city to do so. The move comes as overdose deaths continue to surge in Vancouver and across the country. CBC Vancouver producer Jodie Martinson has been speaking to drug users in the city. She’ll explain the significance and limitations of the possible change.

In recent public and media appearances, Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole has talked up the need to fight inequality through labour rights, and lamented the decline of unionization in the private sector. He's also blamed the Liberals for favouring elites over workers, and trade deals over jobs in Canada. These issues have become recurring themes as he introduces himself to Canadians after being elected leader of the Conservatives back in August. Today on Front Burner, CBC senior parliamentary reporter Catherine Cullen on the reaction to this political shift, and what might be behind it.