The Big Story

Right now, across Canada, there are questions around the names of places, institutions and even streets. The debate about whether or not we should rename something that honours problematic and sometimes racist historical figures is a question all sorts of organizations, from governments to companies to school boards are wrestling with. But more interesting questions come afterward. So you’ve decided to change a name: To what? Who gets a say? How exactly do you go about correcting the historical record? Do you wipe all references to the former person clean, or acknowledge the former name? And how minute can you get with the names of places and things before logistics become a problem? GUEST: Dr. Vidya Shah, York University We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

If you spent time outdoors this weekend, we hope you did a thorough tick check when you got back inside. The creatures have been on the rise in Canada for years, and this summer is no exception. The increase is not just in numbers, but in wide swaths of habitat which used to be tick-free. Why is this happening? How can you spot them? Where are you likely to encounter them? And most importantly, if you find one, how can you remove it safely, and what do you need to do after that? GUEST: Justin Wood, founder of Geneticks We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

As the United States winds down its involvement in Afghanistan, things are becoming more and more dangerous for Afghan citizens who have aided soldiers over the past two decades. And nobody is in more danger than those who worked as interpreters for Canadian and allied forces. Years ago, Canada had a program to fast-track visas for Afghan interpreters, but it’s long gone. Now, veterans who served with the interpreters are sounding the alarm for the government to help hundreds of them and their families, who risked so much to help Canadians on the ground. Will the feds listen? GUEST: Lt.-Col. Mark Popov We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Two people are dead, a town is all but destroyed and more than a thousand people have essentially become climate refugees. And that is the toll of just one of the hundreds of forest fires raging in British Columbia at the moment. But it's in the future of Lytton that we can get a glimpse of what Canada must grapple with. Do you rebuild a town in the hottest place in Canada, at a time when fire season is getting longer and more intense every year? Or do you simply expect people, many of whom belong to the Lytton First Nation, to pick up the pieces and head elsewhere—until "elsewhere" is threatened, too? GUEST: Monika Gul, News 1130, CityNews, Vancouver We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

The heated discussion over a full return to business as usual versus an embrace of remote, flexible work is often couched in language of productivity, creativity and efficiency. But as more and more corporations announce their post-pandemic plans, it's becoming clear that there's a bigger, deeper issue at stake: Control. What makes companies feel like in-person office work is essential? Why are workers so reluctant to give up their new flexibility, even when working from home can be fraught with problems? Are we entering a new era that could end the monoculture of the office... or just one more push from labour to be beaten back by The Man? GUEST: Charlie Warzel, journalist, Galaxy Brain We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Now that vaccines are widely available to almost any Canadian who wants one, the focus turns to convincing people who haven't had one yet to get their needle. It's easier said than done, for more reasons than just hesitancy. And if our inbox is any indication, after months of mixed messaging, Canadians have a lot of questions. What does the science say about mixing mRNA vaccines? When will we have data and shots for kids under 12? How do various brands of vaccines cope with the Delta variant? And why does the threshold for herd immunity keep changing? GUEST: Sabina Vohra-Miller, clinical pharmacologist We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Traditionally, Ontario (and parts of Quebec) would see outbreaks of the creature known as the Gypsy Moth every decade or more. But the past two years have seen back to back outbreaks, each of them much larger than what we'd seen in the past. And we're currently not sure if this is an anomaly, or the new normal. What are these creatures and how did they get here? What do they do to the trees they attack? Do we have a plan to stop their explosive spread? And what can you do if you spot them on trees in your backyard or at your favourite park? GUEST: David Dutkiewicz, entomology technician, Invasive Species Centre We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

A lot of us are lucky enough that we've never thought of Canada Day as anything but a day off to enjoy all the country has to offer, and to celebrate the story we tell ourselves about this land. It's a good story, honestly. But as so many of us have learned over the past year—it's not true. So today we'll hear some perspectives on Canada Day from people whose stories don't often get heard on July 1, and maybe that can help us see what is both great and terrible about this country. GUESTS: Eva Jewell, Donnovan Bennett, Fatima Syed You can donate to the Indian Residential School Survivors Society by visiting their website. We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

First of all, what is a heat dome? How rare is it? How deadly? Are the all-time high temperatures the Pacific Northwest experienced this week an anomaly, or a terrifying glimpse of the new normal? Can we pin this all on a warming climate? Or is some of it an unlucky combination of weather systems? And if this is a sign of things to come, what do Canadians, and governments across the country, need to do to prepare for summers to come? GUEST: Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Right now, the Bank of Canada is working on a "digital loonie" that will replace cash at some point in the future. Governments around the world are either following suit or way ahead of us. While banks have been giving their customers access to digital wallets for years, cryptocurrencies are attempting to corner the market on the next generation of money. The only thing that's clear to everyone is that actual cold, hard cash is not long for this world—with all the benefits and inequalities that will include. So in the race to become the next go-to source of currency ... who's winning? GUEST: Michael Doyle, freelance journalist and reporter We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Last week, Core Development Group announced its intention to spend a billion dollars buying family homes in hot markets across Canada and converting them to rental units. On the surface, this would seem to bring badly needed family rentals into markets that are in desperate need of them—but there's a lot more going on here than just that. What does a billion dollars in corporate money do to an already overheated housing market? Will these rental units be affordable for families that have been priced out of home ownership? How does a condo developer plan to become a landlord at a cross-Canada scale? And why do so many housing advocates warn this will set a dangerous precedent? GUEST: Rachelle Younglai, Real Estate Reporter, The Globe and Mail We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Her real name is Romana Didulo, and over the past few months her following has grown to tens of thousands. And she's putting them to use in real life—handing out cease and desist "orders" to authorities and businesses across the country. The penalty she promises for not complying and removing all Covid-19 restrictions is death. Obviously, Didulo's claims are ridiculous, and completely false. There's zero truth to anything associated with her. But when organizations that work to combat extremism see a new figure rise to prominence and begin to immediately take their goals off the internet and into the streets ... they get very worried. GUEST: Peter Smith, journalist, Canadian Anti-Hate Network We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Too bad, you're likely getting one anyway! Over the past few weeks there have been unmistakeable signs that the governing Liberals as well as opposition parties are getting ready to send Canadians to the polls—whether they want to go or not. From fundraising to renting rooms, passing bills that will look great in campaign literature and reminding voters how long they waited for their vaccines, it's pretty clear that the machines are revving up. So why now? What will a federal election in a country still recovering from Covid look like? Are the Liberals planning this because they think they can come back with a majority? And will there be room for any issues beyond the pandemic? GUEST: Cormac Mac Sweeney, Parliament Hill Reporter We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

One year after being singled out—first by Premier Blaine Higgs, then by members of his own community—as "Patient Zero" for a New Brunswick Covid-19 outbreak, Dr. Jean-Robert Ngola is still putting his life back together. Last May an outbreak in Campbellton, NB, was blamed by Higgs on an "irresponsible medical professional", and online Dr. Ngola was identified less than an hour later. Since then he's been suspended, had charges filed, then eventually dropped. He's asked for and been refused an apology. He's left Campbellton, and now lives in another province and is still wondering where he might be if the premier had been patient and waited for proper tracing to occur. GUEST: Judy Trinh, CBC's The Fifth Estate We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Usually, when someone is charged with murder, their name is all over police statements, and then all over the media. But when police neglect to release that information—and some forces have been doing that more and more frequently—the murder itself can go missing. From the media, from the conversation, and eventually from the statistics kept that guide community safety policies. Why have police begun withholding the name of people accused of murder, and what are the ramifications for the criminal justice system and vulnerable communities? GUEST: Alyshah Hasham, Toronto Star courts reporter We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

When Alberta announced last week it would join several U.S. states in offering the chance of life-changing prizes to citizens who get their Covid-19 vaccine, they were chasing a simple truth: For some reason, we tend to value the remote chance of a big reward far more than the certainty of a small one. This is something that governments and companies are proving true right now as they try all sorts of things to help everyone get vaccinated and get life back to normal. And it begs the question: If it works for vaccines, what else could governments entice us to do by dangling a lottery lure? And what's happening in our brains when we do it? GUEST: Adam Rogers, senior correspondent at WIRED We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Across Canada, in every municipality, there are people experiencing homelessness. It happens everyday. But what really matters is what happens to those people after they become homeless. Homelessness can quickly become a cycle, a self-fulfilling prophecy, a chronic condition. And in many places policy treats it that way, creating benchmarks for people to clear before they qualify for assistance, or tracking people living on the streets as numbers instead of names. What if there was a better way? What if that better way was actually easier and cheaper? And what if it was not some far-left Canadian municipality leading the way, but a conservative stronghold in Alberta? GUEST: Jaime Rogers, Manager of Homeless and Housing Development, Medicine Hat Community Housing Society We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

The months-long blockade at Fairy Creek is something of a tipping point for the province's NDP government's attempt to balance its environmentalism and its logging interests. Before his party was re-elected, Premier John Horgan pledged to follow a report with recommendations to protect B.C.'s old-growth forests, of which only three percent remain. Almost a year later, none of the recommendations have been acted upon and the blockade that has led to hundreds of arrests shows no signs of stopping. Will the province agree to a deferral? Will that buy it time to figure out a solution? Logging vs. the environment is a decades-old fight in the province, but the government has run out of time to find a solution that pleases everyone. GUEST: Sarah Cox, B.C. Investigative Reporter, The Narwhal We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

That's not hyperbole. Many Americans (and Canadians, and citizens around the world) hoped that once Donald Trump was out of office, and Joe Biden became president, the country would experience a snap-back towards political normalcy. That hasn't happened. And driven by their fears of being ousted by Trump's base, Republicans around the country are continuing to push the United States towards the brink. How did this happen? When did Trumpism become the entire identity of the Republican party? Can America wake up to the threat posed to its most crucial institutions, or is it already too late? GUEST: Peter Wehner, contributing writer at The Atlantic, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Peter has worked in the three Republican presidential administrations previous to Trump's. We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

It's a gigantic update to Quebec's language laws, which have been part of the cultural fabric of the province for 50 years—and the proposal even goes so far as to update Canada's constitution. But does Bill 96 actually protect French in Quebec? Does it help newcomers learn and use the language? Will it make it easier for badly-needed immigrants to Canada to choose to settle there? And does taking such measures to protect French do a disservice to the many Indigenous languages that are at risk of disappearing across the country? GUEST: Toula Drimonis, CULT MTL.com We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Last week the federal government announced a tentative plan to announce a less-tentative plan for a July border reopening in the coming weeks. What we do know: It'll be fully-vaccinated Canadians only who can skip the quarantine, and there will still be plenty of checks and balances. What we don't know: Almost everything else. After 15 months of near total shutdown, there are millions of Canadians anxious to see family they have missed, take a long-delayed vacation or even just catch a Jays game in Buffalo or Seattle. How easy will it be to do that? When should they count on being able to travel? GUEST: Charlie Pinkerton, Deputy Editor, iPolitics.ca We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

When Disney+ launched its newest Marvel show, Loki, this week, it came with a marketing campaign: "Wednesdays (when new episodes of Loki will be released) are the new Fridays (when Disney previously released new episodes of Marvel and Star Wars shows)." The campaign means that Disney is choosing not only to release new episodes weekly, rather than all at once, they are actively using the weekly release model as a selling point. The past year has seen a departure from the practice of 'bingable' shows that began in 2013 with Netflix's House of Cards. It's not often that disruptors eventually reject their own premise and take on the tactics of the traditional businesses they're trying to replace. But this appears to be one example of just that. We'll go inside the rise and fall of the binge watch. GUEST: Norm Wilner, Sr. Film Writer, NOW Magazine We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

This week, Canada's reckoning with its racist history was interrupted by its racist present. A terrorist attack in London, ON killed four members of a Muslim family and left a nine-year-old boy orphaned and injured. Are we finally past saying things like, "This kind of stuff doesn't happen in Canada"? Are we ready to shed the self-image that has been proven false so many times? Are Canadians ready, en masse, to take it upon themselves to make this country safe and confront Islamophobia? Are politicians ready to shelve the thoughts and prayers and lead us in doing it? Because right now, things are getting worse, not better. GUEST: Fatima Syed We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Lots of people, when applying for jobs, hope the people doing the hiring can see them as people, instead of as assets that can deliver value for the company. For job seekers with disabilities or neurodivergence, it's just the opposite—they wish that employers could see the real value they'll bring to the business instead of just seeing the atypical applicant they're interviewing. So what happens when businesses make a business decision and hire these applicants? They're often rewarded handsomely and there are many examples of employers who've done this. But how can the rest of Canadian employers learn to see these hires as a competitive advantage instead of an act of charity? GUEST: Katie Lafferty, producer on Employable Me We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

There have been promises in the past. And committees, and commitments and commissions and no shortage of apologies. But in the wake of the 215 children found buried where a residential school once operated near Kamloops, there's a growing sense among Canadians that none of the past work has been enough. Is this reckoning real? Do Indigenous peoples across the country believe it could be different this time? Will average Canadians demand better from their government? And if this time really is different, what happens next? And how horrific will real Truth and Reconciliation be when we learn all there is to learn about that not-so-distant past? GUEST: Eva Jewell, Associate fellow at the Yellowhead Institute, Anishinaabekwe from Deshkan Ziibiing, Chippewas of the Thames First Nation (Learn more about the Yellowhead Institute here.) We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

The promise was pretty clear: During his first successful campaign as Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau told LGBT voters that we would end Canada’s longstanding ban prohibiting men who have sex with men from donating blood. At the time, it seemed like a simple promise to keep. A few years later, he claimed it wasn’t so simple. Now, it’s 2021 and Erin O’Toole is criticizing Trudeau for his failure as the Conservatives seek LGBT support. How is the blood ban still in place? When Trudeau claims his government will “follow the science” what is he referring to? Is a discriminatory approach really still necessary when technology has rapidly advanced and Canada needs blood more than ever? GUEST: Justin Ling, investigative journalist We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Every time there’s a protest, or dispute, or anything else newsworthy in rural Canada, the media shows up to cover it. And runs into the RCMP. Sometimes, nothing happens. But more often than not, access to the story becomes a story in itself, with the RCMP insisting media aren’t allowed in, or offering access only to “accredited media”. You can imagine where this leads, and probably guess that Indigenous journalists have born the brunt of it. But this time, when the RCMP attempted to stop journalists from access the site of a protest against old-growth forest logging near Port Renfrew, B.C., the media went to court. What happens next will go a long way to determining who gets access to protests attempting to stop natural resource extraction in rural areas, and other contentious issues that happen far away from big cities… GUEST: Brent Jolly, President, Canadian Association of Journalists We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Less than one percent of the 1.8-billion Covid-19 vaccines used so far have gone to low-income countries. And in those countries new variants are emerging that could impact our vaccine efficacy. Canadians spent the first four months complaining about our slow rollout, but we’re soon to be second in the world among countries with the highest percentage of people receiving at least one dose. This is vaccine inequity in action. And it’s not someone else’s problem. Today, when experts tell you “the pandemic isn’t over until it’s over everywhere” … here’s what they mean. GUEST: Dr. Ananya Tina Banerjee, McGill University We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Less than two months from now, unless something changes, the postponed 2020 Olympics will begin in Tokyo, Japan. Unless the country’s government listens to both its populace and its doctors, all of whom are urging them not to proceed. Japan has vaccinated less than three percent of its population. A medic this week warned of the Olympics spawning a new ‘Tokyo olympic’ variant of Covid-19. The games could be exactly what the world needs to mark the beginning of the end of this pandemic. Or they could be exactly what the virus needs to keep it going. And we won’t know which, until they happen. If they happen. GUEST: Stephen Brunt, Sportsnet We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal … Canada truly has some of the world’s biggest and most beautiful Pride celebrations. But it also has some of the smallest. In places like Taber, Alberta (POP: 9,000), Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia (POP.: 500) and Norman Wells, Northwest Territories (POP: 800) communities have begun holding Prides of their own, often marked by some of the same traditions you find in big cities. What does that look like? How different is it to walk in a Pride march when you know everybody who is—and isn’t—there? And when everyone will know you attended? How are these events changing what it’s like to grow up queer in small-town Canada? GUEST: Chelle Turingan, co-director, producer, editor, Small Town Pride We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

It’s always been this way but … why? When it comes to everything from routine cleaning appointments and checkups to more complicated procedures like abscesses and crowns, many Canadians scramble to pay for their own dental care. Even for those lucky enough to have insurance, many employers’ plans don’t have enough coverage to take care of the really expensive stuff. Is dental care an afterthought in this country? Was there ever a plan to include it in universal health care? What do other countries do? And does any party have a plan to fix this? GUEST: Anne Thériault, freelance journalist (Read Anne’s piece in The Walrus) We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

We asked a whole bunch of questions, and hundreds of The Big Story’s listeners responded. We’re here for a special episode to share some of the most interesting questions and feedback with you — and to tell you what we’re going to do about it! GUEST HOST: Stefanie Phillips, lead producer, The Big Story GUEST: Jordan Heath-Rawlings, host We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

This is the story of a Jeopardy! contestant who made a white supremacist gesture on the program. Only he didn’t. But that didn’t stop thousands of people, including several dozen former Jeopardy! contestants from insisting that he had, and hunting ceaselessly for evidence to back up their assumptions. This is a story about what the internet is doing to all our minds. Every day. And what we can learn from watching it happen in real time. GUEST: Ben Smith, media columnist, New York Times We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

After nearly a century of moving Canadians between rural towns and big cities, Greyhound Canada announced last week it would end all Canadian routes. This is a move that could be devastating for hundreds of thousands of Canadians who lack access to a car and might be stranded without access to medical appointments, connection to family or dozens of other intercity transportation needs. But that’s only if nobody acts to replace what Greyhound offered with a better version. There are a number of possibilities that could remake the bus landscape in Canada. The question is if any level of government has the will to implement them. GUEST: Alexis Zhou, freelance journalist, transportation advocate We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

When people started presenting with symptoms, local doctors and scientists wondered if the mysterious neurological disorder might be Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t anything else that we recognize, either. And the symptoms are a long list that run from inconvenient to painful to life-altering and deadly. We don’t know what’s causing it, haven’t been able to treat it and—because of the pandemic—haven’t been able to fully research the places where it may have come from. What we do know is that it’s awful. And in New Brunswick it’s becoming more common. GUEST: Amanda Coletta, The Washington Post We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Hope and optimism are the reasons we sign up for dating apps — even if we know we'll end up in the muck when we get there. We expect some bad dates and ghosting and all the rest, but the reality is that a small percentage of these dates do end in alleged sexual assaults. That's horrific, and often the police are involved. But when the user reports their assailant to the app they met on, what happens? Who handles that complaint and escalates it? Are they trained to help victims? What actions do they take? Is there an official process or are victims fending for themselves? And if the accused user isn't removed and it happens again—is the company that makes that app to blame? GUEST: Brian Edwards, Columbia Journalism Investigations We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

When Uber first arrived in Montreal, it wasn't legal—but that didn't stop it. And cabbies were angry, but little was being done at the government level, and police were rarely if ever enforcing the law. So one man decided to take the matter into his own hands, waging a war that, while ultimately unsuccessful, left his mark on a city and an industry as an outlaw hero. This is the story of the Taxi Sheriff. GUEST: Marcello Di Cintio, author, Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

A comprehensive, Canada-wide study found that Canada has some of the highest levels of radon in homes in the world. Roughly half the homes tested failed to meet WHO standards, and even by Canada's more lenient standards, one in five were above the threshold of what's considered safe. The prairie provinces scored worst in the country—but no region was immune. Long-term impacts of radon exposure can lead to lung cancer—in fact it's the second biggest cause of lung cancer behind smoking. So why don't more Canadians know of this danger? Which homes are most vulnerable to high levels of radon? How can you easily test for it, and what can you do if your home is unsafe? As one researcher says, "This is an avoidable public health crisis." To learn more about radon exposure visit evictradon.org. GUEST: Declan Keogh, Investigative Journalism Bureau (You can read the project by the IJB and the Toronto Star right here) We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

About 40 percent of the Amazon packages delivered to Canada come through Ontario's Peel Region. It manufactures almost everything. It's where trucks get loaded up and head out across the country, full of everything. And for months now, it's been on fire with Covid-19. Vulnerable workers in multigenerational homes, without sick days, bringing home the virus and infecting their families. Yet even when the vaccination push began in earnest, Peel was left behind. It wasn't until a massive piece of reporting a month ago connected the dots, that Canadians started to realize the tragedy that was unfolding. And that feature was in an independent publication, not a major Toronto paper. Why did so many, from politicians to journalists to the public forget about Peel? And now that help has arrived—what will it take to put out the fire for good? GUEST: Fatima Syed, reporter (You can read Fatima's feature in The Local) We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Thousands of small businesses used the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy to keep afloat and avoid laying off their staff. But they weren't the only type of business to qualify for and receive the CEWS. Among some of the companies that took government money are companies that bounced back after a bad month, companies who fared well during the pandemic and publicly-traded companies who were even able to payout dividends to shareholders in the same year they accessed this emergency funding. All these companies qualified, so they can't be blamed for taking the funds. Should the policy have been clearer? Should the amounts and recipients be public? What could have been done to make this program more targeted and efficient? GUEST: Patrick Brethour, Tax and Fiscal Policy Reporter, The Globe and Mail We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

It began with allegations of sexual misconduct, but it went beyond that into a bureaucratic tangle that left the alleged victim's parents without justice, the RCMP spending hundreds of thousands to keep a constable on leave and an embarrassing look into an organization that badly needs to fix its policies. What went wrong in the case of Const. Justin Harris? And how systemic are the problems in the RCMP discipline process? GUEST: Jane Gerster, investigative journalist We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

Shopping! Parties! Beer! Reunions! As the United Kingdom moves into phase three of its reopening on Monday, even phase two seems far beyond what Canada can expect. But it's not. As our country struggles through what will hopefully be our last lockdown, it's worth hearing about what happens next from the places in the world that most closely resemble where we've been. This isn't a fever dream, it's just hard to believe right now. But it's happening. GUEST: Ebony-Renee Baker, Canadian journalist reporting from London, UK We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

When Ontario and Alberta decided they would stop giving the AstraZeneca vaccine as a first dose, part of the reasoning was an abundant supply of other vaccines. But that feels like cold comfort to Canadians who eagerly lined up because "the best shot you can get is the one in your arm" and now might be feeling scared or ripped off. What options do those Canadians have? Another vaccine for a second dose? To wait and see? What can those of us who have one dose of any vaccine do in between our shots? Could any of this have been avoided, or is it just a case of the science changing? GUEST: Sabina Vohra-Miller, clinical pharmacologist We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

We are in the home stretch of this pandemic, even if you wouldn't know it from anything Canadian officials tell you. Vaccines work, and hundreds of thousands of Canadians are getting theirs every day. We can look to the United Kingdom right now to see what happens when enough people get their shots. We know a lot more than we ever have about what's safe and what's not, how to protect ourselves and still find activities worth doing. So why don't communications from public health reflect that? Why can't politicians and doctors give us hope, or at least a few carrots mixed in with the constant sticks? Do they not trust us with optimism? Worry we'll start breaking the rules early? Or is treating Canadians like obedient robots doing more harm than good? GUEST: Matt Gurney, columnist with TVO and the National Post We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

He ran for mayor, and won three times, on a platform of bipartisanship, even as political squabbles were getting nastier by the day. He used social media to drive his campaign before 'going viral' became the goal of a comms staff. He took over the job of running a city that had never declared a state of emergency, then had to do it three times in his decade in charge. Naheed Nenshi is leaving office after 10 years of being one of the most interesting politicians in the country. And no -- we didn't ask him what he wants his legacy to be. This isn't that kind of exit interview. GUEST: Naheed Nenshi, Mayor of Calgary We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

There are tens of thousands of infant Canadians who have never been held by anyone but their moms and dads; who have never played with another real live child or spent a second in daycare or with a babysitter. Sometime soon, when restrictions are lifted, all that will change. What do we know about how a year without socialization will impact these infants? How can parents help them enter a world they've never met? And what will we learn about how babies adapt from this unexpected global experiment? GUEST: Dr. Sheri Madigan, University of Calgary, Canada Research Chair in Determinants of Child Development We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

The forest in question this time is a piece of land known as the Greenbelt. The highway, if it's built, would be known as Hwy. 413. If you think this is just a story about Toronto—you're wrong. The fight over Hwy. 413 has arrived at the federal government's level. And how the government chooses to use the powers it has in this situation will decide the project's fate. And quite possibly the fate of the next big highway vs. forest battle. GUEST: Emma McIntosh, National Observer We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

You know something's gone wrong when the government is promising to amend their changes to the broadcasting act to make sure it doesn't apply to, say, your personal Twitter feed. But that's what the federal government had to do this week after public outcry surrounding Bill C-10. That is just one of the more obvious examples of the problems with this bill, which has been trounced by experts on both sides of the aisle. So what's in the actual bill? What did the government get wrong? And how can they fix it? GUEST: Jesse Hirsh, metaviews.ca We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

How many strangers have you chatted with recently? Probably not a lot. And while your immediate reaction to that might be, "Great, I hate talking to strangers about nothing"—the research doesn't back you up. Casual small talk plays a larger role in our well-being than we assume it does, and most of us are doing much, much less of it these days. What does that mean for our happiness? And for our pathetic attempts at chit-chat once we emerge back into a world full of random social interactions? GUEST: Hannah Seo (You can read Hannah's piece in The Walrus) We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky

A year ago we never would have imagined that humanity could collectively change its work habits so quickly, or that governments could unveil ambitious national programs so quickly. We all saw a silver lining last Spring when the global shutdown brought with it clearer waters and skies and a record drop in emissions. If we're smart enough to harness what we've learned over the past 15 months, it could go a long way in the fight to keep our planet livable. If we don't ... we could end up right back where we started. Are we smart enough to apply pandemic lessons to the climate crisis? GUEST: Catherine Abreu, Executive Director, Climate Action Network Canada We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at [email protected] Or @thebigstory.bsky.social on Bluesky