The Big Story

It’s not Donald Trump’s fault. He’s just an accelerant. America has been churning towards a crisis of democracy for decades. Our guest today created a model that predicted the 2020s would be the ultimate test for the future of America. The crisis point is here, so how will America respond? And what does it mean to Canada if our neighbours fail the democratic test? GUEST: Jack Goldstone, George Mason 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

On this show, we usually talk to experts—and that means during Covid-19 we've been speaking with doctors and infectious disease specialists, researchers and scientists, pundits and journalists, but not very often with average Canadians. Fortunately, someone has been. A new documentary that airs tonight follows several Canadians through the past six months, and takes us into their homes and virtual offices, giving us a glimpse of how all the big issues we discuss on The Big Story end up impacting folks who are just trying to live their lives in these "unprecedented times". GUEST: Pat Taney, Reporter/Producer, CityNews 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

In 1988, Toronto lawyer Clayton Ruby represented the family of a young man named Michael Wade Lawson. Though neither Ruby, the family or anyone else involved at the time knew it, it’s a case that's had a profound impact on how police forces in Canada’s largest province do—and don’t—hold themselves accountable. Michael Wade Lawson, you see, was 17—a young Black man who was shot and killed by the police. After his death, amid a public outcry, Ontario's Special Investigations Unit was created, to investigate cases of police misconduct that resulted in injury or death to civilians. And that’s where today's story begins. GUEST: Clayton Ruby 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 November, accused killer Alek Minassian will face trial for the 2018 Toronto van attack that killed 10 people and injured 16. In the aftermath of that attack, we learned that Minassian subscribed to the incel ideology—which has been linked to mass killings around the world. Incels entered the public consciousness as lonely people obsessed with other people's sex lives. But in recent years they've become increasingly deadly. How do young men find themselves radicalized into the incel subculture online? Where are they slipping through the cracks? And how can we respond more effectively to signs of violence before it happens? GUEST: Katherine Laidlaw 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 a lot of things that provincial back-to-school guidelines don't cover—because they can't. Every school is different, and so are the neighbourhoods they serve. And as students return, teachers and administrators often need answers, quickly, to problems they couldn't have foreseen. This is where a new program led by hospitals and doctors in Toronto's east end comes in. Each school is matched up with a doctor or hospital worker who can take their unique questions and come back to them with solutions. How can we do safe screenings with hundreds of kids and little outdoor space? How do you get toddlers to wear masks? What if physical distancing is impossible in my classroom? And at what point do we have to worry about uncontrolled outbreaks and school closures? GUEST: Dr. Janine McCready, infectious disease physician, Michael Garron Hospital 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 been 25 years since the Ipperwash crisis and the killing of Dudley George. Long enough that there's a generation that doesn't remember it—but they have plenty of examples of modern-day land defenders standing up against the government. But the original protesters, who took back land the government had promised to return to them 50 years ago and won? They're still there. Still living at Stony Point. Still waiting for the military to clean up the mess it left behind. Still holding out hope of returning the land to its lush former glory. And in the meantime, they're trying to live on what the government left behind. GUEST: Cristina Howorun, CityNews 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

Are you addicted to the news? Don't lie! It's understandable. This year has been hard, and everything feels like a crisis sometimes, and some of us can't look away. Not knowing what's happening in the world at all is not an option, but what if we don't have to know everything absolutely immediately? Is it possible to regulate the way you consume the news without missing out on the things that matter? Is it possible to go cold turkey for a little while to break the habit? GUEST: Peter Laufer, James Wallace Chair Professor in Journalism at the University of Oregon, author of Dreaming in Turtle and Up Against the Wall: The Case for Opening the Mexican-U.S. Border. 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 been a chaotic and eventful—and still not yet close to done—return to schools across Canada. A majority of parents have chosen to return their kids to the classroom. Other have opted for remote learning either by necessity or preference. And then there are the private pods—small bubbles of a few families, taught by a teacher hired to work privately. Of course, having the means to afford private instructions for your kids is a privilege. It's a sign of inequality in education access. And if the pandemic lingers and drives more families to this solution, it could potentially undermine the school system. But should any of that matter to parents whose first job is to keep their children safe in the best environment possible? GUEST: Matt Gurney, National Post, Code 47 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

In a large house, in a very nice area of Toronto, in the 1970s and 80s, there lived a normal family: Mom, dad, kids. Roughly thirty kids, actually, most of them adopted from all over the worlds. Thirty kids with different languages, needs, dreams and personalities. Why did they do it? What happened when they did? What kind of legacy does the Simpson family leave behind today in a city and country they helped build just be being a normal, loving, ever-growing family? GUEST: Nicholas Hune-Brown, Toronto Life 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 SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy took off from a NASA launchpad this year, it marked a new era of manned spaceflight, one in which private businesses have as much of a stake in success as government space agencies. But have we stopped along the way to think about the ramifications of that? What rules do companies like SpaceX have to follow once they are out on the final frontier? If they break them, who makes sure they pay for it? And as technology evolves at a rapid pace and these partnerships become more common, who or what stops space from becoming the new wild west? GUEST: Michael O'Shea 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 Canadians are obese. That's a fact. But a lot of the things you think you know about that fact—why they're obese, how they could lose weight, what they need to hear from their doctors—just aren't true. Last month Canada unveiled a new set of guidelines for treating obesity, and the biggest headline among the recommendations was: "No dieting." But the guidelines don't stop there. From an acceptance of surgery as a solution, challenging the biases of doctors and looking at obesity as a science-based problem, they call for a dramatic change in approach to the problem. Will they work? Will we follow them? GUEST: Dr. Sean Wharton 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 was a program created at unimaginable speed under incredible circumstances. And it has helped millions of Canadians. But six months later—two months longer than initially planned—the federal government is ending the Canada Emergency Response Benefit. So what’s next? Expanded EI qualifications, new programs for those who don't qualify for EI and other efforts aimed at supporting workers still impacted by COVID-19. Who qualifies? For how much? How quickly and for how long? And what do you need to prepare to apply? We've got a guide to post-CERB Canadian government help. GUEST: Rosa Saba, business reporter, Toronto Star 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 of the goals of the movement to defund the police is to limit a police force's ability to acquire expensive, military-style equipment. Even if that movement is successful, however, the police have other ways of funding their purchases. It doesn't get much attention, but police foundations across Canada have in recent years used money given to them by corporate donors to help police purchase everything from a patrol boat to an armoured vehicle and a drone program. None of those purchases needed the approval of city hall or the public. None of them was open and transparent. And none of them would have been stopped by defunding the police department. In fact, as defunding the police gains momentum, these foundations will become more attractive to police departments and more outrageous to people who worry about preferential treatment for donors. GUEST: Martin Lukacs 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 already something some people try to avoid—and the thought of spending hours in a courtroom with others, masked or not, doesn't make jury duty any more appealing. But jury trials are returning this month, and so jury questionnaires are already on the way to mailboxes. But what's being done to keep jurors safe? To make it worthwhile for them to serve? And to mitigate that added burden on any disruption to work or home life that comes with COVID-19? Should we be trying to make jury trials function well enough, or take this opportunity to rethink jury duty forever? GUEST: Mark Farrant, CEO of the Canadian Juries Commission 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 practice of solitary confinement in Canada had been found to violate inmates' human rights. The government had been given a year to fix it, and last December, the year was almost up. Since then, a lot has changed in the world. But it seems not a lot has changed in our prison system. And if anything had really changed, we likely wouldn’t know, because the government won’t tell us. It won't even tell the panel it appointed to watch over its work. Why? GUEST: Justin Ling 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 sucks to think about cold weather and flu season when BBQs and beaches are still on the menu, but that’s the life of epidemiologists during a global pandemic. School starts next week. Fall is almost here. We’ve learned a lot about Covid-19 since February but have we used that knowledge to prepare for an inevitable second wave? And when that wave does come, how bad will it be? GUEST: Dr. David Fisman, epidemiologist 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're bringing you a special episode of our sister show, Black Tea. In this one, Mel and Dalton talk to Celina Caesar-Chavannes, a former Member of Parliament, about how a lack of political will directly harm Black communities. We hope you'll listen. 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 special episode of the Big Story looks at what has happened in sports over the past 48 hours and asks a question: If it isn't business as usual, and talking won't get things done, what will? GUEST: None. 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’ve probably lived most of your life with rising income inequality. The rich steadily get richer while the rest of us just try to keep up. It’s difficult sometimes to keep in mind that it wasn’t always this way; that this is a choice we made—maybe not us, but the people we put in power. What Covid-19 has done to steadily rising inequality is, basically, the equivalent of throwing gas on a fire. We're getting dangerously close to a tipping point. What happens when we reach it? GUEST: Bruce Livesey, investigative reporter and writer 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 loves Top Gun, but he admits he's not Maverick. He courted the social conservative vote, then turned around and made a play for moderates. He wants a more inclusive Conservative Party of Canada, but he won't budge on the carbon tax. How did Erin O'Toole pull off the upset victory? What's his vision for the party he now leads? Where did he come from and is he just boring enough to put a real scare into Justin Trudeau and the Liberals? GUEST: Marie-Danielle Smith, Maclean's (Read Marie-Danielle's profile of O'Toole 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

It's perhaps the worst news you can imagine getting—and the only way to make it worse is to get it via videoconference in the midst of a pandemic. COVID-19 has forced sudden changes to the medical system, and created a flood of new health questions for anyone at risk. But do we have the answers? How do we give patients the care they need for life-threatening illnesses, and the support they need to fight through them, when we're still learning about a new virus? GUEST: Anne Borden, writer, host of Noncompliant. 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 past six months have featured a lot of speculation about what the pandemic has done to the average workday for those lucky enough to have a job that can be done at home. Now we have some real data on how the lives of millions of workers have changed. Are we working more or less? Are our meetings getting longer? What are we missing about the office? How can companies adapt to what their workforce needs? And which strategies that we're learning now will stick around? GUEST: Jeff Polzer, Professor of Human Resource Management, Harvard Business School 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

Anne With An E is a reimagining of Lucy Maude Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables tales. It ran for three seasons, and then got cancelled. And the fans took it personally. This isn’t a conversation about Anne With An E, though, it's a conversation about what happens when popular culture becomes a political identity. GUEST: John Semley 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

Since Monday, the nation’s federal government has seen a high-profile resignation, a historic appointment, a prorogation of parliament in the middle of a pandemic, the release of 5,000 pages of documents concerning the government’s latest scandal, the promise of a reset and the threat of a fall election. Just another lazy August weekend in Ottawa. So why did the Liberals prorogue parliament? What will happen when it returns? Did Bill Morneau resign or was he fired? And what will Chrystia Freeland include in what is expected to be an ambitious plan for economic recovery? 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

You probably first heard it from the mouth of a losing coach or player—but that's not where it came from. You may have noticed that US President Donald Trump used it to brush off 150,000 dead Americans, and everything that happened afterwards. It's a phrase that means almost nothing, yet is used to describe everything. So why has it become so ubiquitous? When we say "It is what it is", what are we trying to convey? How versatile is it and how much depends on who's using it? And when we do use it, what precisely is the "it" we're referring to? GUEST: Miles Klee, MEL 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

In most places, restaurants can reopen for indoor dining—with a whole lot of restrictions. But with limited seating available, it's going to be impossible for most places to sustain their business on diners alone. And most of us don't feel great about going right back to a restaurant anyway. So...what next? As awful as COVID-19 has been for the hospitality industry, it has merely accelerated some longtime trends like to move to delivery and takeout, the phenomenon of Ghost Kitchens and other, more creative, ways of doing business. So what will the restaurants that survive the pandemic look like when life returns to normal? GUEST: Corey Mintz, food 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

Tracy Moore took over as host of Cityline 12 years ago, the first black woman to host a Canadian daytime lifestyle show. The reaction to her debut was…ugly. But 12 years later, Tracy is still here, and has been talking fashion and health and recipes and everything else you’d expect for more than a decade. But now, she’s also talking about anti-racism and white supremacy. On a lifestyle show. In a space that’s traditionally been considered out of bounds for anything political or uncomfortable. So how is that working out? GUEST: Tracy Moore, host of Cityline 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

What the Toronto Raptors are attempting has never been done before—they're trying to shed a superstar and get even better. When the reigning champs begin the NBA Playoffs Monday against Brooklyn, they'll do so with a better winning percentage than they managed with Kawhi Leonard shutting down opponents and filling the bucket. What makes this group so special? How do they go about winning games against teams that feature Hall of Famers at the top of their rosters? What will they have to do to thrive in a star-driven playoff series? What's their biggest weakness? And can they really, actually win another NBA title? GUEST: Michael Grange, 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

There are lots of reasons schools should open in the fall. From parents' sanity and productivity to the fact that without the childcare schools provide, working parents are basically screwed and economic recovery is impossible. But there's another assumption that we make when discussing sending kids back in September: That going back will be the best thing for their mental health. What if that assumption's wrong? School can be a source of anxiety and stress for kids at the best of times, never mind how it feels when it comes with fear of contracting Covid-19 and bringing it home to make a parent or grandparent sick. Classroom learning doesn't work for some kids, even without teachers in masks and socially distanced. Maybe we should have a more nuanced conversation about what school in a pandemic could look like, instead of assuming it's either in-person or a boring, glitchy Zoom call. GUEST: Dr. Tyler Black, suicidologist and emergency psychiatrist in B.C. 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

Should you drive, take the train or fly? Where should you stay when you arrive? Can you use public bathrooms—and how do you do it safely? Are airlines still enforcing social distancing inside planes? Do you need to wipe down your tray table? Can you ride in a car with another family if you all wear masks? Travel is about getting outside of our comfort zone—which means something much different in 2020. But for those of us with loved ones in other cities, provinces and countries, it might be a necessity, either due to an emergency or just for our own mental health. So, how do you assess risk when you're on the road? And if you are going to travel, how do you do it safely? 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

Ontario's premier won a landslide election in 2018, but by the end of last year his approval rating was underwater. It's fair to say that when COVID-19 began, Ontarians were skeptical of his leadership. Six months later, though, Ford's approval is sky high. So what happened? Did Ford rise to the challenge or just beat low expectations? Has he really changed minds or is this just a crisis bump? What did Ford do right and wrong over the past six months? And what's next for a leader who could be right back on shaky ground if his plan to reopen schools ends in disaster? GUEST: Nick Taylor-Vaisey, Maclean'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

Dead sea lions turn up from time to time on beaches in British Columbia. That's not unusual. Recently though they’ve been found missing their heads. And yes, that’s the strange part. But not the strangest part. What or who, took their heads? Before or after they died? Why? What happened to the heads after they were severed? And what does this whole strange saga tell us about the delicate balance of predator and prey … and working fisheries on our west coast? GUEST: Wanyee Li, Vancouver Bureau, Toronto Star 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 worth looking, every so often, at the stories of 2020 that haven’t gotten much attention because of the...raging global pandemic, furious protests against police brutality and racism, the never-ending saga of Donald Trump somehow being President of the United States and the general 2020 news like murder hornets, plane crashes and catastrophic global warming. It’s been a busy year and some things slip through the cracks. Little things, you know? Aliens, stuff like that. Wait! Aliens? Yup. Aliens. It's that kind of year. GUEST: Marie-Danielle Smith, Maclean'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

When they're going through elementary and high school, nobody asks these children and teens about their immigration status. That's policy in our system. When they graduate however, even if they've got straight 'A's, post-secondary education is just about impossible. So some of our brightest young people leave school, and take up under-the-table jobs in factories and bakeries, putting aside their dreams to keep themselves and their families safe in Canada. Is there a better way? Meet Canada's 'Dreamers'. GUEST: David Bruser, Investigative Reporter, The Toronto Star 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's a ton of good news about various Covid-19 vaccine trials moving to Phase Three. What does that actually mean? Some companies might even begin production now, hoping for positive results, in order to meet global demand should the vaccine be proven to work. Politicians keep touting early 2021 as a target, but... What do we still need for these vaccines to be proven effective? Who makes that call and what goes into it? What role will politics play? Can we even hope to make enough to treat everyone? And what if some people refuse to take a vaccine that's been cleared for use? GUEST: Ivan Semeniuk, Health 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

In casual discussion of the virus, the term "Long Haulers" is, generally, used to describe people for whom symptoms of Covid-19 can linger for weeks and months, long after the worst seems to be over. And that can be debilitating. But that’s not the only kind of ‘long-hauler’. There are also people, we’re learning, who recover, but continue to test positive weeks later. Even without any symptoms. How long can this virus linger inside people? What can other diseases that stay with people for years and even lifetimes tell us about what we’re seeing in these cases with Covid? What do we still not know about how all this works? GUEST: Roxanne Khamsi, science writer 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

Kanye's a celebrity. He lives his life extremely publicly and he's openly discussed his mental health. So many of us feel free to speculate about it, too. When we do, we're also talking about thousands of non-celebrities who live with mental health challenges—and they hear exactly what we're saying. Why do we feel so confident to discuss the mental health of celebrities as though we know them? What does calling Kanye 'crazy' or 'unhinged' do to other people with bipolar disorder who aren't rich and famous? And how can we call out Kanye for his offensive behaviour without blaming it on his condition? GUEST: Stacy Lee Kong, author of Friday Things 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 landmark ruling last week found that sending refugee claimants back to the United States under the Safe Third Country Agreement violates their human rights—and a federal judge has given the government six months to fix or terminate the policy. What does this mean for the US-Canada border? For the thousands of refugees every year that arrive in the United States then try to make it to Canada? To understand this agreement you have to go back to the months after 9/11, when immigration and border security were undergoing massive changes. And to understand why the agreement has been invalidated in court, you need to look at what's changed at the border in the years since then. GUEST: Sharry Aiken, Professor of Immigration Law, Queen's 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

There are at least 102 kids. Most of them are Indigenous. Over seventeen years their money was stolen from their bank accounts, pushing them into poverty, homelessness and worse. And nobody noticed. Nobody cared. A multimillion dollar settlement from the BC government admits that this happened, and attempts to make up for the failures with at least $25,000 per victim. But no criminal charges have been filed. No inquiry is forthcoming. And the details of how this happened gives us a look into just how unfair the system that's supposed to help these kids can be. GUEST: Holly Moore, Investigative Producer, APTN 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 as a strange conspiracy theory in American politics. It's since become much strange, much more widespread and much more dangerous. QAnon has spread around the world and driven real-life events that put lives in danger, including here in Canada. How did this happen? What's behind QAnon's rapid spread and how can we try to convince believers that none of it is true? And what happens if we simply can't stop it and something awful happens? GUEST: Marc-André Argentino, Concordia 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

Last summer, long before a pandemic was on the horizon, the biggest story was a teenage manhunt. After discovering the bodies of Lucas Fowler and Chynna Deese at one location and Leonard Dyck at another, the RCMP named an 18 and a 19-year-old as their main suspects. And they were on the run. After a nationwide sweep that involved the military and tons of media coverage, police found the killers' bodies in the brush of northern Manitoba. In a video found on site, Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky confessed to the murders and voiced their plans to end it all with a murder suicide. Now, a year later, the RCMP are preparing to close the case for good. But one major question remains: Why did they do it? GUEST: Alex McKeen, Vancouver bureau reporter for the Toronto Star, who, with colleague Douglas Quan, recently wrote about the anniversary. 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 nation yawns awake following a months-long shutdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19, restaurants are welcoming diners again. This once fully relaxing experience is now riddled with reminders to be vigilant: Sign-in sheets to allow for contact tracing. Strict rules about wearing face masks indoors. Tables positioned six feet apart. This is a whole new world — unfamiliar to diners, for sure, but also nearly unrecognizable to restaurant staff who’ve gone from being out of work to being frontline workers. And the tips? Let’s just say they’ve been better. As the restaurant industry adjusts to this new reality, there may well be an opportunity for fundamental change — and some advocates have put the practice of tipping on the chopping block. What’s so bad about the gratuity system? And what would a world without tipping look like? Guest: Hassel Aviles, co-founder of Not9to5, a Canadian nonprofit that empowers hospitality workers by connecting them with resources on mental health and substance use. 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 an iconic image of Canada: A Mountie, donning a red serge, Stetson hat, combat boots, standing on guard for thee, which is usually taken to mean “all of us.” But this image, as mighty as it seems, is attached to what critics call a massive, dysfunctional, paramilitary institution that can’t seem to ever hold itself accountable. Its relationship with Indigenous peoples is as strained as ever and there is quaking within its ranks, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars spent on inquiries and settlements. While the residents of Portapique, Nova Scotia took to the streets this week demanding a public inquiry into the RCMP’s response the day 22 of its residents died at the hands of a gunman, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission found the Mounties’ “command and control” approach to policing has led to “unreasonable" use of force in their response to mental health and wellbeing calls. It doesn’t help that their top official can’t answer a basic question on whether systemic racism exists in the force. Can the RCMP be truly and meaningfully reformed? Does it need to be? GUEST: Jane Gerster, a national features reporter for Global News, who has done in-depth investigative reporting on the RCMP. GUEST HOST: Sarah Boesveld 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

Radiyah Chowdhury first thought about leaving the media business when she was still in journalism school. Back in her first year classes, sitting amongst a sea of white peers, she remembers getting an introduction to the idea of “objectivity” and feeling awash in anxiety. “Objectivity, as it was presented to us seemed to be tailored for a specific type of person, one whose capacity to be dispassionate about certain issues came from a place of privilege that was unfamiliar to me,” she wrote in an essay that won this year’s Dalton Camp Award. The industry, as it is, poses a next to impossible ask for journalists of colour, wrote the assistant editor at Chatelaine. These storytellers have been tokenized and largely shut out of an industry dominated by white people. Now that the news business is being taken to task for systemic racism, will we finally see meaningful change? Or will the media cycle churn on? GUEST: Radiyah Chowdhury, assistant editor at Chatelaine and winner of the 2020 Dalton Camp Award 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

Matthew McKnight was a fixture in the Edmonton bar scene, known for partying in colourful animal themed jumpsuits and sometimes only his underwear. He’d buy rounds of drinks, distributing them to pretty young women enjoying a night on the town. In April 2016 the first — a 17-year-old girl — would report to police that she had been sexually assaulted by McKnight. Many other women soon came forward with their own experiences of assault at the hands of a man whose exploits had been an “open secret” for far too long. This past fall, Matthew McKnight pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of sexual assault against 13 different women. In January, a jury found him guilty of five of them. Now, as he awaits sentencing, the case is being scrutinized as one of Canada’s first legal reckonings of the MeToo era — a test of how the court handled a rare case of multiple charges of assault against one serial sexual predator. Can justice really be served? Guest: Jana Pruden, crime and feature writer with The Globe and Mail. You can read her feature about the McKnight case 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

By now we've become at least semi-acquainted with the idea that advertisers and social media companies scrape and use our personal information in ways we can't even begin to comprehend. But a new analysis of the ways LGBTQ people are targeted, surveilled and censored online reveals a disturbing and disheartening tool international governments are using to persecute the queer community: Data from dating apps. In a report released last week, cybersecurity company Recorded Future found dating apps like OKCupid, Grindr and Tinder collected user data, including users' exact location, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, political beliefs, drug use and more, and shared it with at least 135 third party entities. The company observed multiple cybersecurity attacks traced back to Russia and other Eastern European countries as well as cases all over the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa. Sometimes, people were entrapped, beaten and tortured. What implications does this data collection and dissemination have for queer peoples' safety online — and what can be done to protect them? GUEST: Jane Lytvynenko, senior reporter with Buzzfeed News, who wrote about the Recorded Future report. GUEST HOST: Sarah Boesveld 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, Harper’s magazine published an open letter, speaking out against a culture of “intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.” The letter was signed by 150 people. Among them, prominent figures like J.K. Rowling, Margaret Atwood, and Salman Rushdie. Once published, it created a wave of backlash, and at least two people withdrew their names when they saw who else had signed it. Today, a discussion with one of the letter’s signatories about flawed democracies, and why she felt it was important to sign the letter. GUEST: Anne Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism 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 Canadian Association of the Chiefs of Police announced their support for decriminalizing the personal possession of illicit drugs. Drug use and addiction, they said, is a public health issue. And simple possession should be treated with health and social service resources, rather than through the criminal justice system. It’s an idea researchers and people who work in addiction have hammered away at for decades. But it's still a shocking position for the association representing police chiefs across the country. So why now? And what does this mean for drug policy in Canada? GUEST: Justin Ling, investigative reporter. GUEST HOST: Sarmishta Subramanian 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 can joke as much as we want about it, but the reality is that we all go to the bathroom, every single day. It’s a basic human need. Yet many cities are failing at providing accessible public toilets for everyone. What will it take for politicians and city planners to take the issue seriously and address the underlying discrimination and inequality? Which cities are doing it right? How has the pandemic highlighted the need for accessible public washrooms? Could this be a turning point? GUEST: Lezlie Lowe, author of No Place to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs GUEST HOST: Sarmishta Subramanian 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 the entire country went into lockdown a few months ago, it meant kids would be staying home and most of their parents would be too. But now, as businesses reopen and people start going back to work, parents are wondering where their kids are supposed to go. With Labour Day fast approaching, are we doing all that we can to ensure a safe full return to school and protect the educational rights of children? If not, how many parents will have to leave the workforce to provide for their kids? And can you take a wild guess as to which parent that responsibility will usually fall on? GUEST: Lauren Dobson-Hughes, gender and international health consultant. Read her opinion piece here. GUEST HOST: Sarmishta Subramanian 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