Front Burner

CBC

Front Burner is a daily news podcast that takes you deep into the stories shaping Canada and the world. Each morning, from Monday to Friday, host Jayme Poisson talks with the smartest people covering the biggest stories to help you understand what’s going on.

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37 episodes
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Yesterday · 33 min
Why are AI leaders calling for a slow down?
It's been a remarkable week in the world of Artificial Intelligence. Last Tuesday, a researcher resigned from Anthropic, saying AI companies are "racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives." A current Anthropic employee agreed, saying he gives AI more than a 10 per cent chance of causing human extinction within the next 10 years. Then on Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published <a href="https://darioamodei.com/post/we-must-pace-the-f
Monday · 25 min
Risk and reward at Carney’s big investment summit
This week, some of the biggest financiers in the world will be gathering in downtown Toronto along with Prime Minister Mark Carney and the country's premiers for an investment summit.  The summit is part of Carney's plan to spur $1-trillion worth of investment in the country over the next five years. Senior business writer Peter Armstrong talks to Jayme Poisson about what's on offer, to whom, and considers the question: with all the uncertainty caused by the ongoing trad
Friday · 25 min
How is Mexico handling the Trump tariffs?
As the trade war between Canada and the U.S. continued to deepen this week, U.S. commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke ahead of a fourth round of negotiations between the two countries later this month.  Today, we look at the view from Mexico, the other partner in the CUSMA trio. What are the big table stakes in Mexico’s negotiations with the US? What kind of tightrope is Sheinbaum walking? And how could whatever happens between
Thursday · 26 min
Is a shaky U.S. bond market good for Canada?
Many economists say the bond market is the most important financial market in the world. It sets the baseline for almost everything Canadians borrow: mortgages, car loans, lines of credit. And right now, it’s looking pretty weird. 30-year U.S. Treasury yields are the highest they’ve been since 2007, in the runup to the great financial crisis. The U.S. now spends more on interest payments than they do on defence. Canadian bond yields are rising too. But, on th
September 9 · 31 min
Canada retaliates and trade war deepens
The U.S. announced a new string of bans and tariffs against Canadian products, set to go into effect later this month. This came after Canada imposed counter-tariffs against billions of dollars of American imports. As the trade war ramps up, we look to both sides of the border to see where it's all heading and what it would take to get back to the negotiating table. Politico's Ottawa Bureau Chief Nick Taylor-Vaisey joins us from Ottawa, alongside Politico's Washington-based
September 8 · 32 min
Trump, ICE and the impact of 9/11
 This week will mark 25 years since the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Those attacks, by al-Qaeda, killed nearly 3000 people. What followed that tragedy was the 'War on Terror', characterized by a series of foreign wars and domestic security measures. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, detention and torture at Guantanamo Bay and countless other prisons, and a mass surveillance s
September 7 · 27 min
Why are people vanishing in Dawson Creek, B.C.?
The Mile Zero Murders investigates the baffling wave of disappearances and murders in the small town of Dawson Creek, B.C., a community struggling with a deadly local drug trade. Host Timothy Sawa explores missing person cases like that of Cole Hosack and Renee Didier, pursuing leads from grieving families, reluctant authorities and the drug dealers themselves. The question that drives this series is the same one that haunts this community: where is the justice? </p
September 4 · 22 min
Is the age of reading over?
In her piece for the Atlantic, “The end of reading is here”, Rose Horowitch makes the case that across the board in the U.S. – people are reading less. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, fewer than half of all American adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022. Horowitch speaks with host Jayme Poisson about how this decline in reading has a dramatic effect on not only our leisure time and the education system, but also the way that we think and structure our societ
September 3 · 26 min
Why Quebec’s election has been turned upside down
In just over a month, Quebecers will head to the ballot box. And, until recently, this election seemed like a foregone conclusion: the Parti Quebecois, running on a promise to hold another independence referendum, had been ahead in the polls for the better part of three years. Then, the Canada-U.S. trade talks collapsed, and Quebec’s political future suddenly looks uncertain. The governing Coalition Avenir Quebec has surged from a distant fourth place, the PQ has shelved its
September 2 · 30 min
Is Germany's firewall against the far right crumbling?
After a vote this weekend, the far right could take power in a part of Germany for the first time since WWII. Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is far ahead in the polls in a state election in Saxony-Anhalt. They're promising massive changes to immigration, education, and what they call "patriotic cultural policy." Their rise is testing the country's firewall strategy, which was designed to stop parties seen as extremist from gaining power. CBC's Jessica Singer speaks with guest host Jason Mar
September 1 · 24 min
Protein-maxxing and the age of self-optimization
Protein was once mostly associated with body builders and elite athletes, but today it's advertised everywhere from cereal boxes to fast food restaurants. It's just one facet of a broader phenomenon: many are referring to apps and gadgets to count their steps, count calories, and check if they actually had a good night’s sleep.  But are our attempts to enact self-care actually making us self-obsessed? Writer and cultural critic John Seml
August 31 · 27 min
Politics! Trade war fallout, byelections
This weekend, U.S. President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated video of an army of geese with orange hair, holding machine guns, defending what he's now calling "Lake America." It's just the latest provocation in this new phase of the trade war we've entered.  Today, Parliamentary bureau senior writer Aaron Wherry joins guest host Jason Markusoff to discuss the Carney government's plan to weather the storm and how their decision to walk away from the deal with the U.S.
August 28 · 30 min
The culture war comes for the WNBA
For most of its history, the WNBA existed on the margins of American professional sports. Its players were outspoken on race, gender and LGBTQ rights, while the league struggled for the money and attention enjoyed by men’s sports. But today, the league has never been more popular. Women’s basketball has entered a new era of mainstream attention, driven in part by stars like Caitlin Clark. But that attention has brought something else with it: the American culture war.<
August 27 · 29 min
What Big Tech wants out of the trade war
When trade talks between Canada and the U.S. broke down last week, one of the issues that reportedly came up was Canadian streaming rules that require platforms like Netflix to make Canadian and French-language content easier to find in Canada. Prime Minister Mark Carney said that Canada would not compromise on protecting French culture. But U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said language was never the issue – rather "past discriminatory laws that target U.S. streaming companies."&nbsp
August 26 · 30 min
How the trade war is registering in America
On Tuesday, in the ongoing trade war with our southern neighbour, Canada released details on counter-tariffs that will be imposed on a wide range of American products, matching the $28-billion worth of Canadians goods that have been tariffed since the weekend.  It comes after days of heated rhetoric between US President Donald Trump, his officials and Canadian leaders, namely Ontario premier Doug Ford. But how is all of this registering for Americans? Especially with bot
August 25 · 30 min
How will the new tariffs hit Canada's economy?
U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening yet more tariffs, saying he’ll increase levies on cars, trucks and steel to 50% on January 1. This latest announcement comes as new tariffs came into place on Saturday on a number of Canadian goods worth $28 billion after trade negotiations fell apart. Peter Armstrong, CBC’s Senior Business Reporter, is back on the show to talk about what moving forward without a deal on these new tariffs means for the Canadian economy and what Prime
August 24 · 35 min
How the Canada-U.S. trade deal fell apart
On Friday, Canada's trade talks with the U.S. fell apart less than an hour before the deadline for new tariffs hit. While there had been positive signs earlier in the week, Prime Minister Mark Carney says the U.S. proposed new terms in recent days that were "uneconomic, unfair" and "called into question the reliability of any deal."  Former Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole is a member of the Prime Minister's Advisory Committee on Canada–U.S. Economic Relations. He joins
August 21 · 29 min
Carney's big challenge as Canada-U.S. trade deal nears
On Thursday, Canadian trade representatives were in Washington for more talks amid a tentative trade deal with the U.S.  Coming out of the meeting, Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said that they were "very close" to reaching an agreement. Today, CBC senior parliamentary writer Aaron Wherry and Abacus Data CEO David Coletto are here to parse through what we know so far about the impending trade deal and talk about the political test Prime Minis
August 20 · 38 min
Trade war update // What happened to 'woke' politics?
In 2020, the politics of racial justice appeared to be everywhere: the killing of George Floyd sparked one of the largest protest movements in American history, and progressive ideas about policing, prisons, racism and inequality moved into the political mainstream. But many of the central demands of the millions who took to the streets were ultimately not met. Six years later, some of the politicians and activists who came of age during that period now appea
August 19 · 25 min
New U.S. tariffs paused – for now. How did we get here?
Late Tuesday night, U.S. President Donald Trump announced he would pause the implementation of the 50 per cent tariffs on a range of Canadian goods for three days, saying the two countries had reached a tentative agreement. Shortly after, Prime Minister Mark Carney put out a statement that read, in part: "Substantial progress has been made, although there is important work still to be done." Host Jayme Poisson spoke to senior business correspondent Peter Armstrong earlier in

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