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

Front Burner

A horrific mass shooting took place in the small community of Tumbler Ridge, B.C. on Tuesday – one of the deadliest in Canadian history.

Nine people are dead, including the suspect, and 27 more were injured. Many of the victims were as young as 12 or 13 years old.

CBC senior reporter Caroline Barghout is in Tumbler Ridge covering the ongoing investigation. She joins host Jayme Poisson with the latest on the tragedy, and how a community – and country – is in mourning.

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

Tragedy in Tumbler Ridge

Jonathan Haidt, best-selling author of “The Anxious Generation”, is our guest today. He’s been on a global mission to educate parents, the media, and government officials about the harms that social media companies inflict on children.

He believes that the world ran a huge uncontrolled experiment on kids in the 2010s by giving them smartphones and social media accounts. And now, there is clear evidence – often through court case disclosure – that the experiment has harmed children, and that it’s time to call it off.

Haidt has been calling on governments to ban social media for those under 16. And they’re listening. Canada is reportedly considering one for kids under 14 right now.

Today, we’re going to get into some of Jonathan Haidt’s research, what he thinks a ban can achieve, and more broadly about his core goal: reclaiming childhood.

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

The case to ban kids from social media, with Jonathan Haidt

The final remaining agreement constraining U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons expired last week.

The New START treaty was established by President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in 2010. And since then the treaty has governed much of the global landscape concerning nuclear weapons and non-proliferation. Reporting suggests both sides remain in talks.

Yet as the U.S. threatens annexation, attacks nations abroad, and threatens to re-emerge as a colonial power in the Western Hemisphere, some are asking whether nuclear weapons have become a necessity for countries hoping to guarantee their sovereignty. Canada’s former defence chief Wayne Eyre has said we should “keep our options open” on acquiring nuclear weapons.

For more on the future of this landmark treaty, and the possibility of a nuclear arms race, we’re joined by George Perkovich. He is the author of a number of books on nuclear weapons and non-proliferation and Senior Fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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

Should Canada have nuclear weapons?

Last week, Donald Trump’s border Czar Tom Homan announced a drawdown of ICE personnel in Minnesota, following weeks of chaos and two deadly incidents in the state. Homan insisted that ICE was not surrendering, and this departure was instead evidence of ICE’s success in Minnesota. 

Beginning in December 2025, ICE announced ‘Operation Metro Surge’ — an aggressive immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota described as “the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out.” The operation incited weeks of protest, direct action and civil disobedience across the Twin Cities.

Today, we take a step back to assess how this operation unfolded, why Minneapolis became the stage for it, and what the unified response across so much of Minnesota says about the state of immigration enforcement in the U.S. today. We’re joined by Robert Worth, a contributing writer with The Atlantic who spent time in Minneapolis last month to report on the protests.

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

ICE, and lessons from Minnesota

Today on the show we are going to discuss the complete gutting of the Washington Post, an American institution. The paper that broke Watergate. The paper that just nine years ago told the world “Democracy Dies in Darkness”.

And we’re going to place this latest news in the context of a much broader political assault on journalism, and the further consolidation of information in the hands of the billionaire class of Trump allies.

Our guest today is Max Tani. He is the media editor and co-host of the Mixed Signals podcast at Semafor.

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

The Washington Post and billionaires’ assault on journalism

Last week the U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent issued a very public warning to Prime Minister Mark Carney. At the centre of that warning is the USMCA trade deal, which kept Trump’s tariffs from unleashing even deeper damage to the Canadian economy.

 

A mandatory review of the US-Mexico-Canada pact is kicking-off now. It has turned into a high stakes negotiation, with the U.S. poised to squeeze Canada and Mexico and to use the negotiation itself as leverage to advance the administration’s interests. 

 

Today, trade expert Eric Miller is back to talk about where the trade talks are headed, what the Americans are hoping for, and what would happen if the deal got ripped up altogether. Miller is the president of Rideau Potomac Strategy Group and a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. 

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

What’s behind Trump’s latest Canada threats?

Jeffrey Epstein’s vast connections with the rich and powerful, the world over, are on full display in the over 3 million files and documents released by the U.S. Justice department late last week.

There’s mounting evidence of Epstein’s relationships with people like President Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and tech titan Peter Thiel, as well as behind the scenes dealmaking with global power brokers.

Today, we go over the biggest revelations with Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney. We also discuss why so few have been held accountable.

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

Epstein’s orbit: will justice come?

Around 73 thousand people have been detained in ICE facilities across the United States over the past year. That’s a 75 per cent increase from right before Donald Trump took office. At least 38 people have died in ICE custody since then. 

It’s all part of the Trump administration’s rapidly expanding immigration crackdown, which has included the addition of over one hundred new facilities. One of those facilities, in south Florida, has been dubbed Alligator Alcatraz. In December Amnesty International USA detailed conditions there, finding they amounted to quote “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”.

Amy Fischer, Director for Refugee and Migrant Rights at Amnesty International USA joins us to talk about what happens when people are detained by ICE and what, if anything, courts and lawmakers can do to stop it.

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

What happens in ICE detention?

Pierre Poilievre easily won his leadership review in Calgary on the weekend with 87.4% of the vote. Today, senior Parliamentary bureau writer Aaron Wherry talks about the convention, whether it guarantees Poilievre’s future and what challenges still lie ahead for the Conservative leader. Plus, why a press conference at a grocery store prompted election speculation.

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

Politics! Poilievre’s win, election speculation

In just over a decade, the Conservative Party of Canada has lost four elections, picked three new leaders, and turned on two of them when they failed to become Prime Minister. As the party votes on Pierre Poilievre’s future as leader of the Conservative Party, Front Burner speaks to Conservative insiders, Abacus Data CEO David Coletto and senior parliamentary writer Aaron Wherry to consider the path the Conservatives took to this point and whether Poilievre can keep the party united behind him.

Leader or loser: Poilievre’s crucial vote

Earlier this week, Blake Lemoine, an engineer who works for Google’s Responsible AI department, went public with his belief that Google’s LaMDA chatbot is sentient.

LaMDA, or Language Model for Dialogue Applications, is an artificial intelligence program that mimics speech and tries to predict which words are most related to the prompts it is given.

While some experts believe that conscious AI is something that will be possible in the future, many in the field think that Lemoine is mistaken — and that the conversation he has stirred up about sentience takes away from the immediate and pressing ethical questions surrounding Google’s control over this technology and the ease at which people can be fooled by it.

Today on Front Burner, cognitive scientist and author of Rebooting AI, Gary Marcus, discusses LaMDA, the trouble with testing for consciousness in AI and what we should really be thinking about when it comes to AI’s ever-expanding role in our day-to-day lives.

Did Google make conscious AI?

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