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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

On Thursday Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith are set to announce the outlines of a plan that could set Alberta and B.C. on a collision course.

It’s a potential energy deal that would give Alberta special exemptions from federal environmental laws and offer political support for a new oil pipeline to the B.C. coast, among other things.

That is, if Alberta can get through the significant hurdles of opposition from First Nations and B.C. where Premier David Eby was completely cut out of the talks.

Today we discuss the politics of all this with the CBC’s chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton and Jason Markusoff from our Calgary bureau.

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

Correction: An earlier version of this episode misidentified B.C. Liberal MP Will Greaves. He represents the constituency of Victoria.

Hatchet buried? The politics of an Alberta energy deal

After meeting on the sidelines of the G20 in South Africa, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have announced they would restart trade talks.

It’s a long way from where the two countries have been for the last several years. Relations blew up in 2023 after former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused agents of India’s government of being involved in the murder of a Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Then, last year, the RCMP publicly accused such agents of being involved in a campaign of homicides, extortions and threats targeting the South Asian community on Canadian soil. Recently, the director of CSIS suggested that the problem hasn’t gone away.

In B.C.’s Lower Mainland, over 100 reports of extortion were made in the last year.

Two CBC reporters who have been covering this issue give us a closer look at what exactly has been happening on the ground in Canada, particularly when it comes to extortion, who might be behind it, and how this all connects to the larger context of a thawing relationship with India.

Baneet Braich is based out of Abbotsford, B.C. And Evan Dyer is with CBC’s Parliamentary bureau.

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

Gunshots, arson, threats: B.C.’s extortion crisis

At a press conference last week U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi laid out fresh allegations against Ryan Wedding, a 44-year-old Canadian and former Olympian who has been on the FBI’s most wanted list since March.

Wedding is already accused of orchestrating multiple murders, and these new charges add to the drug and conspiracy allegations he’s facing.

We speak to Calvi Leon, a reporter at the Toronto Star who’s been covering this case extensively.

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

The hunt for alleged cocaine kingpin Ryan Wedding

Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — the so-called "notwithstanding clause" — allows governments, both provincial and federal, to override sweeping sections of the other rights the Charter grants. It was intended as a last resort to prevent federal and judicial overreach, leaving power with elected officials, accountable to voters. A compromise demanded by premiers like Alberta's Peter Lougheed, the constitution almost certainly wouldn't exist without it.

Since enacted in 1982, the clause has been very rarely used outside of Quebec. But in recent years, politicians have been using it — or promising to — more and more. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has now used it twice in less than month to preempt court challenges on controversial labour and transgender youth laws.

University of Alberta political science professor Jared Wesley explains why governments are increasingly invoking this supposed last resort to achieve their goals, and the tensions it exposes in Canadian democracy.

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

Is the notwithstanding clause bad for democracy?

For decades there have been allegations that wealthy foreigners traveled into the Bosnian war, during the siege of Sarajevo, to shoot at besieged civilians for sport. That accusation is now the subject of an investigation by the public prosecutor's office in Milan, Italy.

Today, we’re joined by Janine di Giovanni who covered the Bosnian war as a reporter for the Times of London, and lived through the siege of Sarajevo. She’s the author of two books on the war, and has covered 18 wars across her 35 years in journalism. She joins us to talk about ‘sniper tourism’, and the legacy of a defining European conflict. 

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

The ‘sniper tourists’ of Sarajevo

Mark Carney’s Liberals survived a confidence vote on their first budget Monday night. 

It was a strange vote, with four members of the Conservatives and the NDP abstaining, as well as some voting chaos from two of the most powerful members of the Conservative Party.

CBC’s senior Parliamentary writer Aaron Wherry breaks down how the vote went, what it tells us about Parliament right now, and whether the budget itself signals a new era of Liberal politics. 

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

Did Carney just pass a Progressive Conservative budget?

Over 75 years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was established and signed by the newly formed United Nations after the atrocities of the Second World War to create a roadmap that establishes that every single person, regardless of who they are or where they’re from, has inalienable, inherent rights that the world must protect. But if you’ve been paying attention to the news at all lately, reality couldn’t seem further from that idea. 

Alex Neve is an international human rights lawyer and the former secretary general of Amnesty International Canada. He’s delivering this year’s Massey Lecture, broken into five parts, titled Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World. In it he goes through the massive challenges we face today and the things he’s learned from talking to people and bearing witness to human rights abuses from around the world. He also explores why the rights of some seem to take precedence over others. 

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

A hinge point for human rights

With the absolutely massive amounts of money tied up in the AI data centre boom, it's not hard to see why people fear a bubble. That worry has come into sharper focus in recent weeks, following comments from OpenAI and some big moves on the stock market.

This recent round of bubble fear isn't about the tech itself. Rather, it's a growing realization that the boom is being funded in a way that’s starting to resemble some historically devastating bubbles of the past.

Paul Kedrosky is a partner at the venture capital firm SK Ventures and a research fellow at MIT's Initiative for the Digital Economy. He explains why changes in the AI boom's financing are renewing fears of a bubble bursting, and the massive potential impacts if it does.

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

If AI is a bubble, what happens when it pops?

It started with U.S. President Donald Trump's 'quips' about Canada becoming the 51st state. Nearly a year later, the Canada-U.S. relationship has weathered a barrage of tariffs, trade threats and taunts. CBC's Washington bureau — Paul Hunter, Katie Simpson and Willy Lowry — weigh in on the past year of Canada-U.S. relations under Trump, the current trade stalemate and whether the country that's been known as Canada's ally is even still a friend.

Canada's complicated 'situationship' with the U.S. (FB Exclusive)

This week, thousands of pages of documents were released from the estate of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Some suggest Donald Trump knew more about Epstein’s crimes than the President has let on –– though the White House has called it a smear job.

These 23-thousand pages also tell a story that goes much further than the White House, giving insight into just how enmeshed Epstein was with global power-players and events.

Murtaza Hussain, a national security and foreign affairs reporter for Drop Site News, joins the show to discuss all of this and to share what his reporting has uncovered about the link between Epstein, Israeli intelligence officials and more.

Why the Epstein emails go way beyond Trump

Writer George Orwell has had a major impact on the way we talk about and view the world. His book 1984 introduced us to words and phrases like “thoughtcrime,” “doublespeak” and “Big Brother,” which have become common parts of our vocabulary. Seventy five years after his death, his ideas around mass surveillance and propaganda continue to resonate in a world of Big Tech, challenges to democracy, and distrust of institutions.

The new documentary Orwell: 2+2=5 by filmmaker Raoul Peck explores the origin of Orwell’s ideas, and how they connect to political events like the January 6th insurrection, the persecution of the Rohingya people in Myanmar, and the invasion of Ukraine.

Raoul Peck joins guest host Daemon Fairless to talk about Orwell’s life, his words, and the ideological battle over his ideas.

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

How Orwell’s words became our reality

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