Front Burner

Over the last week or so the debate over Canada’s immigration policy has come to the forefront.In Alberta, Premier Danielle Smith has promised to put a series of restrictive new immigration policies to a provincial referendum.In Ottawa, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has brought forward a motion that would compel the federal government to review and restrict the services available to asylum seekers.Critics have said both moves scapegoat immigrants.This is all happening at a time when polling shows that popular support for immigration is on the decline.Today's guest is someone who is uniquely positioned to talk about the proposed changes in immigration policy.Jason Kenney is the former United Conservative Party Premier of Alberta.Prior to that, Kenney spent nearly two decades in federal politics, and was a cabinet minister in Stephen Harper’s Conservative party.He spent years working on the immigration and multiculturalism file and was widely credited for shifting the support of new Canadians from the Liberals to the Conservatives.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Mass violence broke out on Sunday in Mexico after a military raid killed the most wanted, and feared, cartel boss in the country — a man known as El Mencho.We take a closer look at the aftermath of the operation and ask some questions: who was this kingpin, what is the powerful criminal organization he presided over, and what could happen in his absence?With us today is David Mora in Guadalajara. He’s the senior Mexico analyst at International Crisis Group.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

From two heartbreaking hockey losses to the fiery debate over whether the men’s gold medal curling team was cheating, Milano Cortina 2026 was a dramatic one for Team Canada. The games also brought some headscratching moments like a Norwegian biathlete confessing to infidelity minutes after a race and an investigation into Olympic ski-jumping dubbed ‘penis-gate’. We break down the storylines from the Winter Olympics that dominated our timelines and got us talking with senior contributor at CBC Sports, Shireen Ahmed.

On Thursday, former Prince Andrew was arrested by U.K. police.After years of controversy, scandal and allegations of sexual assault, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was taken into custody on suspicion of misconduct in public office.The arrest is related to his decades-long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, and the former prince is alleged to have sent confidential government documents to the convicted sex offender.Today, Andrew Lownie, a historian and the author of Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, joins the show. We get into the details of the arrest, the long-standing ties between the former prince and Epstein and what recently released documents reveal.

Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberals welcomed a third Conservative floor crosser on Wednesday – Edmonton MP Matt Jeneroux. And with three by-elections coming up, two from Liberal strongholds, a Liberal majority is looking like a possibility. So a pretty seismic day on Parliament Hill. CBC’s senior writer Aaron Wherry is here to talk through how this could all play out for the Liberals and for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Looksmaxxers are a community of young men dedicated to the pursuit of maximizing their physical appearance, often at great personal cost. Many are spending thousands of dollars on cosmetic procedures, or even taking blunt objects to their faces, in the hopes of masculinizing their features to become more handsome. Or, as they refer to it: “ascending.” In a world where so many young people — particularly young men — feel as though it’s impossible to get ahead, we’ve got a conversation about this viral community augmenting their bodies in the hopes of doing exactly that. Aidan Walker is a writer and content creator whose work explores all kinds of online subcultures. He joins the show to talk about looksmaxxing, its central characters, connections to the far right, and what the movement reveals about young men right now.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Last week, a 5000 word post on X with the headline “Something big is happening” went viral. It was written by Matt Shumer, the CEO of HyperWrite, an AI writing tool and in it he says he’s recently watched AI go from a helpful tool to something that “does my job better than I do”. And he’s not the only one. The CEO of Anthropic, one of the biggest AI companies today, wrote an essay saying it could replace half of all entry-level white collar jobs in the next one to five years. What’s behind the sudden vibe shift? A good part of it has to do with the abilities of AI agents, which are basically AI models you give a task to perform for you, with the promise of little supervision.Are we on the precipice of something big? Or is it another way to build hype amid fears of a bubble? Will Douglas Heaven, senior AI editor for the MIT Technology Review, joins us to separate reality from hype. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Get lost in someone else’s life. From a mysterious childhood spent on the run, to a courageous escape from domestic violence, each season of Personally invites you to explore the human experience in all its complexity, one story — or season — at a time.In the latest season of Personally: Creation Myth, Helena does not want kids. Her husband believes she’ll change her mind—she has so much love to give, she would be a perfect mother. That will never happen, she tells him. Again. And again. Until one day, he leaves.In the silence, doubt starts rushing in. So she asks her close friends, her mother, her sister, even a perfect stranger—did she make the right decision? What is the purpose of life? Center your pleasure, says one friend. Go for adventure, says another, and isn’t parenthood the biggest adventure of all? Be true to yourself, says a father who regrets his decision. But the voice she needs to hear is her own. More episodes of Creation Myth are available wherever you get your podcasts and here: https://link.mgln.ai/CMxFB

Cuba has been facing rolling blackouts, food shortages, and rationed hospital resources after a month with no oil imports. The energy crisis has also been a major blow to the country’s tourism industry, as major airlines suspended service to the country.The cutoff came after the United States severed the island’s access to Venezuelan oil in January, and then warned any country supplying Cuba it could face retaliation. The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson has been reporting on the region for decades. He joins us to talk about how the Trump administration hopes this could end communist rule in the country.

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. 

Over the last few weeks, the Trump administration has explicitly or implicitly borrowed from the Nazi tradition on social media.Specific passages or iconography from the Third Reich have been repurposed in the context of the government’s own legislative program today. The adoption of these extreme symbols, dog whistles and phrases is part of a re-mainstreaming of fascist and Nazi ideas more broadly.Ali Breland, a staff writer at The Atlantic, explains why he sees it as part of an attempt to remake the U.S. from a country defined by ideas like liberty and equality, to one defined by bloodline and heritage.