Front Burner

After Hurricane Fiona lashed the Caribbean last week, it landed in Canso, N.S., Saturday morning as a post-tropical storm. It then began its path of destruction through Atlantic Canada.

While the level of devastation in Canada doesn't compared to places like Puerto Rico, Fiona has still caused significant damage throughout parts of the Maritimes. It’s torn through homes, flooded streets, toppled power lines and caused at least one death.

Today, Halifax-based CBC reporter Brett Ruskin joins us to talk about Fiona’s devastation in Atlantic Canada, and how people are coping.

The public hearings into the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history end today.

Since February, the Mass Casualty Commission has heard evidence about the gunman and the warning signs reported to the RCMP in the years leading up to April 18, 2020, when he went on a rampage, killing 22 people in Nova Scotia while disguised as a Mountie.

The inquiry has encountered multiple delays and controversies, leaving some victims’ family members to say they now have more questions than answers.

Today, CBC Nova Scotia's investigative reporter, Angela McIvor, takes us through what the commission hearings have revealed and what questions remain.

You’ve probably heard about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The laptop and the trove of data on it belonging to U.S. President Joe Biden’s youngest son first surfaced publicly just weeks before the 2020 presidential election. At the time, it was largely discredited as foreign meddling and a disinformation campaign intended to sway the presidential race.

Since then, several media outlets have verified that at least some of the data on the laptop is real. Meanwhile, the laptop has taken on a life of its own. Depending who you ask, it's either a distraction, or the key to unlocking untold stories of political corruption and shady dealings overseas.

New York Magazine journalists Olivia Nuzzi and Andrew Rice spent six-months looking into the laptop: what’s on it, the cast of characters responsible for its public release, and the legal investigations that have followed.

Today, Andrew Rice joins us to share what they found.

Notorious stalking and harassment site Kiwi Farms has been hacked and taken offline again, less than a month after the website security and hosting provider Cloudflare dropped it, citing an "unprecedented emergency and immediate threat to human life."

Kiwi Farms had risen to prominence after Canadian trans activist and Twitch streamer Clara Sorrenti was swatted in her London, Ont. home this past summer. Sorrenti organized a pressure campaign to remove Kiwi Farms from the internet, calling it "a matter of public safety for every single person online."

Today, Alejandra Caraballo of the Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic explains how Kiwi Farms was able to operate for so long, and outlines the efforts to keep it offline.

In Alberta, the centrepiece of United Conservative Party leadership hopeful Danielle Smith’s campaign is a controversial proposal called the Alberta Sovereignty Act. Smith says the act would allow the Alberta legislature to choose not to enforce any federal law or court order it believed ran counter to its interests.

But many legal experts have decried the proposal as unconstitutional, and some critics — including members of her own party — have claimed that it would unleash economic chaos in the province.

While Smith’s proposal is new, resentment with Ottawa is not — and for decades, provincial politicians have been promising action to protect Alberta’s interests from federal political intervention.

Today, we speak to the CBC’s Jason Markusoff about the Alberta Sovereignty Act and the enduring appeal of that concept.

People in London waited in kilometres-long lines for the chance to pay their respects to Queen Elizabeth II, Britain's longest reigning monarch who died on Sept. 8, during her lying-in-state. Hundreds of leaders, dignitaries and royals travelled from around the world to attend her funeral.

Queen Elizabeth II was just 25 when she took the throne in 1952. At 73, King Charles III — the Queen's son and longtime heir — is the oldest monarch to assume the British throne.

Today on Front Burner, Stephen Bates, author and former religious affairs and royal correspondent for The Guardian, takes us through what's shaped King Charles's character and what his reign could mean for the future of the British monarchy.

Earlier this week, U.S. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced a bill that would place a federal ban on abortions after 15 weeks. While the bill isn’t believed to have a high chance of passing in the immediate future, it does further crank up the heat around the abortion debate ahead of the November midterm elections.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — which protected the constitutional right to an abortion — Democrats have seen a renewed surge in popularity, buoying their hopes of holding onto one or both chambers of Congress in November. But questions remain about whether Democratic wins would actually guarantee greater protections for abortion rights.

Today, CBC Washington correspondent Paul Hunter is here to sort through all of this with us.

After a manhunt that spanned four days, the main suspect in the mass stabbing that injured at least 18 and left 10 people dead in northern Saskatchewan was arrested last Wednesday. Shortly after, he died in police custody after going into what RCMP call "medical distress."

His death means we may never know the motive of the attack. But questions remain about why, despite being a wanted man, he remained at large for months before — and days after — the stabbings.

Today on Front Burner, CBC Saskatoon reporter Dan Zakreski walks us through all the updates on the attacks, the chase and the investigation.

Amazon has tapped into the power of J.R.R. Tolkien, spending around $715 million US on its new series, The Rings of Power, reportedly the most expensive TV show ever made. What is it about Tolkien's fantasy realm of Middle-earth that has held our attention for so long, since his early writings in the 1930s?

Today on Front Burner, we're talking to historian Dominic Sandbrook — co-host of The Rest is History podcast — about how Tolkien's world strikingly mirrors our own, from war, to modernity, to greed, to the fight to save the environment.

Now that Pierre Poilievre is leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, how will he lead?

Today, in the second part of our two-part deep dive on Poilievre, the Globe and Mail’s Shannon Proudfoot returns to talk about the leadership campaign he ran, the criticism he’s faced and where the Conservative Party could go from here.

Plus, we hear from more supporters on the floor of the convention about what they think Pierre Poilievre’s Canada will look like, his "angry" reputation and whether they think he’ll change, now that he’s leader, to broaden his appeal.