Front Burner

It’s been just over a year since the last Canadian plane airlifting people out of Afghanistan left Kabul in the wake of the Taliban takeover. According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, this country has successfully resettled more than 17,600 Afghans since August 2021 – and the government has committed to resettle 40,000. But many who helped Canadians during the war are still stuck there.

Today, two Afghans explain the dangers they now find themselves in because of their previous work with Canadians, and their frustrations in trying to come to Canada. Plus, a Canadian veteran on his efforts to help Afghans through the complicated process.

On Saturday, a car bomb killed pro-war Russian commentator Darya Dugina on the outskirts of Moscow. Dugina was the daughter of ultranationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin, whose influence on Russian President Vladimir Putin is widely debated — leading to speculation the bomb was meant for Dugin himself.

Today on Front Burner, The Guardian's Moscow correspondent Andrew Roth explains who Dugin is, the competing theories for who was responsible for the car bombing, and what impact the attack could have on how the war in Ukraine is fought.

This week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Canada as part of his mission to shore up alternative sources of energy to reduce Germany's dependence on Russian natural gas.

Scholz finished the trip in Newfoundland, where he and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau agreed to form what Trudeau called the “Canada-Germany hydrogen alliance.” Meanwhile, Scholz also said he wanted more liquified natural gas from Canada.

Today, CBC’s Peter Cowan and J.P. Tasker explain what happened during this trip and what it means for the future of Canadian energy.

Many employers continue to struggle to fill vacant positions, despite the end of most pandemic restrictions — and the underlying explanations for this vary depending on who you ask.

A common notion is that people just don’t want to work anymore. But when Canada’s unemployment rate is at its lowest level in decades, does the data really bear that out?

Today on Front Burner, economist and Atkinson Fellow Armine Yalnizyan debunks common myths and explains how the current labour crunch has roots stretching back well before the pandemic — and what to expect moving forward.

It's a perennial debate: what role should the private sector have in Canada's public health-care system? The fact is, it's already part of the ecosystem.

Now, Doug Ford's government in Ontario is mulling the use of more private surgery clinics to alleviate pressures facing the public system.

The move is receiving praise by some, while others raise concerns over how an expanded role of for-profit health care could have negative effects downstream.

Today, Dr. Danyaal Raza explains those concerns. He's the former board chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare, an assistant professor with the department of family and community medicine at the University of Toronto and a family physician.

The pandemic-era work-from-home experiment has gone on for over two years now and for some, it’s proven to be effective. For others, the isolation that comes with remote work hasn’t been easy. As some employers ask their workers to finally return, we dive into the debate around working from home — and what a successful hybrid model could look like. We’re talking to writer Anne Helen Petersen, co-author of Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home.

The United States’ new and historic climate law is being hailed by some Canadian politicians and environmental advocates as a chance to turn Canada into a global hub for electric cars and their components. That’s thanks in part to money and incentives which could potentially give a boost to companies mining in Canada for the minerals used to make electric vehicle batteries.

If that sounds like a big green win for Canada — it is. But it’s also more complicated than that.

Today, we’re taking a look at one example where the promise of mining for nickel to power electric vehicles is presenting a climate conundrum: the Ring of Fire, a mineral-rich but ecologically sensitive region in northern Ontario.

Our guest is Emma McIntosh, The Narwhal’s Ontario environment reporter.

The writer Salman Rushdie is still recovering in hospital from a brutal attack at a literary event last Friday. A young man rushed onstage and stabbed Rushdie nearly a dozen times, leaving him with injuries so severe he may lose an eye.

While Rushdie himself has never been attacked like this before, this isn't the first attempt on his life. He has been targeted by death threats ever since the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie's death in 1989.

The fatwa was over Rushdie's 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, parts of which some Muslims consider blasphemous. The uproar over the book led to huge protests in many countries, pushed Rushdie into hiding for nearly a decade, and led to the deaths of several people around the world.

In England, where Rushdie was based, many people believe it also transformed U.K. society — particularly relations between British Muslims and non-Muslims.

Today, we're looking back at The Satanic Verses affair and its long-term impacts with Mobeen Azhar, a BBC journalist and filmmaker. He's made a documentary about it, The Satanic Verses: 30 Years On, and a podcast, Fatwa.

We'll also hear from celebrated British novelist and playwright Hanif Kureishi, who is a longtime friend of Rushdie's.

In the wake of the FBI raid on former U.S. president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida earlier this month, more details have emerged about what federal agents are investigating, including potential violations of three different federal laws, one of which is the Espionage Act.

One unsealed document shows that the FBI seized 11 sets of classified documents, including some with the special designation of “sensitive compartmented information,” a category meant to protect the country’s most important secrets.

Today, we’re speaking to Aaron Blake, senior political reporter for the Washington Post, about what we’ve learned since the law enforcement agency's search, and what we still don’t know.

Rents are on the rise in Canada, making it harder for tenants to find a place that fits their budget.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s definition of "affordable" housing is a place that costs you less than 30 per cent of your household's income. But in Vancouver, where the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom is now $3,597 — you'd have to earn more than $150,000 for that rent to be affordable. In Toronto, your household would have to make more than $135,000.

On today's episode of Front Burner, Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University in B.C., breaks down what's happening with rents and what could be done to help make them more affordable.