Front Burner

QAnon believers are in turmoil. For years the baseless, wide-ranging conspiracy theory has gained steam, making serious inroads in Canada after exploding in the United States.

QAnon believers think a blood-thirsty, child-trafficking cabal is running the world and that Donald Trump will bring justice through a day of reckoning known as “The Storm”. But now, following Joe Biden’s inauguration, many QAnon followers are devastated and disillusioned — while others are doubling-down.

Today on Front Burner, Daily Beast politics reporter Will Sommer joins us to discuss what might happen to QAnon and its followers next.

For four years, Daniel Dale, a CNN reporter and former Washington bureau chief for the Toronto Star, fact checked every single word that Donald Trump said publicly. Now, he looks back on some of the strangest and most significant lies of Trump’s presidency, and the lasting impact they had on both American politics and our shared sense of reality.

Gov. Gen. Julie Payette has been accused of bullying, berating, and publicly humiliating staff at Rideau Hall. The allegations were substantial enough that an independent workplace review was ordered last year. On Thursday, it was revealed that that review had been completed, and that its findings were scathing. Late in the afternoon, Payette resigned from her position as the Queen’s representative.

Today, Power and Politics host Vassy Kapelos explains Payette’s resignation.

Besides the police presence, the inauguration of Joe Biden on Wednesday as 46th president of the United States was a paired-down affair, thanks to the pandemic and the recent violence at the Capitol. CBC Washington correspondent Paul Hunter covered the inauguration from the roof of the Canadian Embassy. Today he joins Front Burner to report on the meaning behind the day’s pageantry, Donald Trump’s last day in power, and the most pressing problems facing this new administration.

More than 350 people currently face trial for their alleged connections with one of Italy’s most powerful Mafia syndicates, the ‘Ndrangheta. The crime group is known for its secrecy. Bosses, accused of murder, money laundering, and drug trafficking, often hide in bunkers in Calabria, even though their business extends around the world. Italy has not held a Mafia trial of this scale since the late 1980s — when the Cosa Nostra was under fire for their operations in Sicily and abroad. Today on Front Burner, CBC Rome correspondent Megan Williams on the ‘Ndrangheta mafia, its evolution, and what this trial could mean for their future.

"There is no place for the far right in our party." That's a quote from a statement released on Sunday by Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole, where he condemns the riot in the U.S. Capitol and paints a moderate picture of the Conservative Party under his leadership.

On the heels of the statement, PressProgress revealed that MP Derek Sloan accepted a donation from a notorious white supremacist, leading O'Toole to move to oust Sloan from the Conservative party.

Today, CBC parliamentary hill journalist Aaron Wherry on why O'Toole felt he had to declare the Conservatives to be "sitting squarely in the centre of Canadian politics" and what it says about him and the party he leads.

For sometimes as little as two dollars an hour, some migrant workers in Malaysia say they spend their days producing disposable gloves in sweatshop-like conditions in a factory — and spend their nights in dirty, overcrowded shared quarters.

As global demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) surges, it would appear that so has the human cost for those making it overseas, an investigation by CBC's Marketplace has found. The investigation revealed allegations of exploitation, debt bondage and passport retention from across the disposable glove industry in Malaysia.

Marketplace host Asha Tomlinson and producer Eric Szeto join Front Burner to explain why we should be asking where Canada’s PPE comes from.

In the wake of last week's attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Proud Boys — a group founded by Canadian Gavin McInnes — has been under intense pressure. The FBI is arresting some of its members. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has called for the them to be designated a terrorist group, and the federal government is considering it. Today, how the Proud Boys started, and where they ended up, with Jared Holt — a visiting researcher at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab who studies domestic extremism

"Post-truth is pre-fascism." So wrote historian Timothy Snyder in his 2017 book, On Tyranny. He penned it in the lead-up to Donald Trump's inauguration, and he's been warning ever since: The United States is not exceptional, a coup could be attempted there, too.

Now, Trump's presidency is in its dying days. He has been impeached by the House again, this time for "incitement of insurrection." But the big lie, as Snyder calls it, that Trump seeded — that the 2020 election was stolen from him — what becomes of that lie now?

Today on Front Burner, Snyder explores that question.

Last Friday, 16-year-old Ariana Quesada walked into an RCMP station in High River, Alta., to file a formal complaint about the death of her father, Benito, who died eight months ago of COVID-19. He worked at the Cargill meat-packing plant, home to the largest coronavirus outbreak in the country, with at least 950 staff members contracting it last spring.

The RCMP have now opened an investigation into Benito Quesada's death.

Today, CBC investigative reporter Dave Seglins on Benito's story and larger questions about corporate responsibility in a global pandemic.