Front Burner

The Gaza peace plan and ceasefire, announced last October, is in limbo.

Israeli forces have continued their strikes and expanded control of the strip beyond the lines originally agreed upon in the plan. Humanitarian aid is trickling in but there are still concerns about how it’s being distributed. The U.S.-led Board of Peace, created to handle the resolution of violence and reconstruction in Gaza, has made little progress.

But last week, Hamas announced that they are ready to hand over the authority of governing Gaza to a group of US-backed Palestinian technocrats. Is this the breakthrough needed to get things back on track?

Hugh Lovatt is a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. 

He’s here to talk about where things stand in Gaza and what this latest announcement from Hamas means for the Palestinian people.

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

Lindsey Graham, the U.S. Republican Senator from South Carolina, died on Sunday at 71. Before Donald Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016, Graham was a high-profile critic of the future president, calling him “hateful,” a “kook,” and a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” But over time, Graham became a key ally, championing Trump through his many controversies.

Will Saletan of the Bulwark sees Graham’s trajectory as emblematic of the Republican party’s transformation under Trump. He joins Jayme Poisson to discuss the conspiracy theories swirling around Graham’s death and his political legacy.

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

It’s no secret that Prime Minister Mark Carney thinks Canada should reduce its dependence on the U.S. It’s a message he delivered on the world stage in Davos. But new reporting from the Wall Street Journal illustrates how Carney has been making this pitch to European leaders behind the scenes, and how he’s become a central figure in the attempts to reimagine the West’s alliances. 

Today on Front Burner, journalists Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw on their reporting, gleaned from conversations with heads of government, ministers, top aides, as well as detailed notes of private meetings and classified intelligence assessments. 

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

Mark Carney met with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia this week, aiming to strengthen ties and build up our economic relationship in areas like AI and critical minerals.

It’s been 26 years since a Canadian Prime Minister visited the country, despite the fact that they’re a major trading partner. The relationship had come with friction over things like Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, human rights abuses, and political repression. 

Canadian-Saudi relations hit an all-time low during Justin Trudeau's tenure, and Dennis Horak was expelled from his post as Canada’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia in 2018. Now, almost eight years later, he’s applauding this move by the current government to renew the relationship. 

Horak joins us to talk about how relations soured, and why he thinks we’re headed back in the right direction.

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

The U.S. midterms are coming up this fall. They could flip control of the House and possibly the Senate. But both parties are dealing with difficult messes. 

Progressive Democratic candidate Graham Platner’s Senate campaign in Maine imploded after allegations of sexual assault, which has laid bare a war in his party. Republican infighting ground Congress to a halt. And Senator Mitch McConnell has not been seen or heard by the public for weeks, following a hospitalization. 

Alex Shephard, senior editor of the New Republic, joins us to break down the state of each party heading into these consequential elections. 

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

This week, Prime Minister Carney is in Turkey to attend the NATO summit. Ahead of leaving for Ankara, he announced the procurement of 12 submarines from the German company TKMS, in what’s expected to be the largest military procurement deal in Canada’s history.

Carney says that these submarines, along with a slew of other military investments, will allow Canada to assert our full sovereignty in the Arctic.

Today, we are focusing on the Arctic. Earlier this year – the Liberal government announced a plan to modernize and expand the military’s footprint in the North. This is all in a bid to assert sovereignty in a region where Russia and China’s influence is growing.

Anne Shibata Casselman is a science journalist based in B.C. She makes the argument that the path to asserting that sovereignty must put the people who live on the land and have claim to it at the centre. She just wrote a deeply reported piece in Maclean’s about this, called “The Arctic Needs Defending. Canada Isn’t Ready.”

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

In the aftermath of an act of public violence, attention often turns to a document. Sometimes it’s a letter, a blog post, or a video, that gets referred to as a manifesto.

Very quickly the public coalesces around these documents. Journalists struggle to consider what to print, authorities debate whether they should be released, and researchers scour them for clues.

Following the recent incel attack in Montreal, we engage in these questions, and more. What ingredients make up a manifesto? What are they designed to accomplish? And what responsibility do the rest of us have when confronted with one?

Today, we’re joined by J.M. Berger, author of several books including “Extremism.’ He’s also a senior research fellow for the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. 

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

Aaron Wherry, senior writer at CBC's parliamentary bureau and good friend of the show, is here to parse through last week’s big pipeline announcement with Alberta and the deal that Prime Minister Carney made with B.C. to get it all done.

Plus: The 24 Sussex national home reno nightmare turned crowdfunding campaign.

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

The Canadian defence industry can’t grow the way Prime Minister Mark Carney is proposing by just selling domestically. That’s why another aim of the Defence Industrial Strategy is to grow Canadian defence exports by 50%. So what could happen when the world comes knocking on our defence industry’s door?

This is part two of a two part documentary. Part one aired on July 2nd. 

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

Mark Carney ran for office promising to spend a whole lot more on the Canadian military. Since being elected, he’s poured billions of dollars into defence, and plans to roughly triple Canada’s defence expenditures in the next ten years. He’s also proposing to grow Canada’s defence industry revenues by 240%. 

Today, in part one of our two part documentary, senior producer Imogen Birchard heads to Canada’s biggest defence and security trade show in Ottawa to hear what those in the defence industry – and those protesting outside – think about the plan.

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