Front Burner

Since the Kearl mine in northern Alberta began production on Treaty 8 territory in 2013, the company has touted technological innovations that they say “enhance environmental performance.”

Yet for months, wastewater from the mine’s tailings ponds, containing arsenic, hydrocarbons and sulphides has been seeping into the land.

The company that runs the mine, Imperial Oil, first reported the leak in May 2022 to the provincial regulator. But Chief Allan Adam of the nearby Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation says his community only learned of the seepage last month.

That’s created anxiety, says Chief Adam, because people have been hunting, fishing and trapping without knowing there was a risk of contamination.

Drew Anderson, the Narwhal’s Prairies reporter, joins us today to walk us through how the leak happened, Alberta’s tailings pond debate and who’s accountable.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Last year, about 39,000 people entered Canada at Roxham Road, an irregular border crossing in Quebec, in search of asylum. It was a record number — and so far this year, the upward trend is continuing. The steady flow of migrants entering Canada at Roxham Road has become a political issue, but how to handle the stream of people seeking asylum at the border is an open question.

On this episode, Paul Hunter, a senior correspondent with CBC News, takes us to the US-Mexico border in Juarez to see what we can learn from migrants there about the issue at America’s northern border and Roxham Road.

Clarification:

In this episode we discuss a video shown to senior correspondent Paul Hunter by a Venezuelan migrant couple Nelson Ramirez, and his wife, Yescee Urbina at an aid office in Juarez, Mexico. The video depicts a crocodile swimming with a human leg in its mouth. 

We reported that the video was filmed during the couple’s journey through the Panamanian jungle. However, the video shown to CBC News was filmed a few years ago. Ramirez showed the video to convey the desperation and danger that migrants from Central and South America experience trying to seek asylum further north.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In 2016, a handful of American and Canadian government employees working in Cuba came down with mysterious symptoms: nausea, ringing ears, headaches, and minor memory loss.

Their illness came to be known as Havana Syndrome. Theories about what caused it have included microwaves fired by Russia, insecticides, and even crickets.

Now, a new report from US intelligence agencies rejects the idea that an enemy with an energy weapon is to blame.

Shane Harris is an Intelligence and National Security Reporter for the Washington Post. He has spoken to sources who’ve seen the new report, and walks us through its findings.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

On Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau once again resisted a call that’s been getting progressively louder in Ottawa: the call for a public inquiry into allegations of Beijing’s interference in our most recent elections.

Opposition MPs on a Parliamentary committee have already voted in favour of an inquiry into foreign interference, although that motion is non-binding. Meanwhile, a number of reports, committee investigations and witness testimonies have either already been delivered, or are on the way.

Today, CBC’s The House host Catherine Cullen explains the newest revelations, what big questions are still at play, and what avenues remain to get those answers.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Canada women's national soccer team currently ranks as one of the top ten teams worldwide.

Despite their track record of victory, the team’s future success is now at risk. As the FIFA Women’s World Cup approaches, the team’s engaged in a very visible fight with their bosses that has meant strikes, on-field protests, and the resignation of the president of Soccer Canada.

The turmoil comes because of what the players say is a shocking lack of funding and very different treatment compared to the men’s team. But the issue goes deeper than the women’s fight.

TSN senior correspondent, Rick Westhead, takes guest host Daemon Fairless through the national women’s team’s fight, the controversial business deal that may be behind the federation’s money woes, and what’s at stake for the sport in Canada.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

More than three weeks after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake, aftershocks continue to shake devastated cities in Turkey.

Officials say more than 44,000 people have died in the country, and the UN estimates 1.5 million people are without homes. One of the worst-hit cities in Turkey's southeast, Antakya, is largely uninhabitable after entire sections of the city collapsed into rubble.

Today, The Sunday Times Middle East correspondent Louise Callaghan tells us what she saw in Antakya in the weeks after the earthquake, the stories of survival and loss she heard from residents, and the allegations that corruption and illegal construction amplified that destruction and casualties.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Recent reports by the Globe and Mail and Global News, relying on Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) documents and unnamed intelligence sources, have detailed different ways the Chinese government has allegedly interfered with Canadian elections.

On this episode, Dick Fadden, a former director of CSIS and a former national security advisor to both Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau, walks us through the way the spy agency operates on cases like this, and what should be done now to ensure Canadian elections are free of foreign meddling.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

The Colorado River – the lifeblood of the American southwest – is drying up. The river’s basin supplies water to 40 million Americans across seven states, plus two states in Mexico. It’s partly because of climate change, a major drought, and because of century-old rules that govern who has the rights to the water. And it’s a big deal: the Colorado River is a key source of drinking water, power production, and crop irrigation for agriculture that helps feed North America. 

Today on Front Burner, guest host Jodie Martinson speaks with CBC Washington correspondent Alex Panetta, who recently got back from reporting in Arizona, about the politics of drought and how it’s fueling a fight over its most precious resource – water.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Loblaw Companies, the country’s biggest grocery chain, reported its finances for 2022 on Thursday. In a year when Canadians felt the squeeze from skyrocketing grocery bills increased by inflation, the retailer posted net earnings of $2.3 billion dollars.

Also in 2022, Loblaw spent $1.3-billion on something called stock buybacks, which pulls shares off the market and tends to pump up the prices of those still held by investors and executives.

Loblaw isn’t alone in carrying out billion-dollar share buybacks. Today, CBC business journalist Pete Evans returns to explain why so many buybacks are happening, and why critics say they’re happening at the expense of Canadian workers, customers and productivity.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Microsoft soft-launched its new AI-powered search engine in early February. After years of playing second fiddle to Google, the new Bing seemed to finally have something exciting to offer.

More than a million people signed up on a wait list to try out the new feature. But it wasn’t long before some early testers reported that their interactions with the chatbot had taken an unsettling turn.

For some, the bizarre interactions were disconcertingly similar to depictions of AI gone sentient straight out of science fiction.

Today, Chris Stokel-Walker, a technology journalist and contributor to the Guardian’s TechScape newsletter, explains this latest chatbot, what the technology is doing and whether it’s as terrifying as it sounds.