When Canadian campuses shut down, there wasn't a lot of time to make plans. Students needed to get home safely, if they could. Professors needed to set up virtual classes in a week or two—and nobody really had any idea when they might be back on campus.

A month ago, Ontario teachers and the province were fighting about how much e-learning could be made mandatory. Now e-learning is the only learning still happening. So what happens when you try to move the highly social lives of college and university students online?

GUESTS: Professor Ken Dyment, Student Stephanie Bai

Going back to school on a virtual campus

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Recently the department of defence announced a plan to pour billions of dollars into Northern security. And there's no doubt that in a changing world the Arctic region has become more important, for Canada and our allies, as well as for our adversaries.

But what does 'security' or sovereignty even mean when we're discussing a huge swath of land, sparsely populated and lacking the infrastructure to change that? What does the DoD plan to use that money for, exactly? And how will it work with the Indigenous people who live in the region?

GUEST: Andrea Charron, professor and the Director of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba.

How secure is Canada's Arctic?

Most of us had a virtual health care appointment sometime during the pandemic. Those of us that didn't have almost certainly encountered virtual care of some form or another—whether that's a follow-up phone call from your doctor, or post-surgery instructions emailed to you.

As we enter the post-pandemic era, there is a push in some quarters for more virtual care—it can improve access, speed things up and give people more control over their own care and medical records. But will it also simply create more visits, encourage unnecessary appointments and further burden an overtaxed system? There's a line we need to walk here—can we do it?

GUEST: Dr. Tara Kiran, Fidani Chair in Improvement and Innovation at the University of Toronto; family doctor and scientist at St. Michael's Hospital, Unity Health Toronto

Can virtual health care save a collapsing system?

Today, evacuation alerts for several communities in BC and Alberta are in effect. You may not have noticed, because there are always evacuation alerts in effect now, and there are always fires burning, some of them out of control. When the whole country takes notice is when the skies over entire provinces go dark, the air turns bad or a blaze like the Fort McMurray fire in 2016 blitzes through a city.

All of that will probably happen this year. The conditions are ripe for it, and there's not much we can do to prevent a devastating fire when it comes. But we can evolve our strategies as the fires get bigger. We can adapt. But...will we?

GUEST: John Vaillant, author, Fire Weather: The making of a beast

These days, something's always burning: A fire season preview

In 2022, the Doug Ford government opened parts of Ontario’s protected Greenbelt for housing development, touching off a massive political scandal. But long before that, tensions over the green space outside of Toronto had been quietly simmering for nearly two decades. 

What is the Greenbelt? How did it end up becoming such a flashpoint for fights over the housing crisis and the climate crisis? And who stood to benefit when the Ford government tore it up after 20 years?

Paydirt E1: It's not easy being green

On Saturday's we normally drop the newest episode of In this Economy?! in the feed, but this week we wanted to spotlight another Frequency Podcast Network production that we thought you'd enjoy. Here's the first episode of the sixth season of Laura Palmer's acclaimed show, Island Crime, and we think it might be best one yet. 

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ORIGINAL SHOW NOTES

For three decades, Rhonda has wondered why someone killed her high school friend Kimberly Gallup. Kimberly was a girl who loved the Kansas City Chiefs and Bon Jovi. Her death has a lasting impact on all who knew her.

Going back to school on a virtual campus

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