The Cheltenham Badlands are an alien landscape in Caledon, Ontario, once home of the Mississaugas of the Credit. Chief Ajetance was forced to sign Treaty 19 which ceded much of their traditional territory to the Crown and opened it to settlement. Colonists accidentally created this unique wasteland through tree clearing and bad farming practices. There was only a thin layer of soil over the Queenston Shale formation, a soft sedimentary rock that runs through Peel and Halton Regions. As news of this alien landscape spread, the footsteps of thousands of visitors hastened the erosion. The Ontario Heritage Trust is now preserving this reminder of how human actions can profoundly change the planet.

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Visits to the food bank have risen in Ontario, indicating that the cost of living has affected food security. At the same time, there's a lot of food waste along the food value chain. Food waste is not only an environmental challenge, but one that falls on the shoulders of our provincial municipalities. Find out what community organizations, local businesses, and municipalities are doing to combat food waste and, at the same time, potentially improve food insecurity. Kate Parizeau, from the University of Guelph; Tom Armitage and Logan Pollock from The SEED; Bradley Crepeau from Food Cycle Science; and Cameron Walsh from the City of Guelph, offer their insights into the issue that affects Ontarians.

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The Agenda's week in review looked at why property taxes are going up across municipalities, an exit interview with NDP MP Charlie Angus, a check-in on MAID (medical assistance in dying) and the loss experienced by Canadian trumpet player Jens Lindemann from the Los Angeles wildfires.

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The fires in Los Angeles have captured the empathy and attention of people all over the world. Canada has sent water bombers to help extinguish the fires. And, of course, many Canadians live in southern California. Jens Lindemann is a world-renowned trumpet player. He was a member of the Canadian Brass, has an honorary degree from Hamilton's McMaster University, is an honorary fellow at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, has the Order of Canada, and tonight finds himself homeless. His house in Pacific Palisades is gone. Jens Lindemann joins Steve Paikin to share his story about the devastation wrought by the inferno.

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What options are available to people who need fertility assistance in Ontario? And what barriers do queer and trans people face in their journeys to parenthood? Laine Halpern Zisman explains more in her new book "Conceivable: A Guide to Making 2SLGBTQ+ Family."

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Health Canada's 5th annual report on medical assistance in dying was released in December, reflecting numbers and demographics from 2023. For the first time, race and Indigenous identity, and disability were measured. For a discussion on who is requesting and receiving MAID, and for what illnesses, we welcome James Downar, Clinical Research Chair in Palliative and End of Life Care, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa; Rebecca Vachon, Program Director of Health at Cardus Canada; zSonu Gaind, a psychiatrist and professor at University of Toronto; and Sandy Buchman, a palliative care doctor working out of North York General Hospital.

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After two decades of raging against the machine, The NDP MP for Timmins-James Bay, Charlie Angus, is leaving Canadian politics at the end of this parliament's life. He is also the author of a new book called "Dangerous Memory: Coming of Age in the Decade of Greed." He joins Steve Paikin in studio for a wide-ranging discussion on his political career, and a tumultuous period in Ottawa.

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The cost of housing, particularly in the Greater Toronto Area, is one of our most persistent problems. Governments have employed a lot of strategies to get the prices down, and yet, they remain stubbornly high. The city of Vaughan in York Region recently announced a new approach, and the city's mayor, Steven Del Duca, joins The Agenda to explain.

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Municipal budget season in Ontario is coming to a close, and if there's one major takeaway from all of these proposals and deliberations, it's that property taxes everywhere are going up in 2025. But the rate of the increase is much more steep in some places than in others. Why is that? And what, exactly, are these billions of dollars collected by cities and towns being spent on?

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In recent years, Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister, has become a contentious subject. Statues have been taken down, his name has been removed from schools and his face has been removed from the $10 bill. However, one author is pushing back against the noise. The Agenda invites author Patrice Dutil to speak on his latest book, "Sir John A. Macdonald & the Apocalyptic Year 1885."

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