The Big Story

Elizabeth Payne is a longtime health reporter. She knows the ins and outs of Canada's healthcare system—its triumphs and tragedies. At least, intellectually. 

But when her father suffered a fall that brought him first to the emergency room, and then deeper and deeper into an overcrowded, short-staffed system that failed him even as it tried its best, she got a different kind of look at what's wrong, and what it means for every senior who might suffer an extremely common accident.

GUEST: Elizabeth Payne, Ottawa Citizen (You can read Elizabeth's detailed chronicle of her father's experience right here.)

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Recent reports have seen Russian forces make some of their biggest gains into Ukrainian territory in recent weeks, while aid for Ukraine from western allies has become harder and harder to come by. Does that mean a Russian victory is inevitable? Or does it merely signal a new phase of a conflict that will continue for some time?

If Ukraine can't get help from its allies as it has since Russia's invasion, what happens to its forces? And what happens to NATO and other allies if Russia is able to scale up its aggression? Two years into this war, so much of the world's future still hangs in the balance...

GUEST: Oleksa Drachewych, Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Western University, lecturer in History at King’s University College

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When the longtime CBC news anchor began his career as a reporter in the early 1970's, giving people the news was among the most trusted and important occupations in the country. When he retired in 2017, it was the era of "fake news", as trust in the media was at an all-time low. Seven years later, it's even lower than that.

So what happened? Did the media lose people's trust? Did the internet do it for them? How does a legendary face of Canadian news grapple with the fact that, if he were in the chair today, less than half of Canadians would trust the news he delivered? Can anything be done to fix it? Or is it already too late?

GUEST: Peter Mansbridge, former anchor of CBC's The National, host of The Bridge podcast

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Most people would support the concept of preventing children from accessing online pornography. But the devil is in the details. How exactly do you do that? And what level of privacy will you ask adults to give up to make it happen.

A bill currently sitting in committee has this very goal, but no details yet to go with it. It may involve asking sites like industry leader PornHub to take access users' identification. It may even require facial recognition software. Nobody knows. PornHub, meanwhile, is saying it won't break the law, but it also might just decide to block all Canadians from the site, just to be safe.

When politicians staret legislation pornography, it can get messy pretty quickly. And here we are...

GUEST: Stephanie Taylor, Parliament Hill reporter, The Canadian Press

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In early February, a man was stabbed at what was believed to be an illegal rooming house in Toronto. A few weeks earlier, a fire at another left one person dead. The city says it can't count the number of illegal rooming houses that exist right now. And the people who live in them often pay a lot of money for a small room and what can be unsafe living conditions.

And they don't have a lot of options if something goes wrong -- which it often does. The city plans to tackle the problem by allowing legal rooming houses across the city, but advocates are unsure if this will help or hurt the problem. How do these houses exist? Who lives in them? And what can illegal homes do to their tenants, and the neighbourhoods where they sit?

GUEST: Pat Taney, CityNews 

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Every criminal case up for trial needs a judge. But in Canada, not every case gets one. Recent years have seen a severe and growing shortage of judges across many levels of the justice system—in some cases this means cases that have waited years for a trial must be thrown out. 

Not only does this mean people accused of serious crimes simply walk free, it means that potentially innocent people are spending years waiting for a trial that never comes. How did we end up in this mess? Why hasn't the government appointed more judges? How many more cases will be tossed in the meantime?

GUEST: Jacques Gallant, courts and legal affairs reporter, The Toronto Star

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Welcome to the first feedback episode of The Big Story. Today lead producer Joe Fish and host Jordan Heath-Rawlings go through your comments, questions and concerns to shed a little light on TBS listeners, how we make the show and what you think of some of our topics and guests. 

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Jennie has been searching for a one-bedroom condo in Vancouver for over two years. Despite having money for a downpayment, her search has been largely unsuccessful. Now, she's wondering if home ownership is really the best option.

Jordan calls Dr. Tom Davidoff, housing economist and real estate development expert, to find out if buying a condo is a good investment in today's market. 

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It can -- but the better question might be: Is it something that could be used against you? The technology does exist to use a sample to create a sketch of a person's face, but there are doubts about its accuracy, and how much value it provides.

But that hasn't stopped police from taking these sketches and running them through facial recognition software. Searching for ... someone who looks like the a drawing a computer made when it was given your DNA? Welcome to the next level of investigative technology. As you might imagine, the experts have concerns...

GUEST: Dhruv Mehrotra, staff writer at WIRED

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When Toronto's mayor presented her budget on Wednesday, the city's police services got everything they had asked for, with Olivia Chow retreating from her original plans to fund a smaller increase. Across Canada, police budgets continue to increase by millions of dollars per year, as the associations representing the police effectively lobby politicians and the public—often with vague warnings about rising crime and public safety.

So let's look at the numbers. What is the correlation between police spending and crime rates? Why do police say it's taking them longer to respond to calls? Will more officers actually improve the force's efficiency? And ... is crime, including car thefts, really spiking in Canada right now?

GUEST: Ted Rutland, associate professor at Concordia University, research focusing on policing in Canada.

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