The Big Story

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has deep Ukrainian roots. Depending on who you ask, those roots have been an asset or an anchor over the past few weeks, as she has been able to lead the political movement to sanction Russia, while also starring in a number of misinformation campaigns based on her history. 

But there is no doubt that she has been a major global player in the finance fight against Vladimir Putin, and has given Canada its first tangible foreign policy strategy in some time.

GUEST: Justin Ling, freelance investigative reporter

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Will it all probably be fine, or are we asking for another wave? With Alberta already ending masking, and Ontario promising to follow suit, it's likely that much of Canada will be Covid-restriction free  by April.

Cases and hospitalizations are trending down, and much of the country has at least two doses of vaccine. But with a new subvariant already here, and showing infection rates higher than Omicron, will wee see another spike? And it's also important to ask, as the pandemic closes in on its two-year anniversary ... if not now, when?

GUEST: Dr. Raywat Deonandan, Global Health Epidemiologist and Associate Professor with the Interdisciplinary School of Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa

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They probably don't look like your typical picture of anti-vaxxers. They own yoga studios, or push organic juice on Instagram. But the wellness space has been home to some of the pandemic's most unexpected sentiment against vaccinations. And it shouldn't really surprise anyone who has been paying attention. Today we'll explain how it happened.

GUEST: Stacy Lee Kong, writer and editor, creator of the Friday Things newsletter

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It's the worst mass killing in Canadian history, and there are hundreds of questions still unanswered almost two years later. A public inquiry into the Portapique shootings is happening right now, and the early answers to some of those questions are disturbing. What more will we learn about how many lives could have been saved? Will RCMP officers actually agree to testify at all? And what about the killer's rumoured connections to the RCMP itself?

How much of this mystery will we unravel? And how bad will it get?

GUEST: Greg Mercer, Atlantic Canada reporter, The Globe and Mail

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For all the bad news (and there is a lot of it) contained in the newest IPCC report, there is also one very clear message: It's still possible to save our world from the worst outcome, and we have about eight years to do it. The impacts of climate change are already being felt around the globe, including in many parts of Canada—but all is not yet lost.

What will it take to win this fight? And what can we learn from the global response to the pandemic, or more recently from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, that we can apply to the biggest existential crisis humanity has ever faced?

GUEST: Catherine Abreu, founder and executive director of Destination Zero, a nonprofit dedicated to accelerating the global transition away from fossil fuels; member of Canada's net-zero advisory board

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The footage of that legendary fighter pilot is from a video game. The Ukrainians who told the Russian warship to "go f--- yourself" were not killed and are still alive. Even the image you see attached to this episode—a still from a widely circulated video that was supposedly shot during the current conflict—was actually captured in Libya back in 2011. All this might seem obvious, but there are dozens, likely hundreds, of pieces of misinformation being shared widely as the world's attention turns to the war in Ukraine.

So how can you tell real from fake? What's at play in our hearts and minds that helps us fall victim to this stuff? What should be the first thing you do when you see footage that purports to show something unbelievable from the war zone? We'll help you figure out where to start.

GUEST: Craig Silverman, reporter covering misinformation and digital manipulation for ProPublica, editor of the Verification Handbook

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When we share stories of immigration to Canada, we often tell them and hear them as individual, personal tales. And those stories are great—but they don't illustrate just how big a part of Canada's history programs like the West Indian Domestic Scheme really were. 

Thousands of women came to this country, brought their families, made Canada home and supercharged Canadian women's entry to the workforce. Why don't we view this as one of our country's building blocks?

GUEST: Garvia Bailey, co-creator of Strong and Free, a Historica Canada podcast

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It sounds like hyperbole—unless you listen to the Russian president's thinly veiled threat to use nuclear weapons on any country that intervenes with his aggression in Ukraine. That doesn't mean this conflict will escalate to a multi-nation war, but the possibility is certainly there, according to experts. And nobody knows what happens next.

What does this mean for the future of the international order and traditional alliances? What does it mean for millions of innocent Ukrainians? For countries like Canada who are on the sidelines? How will this conflict reshape the world in the weeks and months to come?

GUEST: Balkan Devlen, senior fellow at McDonald Laurier Institute, Superforecaster for Good Judgment, Inc.

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On the surface it seems silly. Why hold a vaccination clinic at a strip club in downtown Toronto? But once you look a little deeper, the answer becomes obvious. Ontario currently has 92% of its 12+ population with at least one dose. Finishing the last eight percent will require reaching the people who are hardest to find, and who don't trust the traditional healthcare system. So you have to go where they can find you, safely.

GUEST: Ellie Ade Kur is a board member at Maggie's Toronto Sex Workers Action Project

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Both the occupation of Ottawa and the federal government's use of the emergencies act were unprecedented. And it's hard to see a future where neither one is used again. If the game is truly changing, what does that mean for Canada's national security? And for Canadians' personal freedoms?

GUEST: Stephanie Carvin, former national security analyst, author of Stand on Guard: Reassessing threats to Canada's National Security

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