The Big Story

You probably know Bonavista best from the Canadian lyrics to "This land is your land". It's a town of a few thousand people on the far east coast of the country. And it's growing—especially during the pandemic. But it's not alone. Towns, villages and even cities across Newfoundland and all of Atlantic Canada have seen a population boom during the pandemic as newly-freed remote workers relocate to places with space and affordable housing.
But are these towns equipped to handle a sudden influx of citizens? Are citizens prepared for life in a small town and everything that comes with it? How do you walk the fine line of needing new residents with the reality of welcoming them all to town without spoiling what you've got?
GUEST: John Norman, Mayor of Bonavista, Newfoundland

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It's one of those crimes with an image — and that image is mostly fictional. The vast majority of victims who end up trafficked in Canada are not abducted by strangers and chained to beds as Hollywood depicts. They are victims of intimate partner violence, often pushed into the industry by a person they know. And it doesn't happen in dark warehouses, but in well-lit chain hotels, like one's you've stayed at on a business trip.
Today we'll meet the women fighting to help trafficking victims, learn where and how this crime really happens, and why police charge so few people in these cases. And you'll learn how to recognize a potential trafficking situation when it's right in front of you.
GUEST: Cristina Howorun, CityNews, lead reporter on VeraCity: Fighting Traffick documentary

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Through a so-called "public safety escrow account", Canada's biggest energy company, Enbridge, has payed somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2.4 million to law enforcement agencies in Minnesota, ostensibly to reimburse police for any help provided in 'protecting' the construction of the new Line 3 oil pipeline through the state. 

While Enbridge claims that there is nothing untoward about the arrangement, others have been sounding the alarm that this sort of arrangement between public and private entities is unethical, and may serve to incentivize the use of violence against demonstrators. 

And so it begs the question: what exactly is Enbridge paying for? 

GUEST: Hilary Beaumont, investigative journalist 

Read Hilary's coverage HERE

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To the rest of the world, the Mountie in red dress uniform is a symbol of Canada. The world has bought into the myth of the good-hearted, white man who protects the little guys and always gets his man. Even a cursory look at the history of the RCMP would reveal that to be far from the truth—and in-depth reporting over the past decade has made it very clear just how poorly reality compares to the image.

But the image endures. Why? How did it come to be so powerful? Why is the RCMP so resistant to reform? And if an ongoing investigation into Canada's largest shooting reveals that their actions made a bad situation deadly, will even that be enough to change things?

GUEST: Jane Gerster, journalist and author

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You've probably heard warnings to start your holiday shopping early this year — this is why. With much of the global supply chain thrown into chaos by a combination of several complicating factors, it's impossible to tell when or if you'll be able to find exactly what you want. But a little shipping inconvenience is hardly the end of the world. What should concern us all about the current situation is what it reveals about the fragility of the systems the world uses to manufacture and move goods with pinpoint efficiency.

Has our quest for the most efficient system created a system that can't handle it when something goes awry? What are the implications of that?

GUEST: Michael LeBlanc, retailer, host of The Voice of Retail podcast, Senior Retail Advisor at the Retail Council of Canada

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Early in October, some Iqaluit residents noticed something funny about their tap water — it smelled like gas. After they raised the alarm it took more than a week of varied testing to confirm the presence of fuel in the water. Since last week, citizens have been told not to drink the water at all, not even to boil it first. How did this happen and how can it be fixed? Why are health officials dodging questions about how much fuel is in the water? And what does the entire mess reveal about infrastructure in Canada's northernmost regions?

GUEST: Kent Driscoll, APTN Iqaluit

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Much of the Atlantic bubble is intact, but in New Brunswick, cases are spiking. Ontario has mostly escaped unscathed so far, while Saskatchewan and Alberta grapple with a wave worse than the first three. Is this evidence of the pandemic diverging regionally across Canada, or just a more infectious variant that can better find holes that existed the entire time?

What have we learned from previous waves that we're employing now? What are we still finding out? And, most importantly, will this be Covid's last wave in Canada?

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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A nation of 100 million people? New towns and cities springing up in previously rural areas? A revitalized and younger workforce? As the impact of the climate era makes parts of the world uninhabitable, billions of people will need to move to survive — one of the largest migrations in human history. Where will these people go? Who is equipped to best take them in, and help them build new homes and lives? Canada may not have taken the lead on fighting climate change yet, but this is an area in which we're perfectly equipped to blaze a trail.

GUEST: Parag Khanna, author of Move: The Forces Uprooting Us

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Many North American cities are locked in a damaging cycle, whereby new suburban expansion is needed to subsidize the infrastructure costs of old development. The pattern has left many municipalities teetering on the brink of insolvency, and led to the decimation of once vibrant streetscapes to make way for unsightly, car-friendly strip malls.

What went awry in this continent's approach to urban planning? And to the extent that it's even possible, how can we even begin to correct the mistakes of the past?

GUEST: Jason Slaughter, Creator and Host of the Youtube channel, Not Just Bikes

https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes

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The Canadian government thought it was an agreement on a minor part of the settlement the church owed for its part in residential schools. The church managed to convince a court that the government had agreed to waive the entire remaining amount — potentially more than $20 million. How did a legal loophole allow the church to avoid payment, and ... it has to be asked: Why didn't the Catholic Church just pay what it owed as reparations for the part it played in residential school horrors?
 

GUEST: Tom Cardoso, The Globe and Mail investigations team

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