Guests: Star reporters Nicholas Keung and Ghada Alsharif

During the pandemic, they were called essential. Migrant workers who packed our meat, picked our produce, and kept grocery shelves stocked. In return, many were offered a pathway to permanent residency through a federal pilot program. Now, that door has quietly closed. The Agri-Food Immigration Pilot is being phased out by the federal government. And with it, thousands of low-wage food workers are once again left in Canada’s continuing cycle of “permanently temporary” immigration. Why was the program shut down? What does this mean for the people who grow and deliver our food and for Canada’s food supply chain with a trade war with the U.S. looming over it all? Two Star immigration and labour reporters break it down. 

Produced by Saba Eitizaz and Paulo Marques

Guest: Star city hall reporter Mahdis Habibinia

After the recent devastating vehicle attack at Vancouver’s Lapu Lapu Day festival, Toronto organizers are raising fresh concerns about soaring security costs and the mounting pressure to keep people safe, especially with the city’s peak festival season around the corner. Toronto has been grappling with these fears for years, particularly after the 2018 van attack on Yonge Street. Since then, efforts to improve safety and crowd control have been underway but serious challenges remain.We look at whether things have actually improved, what risks still exist, and how rising safety demands are testing the limits of festival organizers and the city itself.

Produced by Saba Eitizaz, Paulo Marques and Sean Pattendon

Guest: Shawn Pegg, Director at Community Living Ontario 

A new report by Community Living Ontario exposes a disturbing reality faced by children with disabilities in Ontario schools. Based on interviews with over 500 parents and caregivers, it details how students, some of whom are as young as five, have been locked in rooms, physically restrained, or sent home because schools couldn’t meet their needs. Despite nearly $4 billion in annual special education funding, families and advocates say the system is failing the children. The result is a pattern of trauma, fear, and exclusion playing out in classrooms across the province. We talk to Shawn Pegg, the author of the report about the findings and what needs to be done. 

Produced by Saba Eitizaz and Paulo Marques

Guest:  Ottawa bureau chief Tonda MacCharles 

We’re heading into the final stretch of a charged federal election campaign that’s shaped not just by a critical point in affordability, housing and healthcare but also by global events and Trump’s looming shadow. With election results just around the corner, on Monday; the political mood seems restless.The Star’s Ottawa bureau chief Tonda MacCharles unpacks the political climate, key turning points shaping this campaign and what might come next as the results roll in. 

Produced by Saba Eitizaz, Paulo Marques and Sean Pattendon

Guest: Toronto Star reporter Alex Boyd 

 As Canada heads toward a federal election, the online information landscape is getting messier, more manipulated, and harder to recognize in real time. From repurposed Facebook groups to shady digital operations selling conspiracy-laced content and merch, these tactics are designed to grab attention and slowly shift public opinion. We talk about the strange case of the local buy and sell group in Hamilton, that morphed, almost overnight, into a far-right pro-Trump hub. 

Produced by Saba Eitizaz, Paulo Marques and Sean Pattendon

Guest: Toronto Star crime reporter Peter Edwards 

It’s like a Netflix show in real life. A truck driving off with $24 million in gold and cash, stolen from a hangar outside Pearson International Airport in a crime so smooth it left everyone stunned. Now, two years later the investigation trail spreads across four countries from Canada to the U.S. to Dubai and India. Some of the suspects have fled and it doesn’t like they’re coming back. Neither is the gold. On its two-year anniversary we unpack what’s happened with the infamous Toronto gold heist, the key players and whether there’s any hope left for the case.

 Produced by Saba Eitizaz and Paulo Marques

Guests: Jack Blum and Sharon Corder, co-founders of National Canadian Film Day

Over the past few months, the president of the United States has done more to solidify a sense of Canadian identity than anyone in the past few decades.Suddenly Canadians are examining grocery labels to see what’s made here, looking at their investment portfolios to see if their dollars are working here, and an entire election has turned into a celebration of Canadian patriotism.

But perhaps nowhere has U.S. domination been bigger than in the entertainment industry — our TV screens and (especially) our movie screens are dominated by Hollywood. National Canadian Film Day this week is a chance to break out of that American mindset, offering 1,800 free screenings of Canadian movies in cinemas, concert theaters, libraries, malls, legion halls and anywhere else people can fit a screen.

Founders Jack Blum and Sharon Corder of Reel Canada talk about why they started on a mission to show people great Canadian movies, and why that mission seems especially appropriate at this moment. Plus some highlights of movies being shown Wednesday in and around Toronto, where “I guarantee there’s a screening within a few blocks of you, wherever you are.”

PLUS: Some picks for the best onscreen moments of Canadian patriotism.

This episode was produced by Julia De Laurentiis Johnston, Ed Keenan & Paulo Marques

Guest: Kate Allen, Toronto Star climate change reporter

When the movie Jurassic Park was made in 1993, the technology at the heart of its plot — bringing ancient giant animals back from extinction — was in the same category as time travel and warp drives: science fiction. This week it seems it may be closer to being just plain science.

After a company named Colossal Biosciences stunned the world by announcing it had overseen the birth of three dire wolves, a species of oversized white wolf known to fans of Game of Thrones, but one that has been extinct in reality for over 10,000 years. They have plans to bring the woolly mammoth back to the northern tundra, and revive the dodo bird, too.

Even before this week’s surprise news, executives at the Toronto Zoo have been wrestling with the ethics of “de-extinction” and the mammoth question, and Toronto Star reporter Kate Allen has been reporting on the issues that they and other zookeepers around the world, and conservation experts, see with the sudden application of this technology.

Allen joins This Matters to explain just what Colossal is doing and why it chooses pop-culture celebrity “charismatic” species to revive. And she outlines the ethical, technical and practical questions, and the massive amounts of money and scientific expertise, that this startup company has suddenly brought to the field of animal conservation.

PLUS: Did they really bring back dire wolves, or are these animals something else entirely?   

This episode was produced by Julia De Laurentiis Johnston, Ed Keenan & Paulo Marques

Guest: Toronto Star senior immigration reporter Nicholas Keung

For years, Canada’s immigration system was held up as a glowing model on the global stage. But what was once seen as a solution— to labour shortages, economic slowdown and an aging population—is now being blamed for everything from the housing crisis to collapsing healthcare. In today’s episode, we try to wade through the numbers, the policies and the politics behind a dramatic shift in how Canadians view immigration and how it went from celebrated to scrutinized. 

Produced by Saba Eitizaz and Paulo Marques

Guest: Brendan Kennedy, investigative reporter at The Star

On Dec. 20, 2023 a guard was assaulted by an inmate at Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton, Ontario. The inmate was then immediately removed from the facility. Two days later, jail guards in full riot gear carried out a violent, mass strip search of 192 inmates – none of whom were involved in the initial incident -- in a coordinated, collective punishment that spanned 48 hours. 

A judge has called it a gross display of power, something that should never happen in this country. However, the Ministry of the Solicitor General, who oversees jails across the province, has remained relatively silent on the matter. 

The incident has gone on to impact dozens of criminal cases across the province, as inmates seek to have their charges stayed or sentences reduced – and in some cases have received just that, as a recourse for having their Charter Rights violated.

Brendan Kennedy, investigative reporter with The Star, originally broke this story last year and has been doggedly trying to obtain security footage of exactly what went down at Maplehurst over the course of those 48 hours and what that tell us about the state of our jails.

PLUS: Hear from Rene Pearle, a former Maplehurst inmate who was there on that fateful day

This episode was produced by Julia De Laurentiis Johnston, Sean Pattendon and Paulo Marques.