Guest: Sara Mojtehedzadeh, work and wealth reporter for the Star

A recent Star investigation has revealed a tangled thread of wage theft, threats and intimidation, all a systemic pattern of abuse within Canada's long-haul trucking industry. Now, truck drivers from Brampton, Ont. are mobilizing and fighting back through a public campaign, as the trucking companies facing allegations have denied any wrongdoing. Work and wealth reporter Sara Mojtehedzadeh joins "This Matters" to talk about her investigation and what the stakes are in this mounting crisis.

Guest: Josh Rubin, business reporter at The Star

Is it time to say a final "cheers" to The Beer Store? The provincial government wants to change alcohol sales in Ontario are and has already loosened some things during the pandemic. The Beer Store is losing money with a continually dropping market share as beer retails in more outlets outside their stores. The contract between the province and The Beer Store's owners is up in 2025, and with that deadline looming and little news of negotiations, the retail outlet's murky future is as clear as a dark stout.

Guest: Kerry Gillespie, sports reporter for the Star

Are Olympians born or are they created? While Canada has a big athletic talent pool to choose from, there are athletes flying under the radar who have world-class abilities but perhaps not the sport to match them. The RBC Training Centre is aiming to find "diamonds in the rough" of Canadian athletes, putting them through tests and trials of their athletic prowess to see if one day they could become Olympians for Team Canada. It's not just a far-fetched dream. It's already led to gold medallists. Today on "This Matters," we take you inside the lab and talk about the state of amateur sports in Canada.

Guest: Jake Roach, senior writer, computing at Digitaltrends.com

If you've tried to buy a hot ticket item online like a new video game console, PC graphics cards or high end sneakers, you know that it is a race against the bots to purchase it. Now, as the holiday season approaches, these programs are spreading to other highly sought after items like toys, prompting members of U.S. Congress to table the Stopping Grinch Bots Act. Building on legislation that first targeted concert tickets which have long been scooped up by scalper's bots, there are plenty of questions about enforcement, jurisdictions and whether it will have any effect at all.

Guests: Natasha Shakespeare, mother of a 13-year-old girl facing bullying and harassment at school, and Shree Paradkar, The Star's race and gender columnist

Warning: Graphic content outlining anti-Black racism and antisemitic abuse.

There has been an explosion of anti-Black racism in schools across Ontario, often intersecting with other forms of hate, including antisemitism. Black parents are now reaching out to advocacy groups, media and legal experts in a desperate bid for the safety of their children in their own schools. In today's episode, mother Natasha Shakespeare shares the harrowing story of how her 13-year-old daughter was targeted by anti-Black violence at not one but two schools in Ontario. Later on, Star journalist Shree Paradkar explains why these incidents are happening so frequently and what, if anything, is being done to stop them.

Guest: Danica Samuel, reporter for the Toronto Star

With hundreds of ethnicities, cultures and unique neighbourhoods, one of the great points of pride for Toronto is its diversity. The City of Toronto wants to define what exactly this is through a "cultural districts" program that would identify different cultural enclaves as being worthy of being preserved. Who gets to decide what should be preserved? Would a "cultural district" designation make these places more secure or is it more red-tape? We parse through what this program is to ultimately answer: who gets to decide what stays and what goes in an ever-changing city.

Guest: Kevin Donovan, The Star's chief investigative reporter

With films like "Gone in 60 Seconds" to "The Fast and The Furious," the world of car theft has been portrayed as a glamorous life full of high stakes and rollicking action. In fact, the modern car thief has high tech tools and they usually work in groups. Cars stolen in the middle of the night and are often on their way to being shipped out of the country before you even wake up. That's what happened to journalist Kevin Donovan's car, and despite what the authorities said and long odds, it was actually recovered. From there he dove into finding out how the world of auto theft works.

Guest: Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti, infectious diseases physician at Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga

News and serious worry over the Omicron variant of COVID-19 spread almost as quickly as the virus itself. The World Health Organization says the newest, potentially more contagious variant poses a "very high" global risk. The UK's Health and Security Agency calls it "the most worrying we've ever seen." In the span of a week and a half, the Omicron variant has been detected in more than a dozen countries around the world. But what do we really know about Omicron? What makes it more transmissible? Given what we know about how COVID works, how worried should we be? Today on "This Matters," we go to the basics with an infectious diseases doctor to explain why scientists believe the variant is more transmissible, talk through what we know and perhaps more crucially, what we're still waiting to find out.

Guest: Alex Boyd, Calgary-based reporter for the Toronto Star

The latest Omicron variant has starkly reminded the world about what global health advocates have been shouting about for more than a year – if vaccines aren't shared, the virus and its variants will spread. Canada has followed dozens of other countries in announcing more travel bans on African countries, and many in South Africa are feeling like they're being punished for alerting the world about Omicron. And just as it came made its presence known in the pandemic, Star reporter Alex Boyd was travelling across Africa to report on exactly these issues. She made it back to Canada from South Africa right under the wire, just hours ahead of the travel ban. She joins "This Matters" to talk about Canada's initial quarantine confusion and how vaccine inequality in the Global South is connected to what's unfolding now.

Guest: Kenyon Wallace, investigative reporter for the Star

The start of the school year in Canada was in effect a real-time experiment of how COVID-19 could spread among a mostly unvaccinated population. Despite vaccine mandates among school staff, mask use, physical distancing and ventilation, the vast majority of elementary school-age children are unvaccinated with their vaccine rollout only now in its initial stages. COVID outbreaks have surged in Ontario schools since November leaving the question about what we can do to slow the spread before the holidays.