Guests: Ontario NDP MPP Sol Mamakwa, and Samanta Krishnapillai, founder of On Canada Project

The calls to cancel Canada Day are loud. After more than 1,000 bodies of Indigenous children have been found in unmarked graves at former residential schools, many are questioning whether it is appropriate to celebrate national pride while a deep national trauma is ongoing and being reckoned with. After multiple Canadian cities have cancelled their festivities, should Canada Day be cancelled nation-wide? Is this a moment, not for fireworks, but for deep reflection, conversation and action over Canada's colonial history and present reality?

Guest: Erin Benjamin, president and CEO of the Canadian Live Music Association

With over 85 entertainment venues closed across the country during this pandemic, the people behind the concert halls and performance spaces that managed to survive repeated lockdowns are now cautiously optimistic that business can get back to normal. But there is still a long way to go with a confusing patchwork set of rules across the country. You can't just turn performances on like a tap, but the bands (and plays, ballet, symphony and more) should be playing on soon.

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With eye doctors embroiled in a pay dispute with the Ontario government over what OHIP covers of an annual eye exam, the province's optometrists have threatened to not accept OHIP-covered patients — which most affects patients under 18 and above 65 — come September unless the province agrees to legally-binding negotiations on the issue. Dr. Salaba joins us to explain the doctor's case.

Guest: Dr. Sheldon Salaba, Hamilton-based optometrist and president of the Ontario Association of Optometrists

June is Pride month. It's a month that is a celebration of 2SLGBTQIA+ communities, a recognition of a decades-long struggle for rights and equality and a reminder that this struggle is ongoing. Brian Bradley joins on "This Matters" to talk about how that struggle is going in Hamilton, Ont., two years after Pride Hamilton organizers had to grapple with violent hate by far-right groups and questionable response from their local police service to protect them. They're taking their fight all the way to the human rights tribunal and making history along the way.

Guest: Brian Bradley, Digital Producer, Toronto Star

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Most of us knows someone who mistrusts some element of the COVID-19 vaccine. Access, miscommunication, cultural barriers and the historic traumas that some communities have associated with the health system are all factors behind that mistrust. Data shows that more than a quarter of Canadians have yet to get their first dose. So, how are vaccine advocates working towards turning a "maybe" into a "hell yes?" Dr. Tajinder Kaura joins me on "This Matters" to explain.

Guest: Dr. Tajinder Kaura, ER physician in Peel Region, member of South Asian COVID-19 Task Force and the This is Our Shot campaign

While there are fresh concerns over the Delta Plus variant of COVID, the Delta variant itself is reaching a tipping point in Ontario. For much of the pandemic, Canada has lagged a few weeks behind the UK in cases — but what happens across the Atlantic, usually happens here. We look into the latest data in the UK, explain why Delta spreads so quickly and what Canada should be learning now.

Guests: Health reporter Jennifer Yang and Investigative reporter Kenyon Wallace, Toronto Star

If you would like to support the journalism of the Toronto Star, you can subscribe at thestar.com/subscribingmatters.

COVID vaccines approved and circulated by Health Canada — Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca — are safe and effective, but one of these is not like the other. AstraZeneca is a viral vector vaccine and it has faced waves of bad press, poor communication and changing guidelines. Many question its use. In a time of reopening and specific restrictions, why is an effective vaccine that millions of Canadians have received getting short shrifted? What happens to the thousands of AZ doses Canada still has available?

Guests: May Warren and Alex Boyd, Toronto Star reporters on COVID and vaccines

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Kofi Hope and Zahra Ebrahim, co-founders of Monumental and part of a team leading the AllOut campaign, join "This Matters" to talk about the systemic barriers that lead to a lack of representation of racialized communities in the Canadian outdoors, how this fuels damaging stereotypes and the growing movement to get more Indigenous, Black and people of colour outside.

If you would like to support the journalism of the Toronto Star, you can subscribe at thestar.com/subscribingmatters.

In the works for almost four years, reporter Kevin Donovan's five-part series "Death in a Small Town" explores the death of a child and the turmoil it plunged his family into. Nathaniel McLellan was 15-months-old and acting strangely at his daycare when his parents, Rose-Anne and Kent McLellan, were summoned to take him to the hospital. What followed was a tumultuous journey of a seemingly tunnel visioned investigation, conflicting medical reports and a family's ongoing fight for justice. Kevin Donovan joins "This Matters" to discuss the story and add some personal commentary to the investigation.

It was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who said "young people aren't facing a housing problem, they're facing a housing crisis." The red hot real estate market has seen growth at a record pace, and many young and first-time buyers have found themselves priced out of buying a home. To address that, the government recently made changes to the mortgage stress test. We take a look at the test, and many of the issues facing those who are trying to buy a home in this market.