This week on On The Line, Matt Gurney is joined by Gregory Jack, senior vice president of public affairs at Ipsos Canada, for a conversation about the issues that are animating — and dividing — Canadians today.

This episode of the On The Line is brought to you by Forestry For The Future. Canada’s housing crisis demands bold, scalable solutions. Build Canada Homes is an opportunity to leverage Canadian wood in modern construction. Wood-based methods like mass timber and modular construction can significantly reduce build times, waste, and carbon emissions, while supporting local economies. Expanding building codes, streamlining approvals, and prioritizing domestic wood in federal projects could double demand and foster job creation in rural and northern communities.

Despite trade challenges and market volatility, a partnership between industry and government is vital to stabilize the sector, enhance competitiveness, and deliver innovative, sustainably sourced Canadian wood products for homes across Canada and abroad. With capacity growing across provinces, stable demand and predictable financing are key to unlocking the sector’s potential.

We need to Build Canada Homes with Canadian wood. To learn more, visit ForestryForTheFuture.ca.

They start with an extended discussion guided by new polling data that captures what Canadians are currently worried about. Concerns about Donald Trump and the U.S.-Canada relationship remain, but they’ve faded. Cost of living issues, public safety, crime, and the eternal favourite — healthcare — are back at the top of the agenda. But the polling also shows that Trump has a knack for shooting back to the top of the list whenever he has one of his more remarkable moments talking about Canada.

This episode is also brought to you by the Daily Bread Food Bank. Working-age Canadians with disabilities experience poverty and food insecurity at twice the rate of the general population. The Canada Disability Benefit was designed to address this, but at $6.67 a day, it fails to cover essentials like food, housing, and medication. Daily Bread Food Bank and coalition partners urge the federal government to fully fund the benefit to lift those it was meant to serve out of poverty. Join thousands of Canadians calling for change to help ensure people with disabilities can live a life of dignity. Take action at FundTheBenefit.ca.

From there, Matt and Greg dive into immigration — a topic they deliberately avoided earlier in the show so they could focus on it here. Matt had a hunch, based on what he’s been seeing and hearing out there, and asked Greg to pull some numbers to see if it held up. Stay tuned. You won’t want to miss this one.

A note for our audience: this episode was recorded early because of the Thanksgiving long weekend, so we avoided anything we thought might be vulnerable to breaking news developments. Don't blame us if something wild happens! We did our part to be responsible and not jinx anyone.