- As the winter thaw looms in Ukraine, NATO tanks will be critical
Tuesday, February 7th 2023
A Canadian tank arrived in Poland on Monday, and will head off to bolster Ukrainian efforts agains a Russian invasion. The single tank, obviously, isn't critical on its own, but what it represents definitely is: It's a German tank, which Canada could not have offered without German agreement, which shouldn't be taken for granted.
Nearly a year after the war started, holding NATO's supportive alliance together is paramount, and these tanks are a symbol that it remains. They are also critical because as the territory warms up, Russia is likely planning new incursions—and the tanks will allow Ukrainian forces to bring the fight to them. After nearly a year of death and resistance, and a cold, slow winter, what happens when the thaw arrives?
GUEST: Matt Gurney, reporter and columnist, writing in The Line
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- Employee monitoring goes to court, and we learn about "time theft"
Monday, February 6th 2023
What counts as "work" and what doesn't? If you're sitting there, doing nothing, thinking of how to accomplish your goals ... are you working? Well, if you're using a company laptop, the software watching your every move might not agree. And now there's a chance the courts will agree with them.
Welcome to the still-very-new era of "time theft", where employee tracking can result in a case being made against workers who were using their work time for something else, at least in the eyes of their employers. What kind of rules exist around employee monitoring in Canada? How far can this go? And who among us has never "stolen" some time? Like, really?
GUEST: Valerio De Stefano, Canada Research Chair in Innovation, Law and Society at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto and co-author of the 2022 book “Your boss is an Algorithm”
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- Are we looking for aliens in all the wrong places?
Friday, February 3rd 2023
Much of humanity's search for extraterrestrial life has focused on, well, our kind of life—the conditions that make possible the biology we see on Earth. But what if the conditions that make life possible are far from what we imagine? What if we don't actually know what "life" is, even? Woah, dude...
Seriously, though, in recent years scientists have been working to reframe our parameters in hopes that we'll find unlikely life, in unlikely places. What might that look like? The possibilities are infinite.
GUEST: Sarah Scoles, science writer, reporting in Scientific American
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- Is Toronto's transit system entering a death spiral?
Thursday, February 2nd 2023
Even if you don't live in the city, you've probably heard about the recent spate of violence on Toronto's transit system. There have been some really ugly, seemingly random incidents. And while anecdotes may not be reliable, in this case the numbers back them up: Even with far fewer riders, there has been a sharp spike in the number of serious incidents on the system since the pandemic began.
The question is what happens now. When fear spreads, that keeps riders away. With fewer riders comes worse service and safety, which keeps the cycle going. Add in the failings of Toronto's shelter system and other public health initiatives to help care for the city's vulnerable population, and you have a collapsing transit system also taking on the weight of other services.
Are more cops the answer? What else could the city try? Will they tackle the root cause of the problems, rather than simply the problems themselves? And what happens if they don't?
GUEST: Lex Harvey, transportation reporter, Toronto Star
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- We're still short on kids' fever meds, and those aren't the only drugs we need
Wednesday, February 1st 2023
Pain and fever meds for children—acetaminophen and ibuprofen, usually—have been in short (or no) supply across the country for several months. Purchases made by the government have begun to hit shelves, but for many parents it's still difficult to find. How did a handful of factors combine to cause this shortage? Why has it lasted so long?
And although these medicines have been the ones grabbing headlines, why don't many Canadians know just how many drugs we're running out of?
GUEST: Carly Weeks, health reporter, The Globe and Mail
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