- A story about the family that just kept growing
Thursday, September 10th 2020
In a large house, in a very nice area of Toronto, in the 1970s and 80s, there lived a normal family: Mom, dad, kids. Roughly thirty kids, actually, most of them adopted from all over the worlds. Thirty kids with different languages, needs, dreams and personalities.
Why did they do it? What happened when they did? What kind of legacy does the Simpson family leave behind today in a city and country they helped build just be being a normal, loving, ever-growing family?
GUEST: Nicholas Hune-Brown, Toronto Life
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- Will outer space become the new Wild West?
Wednesday, September 9th 2020
When SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy took off from a NASA launchpad this year, it marked a new era of manned spaceflight, one in which private businesses have as much of a stake in success as government space agencies. But have we stopped along the way to think about the ramifications of that?
What rules do companies like SpaceX have to follow once they are out on the final frontier? If they break them, who makes sure they pay for it? And as technology evolves at a rapid pace and these partnerships become more common, who or what stops space from becoming the new wild west?
GUEST: Michael O'Shea
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- Canada’s new approach to treating obesity
Tuesday, September 8th 2020
A lot of Canadians are obese. That's a fact. But a lot of the things you think you know about that fact—why they're obese, how they could lose weight, what they need to hear from their doctors—just aren't true. Last month Canada unveiled a new set of guidelines for treating obesity, and the biggest headline among the recommendations was: "No dieting."
But the guidelines don't stop there. From an acceptance of surgery as a solution, challenging the biases of doctors and looking at obesity as a science-based problem, they call for a dramatic change in approach to the problem. Will they work? Will we follow them?
GUEST: Dr. Sean Wharton
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- Your guide to government benefits after the CERB
Friday, September 4th 2020
It was a program created at unimaginable speed under incredible circumstances. And it has helped millions of Canadians. But six months later—two months longer than initially planned—the federal government is ending the Canada Emergency Response Benefit. So what’s next?
Expanded EI qualifications, new programs for those who don't qualify for EI and other efforts aimed at supporting workers still impacted by COVID-19. Who qualifies? For how much? How quickly and for how long? And what do you need to prepare to apply? We've got a guide to post-CERB Canadian government help.
GUEST: Rosa Saba, business reporter, Toronto Star
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- How police use private donations to buy big-ticket items
Thursday, September 3rd 2020
One of the goals of the movement to defund the police is to limit a police force's ability to acquire expensive, military-style equipment. Even if that movement is successful, however, the police have other ways of funding their purchases. It doesn't get much attention, but police foundations across Canada have in recent years used money given to them by corporate donors to help police purchase everything from a patrol boat to an armoured vehicle and a drone program.
None of those purchases needed the approval of city hall or the public. None of them was open and transparent. And none of them would have been stopped by defunding the police department. In fact, as defunding the police gains momentum, these foundations will become more attractive to police departments and more outrageous to people who worry about preferential treatment for donors.
GUEST: Martin Lukacs
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