The Big Story Frequency Podcast Network

Today, evacuation alerts for several communities in BC and Alberta are in effect. You may not have noticed, because there are always evacuation alerts in effect now, and there are always fires burning, some of them out of control. When the whole country takes notice is when the skies over entire provinces go dark, the air turns bad or a blaze like the Fort McMurray fire in 2016 blitzes through a city.

All of that will probably happen this year. The conditions are ripe for it, and there's not much we can do to prevent a devastating fire when it comes. But we can evolve our strategies as the fires get bigger. We can adapt. But...will we?

GUEST: John Vaillant, author, Fire Weather: The making of a beast

In 2022, the Doug Ford government opened parts of Ontario’s protected Greenbelt for housing development, touching off a massive political scandal. But long before that, tensions over the green space outside of Toronto had been quietly simmering for nearly two decades.

What is the Greenbelt? How did it end up becoming such a flashpoint for fights over the housing crisis and the climate crisis? And who stood to benefit when the Ford government tore it up after 20 years?

On Saturday's we normally drop the newest episode of In this Economy?! in the feed, but this week we wanted to spotlight another Frequency Podcast Network production that we thought you'd enjoy. Here's the first episode of the sixth season of Laura Palmer's acclaimed show, Island Crime, and we think it might be best one yet.

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ORIGINAL SHOW NOTES

For three decades, Rhonda has wondered why someone killed her high school friend Kimberly Gallup. Kimberly was a girl who loved the Kansas City Chiefs and Bon Jovi. Her death has a lasting impact on all who knew her.

This is one that even the police say will be a Netflix miniseries someday. On April 17, 2023, more than $20 million in gold was stolen from Pearson airport in Toronto. Nobody was hurt, and the crooks got away. It was one of those kinds of thefts. You can picture the scene in your head.

Exactly one year later though, police announced arrests, including those of two Air Canada employees, making clear they believe it was at least partly an inside job. How did the crooks pull off the initial caper? How did the cops catch them? What happened to the gold, and who will play whom in the adaptation?

GUEST: Andy Takagi, reporter, The Toronto Star

By far the biggest part of the federal budget is an ambitious plan that the Liberal government claims will not only hit the targeted estimate of homes Canada needs, but will blow right past it. You'd be forgiven some skepticism, since the Prime Minister stated less than a year ago that housing "isn't a primary federal responsibility." A lot has changed since then, especially the government's polling numbers.

But politics aside, what's in this plan? How exactly does the government think it can hit its targets? What does one of the country's leading housing policy analysts think of those solutions? What's in this plan that will or won't solve the housing crisis in the next decade? And what's in it to help people afford homes right now?

GUEST: Mike Moffatt, Senior Director of Policy and Innovation at the Smart Prosperity Institute; Assistant Professor in the Business, Economics and Public Policy group at Ivey Business School, Western University

In the weeks leading up to Tuesday's budget announcement, the federal government has been hammering a message that this document would make life more affordable for Canadians.

Does it accomplish that? What's in here that will matter to your wallet in the months to come? What takes aim at trying to bring down the cost of living over the next several years? And who's going to end up paying for all this?

GUEST: Jim Stanford, economist and Director of The Centre for Future Work