CanCon

Over the next couple of weeks, we'll be revisiting a couple of our previous episodes—beginning with a trip through some of Canada's least-known but most worthy places to visit if you've still got some time to explore this summer: 

This summer, given ... everything going on down there, Canadians are more interested in exploring their own backyard than traveling to the United States. And since we've spent four months explo...

Last week, we examined the Canadian Tech from a 10,000-foot perspective. This week, we take you inside the launch of Eh!, a Canadian social media platform that aims to get users out into their cities, towns and neighbourhoods, rather than lost in an algorithm.

It's been around for almost a year now, and boasts tens of thousands of users—which is great, but is also a drop in the ocean compared to Facebook and Instagram. So wha...

It's been well over a year since Canadians (and our governments) realized just how dependent we are on American technology—for everything from our day-to-day lives to the infrastructure of Canadian businesses and even our defence capabilities. We knew then that Canada had the talent and the resources, all we needed was the will.

Well, that and hundreds of billions of dollars. And a tech industry that doesn't keep losing talen...

Laura Palmer has been investigating and reporting on crimes on Vancouver Island for years. It's changed the way she sees one of Canada's most gorgeous places, and made her something of a local celebrity. But she's never dug into a case as old as the one she's chasing on her current season of Island Crime.

In this episode, Laura (one of the founders of this podcast) takes us inside what it's like to be something of a public detectiv...

Nothing much had ever been expected from soccer in Canada—or at least from men's soccer in Canada, and mainstream soccer fandom. Until recently. After our women's team showed the world we could punch well above our weight in the 2000s, the game started to gather steam. Now, after a successful run by the mean's team at the World Cup, and what has been by all accounts a superb atmosphere at the games played in Toronto and Vanco...

The House of Commons is a staid, formal institution. Right? It's been that way for well over a century. Gentlemen (and eventually Gentlewomen) debating important issues in a dignified manner? Not always.

The real history of our halls of power includes exploding protesters, lots of cats and nudity and myriad other strange situations that crop up when flawed people hold power, public citizens protest and everyone pushes for their own...

Ticks in this country used to be a minor, if dangerous, annoyance. That's changing quickly. Not only are the traditional deer ticks that we've lived with in some areas of the country spreading further north than ever before, other species that carry different tick-borne disease than what we've come to expect. Some of them increasingly harmful.

Driving this explosion are a combination of factors. Climate change, of course. But it go...

Halifax, like many cities in Canada, faces a housing crunch. Not because of how big it is geographically. There's plenty of room. But because of how hard it can be for cities to rezone for increased density and create more affordable housing. If you live in a city of decent  size, you're probably familiar with why: NIMBYs, lobbyists and all the assorted complaints and opposition and money that tends to stop ambitious city-plan...

Well, let's just say that if everything's going great, you don't generally need to spin up an entire law enforcement agency out of thin air. But after years of failing to meaningfully cope with financial crimes, and the subsequent hits to our reputation in the international community that failure brings, the federal government has seen enough.

Instead of the RCMP, which has murders and kidnappings and daily small-town policing on i...

It was long overdue, and began with a promise: It might start small, covering just a few common drugs, and expand until Canadians without benefits were no longer struggling to afford medication prescribed by doctors under our universal health care system.

Less than two years later, however, the program seems set to contract instead of expand. It never got beyond the first couple of drugs, and the funding might well be squeezed to z...

You may not have heard about it, but the Permanent Joint Board on Defense has been a part of Canada and America's shared strategy for decades. Evidently, however, it may not be as "permanent" as its name suggests. 

Recently, the US announced it was pausing the board, citing Canada's need to contribute more to mutual defence in North America and a suggestion that we're talking the talk more than walking the walk when it comes t...

Canada, as you may know, produces a ton of oil. Billions of tons every day, actually. Nearly all the oil we use was taken from the ground, one way or another, right here. And yet! When the Strait of Hormuz shut down, the price Canadians pay for Canadian-produced oil and gas went through the roof, just as it's done in nations that need to import almost all their oil.

The answer to why that happened goes back to a policy that Canada ...

This week we're checking in with the audience on the first few months of CanCon, discussing episodes we did or didn't (yet!) create, reading some of your feedback and getting a feel for where we're at before we dive back in to another few months of Canadian stories. If you haven't yet, don't forget to let us know what you think, and what you'd like us to cover. And thanks, as always, for listening.

Feedback from listeners is so, so...

A roof over one's head has been a necessity of life since we lived in caves. But when that roof also represents Canada's class struggle, our income inequality issues and potentially the owner's entire retirement portfolio...things get complicated.

More than half of young Canadians don't expect they'll ever own a home. There are millions of Canadians right now who own their homes thanks to privilege, timing, relationships and...just...

In recent weeks, dozens of videos pushing Alberta separation (and frequently US annexation) have driven tens of millions of views on YouTube. But there's a problem. All these videos and accounts are remarkably similar, and to someone who actually knows the province, there are signs the people making them ... do not.

Who's behind these videos and what's their goal? To truly drive an independent Alberta, or to sow division during a t...

In the late '90s and early '00s, the music industry fundamentally changed. Within a decade, fans went from buying CDs in a local music store to purchasing $0.99 singles on iTunes. But before iTunes was available in Canada, and before the US giants took over the industry, Canadian startups were at the front of the pack.

In this episode, we reminisce on a very strange and transformative time in media--you might remember the first CD ...

It's not just a Canadian problem, though it has likely cost some Canadians their lives. Staff answering 911 calls in centres the world over are overworked, stressed and sometimes ... there just aren't enough of them. As a result, callers are sometimes left on hold in the most awful circumstances possible. Money has been spent on recruitment, but talent is tough to come by. Enter Hyper.

A Canadian startup that was just acquired by M...

Would you call Walmart Canada a "Canadian" company? It's a much more complex question than it appears—but I think most of us would agree on the general answer. It's a Canadian subsidiary of a giant US retail behemoth. But when it comes to procurement spending from the federal government, often these are kinds of companies that can meet qualifications to describe themselves as "Canadian" and earn an edge over their competitors...

When the World Happiness Report first began scoring countries on their self-reported levels of happiness in 2012, Canada was consistently in the top 10. It felt right, we were pretty happy. Over the past several years, things have been changing, first slowly and now rapidly. In the recently published edition of the report, Canadians' happiness levels ranked 25th in the world, by far a new low. And that precipitous drop has been dri...