CANADALAND

AI chatbots are encouraging violence, social media is hurting kids, and Ottawa is still trying to figure out how to regulate the harms of the internet after two very public failed attempts. Host Noor Azrieh and Taylor Owen, professor and member of the federal task force on AI and online safety, dig into the federal government’s latest Online Harms push. 

Why does regulating the internet, especially its nastier corners, keep...

Canada is home to one of the largest Iranian communities outside of Iran in the world. There are over 280,000 Iranian Canadians living here. 

The rallies they've held in recent months have been some of the largest that Canada has ever seen. According to the CBC last month, 350,000 people took to the streets in Toronto. And that was before the war had even begun.

Today we’re checking in with three Iranian-Canadians as the...

Carney travels to India and strikes a landmark deal with Modi, but what about all those allegations of foreign interference by Indian agents in Canada? 

A senior official in Carney’s government says India is no longer targeting Canadians, but CSIS and other Liberal MPs insist it’s still ongoing. 

Plus, a new Globe and Mail investigation offers a detailed portrait of the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Corre...

As journalists, our job is to dig deep into stories. And sometimes, we dig far deeper than we ever thought possible. And those deep dives will often become our most interesting stories.

And finding those stories usually follows a pattern.

Something catches your eye, it draws you in. You start doing a little research on it.

Then you find something that makes us go, “Huh…”

You start pulling the thread, follow the bread cr...

Carney’s support of the US and Israel’s attack on Iran raises questions around Canada’s “principled pragmatism” approach to foreign policy. Is it consistent with what he said at Davos?

Plus, the Iranian-Canadian response to the killing of Ali Khamenei isn’t as mixed as the headlines suggest. 

Correction: in a previous version of this episode, a statement was erroneously attributed to Quebec’s Minister of Education, Sonia...

More than 24,000 federal public servants have received notices that their jobs could be at risk. That is on top of the 9800 public service employees who were already let go last year. Host Sam Konnert takes us inside the government, specifically, inside a single lab within Environment and Climate Change Canada. A lab tasked with making sure our water is clean and our food is plastic-free. A lab that could go from nine PhD-level sci...

By some estimates Canada will soon be short thousands of trained aircraft mechanics. The people who keep our flights safe. The government came up with $25 million dollars to help.

A whistleblower came to Canadaland to allege that the money bought training materials that were plagiarized, then run through ChatGPT. Those materials resulted in AI slop that included AI hallucinations.

Our reporter Gemma Boothroyd brings us her in...

Sparks were markedly absent from the final NDP leadership debate, replaced instead by “violent agreement” amongst candidates. Meanwhile, the federal Liberals’ rightward shift leaves a wide gap on the left side of the political spectrum. What does the NDP need to do to shake off the sleepies, and meet the current political moment?

Freelance journalist Luke Savage joins host James Nicholson to give Canada’s traditionally left-lean...

 " What in the Silicon Valley ethos of move fast and break stuff would make us expect that they are going to have any real safety concerns at all?"

A new report from the Wall Street Journal reveals the U.S. tech company OpenAI knew of troublesome ChatGPT usage by Jesse van Rootselaar, months before the Tumbler Ridge shooting, and did nothing. The news stoked ongoing calls for better guardrails on A.I. chatbots and beyond.

Mark Carney is busy trying to Trump-proof Canada with a flurry of trade deals and whispers of a mega anti-Trump alliance linking Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Trade researcher Stuart Trew joins host Noor Azrieh to argue that more free trade isn’t a master plan; it’s diminishing returns with nicer branding.

Plus, Ottawa reporter Sam Konnert breaks down Canada’s newly released Defence Industrial Strategy: 70% Canadian content, massive ...

When shots rang out in Tumbler Ridge there was one reporter in town. He was used to covering local events like town council meetings, local hockey, or even, once, a mother duck leading her chicks through town. Then on February 10 came one of the worst shootings in Canadian history.

For the first five hours after the attack local reporter Trent Ernst was the sole journalist in the town. Then the international media descended and ...

Another floor crossing MP spoils Pierre Poilievre’s entry into the men’s fitness ecosystem. 

Edmonton MP Matt Jeneroux’s decision to unresign and join Carney’s Liberals has resurfaced questions around Poilievre fitness for leadership. Pierre can swing a kettlebell, but can hold onto his own caucus?

Host: Jesse Brown 

Credits: James Nicholson (Producer), Kattie Laur (Associate Producer and Fact Checking), Caleb Th...

Project South uncovers one of the worst cases of police corruption in Canadian history. 

The investigation into Toronto Police offers a staggering portrait of corruption, with allegations connecting officers to attempted assassinations, illegal firearms, drug trafficking, extortion, bribery, and leaking confidential information.

Plus, the death of “the last man in Africville” and the targeting of Jewish summer camps.&nbs...

Surrey, BC has already recorded 51 extortions this year. 11 of them ended with shots fired. That might sound surprising until you realise last year there were 133 cases, and 49 related shootings. So what’s actually driving this? And how is it possible that after more than a year of this, no level of government (municipal, provincial, federal) and no police force has managed to get it under control? Host Noor speaks with former MP J...

Jay Baruchel, if you don’t know that name, you likely know his face from the string of hit movies he’s been in: Knocked Up, This Is The End, Blackberry, Million Dollar Baby, Almost Famous, and Tropic Thunder, among many others. He’s been in the belly of Hollywood’s beast for over two decades. 

But he’s also a self-proclaimed Canadian patriot with the maple leaf literally tattooed over his heart. So who better to join us to ...

While the Canadian mainstream media was reluctant to reveal unverified information, far right outlets and bad actors swarmed to score political points for their anti-trans agenda.

Why is Jesse Van Rootselaar’s gender the focus of the online discussion? And how should it fit into the coverage? 

Mel Woods of Xtra Magazine joins Noor Azrieh. 

Host: Noor Azrieh

Credits: James Nicholson (Producer), Kattie Laur (Associa...

Playing rules-based games at the end of the rules-based order. 

With the heated rivalry between the US and Canada, athletes speaking out against ICE, and the rupture of old world order in the background, the Olympics are especially political this time around.

Where do politics fit into the winter games and how did hockey become a symbol of geopolitical conflict? 

Rahim Mohamed of the National Post gets “Canada Do...

NATO is building something new: a Defence, Security and Resilience Bank. Basically a World Bank for war, and Canada wants it.

From Toronto to Montreal to Ottawa to Halifax, mayors are campaigning hard, pitching their cities as the future headquarters of a global military finance hub. Thousands of high-paying jobs, direct access to defence capital and a front-row seat to the new security order are all at stake.

At the same tim...

The government of New Brunswick has released its much-anticipated report on the mysterious neurological illnesses afflicting many in the province. The report doesn’t just aim to identify what’s behind the “cluster” of disease. It’s far more fundamental than that. Its findings raise questions as to whether the disease itself exists. Is it a single disease or a mass misdiagnosis of unrelated illnesses?

The physician at the heart o...