Front Burner

"There is no place for the far right in our party." That's a quote from a statement released on Sunday by Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole, where he condemns the riot in the U.S. Capitol and paints a moderate picture of the Conservative Party under his leadership. On the heels of the statement, PressProgress revealed that MP Derek Sloan accepted a donation from a notorious white supremacist, leading O'Toole to move to oust Sloan from the Conservative party. Today, CBC parliamentary hill journalist Aaron Wherry on why O'Toole felt he had to declare the Conservatives to be "sitting squarely in the centre of Canadian politics" and what it says about him and the party he leads.

For sometimes as little as two dollars an hour, some migrant workers in Malaysia say they spend their days producing disposable gloves in sweatshop-like conditions in a factory — and spend their nights in dirty, overcrowded shared quarters. As global demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) surges, it would appear that so has the human cost for those making it overseas, an investigation by CBC's Marketplace has found. The investigation revealed allegations of exploitation, debt bondage and passport retention from across the disposable glove industry in Malaysia. Marketplace host Asha Tomlinson and producer Eric Szeto join Front Burner to explain why we should be asking where Canada’s PPE comes from.

In the wake of last week's attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Proud Boys — a group founded by Canadian Gavin McInnes — has been under intense pressure. The FBI is arresting some of its members. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has called for the them to be designated a terrorist group, and the federal government is considering it. Today, how the Proud Boys started, and where they ended up, with Jared Holt — a visiting researcher at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab who studies domestic extremism

"Post-truth is pre-fascism." So wrote historian Timothy Snyder in his 2017 book, On Tyranny. He penned it in the lead-up to Donald Trump's inauguration, and he's been warning ever since: The United States is not exceptional, a coup could be attempted there, too. Now, Trump's presidency is in its dying days. He has been impeached by the House again, this time for "incitement of insurrection." But the big lie, as Snyder calls it, that Trump seeded — that the 2020 election was stolen from him — what becomes of that lie now? Today on Front Burner, Snyder explores that question.

Last Friday, 16-year-old Ariana Quesada walked into an RCMP station in High River, Alta., to file a formal complaint about the death of her father, Benito, who died eight months ago of COVID-19. He worked at the Cargill meat-packing plant, home to the largest coronavirus outbreak in the country, with at least 950 staff members contracting it last spring. The RCMP have now opened an investigation into Benito Quesada's death. Today, CBC investigative reporter Dave Seglins on Benito's story and larger questions about corporate responsibility in a global pandemic.

On Monday, for the second time in his one-term presidency, Democrats introduced an article to impeach Donald Trump. Previously, Trump was impeached but not convicted by the Senate. But following last week's deadly riot at the Capitol building, Democrats are trying to hold Trump accountable. Their tactics also include a resolution urging Vice-President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from power. Today on Front Burner, CBC Washington correspondents Lyndsay Duncombe and Alex Panetta explain what might happen next.

U.S. President Donald Trump was permanently banned from Twitter after the platform cited “the risk of further incitement of violence” following the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last week. Facebook previously banned him for the remainder of his time in office, and many other tech companies have followed suit. Today on Front Burner, Julia Angwin joins host Jayme Poisson for a conversation about Trump’s ban from multiple social media platforms and what consequences that might have. Angwin is editor-in-chief of The Markup, an American non-profit that takes on data-driven investigations about the ethics and impact of technology.

Canada has received more than 430,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. But as of Thursday, only about 45 per cent of those doses have gone into arms. Those numbers are sourced from the COVID-19 Canada Open Data Working Group, made up of public health experts and data scientists from the University of Toronto and the University of Guelph. Provincial governments across the country have been roundly criticized for not administering the vaccines they got in mid December quickly enough. Today on Front Burner, Globe and Mail health columnist André Picard and scientist Krishana Sankar, on why the rollout has been so challenging and what can be done about it.

Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump sowed chaos in and around the U.S. Capitol, forcing lawmakers to flee as they’d gathered to certify president-elect Joe Biden’s victory, after Trump himself encouraged them. CBC Washington correspondents Katie Simpson and Paul Hunter explain how pro-Trump extremists managed to breach Capitol security and storm the complex.

Last spring, Ontario Premier Doug Ford promised to move "heaven and earth" to prevent more long-term care residents from dying of COVID-19. But today, more than one-third of the province's long-term care homes are in an outbreak. More than 960 residents have died since the start of October. And experts say it didn't have to be this way. Today, we're speaking to Dr. Samir Sinha — the director of geriatrics at the Sinai Health System and the University Health Network, and the director of health policy research at the National Institute on Ageing — about what Ontario could have done, but didn't.