This Matters

Ed Keenan and Emma Teitel's Toronto politics chat considers the implications and possible motivations for the likely next stop on the premier’s policy revolving door, discusses new Ontario Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie’s retail appeal, considers both the impact and the implications of the library’s ongoing victimization by hackers, and talks about possible progress on the King Street transit priority situation.

Produced by Julia De Laurentiis Johnston, Paulo Marques and Edward Keenan

What you would like to hear on Toronto Star podcasts? Let us know in this survey and you can enter to win a $100 gift card.

Guest: Moira Welsh, journalist 

Canada's population is aging fast. Over the next two decades, one in four Canadians are going to be over the age of 65. As experts say our health care system isn't ready, the devastation in long-term care homes during COVID-19 offered a terrifying glimpse into the future. As such, many older adults fear nursing homes and instead struggle to age at home, alone, often without support, human contact or dignity. Moira Welsh, Toronto Star journalist and author of the book "Happily Ever Older: Revolutionary Approaches to Long-Term Care," joins us to explain. 

What you would like to hear on Toronto Star podcasts? Let us know in this survey and you can enter to win a $100 gift card.

Returning for its third season, the “Millennial Money” podcast is doing things differently this time around. New host and Toronto Star business reporter Ghada Alsharif speaks to fellow millennials about relatable financial dilemmas that are usually taboo or embarrassing, that everyone is grappling with behind closed doors. Alsharif will then bring the topic straight to an expert to work out some options.

Episode 1 (Home ownership or kids: do I have to choose?) is now available on podcast platforms or at thestar.com/millennialmoneypodcast.

Guest: Robert Benzie, Queen’s Park bureau chief 

The Ontario Liberals have elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. She is tasked with taking down Premier Doug Ford, whose government is already labelling her as an elitist, and bringing her party back in from the wilderness after two crushing and consecutive defeats and no official party status. You could say she’s got her work cut out for her. Robert Benzie, The Star’s Queen’s Park bureau chief and our very own Ontario politics expert, helps unpack Crombie’s victory and what the next two and a half years could look like for the Liberals in Ontario politics before the next provincial election in June 2026. 

This episode was produced by Paulo Marques and Saba Eitizaz.

What you would like to hear on Toronto Star podcasts? Let us know in this survey and you can enter to win a $100 gift card.

Guest: Emma Teitel, columnist

Columnist Emma Teitel joins again for a Toronto politics chat after an extended absence with lots of fresh news to talk about, including the election of a new councillor to replace Gary Crawford in Scarborough. It was a race that will affect council’s ideological composition, with a winner who wants to emphasize transit and child care. Meanwhile, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced a new financial deal for Toronto. We get into the nuts and bolts of it, what it means, what it doesn’t and evaluate the trade-offs for the city.

Guests: Toronto Star hockey reporter Kevin McGran, basketball reporter Doug Smith and Deputy Sports Editor Patrick Ho

Our sports department spent much of a year compiling historical information and debating tough questions on a simple, maybe even silly, question: when you look at jersey numbers, who is the ultimate Toronto pro athlete to have worn each one? It’s a fun assignment, but more difficult that it might seem. At #27 forever, you have at least two bone fide Toronto Maple Leafs legends and a potential Blue Jays legend in the making. Kyle Lowry would seem to be a shoe-in at #7 for Raptors fans, but he’s up against a Leafs defender who is a household name across Canada. Meanwhile, the eccentricities of the project mean for some numbers, we’re left with an athlete who may leave even seasoned sports fans asking, “who’s that?” Our panel goes over some of the most interesting and contentious numbers on the list, including the only one we know of that was retired in honour and then unretired in disgrace. It’s the most fun kind of sports conversation, the kind where you remember some players and debate the most interesting and exciting moments from the history of the Raptors, Argos, Toronto FC, The 6, Furies, Blue Jays and Leafs.

Produced by Julia De Laurentiis Johnston, Paulo Marques and Edward Keenan

Audio Sources: Toronto Blue Jays, Heritage Hockey, NBA, CBC, Global News

Guest: Mark Ramzy, reporter

Canada is home to thousands of diaspora communities. It’s known as the hub of multiculturalism and diversity, which is sown into the social fabric and even its legislation Data shows that out of the 1.3 million immigrants who arrived in Canada between 2016 and 2021, more than 900,000 had a mother tongue that was neither English nor French. There are almost 400 nonofficial mother tongues in the country today, but why are the younger generations of these diaspora communities losing their first languages?

Special thanks to: Manuela Vega, Akrit Michael, Sheila Wang, Annette Ejiofor, Ghada Alsharif

This episode was produced by Paulo Marques and Saba Eitizaz.

Guests: Matt Elliott and Shawn Micallef, contributing columnists

So much has been happening in Toronto this week. As encampments are cleared, the mayor and the federal government are fighting over shelter and housing dollars and the city is cancelling plans for public washrooms even as it opens all of its ice rinks. Joined by Shawn Micallef, Matt Elliott issues his first look at how Mayor Olivia Chow’s council support has lined up in her first months (and the dynamic duo of consistent oppositions to her). Plus, a little sliver of good news for GTA transit riders.

This episode was produced by Julia De Laurentiis Johnston, Edward Keenan and Paolo Marques.

Audio Sources: CP24

Guests: Nicholas Keung and Andy Takagi, staff reporters

For years, Canada has been a dream destination for young people around the world with a record number of international students arriving in 2023. But that dream is unaffordable for many. As the cost of living keeps rising and tuition remains high for students from out of country, many international students have limited resources and turn to strained food banks for support. Yet, one Brampton food bank banned international students and puzzlingly cites abuse. That made headlines and brought attention to what these students have been grappling with.

This episode was produced by Paulo Marques, Brian Bradley and Saba Eitizaz.

Guest: Wendy Gillis, crime and policing reporter

Over the past nine weeks, a Canadian courtroom heard disturbing testimonies of how and why 22-year-old Nathaniel Veltman murdered three generations of a Muslim family in 2021. Now guilty for the deaths of Salman Afzaal, his wife Madiha, 15-year-old daughter Yumna and 74-year-old mother Talat, and for the attempted murder of Salman’s nine-year-old son, the upcoming sentencing will be a significant litmus test for Canada’s anti-terror laws. What is also critical is the need to unravel how a small-town factory worker just out of his teens became a deadly mass murderer. Veltman’s descent down the rabbit-hole of far-right extremism has exposed a deadly threat in Canada, as hate is once again on the rise. We retrace the digital footsteps of Veltman’s radicalization.

This episode was produced by Paulo Marques and Saba Eitizaz.

Guest: Toronto Star reporter Kerry Gillespie

The interview today is timed to run 17 minutes and 28 seconds, the exact length of Stouffville 12-year-old Sawyer Nicholson’s world-record-breaking 5-kilometer run. So listeners are invited to jog along as they listen and see how their own progress stacks up. Star reporter Kerry Gillespie talks about the tiny running phenomenon, and how she took up running as training for another sport, how she developed, and the blowback her family has gotten online as a result. And Sawyer herself checks in with us from checkpoints on her own 5K training run. PLUS: the world-record holder’s pump-up playlist.

This episode was produced by Julia De Laurentiis Johnston, Edward Keenan and Sean Pattendon.

Guest: Sara Mojtehdzadeh, investigative reporter

Did you know that a victim of labour trafficking could be right in front of you? Hundreds are working in plain sight, changing our hotel sheets, renovating our houses and growing the food we eat. In an investigative series by reporters Sara Mojtehdzadeh and Rachel Mendlesen called “Work Forced,” The Star identified 10 cases across the GTA and southwestern Ontario since 2019 where police have raided labour trafficking operations. They have led to complex legal proceedings, which are ongoing, dozens of arrests and involve more than 200 victims – desperate to make a better life for their families – who got caught in this web. Mojtehdzadeh talks about it on the podcast.

This episode was produced by Paulo Marques, Julia De Laurentiis Johnston and Saba Eitizaz.

Guest: Ghada Alsharif, business reporter

Concerns of worker exploitation, especially on farms, are escalating as Canada significantly increases its foreign workforce in order to race towards an ambitious $100-billion food export target. In the momentum to win this race, is enough being done to secure the rights and protections of those migrants who arrive under Canada’s Temporary Foreign Workers program?

This episode was produced by Paulo Marques, Kevin Sexton and Saba Eitizaz.

In our series, “The Kids Aren’t All Right,” the Star has been highlighting the many ways in which children are struggling in Toronto. Mayor Olivia Chow joins “This Matters” to talk about why she thinks a lot of these areas stem from housing affordability and about her plan to try to break the logjam on that file. She also discusses her history of advocating for children at the city and what inspired it, and gives some concrete steps she plans to take in the next year or two to try to make things easier for families and children.

Guest: Dr. Amy Gajaria, psychiatrist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)

Wait times of up to two years. There are not enough publicly funded therapists. Emergency rooms are overwhelmed by children in crisis. Ontario’s child and youth mental health system is at a breaking point. The Mental Health Commission of Canada reports that mental illness affects more than one million children and youth in the country. And while the provincial government has stood up and started to take notice with new funding announcements this year, there remain simply not enough resources to help young people suffering from mental illness. As part of “The Kids Aren’t All Right“ series, reporter Kenyon Wallace – who wrote on mental health and children – speaks with Dr. Amy Gajaria.

Audio Sources: CBC News

This episode was produced by Paolo Marques, Brian Bradley and Kenyon Wallace.

Guest: Ivy Lynn Bourgeault, Professor in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa

Ontario’s registered nurses will now be able to independently prescribe some medications such as vaccines, medicines to quit smoking and for pain relief or wound care. The government sees this as an effort to tackle Ontario’s acute health care crisis, where more than two million people currently lacking a family doctor. This is the latest in a series of recent moves to expand the role of some health professionals to try and fill the gap, including pharmacists and midwives. We explore what this means for health care.

This episode was produced by Paulo Marques, Brian Bradley and Saba Eitizaz.

Guest: Noor Javed, city news reporter

At the peak of the pandemic, the Ford government turned to Minister’s Zoning Orders (known as MZOs) as the speediest solution to the housing crisis and direly needed construction of long-term-care facilities. Former housing minister Steve Clark issued more than 100 MZOs between 2019 and 2023. But in the wake of the Greenbelt scandal, scrutiny is now shifting to these MZOs and if they have actually fast-tracked development efforts. The Star did its own analysis and found little progress in the past four years to support that claim.

Audio sources: Ontario Nature, CHCH News

This episode was produced by Paulo Marques, Brian Bradley and Saba Eitizaz.

Guest: Richard Warnica, business feature writer

When Toronto hosted a packed WNBA exhibition game in May, hopes were high that the city would soon get its own team, but by then, “the game was already over,” writer Richard Warnica says. Local sports powerhouse Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE) had already considered and rejected the idea, mostly because two particular members of the board were set against it. At a time when women’s professional sports seem to be awakening across the continent, Warnica has the exclusive on how Toronto ruled itself out, possibly missing an opportunity for exponential growth in the fan base.

Audio Source: Sportsnet

Guest: Katie Daubs, senior writer

As Ontario’s schools struggle with resources and ripple effects of the pandemic, experts say students with diverse needs like attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) aren’t getting the help they require. ADHD is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders in children, yet there is no official ministry categorization making it difficult to support in classrooms. As part of the Star’s “The Kids Aren’t All Right” series, senior writer Katie Daubs talked to one high school student about her experience.

This episode was produced by Paolo Marques and Brian Bradley.

Guest: Jennifer Pagliaro, crime reporter

Many parents across Toronto struggle to balance keeping their kids safe and letting them develop a sense of independence. In a city where crime concerns are rising and rising faster for younger people, some weigh on that balance more than others. In one family, their son was shot before he was two years old. For the Star’s “The Kids Aren’t All Right” series, reporter Jennifer Pagliaro looked at life after a shooting and what could work to prevent others from suffering the same tragedy.

This episode was produced by Paolo Marques, Julia De Laurentiis Johnston and Edward Keenan.