The Decibel

Events in Haiti have been unfolding quickly following the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in his Port-au-Prince home on July 7. In the past week there has been news of arrests of mercenaries, a siege in the country’s Taiwanese embassy and the alleged involvement of a doctor in the murder.But if you look back at Haiti’s history, a lot of the political turmoil is tied into all the money the Caribbean country gets from donor countries, like Canada and the U.S. Jake Johnston, a senior research associate at the Centre for Economic Policy Research in Washington, D.C., discusses how all the strings attached to aid to Haiti can render it more harmful than helpful and how the country’s politics are often more focused on external powers than the people of Haiti. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Can racism cause schizophrenia? It’s an area of mental health research that has been ongoing for decades and over time, researchers are increasingly finding that having a darker skin colour than your neighbours does seem to have an effect. But just how much and how that alters your brain chemistry is difficult to tease apart due to the complexities of schizophrenia as a disease.Erin Anderssen, who has been covering mental health for The Globe and Mail for years, discusses what she has found on this topic by looking at the research, examining the history of how Western culture has perceived psychosis and talking to doctors. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lebanon’s financial crisis was only made worse last year when an explosion ripped through the port of its capital city, Beirut, killing more than 200 people. Now, people are left scrambling for basic medicine, gas and other necessities.The Globe’s senior international correspondent Mark MacKinnon is in Lebanon, and talks about what he has seen in Beirut’s largest hospital, how Lebanon has gotten to the brink of a “social explosion,” according to its prime minister, and why this threatens the very existence of the country. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Domestic vaccine passports offer one way of letting vaccinated people get back to normal life by giving them access to privileges non-vaccinated people wouldn’t have. But civil liberties advocates have been pushing back against the concept since the start of the pandemic, pointing to a number of equality and privacy concerns.Cara Zwibel is the director of the fundamental freedoms program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which has raised concerns about how vaccine passports might violate our constitutional rights. She’ll explain how, and why she believes that vaccine passports might do more harm than good as our vaccination rates rise and we ease public health restrictions across the country. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The village of Lytton, BC burned to the ground a day after hitting the hottest temperature ever recorded in Canada, forcing residents to evacuate in as little as a few minutes. Investigators now believe the fire was caused by human activity.On today’s show, Globe environment reporter Kathryn Blaze Baum joins Tamara to share a conversation she’s had with one Lytton resident about the human toll of the heat dome that enveloped Western Canada and is believed to have caused hundreds of heat-related deaths, as well as the science that explains this extreme weather. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Soaring house prices have made it harder to afford a house in Canada than it’s been in three decades, with experts blaming everything from low interest rates to blind bidding to intergenerational wealth transfers.So how do you cool the housing market? Rachelle Younglai covers real estate for The Globe and Mail, and she’ll explain how we got here, why the measures taken by governments so far haven’t helped, and what else could be done to get prices under control. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Calls to reconsider the fireworks and celebrations of Canada Day have intensified as we approach the national holiday, in light of the announcements from B.C. and Saskatchewan First Nations that they’d located hundreds of unmarked graves where residential schools once stood.Crystal Fraser is assistant professor of history at the University of Alberta, and is Gwichyà Gwich’in, originally from Inuvik and Dachan Choo Gę̀hnjik in the Northwest Territories. She’ll tell us how she sees Canada, as a historian and an Indigenous person, and how we can reflect on the history of Canada. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

New guidelines for people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 were published by the Public Health Agency of Canada last week, which now applies to over a quarter of people in Canada.So we asked Globe and Mail health columnist André Picard back on the show to lead us through what those guidelines mean, why they’re different from the provincial guidelines, and how to navigate them as the country re-opens. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A lot of Canadians have pandemic-savings money to burn – and not many places to spend it. With travel, entertainment and even dining still severely limited, many have turned to recreational toys and home improvement projects, and then found out that in-demand items like bicycles and kayaks are sold out.Economics reporter Matt Lundy breaks down the demand side of the equation, talks about just-in-time production and explains all the different issues that are affecting the entire supply chain, from the cost of raw materials to the issue of getting items off ships. Plus, he offers his best guess at when bike stores will have enough stock again. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

China is encouraging people to have up to three children in a bid to reverse the effects of its one-child policy, which has left the country with an aging population in need of workers to support them and the economy.But as Globe Asia correspondent Nathan Vanderklippe reports following his recent trip to the region, some Muslim Uyghurs of the western Xinjiang province are subject to different family-planning rules, and there have been reports of forced sterilization among other human rights abuses. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.