The Big Story

It's tax season! If you took any form of government COVID-19 relief this year, you've probably got all sorts of questions about how that impacts your return. If you didn't, but you worked from home, you might be eligible for deductions you haven't even considered. As tax season begins, the pros are being swamped with questions from anxious Canadians. We asked one of those pros to clarify the confusion she hears from clients, debunk the most common misconceptions about the CERB, and share her best tips for navigating the most complicated tax year in recent memory. GUEST: Shannon Lee Simmons, The New School of Finance We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the single-family rental industry has exploded in the United States, with massive companies buying up as many single-family homes as possible, and renting them out en masse. What that means is that millions of Americans now have megacorporations as their landlords—and that's going about as well as you'd expect. And here's the kicker: One of the largest of these companies is doing hundreds of millions of dollars in business with a Canadian government pension fund. This means that hundreds of thousands of Canadians are seeing their retirement savings grow as Americans lose their homes during a pandemic... GUEST: Richard Warnica, business feature writer, The Toronto Star We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

Provinces are rolling out their vaccination plans for the general public, and they all seem pretty similar. After the initial push to vaccinate frontline health-care workers and residents of long-term care facilities, programs will proceed by age groups, starting with the 80+ cohort. It makes sense, as the elderly are most at risk from COVID-19. But what if there was another factor that could guide our plans to where shots would do the most good? Ontario's COVID-19 Science Advisory Table has published a new report that offers evidence that simply using age is not the best way to save lives and stop the spread of the virus. But will health units take their advice, if it means prioritizing at-risk neighbourhoods over wealthy ones? GUEST: Peter Jüni, member of Ontario's COVID-19 Science Advisory Table We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

Even without a global pandemic, we're spending less and less time just doing nothing. The urge to check our phone every 20 minutes is the same urge that leads us to online shopping and bread making and ... anything else to distract us from our current predicament. But what if we could learn to turn our boredom into a strength? If we could train ourselves to once again sit quietly in the moments we get to ourselves? It's no secret the past year has taken a toll on our mental health. But can we help ourselves by embracing the stillness forced upon us? GUEST: Mark Hawkins, author of The Power of Boredom We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

Temperatures are rising everywhere. Severe weather is becoming more common. And climate disasters are becoming an increasing part of our lives. So it can feel like we're hurtling off a cliff. But in the past few years, we've also made incredible progress on reducing emissions, renewable energy and other efforts—so much so that the grimmest of possible futures is much less likely to occur. It can feel like a naive question to ask, but are we turning a corner in our fight to save the Earth? GUEST: David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

What if your face could serve as your passport and identification? Does that sound convenient, or incredibly creepy and invasive? As advances in technology spread from pilot programs to wider use at borders around the world, there's very little governing what agencies can and can't do with the data they capture. And there's almost no way for us to opt out—at least, if we want to ever visit the United States again. How far can this technology go? What can it be used for? Are there any regulations in place to protect you? And just how much of our body's unique signature are we prepared to hand over, anyway? Where does this end? GUEST: Hilary Beaumont, freelance investigative reporter We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

The social media giant is currently negotiating with the Australian government—which is a big improvement from last week, when Facebook was blocking all links from Australian news media. In Canada, the federal government has indicated it will follow Australia's lead in taxing Facebook and distributing the revenue to struggling news media. Facebook has no plans to let that happen and has shown it will do whatever it takes to keep its ad money for itself. Why does this fight matter? How nasty could it get? And who would even decide what qualifies as "news" on the platform anyway? Welcome to the first volley in what could be a long war. GUEST: Jesse Hirsh, metaviews.ca We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

You remember it, even if you've forgotten how to pronounce it. Oumuamua was a cigar-shaped object that passed through our inner solar system and mystified plenty of scientists. It didn't fit any of the categories we have for space debris, comets or meteors. So what was it? Where did it come from? When will we find more? A new book by a Harvard University astrophysicist makes the case that Oumuamua was proof of intelligent life beyond Earth. And as we build more powerful instruments, he says, it will only be the first of many we'll find. GUEST: Avi Loeb, Harvard University, author of Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

Today we meet the woman who can win over a crowd of cowboys in one of Canada's whitest places. All while telling jokes about systemic racism. She is one of the only Black women comics in Alberta, maybe the only one in Calgary. But she wields her power on, and off, the stage to make her province a better place. Guest: Adora Nwofor You can watch the documentary on Feb. 22 at 10 p.m. EST on CityTV or on-demand later at CityNews.ca. We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter

Remember when flour disappeared for a brief moment as we stocked up for the pandemic? It wasn't because we bought up all the flour in the world. Companies were just struggling to mill it, package it, and transport it to us as quickly as we were using it. Take King Arthur Flour, one of the oldest companies in the United States. It saw sales skyrocket by 2,000 per cent. When demand started to shoot up, their mills had the flour to replenish supply but had run out of packaging. So how did they cope? And will the unprecedented demand for flour continue in 2021? Guest: Meghan McCarron We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca Or @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter