Front Burner

Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party won a record number of seats in the country's parliamentary elections. Putin is expected to frame the result as an endorsement of his war with Ukraine. And, according to Ukrainian intelligence, he may mobilize hundreds of thousands more Russian troops before the end of the year.

All of this has Europe on edge. Because Russia hasn't just been targeting Ukraine – but Ukraine’s allies too. In the last few weeks, a Russian ship fired flares at a Danish military helicopter, NATO jets shot down a drone over Lithuania, and Germany thwarted a suspected Russian drone attack at one of their airports.
Many observers think Russia is intentionally trying to provoke NATO. But why? And what happens if NATO decides to fight back?

Victor Jack, POLITICO’s NATO reporter, joins us from NATO’s headquarters in Brussels.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

On Sunday it looked like the United States was about to wade back into its fight with Ansar Allah, or the Houthis, the Iran-backed group in Yemen that has grown into a surprisingly powerful military presence in the region.

Saudi Arabia had been asking for support after a series of Houthi attacks and advancements,
which brought a major global shipping and oil chokepoint - the Bab el-Mandeb strait - under Houthi control.

Iona Craig has been reporting on Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula for over a decade and she joins us to track the group's rise from a group of rebels from the mountains of northwestern Yemen to a geopolitical force.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Parliament returns today from summer recess, amid ongoing economic uncertainty and an unresolved trade war with the U.S. Prime Minister Mark Carney told MPs on Friday that this will be "a crucial session of the House of Commons" and vowed to introduce "some of the most consequential legislation not just of this government, but in decades."

CBC's Chief Political Correspondent Rosie Barton joins us to talk about what we can expect in this session of Parliament, and Carney's balancing act for his ambitious agenda.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

It's been almost a month now since trade talks between the U.S. and Canada collapsed and Mark Carney's government walked away from a deal. Canadian retaliatory tariffs went into effect earlier this month and yet more U.S. tariffs hit this week. A new deal between the two countries is nowhere in sight.

By and large — Canadians support this.

But Sean Speer sees this a bit differently: he's wondering if Canada really should have walked away from the table, and asks if Canadians – in all their righteous anger – are thinking clearly about the path we're on now.

Speer is the editor-at-large of The Hub and a former senior economic advisor to Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

At her State of the Union address yesterday, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, made a historic offer: she wants Canada to become the first “associate member” of the European Union.

No one knows exactly what that will mean. Associate membership is a designation that doesn’t currently exist in the EU.

But Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson think it could be transformational. They’re two of the journalists who first broke this story in the Wall Street Journal, and they think this signals more than a changing relationship between Canada and Europe. It’s a sign of a fundamental shift in the international order.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts