The Decibel

The 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Games begin on Friday. The Olympics are always a time to rally behind your country, but this year cheering on Team Canada takes on a different meaning. At a time when Canada is asserting itself as a “middle power,” how will that translate on the podium?
Cathal Kelly is a Globe and Mail columnist who writes about sports. Today, he joins the show to prime Olympics superfans and casual watchers alike for what you need to know about the Milan Cortina Winter Games, where Canada is likely to excel, and how politics could shape the narrative of these Winter Olympics.
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Canvassers are currently collecting signatures for a petition in Alberta that could trigger a referendum on whether Albertans want to remain a part of Canada. The volunteers are with a group called Stay Free Alberta, whose leaders are Mitch Sylvestre and Jeffrey Rath.
Matthew Scace is a staff reporter for The Globe and Mail based in Calgary. He has been reporting on the separatist movement in Alberta and shares interviews he conducted with the leaders, and some supporters, on how they feel about recent U.S. comments about their movement and why they’ve given up on Canada.
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The federal government’s Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program was meant to bring child care fees down to $10 per day and create 284,000 new daycare spaces by the end of March this year. A recent report found the program is expected to miss that goal by 90,000 spaces – and many places haven’t reached the initial $10 a day goal. But this program has made a huge difference for families.
Today, we’re doing a daycare check in with the Globe’s education reporter Dave McGinn. He’ll walk us through what’s worked with the program, what hasn’t, and when we might expect more affordable child care in Canada.
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Over the last few weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened military intervention in Iran – first over the Islamic Republic’s treatment of protesters, and now, over the country’s nuclear ambitions. U.S. military warships have moved toward striking distance of Iran; meanwhile, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that a strike on Iran would spark a regional war.
Thomas Juneau is a professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. He’s here to talk about how close Iran and the U.S. are to re-entering diplomatic talks, how other countries in the region are working to mediate the situation, and where this is leading for the people of Iran.
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Snow and ice is a fact of life in a long, Canadian winter. So are the millions of tonnes of salt that is used to combat it on roads across the country. But there is a cost to all that salt: damage to property, waterways and other parts of the environment and infrastructure – totalling billions of dollars annually.
Patrick White, reporter for The Globe, explains the science behind why Canada is the biggest consumer of road salt in the world and why the same chemical that is necessary for a winter climate is also endangering water systems.
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