Front Burner

With last night’s byelection wins, Prime Minister Mark Carney is now leading a majority government. But after five floor crossers joined the Liberals, spanning from the NDP to the social conservative wing of the Conservative party, there are questions around what exactly that government stands for.

Aaron Wherry is a senior writer with CBC’s parliamentary bureau. He’s here to talk about how a majority will change things for the Liberals, and what Carney’s big tent looks like.

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

After a fourth Conservative MP crossed over last week, the Liberals are now only one seat shy of an official majority. And with two out of three byelections taking place today in safe Liberal ridings, it’s widely expected that Mark Carney and the Liberals will get their majority government after the results come in.

Tonda MacCharles is the Toronto Star’s Ottawa bureau chief. She’s here to talk about the challenges facing Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, whether he can keep his caucus in line, and if there’s a case for pushing him out now.

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

After six weeks of war and a fragile ceasefire Iran is going into high-level talks with the U.S. battered but defiant. Whether any kind of real agreement can be reached remains to be seen. The U.S. and Iran are extremely far apart in their demands.

Vali Nasr is a professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University and the author of “Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History”. He joins us to talk about why Iran’s leadership remains steadfast and what the war has meant for its domestic and international standing.

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

By the end of the day on Wednesday, the tenuous ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. was already being tested.

Israel continued to bomb Lebanon heavily, and Iran attacked Gulf countries. There was confusion over whether the Strait of Hormuz was open or not.
And then there are the larger questions. What was the real cost of this war? Who came out on top?

Today on the show The Economist geopolitics editor David Rennie is here. He also talks about the shape of this deal and whether it resolves any of the big issues that existed before the fighting started.

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

Today on the show we are going to talk about a grave threat made by U.S. President Donald Trump towards Iran where he wrote that unless the Strait of Hormuz is opened up “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

It set off a whole day of worried speculation. Could this mean the obliteration of Iran’s energy grid and water plants? A nuclear strike? Or could it be some incredibly high stakes bluster in search of an off-ramp?

On Tuesday evening the picture got marginally clearer when Trump said he’d extended his self-imposed deadline by two weeks.

Alex Shephard from The New Republic is back on the show. He joined us before Trump’s deadline extension offer, and the conversation remains very helpful.

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