Closer Look - Insightful, credible, unfiltered conversations that matter
Village Media Inc.
213 episodes
2 weeks ago
Send us a text In cities and towns across Ontario (and at Queen’s Park and Parliament Hill) our journalists work for you. Their mission is to dig for answers and tell you what they find. This daily podcast — Closer Look — is all about the stories we tell. Launched in September, our mission is to go beyond the headlines with in-depth, eye-opening conversations featuring Village Media reporters and editors, leading experts, key stakeholders and major newsmakers. Tonight, as we begin a two-wee...
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Send us a text In cities and towns across Ontario (and at Queen’s Park and Parliament Hill) our journalists work for you. Their mission is to dig for answers and tell you what they find. This daily podcast — Closer Look — is all about the stories we tell. Launched in September, our mission is to go beyond the headlines with in-depth, eye-opening conversations featuring Village Media reporters and editors, leading experts, key stakeholders and major newsmakers. Tonight, as we begin a two-wee...
Send us a text Buying some gift cards for Christmas? Don’t get scammed. Like so much else these days, gift cards have become a prime target for fraudsters, costing Canadian shoppers millions of dollars a year. (The Retail Council of Canada reported $5.7 million lost to gift card scams in 2024 — up from $3.8 million 2021.) Last week alone, police in both Hamilton and Waterloo Region announced major busts involving fraudulent gift cards. In the Hamilton case, police allege a man was “manipula...
Send us a text How widespread is human trafficking in Canada? Two new reports offer the clearest evidence yet. According to Statistics Canada, more than 5,000 incidents of human trafficking were reported to police between 2014 and 2024, for a national average of 1.2 per 100,000 people. Among the provinces and territories, Ontario recorded the second-highest rate. The StatsCan analysis comes on the heels of another alarming report from The Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking, which reveal...
Send us a text Imagine looking at a billboard — then realizing it’s watching you back. That’s exactly what’s happening near Union Station in Toronto, where certain signs are outfitted with small cameras that record every person walking by. Known as anonymous video analytics (AVA), the technology generates stats about people’s estimated age and gender, then uses that information to determine which kind of ads to display. The company behind the billboards, Cineplex Digital Media, is adamant t...
Send us a text Cheers to charity? That’s what the Ford government is being urged to do. For months, the LCBO has been sitting on an $80-million stockpile of U.S. booze — all of it yanked off store shelves back in March as retaliation for Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs. The Ontario Liberals are now calling on the province to sell all that bourbon, wine and spritzers and donate the money to charitable causes — following the lead of other provinces, including Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Prince ...
Send us a text For more than four decades, Joe Bowen’s unmistakable voice has been the soundtrack of Leafs Nation. But this season will be the last of his legendary career behind the mic. Bowen — the pride of Sudbury — is retiring from the broadcast booth after more than 3,800 NHL games and countless magical calls. And next Tuesday night, the Maple Leafs have a special on-ice tribute planned during their game against the Chicago Blackhawks, the same team on the opposing bench when Bowen fir...
Send us a text Hosted by Village Media’s Michael Friscolanti and Scott Sexsmith, and produced by Derek Turner, Closer Look is a new daily podcast that goes way beyond the headlines with insightful, in-depth conversations featuring our reporters and editors, leading experts, key stakeholders and big newsmakers. Fresh episodes drop every Monday to Friday at 7 p.m. right in your local news feed — and on the show’s dedicated website: closerlookpodcast.ca. Of course, you can also find us wherever ...
Send us a text Earlier this year, the Retail Council of Canada released an alarming report about a "national crisis" facing its members: skyrocketing rates of theft, violence and organized criminal activity. This week, police in Halton Region added to the long list of examples. Three people were arrested for their role in what the cops described as a “large-scale liquor trafficking operation” that moved more than $1.3 million worth of stolen booze across the Greater Toronto Area. Police say...
Send us a text Don’t expect the new year to ring in lower grocery bills. The latest edition of Canada’s Food Price Report, produced annually by several universities, projects that an average family of four will pay close to $1,000 more for food in 2026 than this year — for a total bill of $17,571.79. The report pegs the rate of food inflation at somewhere between four and six per cent, with items such as meat, baked goods and vegetables seeing the biggest price jumps. What’s driving the eve...
Send us a text Hosted by Village Media’s Michael Friscolanti and Scott Sexsmith, and produced by Derek Turner, Closer Look is a new daily podcast that goes way beyond the headlines with insightful, in-depth conversations featuring our reporters and editors, leading experts, key stakeholders and big newsmakers. Fresh episodes drop every Monday to Friday at 7 p.m. right in your local news feed — and on the show’s dedicated website: closerlookpodcast.ca. Of course, you can also find us wherever...
Send us a text Raccoons as pets? Don’t laugh. A new study has found that urban raccoons have shorter snouts compared to their rural counterparts — a sign they're heading down the same path of evolutionary domestication that dogs and cats did tens of thousands of years ago. TorontoToday reporter Emma Johnston-Wheeler dug a little deeper into the research, seeking out reaction in a city where the raccoon has risen to the status of de facto mascot. Johnston-Wheeler is our guest on tonight’s epis...
Send us a text The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a harsh truth about Ontario’s long-term care homes: many were woefully understaffed, a factor that helped fuel the rapid spread of the deadly virus. Doug Ford’s government promised a major overhaul, including this key goal: by the end of 2024-25, LTC homes would have enough staff that each resident would receive an average of at least four hours a day of direct “hands-on care” from nurses and personal support workers (PSWs). As it worked toward t...
Send us a text Cheers to compromise. Ontario grocers and The Beer Store have reached a tentative deal on a problem that’s been brewing for months: Who is going to collect your empties? As of Jan. 1, grocery stores across the province were supposed to be ready to accept empty alcohol containers — all part of the Ford government’s expansion of booze sales to grocery and convenience stores. Grocers big and small were never keen on the plan, citing increased costs — not to mention the health an...
Send us a text Back in September, our podcast featured an emotional interview with Hazel van der Werken, a grieving mother who is on a mission to slash wait times at Ontario emergency departments. Her son, Finlay van der Werken, died from sepsis and pneumonia in February 2024 — after waiting more than eight hours to be treated at Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital. “Everybody knows how bad and how long the wait times are, yet we seem to be complacent because nothing has changed,” Ha...
Send us a text If you don’t have your winter clothes ready to go, dig them out. Frigid temperatures are on the way. A polar vortex is expected to unleash a deep chill on most parts of Canada next week, with heavy snow expected in some parts of Ontario. What exactly is a polar vortex? Despite its sinister name, a lot of people don’t actually know. So we asked an expert to help us (and you) understand. David Phillips is a longtime climatologist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, and ar...
Send us a text This week, the OPP announced a major development in an unsolved mystery that devastated a small community in northern Ontario. As reported by TimminsToday, police say they’ve identified the specific pickup truck believed to have been involved in a hit-and-run incident that killed a young woman in Moose Factory, Ont., more than two years ago. The victim was 21-year-old Loni Chum. A beloved daughter and sister, she was walking home from a friend’s house on the early morning of ...
Send us a text When it comes to our lingering trade war with the United States, reassuring headlines are hard to find. But here’s one silver lining: Turns out Donald Trump has been quite a boon to the Canadian tourism industry. While international travel to the U.S. is way down — in part because many Canadians are hesitant cross the border these days — tourism spending on this side of the 49th is on the rise. According to Destination Canada, the busy summer season saw a total revenue increa...
Send us a text Whatever your opinion of Dalton McGuinty, this much is difficult to dispute: the man knows a thing or two about leadership. He was Ontario’s Liberal leader for 16 years, including a full decade as Premier (2003 to 2013). And long before that, McGuinty grew up as one of the eldest in a house of 10 children. He learned at a young age some of the most important virtues of leadership, including patience, compromise and teamwork. Now 70 and long retired from public life, McGuint...
Send us a text We cover a lot of different issues on this podcast: some extremely serious, some much lighter. Today’s topic can fall on either end of the spectrum, depending on your viewpoint. Should candy tossing be outlawed at community parades? There was a time, not long ago, when local parades were a literal rain shower of candy chucked from floats. But after a few tragic accidents — including the 2018 death of a four-year-old girl during a Christmas parade in Nova Scotia — many organiz...
Send us a text Would you buy a steak or pork chop that came from a cloned animal? In the new year, you might end up doing just that — without even knowing it. Health Canada has introduced new regulations that will remove cloned meat from the agency’s “novel foods” category, which means meat from cloned animals won’t need to be labelled. The move raises a whole lot of juicy questions. Is cloned meat safe to eat? Shouldn’t producers be forced to tell us what we’re eating? Do we even nee...
Send us a text If you follow Ontario politics, you’ve no doubt heard of the Skills Development Fund (SDF). One of the Ford government’s signature initiatives, the multi-billion-dollar program doles out taxpayer dollars to companies and organizations that provide training programs and other support for workers. Premier Doug Ford has called it “the best investment we’ve ever done in the province.” But the Skills Development Fund has been at the centre of a political firestorm during the...
Closer Look - Insightful, credible, unfiltered conversations that matter
Send us a text In cities and towns across Ontario (and at Queen’s Park and Parliament Hill) our journalists work for you. Their mission is to dig for answers and tell you what they find. This daily podcast — Closer Look — is all about the stories we tell. Launched in September, our mission is to go beyond the headlines with in-depth, eye-opening conversations featuring Village Media reporters and editors, leading experts, key stakeholders and major newsmakers. Tonight, as we begin a two-wee...
