About The House
The show
The House helps make sense of the political decisions that affect your life. Each week, we take an in-depth look at developments in Canadian politics and policy, hearing from the politicians who make the changes — and the people whose lives are changed by them.
How to listen
CBC Radio One
Saturdays at 9 a.m. (9:30 NT) and at midnight (12:30 a.m. NT). You can also listen to the show on SiriusXM on Saturdays at 9:00 a.m. and midnight (ET), and Sundays at 8:00 a.m. ET.
Tune in wherever you are on CBC Listen.
Podcast
You can follow The House wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Our host
Before her time with the Parliamentary bureau, Catherine worked for nearly a decade at CBC Montreal, covering several Quebec provincial elections as well as the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster and the Dawson College shooting.
In 2014 Catherine moved to Ottawa and covered the final months of the Stephen Harper government as well as the 2015 election that brought Justin Trudeau to power. She has reported on major changes in Canadian law, including cannabis legalization and the legislation permitting medically assisted dying.She's reported from across the globe, including Beijing, Addis Ababa, London, Brussels and Washington, D.C.
Catherine is a familiar face to viewers of The National and CBC News Network's Power & Politics.
Many respected CBC journalists have hosted The House over the years, including former regular hosts:
Marguerite McDonald
Stephen Boissonneault
Denise Rudnicki
Judy Morrison
Jason Moscovitz
Anthony Germain
Kathleen Petty
Evan Solomon
Chris Hall
Our team
Jennifer Chevalier
Jennifer is the senior producer of The House. She spent 18 years as a reporter and producer for BBC Radio in London before returning to Ottawa to join CBC's Parliament Hill Bureau. She's won several awards for her radio documentaries and a CAJ award for Investigative Journalism.
Kristen Everson
Kristen is a producer on The House. She joined the team after spending many years in television, working most recently as a field producer in the Parliamentary bureau. Political journalism has taken her across the country and in 2020 she was a Michener award finalist for the CBC investigation into the toxic workplace at Rideau Hall.
Emma Godmere
Producer Emma Godmere started her radio career in Toronto, first as a guest host on CBC Radio 3 and later as a writer and producer on Q with Tom Power. A former House of Commons page, she returned home to the capital to join The House in 2020 and won her first radio documentary award, a Gracie, in 2023.
Christian Paas-Lang
Christian is an associate producer with The House and a digital writer with CBC Politics. He organizes the show's digital presence and writes interviews for the website. He's almost as passionate about federal politics as he is about basketball.
Our history
The House has long been the most popular political affairs program in Canada, with a larger per minute audience than any other politics show. It launched on October 22, 1977 when radio and television broadcasting were first introduced to the House of Commons.
Over the course of more than 45 years, The House has interviewed prime ministers and leaders of the opposition, covered election campaigns and political scandals, referenda, and nation-shaking events like the repatriation of the Constitution and the Meech Lake Accord. But from the beginning, the show has always been about what happens in the House of Commons and how it affects Canadians.
"It's almost impossible to remember what political reporting was like before the media were allowed to broadcast the House of Commons," said Marguerite McDonald, the show's first host. "No one in the radio and TV audiences had ever seen or heard anything that took place inside the Chamber. Our whole view of national politics was shaped by what politicians said in 'scrums' and press conferences after they walked out of the House."
Susan Helwig, a producer at The House from 1977 to 1987, also witnessed the immediate changes broadcasting had on Parliament.
"Before the arrival of electronic media, MPs used to pound their desks in response to debates in the Commons," she said. "That sound appears in the first recordings if you search them out. The thumping from the desks proved to be too noisy and did not go over well on either radio or television. So MPs gradually shifted to applauding instead of banging their desks."
The House continues to build on its long legacy of cutting through the noise of politics to get to what matters to people in Canada — holding politicians to account and speaking to the policy makers and the people at the heart of political issues.