About Marketplace
Marketplace is Canada's award-winning and investigative consumer watchdog.
Our team of journalists work to uncover the truth about popular products and services.
Since 1972, this series has pushed the boundaries of consumer journalism and visual storytelling through innovative testing, hidden camera surveys of our Canadian and global marketplace, ground-breaking investigative research, and a search for accountability that has led to corporate and government policy changes.
Where to watch Marketplace
CBC Television
Friday at 8:00 p.m., 8:30 in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Or stream Marketplace anytime on CBC Gem, and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Hosts
David Common is a host of Marketplace and a senior correspondent with The National.
He's worked with Marketplace's strong and creative investigative team to be involved in some of the program's most recent major investigations, travelling to India to confront phone scammers targeting Canadians, tracking Canadian recycling from the blue bin to dumps in Malaysia. He's led the network coverage on long term care, starting long before the COVID-19 pandemic.
David has been privileged to travel to every province and territory in Canada on assignment, as well as more than 80 countries worldwide during his journalistic career. David has spent time underwater in a submerged submarine near the Korean peninsula, travelled Afghanistan and Iraq covering war, watched as Canada's Navy confronted pirates off Somalia, learned on Indigenous lands across Canada, including a particular affinity for Nunavut and Canada's far north, including travelling on board Canadian icebreaker in the Arctic search for the ill-fated Franklin expedition.
He is multi-skilled and you may have seen or heard David on a variety of other CBC platforms, acting as host, reporter or contributor.
His career has seen him living in Winnipeg, Regina, Fredericton, Paris, London, New York and now Toronto.
Originally from Winnipeg, David has tackled questionable sales practices in Canada's funeral homes, located the source of a potential poison inserted into kid's jewellery at factories in China which was then sold at Canadian stores, and dived into the problem of food waste in Canadian supermarkets. He's met and covered senior national and international political figures, as well as celebrities, but finds the greatest interest in meeting ordinary Canadians in extraordinary circumstances.
He lives in Toronto with his wife and two daughters.
Asha Tomlinson is an award-winning investigative journalist with Marketplace and a CBC News contributor across all platforms.
Her investigations have include exposing the big business of fake degrees, tackling racial profiling by stores, landlords and companies, and cracking down on counterfeit goods sold online by major retailers. Her report on the illegal sale of skin lightening products led to the removal of dangerous and approved skin whitening creams and lotions in beauty stores across Ontario.
Asha has won two Canadian Screen Awards, Best News Information, and Best Host or Interviewer, for her work on fake degrees. Asha and the Marketplace team mined mountains of data to uncover phony credentials used by professionals across Canada. The team even applied for and received a bogus Ph.D. within weeks. And this scheme was eventually traced back to the world's largest diploma mill in Pakistan.
She's worked in three provinces and one territory as an anchor and reporter. Asha began her career as a writer in Toronto and quickly moved in front of the camera, reporting in London, Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Iqaluit.
Asha joined CBC News as a breaking news reporter and host. She's reported on major national and international stories such as the Newtown shooting in Connecticut, the train derailment in Lac Megantic, the Alberta flooding, and the raging wildfires in Fort McMurray.
Asha was on scene at the worst mass shooting in Toronto's history, she's been embedded with the Canadian military in the high Arctic, and she most recently covered the Toronto Raptors NBA Finals run and the subsequent championship parade.
She also co-produced and hosted the first-ever series on CBC News Network called Being Black in Canada for three years.
A dancer at heart, Asha is a former CFL cheerleader for the Edmonton Eskimos and the Toronto Argonauts.
She lives with her family in the Greater Toronto area.
Charlsie Agro is an award winning journalist and veteran member of the CBC investigates team. As a host of Marketplace, her work is regularly featured on all of CBC's platforms including The National, News Network, CBC Radio. and cbc.ca.
She is a passionate consumer advocate, has investigated some of the biggest businesses in the world to fight the good fight for Canadian consumers.
From exposing food fraud at farmers' markets to unsafe conditions for children at trampoline parks, Charlsie's hands-on approach to testing everything from filthy airplane surfaces to fast food often lands her in some interesting situations.
She's reported undercover to expose sexism in restaurant dress codes, scouted housing auctions in Australia, and even spent a week in Cuba tracking dangerous travel conditions for teens.
Charlsie's investigations have led to the removal of unsafe products from the marketplace, changed the way homes are bought and sold in Ontario and BC, and put thousands of dollars back in people's pockets.
Her story about fast fashion's recycling promises sparked a conversation in countless communities and changed the way many people think about buying clothes.
But some of the simplest questions she's asked, like what's really in our chicken sandwiches and what do those DNA tests actually tell us... have led to popular and even global debates.
Charlsie is especially proud to be leading the team that puts buzzworthy products through the wringer. In its first year, BUZZKILL was recognized with a digital publishing award, a creative first for Marketplace.
Charlsie also lends her broadcasting skills to the CBC/Radio Canada Olympic broadcast teams.
An athlete in her own right, Charlsie played NCAA Division I field hockey while attending St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. She is also a graduate of Sheridan College's Journalism New Media Program.
Charlise lives near Toronto with her family, and mini dachshund Winston.