The World This Hour - The World This Hour for 2025/02/13 at 17:00 EST

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

The World This Hour for 2025/02/13 at 17:00 EST

When a body is discovered 10 miles out to sea, it sparks a mind-blowing police investigation. There's a man living in this address in the name of a deceased. He's one of the most wanted men in the world. This isn't really happening. Officers are finding large sums of money. It's a tale of murder, skullduggery and international intrigue. So who really is he? I'm Sam Mullins and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncovered, available now.

From CBC News, the world is ours. I'm Tom Harrington. The new US Defense Secretary told a NATO conference America is not abandoning Ukraine. Pete Hegseth walked back yesterday's comments that Ukraine should not expect to get back territory it lost in the war. But he did say Donald Trump is committed to a diplomatic end of the conflict and Hexeth warns European countries need to spend more on defense. We can talk all we want about values but you can't shoot values. You can't shoot flags and you can't shoot strong speeches.

As much as we may not want to like the world we live in in some cases, there's nothing like hard power. Hexas repeated Trump's demand NATO nations allocate 5% of their GDP for defense. But the Alliance's Secretary General Mark Rutte says many members are upping their defense budgets. We discussed the importance of our continued support to Ukraine. And we discussed the need for European allies in Canada to do even more. In 2024, NATO allies provided over 50 billion euros in security assistance to Ukraine.

Nearly 60% of this coming from Europe and Canada. Well above the 40 billion that we had pledged for the year. The UK is among the NATO members saying there can be no Ukraine peace talks without Ukraine's full participation. Liberal leadership candidate Mark Carney is ruling out calling a federal election right away, if he wins on March 9th. But Carney says nothing is pre-wired. Let's see what the situation is in the middle of March

and do what is best for Canadians. If parliament needs to be recalled for certain reasons, it will be. If it makes sense to get a strong mandate at that point, that is what will follow. His competitors, Karina Gould and Chris Freeland, both say it may be better to hold off on a spring election. They believe the situation with Donald Trump and his tariff threats needs to be stabilized. In a New York Times essay, Freeland called for dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs on the US and a 100 percent tariff on Tesla vehicles. Donald Trump's tariff threats appear to be having an impact in BC. The province's finance minister has cancelled a $1,000 grocery rebate promised

during last fall's election campaign. Brenda Bailey says it's impossible to predict the impact of what she's calling Trump's reckless and destabilizing levies. Bailey also announced a government hiring freeze. It's been a nervy week in northeast BC. Four earthquakes have hit in five days west of the community of Fort St. John. As Hannah Peterson reports, the increase in seismic activity has been linked to fracking in the region. John Cassidy is an earthquake seismologist with Natural Resources Canada. He says 4.4 and 4.2 magnitude earthquakes happened about 105 kilometres west of Fort St. John. Cassidy

says they were caused by hydraulic fracking, a process that blasts water, sand, and chemicals at high pressure more than two kilometres underground to release natural gas. Quakes were very shallow. They were very close to these activities. Gas fracking is set to ramp up in the peace region as fracked gas will flow through the coastal gas link pipeline to feed LNG Canada's facility on the North Coast. Cassidy says although it's an active area, it's unusual to see four quakes in just over

four days. BC's energy regulator says fracking activities are required to immediately stop if a magnitude 4.0 earthquake or greater is recorded. Cassidy says seismologists will be closely monitoring the region for the next little while. Hannah Peterson, CBC News, Prince George. Torontonians and many other Canadians across southern Ontario and Quebec are busting out the snow shovels. Much of the region is under winter storm and snowfall warnings. Between 50 and 40 centimeters are forecast to have come down by this

afternoon. Philippe Sabarin of the City of Montreal says their plows are busy. We're pushing this to a side. We're adding salt and abrasive in order to avoid slippery conditions. But of course the roads are covered by snow. The storm is now moving east. Environment Canada is issuing freezing rain warnings for New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. And that is your World This Hour. For CBC News, I'm Tom Harrington. Thanks for listening.