The World This Hour - The World This Hour for 2025/02/13 at 22:00 EST

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

The World This Hour for 2025/02/13 at 22:00 EST

In Scarborough, there's this fire behind our eyes. A passion in our bellies. It's in the hearts of our neighbors. The eyes of our nurses. And the hands of our doctors. It's what makes Scarborough, Scarborough. In our hospitals, we do more than anyone thought possible. We've less than anyone could imagine.

But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together, we can turn grit into greatness. Donate at lovescarborough.ca. From CBC News, the world this hour. I'm Claude Fague. Donald Trump is looking at imposing new tariffs on more countries exporting goods into the United States.

And as the proposal was unveiled, Trump again trash-talked Canada. Katie Simpson has more from Washington. The reciprocal makes tariffs really fair. Officials are being asked to determine tariff rates for individual countries based on a wide range of reasons, including if a country imposes tariffs on US goods,

whether the US thinks the country has unfair trading practices, or if it has a value-added tax. Canada's GST is considered a value-added tax. How this could affect Canada remains unclear, but Canada and the US already have 99% tariff-free trade thanks to the renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement. Canada's been very bad to us on trade, but now Canada is going to have to start paying up. All of this comes after Trump already threatened 25% blanket tariffs on all Canadian goods

starting March 4th, additional 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum starting March 12th, and even more tariffs based on long-standing trade irritants that could also start April 1st. Katie Simpson, CBC News, Washington. Meanwhile, Trump says Vladimir Zelensky will have a seat at the table at Ukraine peace talks. European leaders back Zelensky after Trump's phone call yesterday with Vladimir Putin and their pledge to start negotiations Friday in Munich.

Chris Brown reports. The Russian leader's long-standing goal has been to make Ukraine a puppet state. So for many Ukrainians, Trump's plan smelled of betrayal. Zelensky, who will meet face-to-face with U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, said, As a sovereign country, we simply will not be able to accept any agreements without us. It's still not clear what role Zelensky will take in these negotiations. Same for the European countries that would guarantee Ukraine security afterward, prompting this warning from the EU's top diplomat, Kaya Callis.

Any agreement will need Ukraine and Europe. There is no betrayal there. In Brussels for a NATO meeting, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth underscored Trump does see Russia as the aggressor in the war. Putin has said he expects to keep all of the Ukrainian land Russia has conquered and for Ukraine to disband most of its army. Chris Brown, CBC News, London. Four earthquakes have hit in five days west of Fort St. John. As Hannah Peterson reports,

the increase in seismic activity has been linked to fracking in the Peace Region. John Cassidy is an earthquake seismologist with Natural Resources Canada. He says 4.4 and 4.2 magnitude earthquakes happened about 105 kilometers 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 kilometers underground to release natural gas. The earthquakes 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. A Toronto-based artificial intelligence firm is being sued for copyright infringement. The Toronto Star and several other major media organizations accuse the company, Coheer, of scraping copies of their articles from the internet, then using them to train their AI system all without permission or compensation. The suit calls for compensation of $150,000 for every article taken.

And that is your World This Hour. For CBC News, I'm Claude Fague.