The World This Hour - The World This Hour for 2025/03/07 at 10:00 EST

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

The World This Hour for 2025/03/07 at 10:00 EST

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From CBC News, it's the world this hour. I'm Joe Cummings. The latest update on the state of the economy comes today from the February jobs report. And it appears to show the U.S. tariff action is affecting the labor market right across the country. Scott Peterson has the details. Eleven hundred positions were created for February. That was disappointing.

We were expecting 20,000. The unemployment rate stayed at 6.6%. We also saw a loss of full-time jobs, about 20,000, and that was replaced by part-time jobs. So that's a worry as well as far as a hollowing out of the good, secure jobs in the country. So job losses in the scientific field. We saw gains in finance, infrastructure, and leasing.

And this is where the story gets interesting. We saw a big gain, infrastructure and leasing, and this is where the story gets interesting. We saw a big gain, 51,000 positions. It was the largest sector gain of all the sectors that Canada has in wholesale and retail trade. And that comes on the back of a record surplus that Canada had with the U.S. at $14.4 billion. That's a trade surplus for the month of January. So clearly, the indication here is that US companies were going to record import levels to get as much Canadian goods as they possibly could to get under the threat of the tariff

deadline. Scott Peterson, CBC News, Toronto. Aaron Ross As for the US trade action, as of this morning, the Trump administration has temporarily paused some of its tariffs on Canada. And while this confusing on-again off-again campaign continues, Canada's response remains unchanged. Kate McKenna has more. One message is loud and clear from Ottawa and the provinces. This 30-day partial tariff pause is not good enough. The federal government won't lift 30 billion dollars in retaliatory tariffs,

even if it won't proceed with a second and bigger wave of retaliation in a few weeks. The on-again-off-again tariffs leave Canadian businesses in turmoil and uncertainty. Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc spoke to CBC's power in politics. Well, hopefully we're lining up a conversation and a discussion with the Americans that's much more coherent in the sense it's not this week, it's this

sector of the economy. He says the majority of trade to the U.S. can now meet the bar of being compliant with the existing free trade agreement and avoid tariffs for now. But there are other looming deadlines. There's a steel and aluminum tariff that could come into effect next week. There could be more tariffs on April 2nd. Plus yesterday's announcement from Trump is being described as a pause, not a total walk back.

Kate McKenna, CBC News, Ottawa. The dates differ from province to province, but this year's March break travel season is now underway. And it turns out a growing number of Canadians are deciding against vacation trips to the United States. Linda Ward reports. Leisure bookings to American cities are down. We're hearing from Flight Centre Travel Group Canada who says that they have dropped 40 percent

in February from the same month last year. And we're also hearing numbers from a number of airlines as well. Air Canada is offering 10 percent fewer flights to Florida, Arizona, Las Vegas, popular sun destinations for Canadians at this time of the year. WestJet is reporting a shift in bookings from the US to Mexico and the Caribbean. Flares, US bound flights are down 24% year over year for March. And Sunwing Airlines has just scrapped all its US flights altogether.

And it's not just that people aren't booking, but they're also cancelling. One in five customers cancelled their trips to the United States over the past three months. Flight Center now also says it has seen a pause in business travel to the United States. And if that gets worse, that would have a much larger impact. Linda Ward, CBC News, Toronto. Another setback for Elon Musk's aerospace company. Getting video down from the ship, you can see we've lost several engines and we've lost attitude control of the vehicle. At a SpaceX mission control in Texas as the Starship rocket exploded last night just moments after liftoff, some of the debris scattered over a vast area of the Caribbean forcing

flights to be diverted in and around the Turks and Caicos Islands, and it also led to delays at four Florida airports. This is the second time now in less than two months that a SpaceX mega rocket has exploded during a test flight. And that is The World This Hour. I'm Joe Cummings.