The World This Hour - The World This Hour for 2025/04/19 at 13:00 EDT

Episode Date: April 19, 2025

The World This Hour for 2025/04/19 at 13:00 EDT

Readers have been waiting for a new novel from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for 12 years. On my podcast Bookends, Chimamanda tells me what was happening behind the scenes, about the sudden loss of both of her parents and how her mother's spirit brought her back to fiction. Sometimes I do not even want to talk about my mother because I get ridiculously emotional. But she kind of helped me start writing because she realized that I might go mad if I wasn't... If the thoughts all had to stay inside. Yes. Search for bookends with Matea Roach to hear the rest of that conversation.

From CBC News The World This Hour, I'm Julie-Ann Hazelwood. Liberal leader Mark Carney has released his party's platform. It's called Canada Strong, and Carney says it's all about building a new Canadian economy. Two thirds of all new spending in our plan will go to capital investments that catalyze the building of affordable homes, that provide equipment for our Canadian Armed Forces to secure this country, that build clean and conventional energy, that create nation-building infrastructure like ports, new roads, railways that connect us with reliable trading partners.

And crucially, most of the remaining spending is on our middle-class tax cut. The Liberal platform promises $130 billion in new spending over four years, including tax cuts to the middle class. Combined with existing spending, that will add $225 billion to the federal debt. Carney made the announcement in Whitby, Ontario. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh also releasing his party's costed platform during a morning appearance in Burnaby, B.C. So here's what we'll fight to deliver in the first year. Real steps towards a family doctor for every Canadian.

Universal PharmaCare, national rent control, grocery price caps, a real fix to EI, and tax relief for working people. Singh's promising to push for extended pharmacare to cover essential medicines and mental health services. He's also pledging $10 billion a year for infrastructure. Conservative leader Pierre Pollyaev

is expected to announce his party's costed platform soon. He's in Richmond, BC today. Bloquet-Bacoy leader Yves-Francois Blanchet is in the city of Magog speaking about climate change. As for the Green Party, co-leaders Elizabeth May and Jonathan Pedneau will be in Nanaimo, B.C., where they'll mark Pedneau's 35th birthday.

A recent survey says young people are getting their federal election information from social media. Of the 1,200 participants, 16% cited misinformation as the biggest obstacle to voting. Concordia University Media Studies PhD candidate Colleen McCool says social media can limit the diversity of views that voters hear. If you're only consuming news from a certain angle, you might not be getting all the facts, especially when you're going through news influencers who do a really interesting job of being entertaining and who, you know, a lot of them do quite a bit of research, but who are not necessarily journalists, who are not sort of working in a fact-gathering capacity and are more so working in a, oh, this is new, I have to talk about it,

I have to comment on it now. McCool says voters should do their own fact-checking before heading to the polls. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered a ceasefire in Ukraine. It comes as US President Donald Trump has threatened to abandon peace efforts unless there's progress in ending the more than three-year conflict. Dominic Vilaitis reports. Russia's Vladimir Putin announcing the details of his East Etrus. Flanked by his top general, Putin ordered his forces to end all hostilities in Ukraine from late morning.

He said the ceasefire would be temporary, lasting until 5pm Eastern Time Sunday. In his statement, he said he assumed Ukrainian forces would follow the truce, but Russian troops were ready to repel any possible violations. With air raid sirens sounding across Ukraine just 45 minutes before the ceasefire reportedly came into effect, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed skepticism and accused Putin of playing with human lives. The Russian leader said his decision to call a truce was based on humanitarian considerations. The surprising announcement, though, came just hours after US President Donald Trump

warned America would walk away from efforts to broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal unless there were clear signs of progress in the coming days. Dominic Vleitis for CBC News, Riga, Latvia. This hour the puck drops as Team Canada faces Finland at the Women's World Hockey Championship. It's a semi-final with the winner going on to face either the US or the Czech Republic. Those two are facing off in their other semi-final. The gold medal game happens tomorrow. And that is Your World This Hour. For CBC News, I'm Julie-Ann Hazelwood.