The World This Hour - The World This Hour for 2025/06/04 at 07:00 EDT

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

The World This Hour for 2025/06/04 at 07:00 EDT

The ocean is vast, beautiful, and lawless. I'm Ian Urbina back with an all new season of The Outlaw Ocean. The stories we bring you this season are literally life or death. We look into the shocking prevalence of forced labor, mine boggling overfishing, migrants hunted and captured. The Outlaw Ocean takes you where others won't. Available on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. From CBC News, it's the World This Hour.

I'm Joe Cummings. The wildfires burning across the prairies are now sending plumes of smoke across the Atlantic Ocean. They have forced tens of thousands of people from their homes, and thousands more are being told to be ready to flee at a moment's notice. In northern Saskatchewan, hundreds of homes and structures have been destroyed, leaving the evacuees waiting and hoping that their property will be spared.

Alexander Silberman has more. Wildfire tore into Laurent, Saskatchewan mere hours after evacuees got out, crews still battling to protect the remaining homes and businesses against unrelenting wind gusts of up to 90 km per hour. They just can't battle the flames with those kinds of winds. Mayor Joe Horduski says firefighters from eight communities are continuing to fight to save buildings. I don't blame people for panicking. It's become a very, very dangerous situation. Hundreds of kilometres to the northeast in Dener

Beach near the Manitoba border, fire tore into town. The last firefighters on the ground airlifted out with conditions too dangerous to keep up the fight. The Saskatchewan government says more than 400 homes and buildings have been destroyed so far. Alexander Silberman, CBC News, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. The latest executive order from U.S. President Donald Trump went into effect at midnight and American tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum now go from 25 to 50 percent, which means the economic outlook for thousands of Canadians just went from bad to worse.

Anis Hadari has the latest. So most of our products are made out of steel or aluminum. Parag Shah is the president of Toronto's New Age Products. The company makes garage cabinets and outdoor kitchens. Even before tariffs doubled, he noticed them. There's a lot of uncertainty from the consumer. They are sort of holding off on bigger purchases for their home. But it's not just Canadian businesses that will feel this.

The Americans import most of their aluminum and most of their imports come from Canada. Jim Stamford is an economist and director of the Centre for Future Work. It is Americans who will feel the pain in an immediate way as well as Canadians. In Canada, steel industry advocates already pointed out hundreds of job losses were related to the 25 percent tariffs. The exact consequences of 50 percent tariffs are unclear because predictions often rely on consistent policies, which these days they often are not. Anish Tadari, CBC News, Calgary. Meanwhile, the Bank of Canada makes its June interest rate setting today and most analysts are expecting the central bank to leave its influential rate where it

is unchanged at 2.75%. That says the latest GDP update shows that the economy was growing at a better than expected pace over the first quarter, primarily because most businesses have been rushing to get ahead of the Trump tariff impact. Police are searching for suspects following a deadly shooting last night in Toronto. Tragically, a man in his 40s pronounced deceased and four other men and one woman,

all adults, transported to hospital with non-life threatening injuries. That is Toronto Police Staff Sergeant Baheer Sarandhan. He says the shooting occurred in North Toronto and there have been no arrests. Police are searching for multiple suspects but won't say at this point if the suspects and victims are known to each other. The Liberal minority government faces its first real parliamentary test today as MPs vote on last week's throne speech. In a vote the Liberals lost back on Monday, the opposition amended the speech to include a call for an economic update before Parliament breaks for the summer. Now we'll

see how the government responds. And keep in mind, today's vote is a confidence vote, which means if it doesn't pass, the government will fall, and we'll be headed for another general election. And that is The World This Hour. For news anytime, go to our website cbcnews.ca. For CBC News, I'm Joe Cummings.