The World This Hour - The World This Hour for 2025/08/17 at 04:00 EDT

Episode Date: August 17, 2025

The World This Hour for 2025/08/17 at 04:00 EDT

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Certain conditions apply. From CBC News, the world this hour, I'm Neil Kumar. Just hours after it started, Otto intervened in the Air Canada strike. 10,000 workers walked off the job early Saturday morning. Not long after flights were grounded, the federal government sent the labor dispute to arbitration. As Emily Fitzpatrick reports, passengers are still caught in the middle. What do we want? Fair pay!

What do we want? Air Canada flight attendants weren't on the picket line for long. They walked off the job early Saturday morning after months of stalled talks. But just 12 hours later, the federal jobs minister, Patty Heidu, ordered them back to work. I've also asked the board to assist the parties in reaching a settlement of the outstanding terms of their collective agreement by imposing final and binding arbitration. After more than three decades serving passengers, strike captain Christine Langell is worried this decision won't take them in the direction they want. We expected it, I think.

but we weren't pleased. We were hoping that it wouldn't go that route. Inside the airport, travelers were scrambling to adjust to the disruption. The last couple days have been super stressful. Trina Swan is trying to get to Newfoundland to watch her son play in the Canada summer games. After waking up to a cancelled flight, she managed to rebook by coming to the airport. Emily Fitzpatrick, CBC News, Edmonton. Flight attendants United across Canada are planning for a day of action at several airports around the country on Sunday.

They plan to make their voices heard with demonstrations at airports in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver, where they will plead for fairness and the end to unpaid work. It's a debate that goes to the heart of a question. Who decides what is grown across the country? In the past, it has pitted some Canadian farmers against foreign-owned multinational seed companies. Now, the federal government is proposing changes that could reopen that debate. Ultimately, it's about food security. Keith Curry heads the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.

he's also a farmer who saves some of his seeds each year to reuse. It's called farmer's privilege. Then there are plant breeders, often multinationals. They develop new varieties of seeds, like plants that can resist drought. They want to make money and protect their innovation. Canada has a law that helps them do that. Now the federal government is proposing changes to those rules. It would remove the farmer's privilege to reuse seeds for certain crops like fruits and vegetables.

It wouldn't affect some others like wheat or cereals. Lauren Common is with Seeds Canada. She welcomes the changes, but says they don't go far enough. Intellectual property protection, just in general, is incredibly important. Kathy Holtzlender from the National Farmers Union worries the changes are a slippery slope. Removing farmers' privilege using this regulatory power for the one set of crops just makes it that much easier to remove it from other types of crops. Elizabeth Thompson, CBC News, Ottawa.

Bolivia is holding its presidential election today as the Landlocked nation faces a severe economic crisis that has led to field shortages, including 25% inflation over the past year. As Manuel Rada reports, the party that has ruled Bolivia for the past two decades is expected to lose. Economic recovery is the top concern for many voters in Bolivia, where decline in revenues from the government-run natural gas fields have led to a massive shortage of U.S. dollars. Without dollars, Bolivia has struggled to import food and gasoline. Bolivia's ruling party, the movement towards socialism has been widely accused of mismanaging the nation's economy, and now its candidate has less than 3% support in opinion polls.

But the leading candidate businessman Samuel Doria only has 20% support. Glaelis Gonzalez, a Bolivia analyst at the International Crisis Group, says that eight candidates are running, and the election is likely to head to a runoff between the top two contenders. If this is the first election in two decades, without a dominant party or a clear front-runner, the outcome could definitely reshape Bolivia's economic strategy for the years to come. Manuel Rueda for CBC News, Bogota. And that is your world is sour. For CBC News, I'm Neil Kumar.

Thank you.