Your World Tonight - A.I. summit in Paris, trading minerals for military support in Ukraine, charging drug dealers with deaths and more

Episode Date: February 8, 2025

Officials from nearly one-hundred countries are meeting in Paris to discuss Artificial Intelligence, including Canada's Prime Minister. The risks associated with A.I. are top of mind -- but so are the opportunities. Also: U.S. President Donald Trump is proposing a trade to Ukraine - military support for rare earth resources. We'll look at why Trump wants these resources so badly, and the other countries he's eyeing to get them.And: Toxic drugs have killed tens of thousands of Canadians, but drug dealers are rarely charged directly in those deaths. Now there is a push to hand down tough punishments on drug dealers whose customers die from overdoses.Plus: Court challenges to Donald Trump's executive orders, Canadian doctors scrutinize the Lucy Letby case, and more.

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. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Stephanie Scanderis. This is your World Tonight. On the podcast, Donald Trump makes a proposal to Ukraine, military aid in exchange for valuable

minerals. But is it a fair trade? Also, the US president's tariff threats have put a spotlight on Canada's fentanyl crisis. Later in the show, the push to hand down tough punishments on drug dealers whose customers die. Plus, a Canadian doctor says one of Britain's most notorious killers is innocent. You'll hear why he thinks the evidence is flawed. But first, the Prime Minister is in France to discuss AI with other world leaders. AI could be one of the most transformative technologies since the internet. But for all its potential, there are hazards too. Job losses, disinformation, algorithmic bias.

This coming week, as part of his five-day trip to Europe, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in Paris to discuss all of that, meeting with world leaders, tech bosses and academics at a major AI summit. As Philippe Le Chanoc reports, it's all about trying to reap the benefits of AI while managing the risks. Set to begin Monday at the Grand Palais in central Paris, which opened 125 years ago, organizers of the AI Action Summit say this is a pivotal moment before society has become too reliant on artificial intelligence. Jamal Atif is the Scientific Director of France's nationwide AI priority program. So there are important questions that we should tackle.

The future of the workforce, of course. Representatives from close to 100 nations and the CEOs of the world's biggest tech firms are hoping to find common ground on the safe development of artificial intelligence. This is where we should have the discussion, which paths we should define for AI. And this is why the summit is so important. The leaders of France, India and Canada will brush shoulders with top executives from Alphabet, Microsoft and OpenAI.

They're looking at impacts on employment and sovereignty but also potential AI positives such as climate change solutions and new treatments for diseases. Atif says the summit also seeks to address concerns that Europe is late to the game behind the

U.S. big money powerhouses from Silicon Valley. Concentration of money means concentration of power. So, yeah, we should be worried about that. I think all of the jobs that don't involve a human-to-human relationship are threatened. Montreal-based Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, a pioneer in artificial neural networks and deep learning, will be speaking at the summit about AI safety. Imagine a world where we have machines that can do most people's jobs. Some of these systems are already superior to humans. In other ways, they're still doing lots of mistakes. But it's hard to project ourselves in a few years or maybe a decade. But really, this is where we're going.

It's a very large-scale complex plagiarism machine. Identifying clearly what is AI-generated is why the Authors Guild is pushing for a new human-authored certification label that would appear on books. Mary Rasenberger is its CEO. You think about the way that AI works, they're trained on all kinds of text, right? So it learns sentence structure from books, it even learns long form narrative structure, it knows how to write. But it lacks that human element which is reflection on actual human

experience, what I would call the creative spark. Readers should have the right to know whether or not that text was AI generated. The AI Summit is hoping participants will sign a non-binding communique of principles on the stewardship of AI to address issues like these. But there will be other opportunities. AI will be on Canada's agenda at the G7 meeting it's hosting in Alberta this summer. Philip LeChanoc, CBC News, Toronto. Aside from tech, the Prime Minister is also in Europe to talk trade. The EU is Canada's second largest trading partner after the US,

a relationship that has grown since signing a free trade deal in 2017. Trade Minister Mary Ing is in Brussels and says Canada is hoping to deepen that trade relationship because of the tariff threat coming from the US. Trade agreements are one thing and we have seen really great numbers but what more can we be doing to help Canadian businesses enter into the any of the 27 member states that's here in the European Union? What more can we do to do the same in Canada for European businesses? Mary Ng says should Washington go forward with the tariffs Canada will retaliate as well as challenge the Trump administration at the World Trade Organization. Christia Freeland is getting support from her fellow Liberal leadership candidate Mark

Carney after what security officials call a coordinated and malicious online campaign targeted her. The Canadian agency that monitors election interference says posts disparaging Freeland have been traced to a popular WeChat account with alleged ties to the Chinese government. Carney says he's committed to defending the integrity of the leadership race. First off, it's very troubling that this continues to happen. Secondly, I absolutely support her campaign and the process that we're undertaking to

have a fair election for the leadership of the Liberal Party. Thirdly, I would like really to salute the officials in global affairs. They caught this. They're on top of it. They had a quick reaction. It was public. It was transparent. That's what we need to reestablish confidence in our democracy. Meanwhile, the two debates for leadership candidates have been scheduled. Montreal will host both the French and English debates on February 24th and 25th.

Still ahead, US President Donald Trump is proposing a trade to Ukraine, military support for rare earth resources. Some say it's a selfish deal. Others say it's necessary. We'll look at why Trump wants these resources so badly and the other countries he's eyeing to get them. That's coming up on your World Tonight.

Well President Trump has been in office for less than three weeks, but already he's been attempting to uproot pretty much every corner of the government, from the civil service to federal programs and entire federal departments. To do it, he's been using executive orders. It's a whiplash inducing strategy that some on Trump's team call flooding the zone. But as Chris Reyes tells us, this plan to dismantle everything at once is being met with legal resistance. Why don't you say what I'm saying?

Sure, the first item that President Trump has signed... As President Donald Trump goes into his third week of office, the executive orders keep piling up and the resistance to all of it mounting. Washington State Attorney General McBrown describes the battlefield. And what we're facing right now in this country is the Trump administration moving 100 miles an hour in 100 different areas and on a daily, daily basis breaking the law, violating the United States Constitution. Across the country, Democrats, civil rights groups and activists have

turned to the courts to stem the tide of Trump's aggressive agenda. John Alsop writes for the Columbia Journalism Review. He's watching closely to see if that strategy will work. The courts are a potent weapon to fight back against Trump for his opponents for sure, but the legal system is very, very slow. So far, some temporary holds have been put on Trump's executive orders. Today, a federal judge in New York blocked the newly created Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the Treasury Department's payment and data system. The unofficial agency is led by Elon Musk, who's been repeatedly praised by Trump for the work he's doing.

And it's amazing actually what they've exposed and to a level where they cut 97% of the people out. The whole thing is a scam and you look at some of the people working there, they're very political people. Another federal judge from Washington, D.C. has issued a temporary restraining order to stop the Trump administration from putting thousands of USAID workers from being put on leave. In Washington, protesters have hit the streets to fight against the attack on federal workers.

Activist Michael Katsky vows to mount an organized force to fight against Trump. We'll be here now, we'll be here tomorrow, we'll be here for the next few months, however long it takes to show that we deserve our rights and we will fight for our rights. In just 18 days, Trump has already signed more than 50 executive orders, in addition to revoking almost 100 orders from the Biden administration. The so-called shock and awe campaign has upended every aspect of the government from its federal workforce to the FBI to foreign policy. Alsop says there is concern Trump's strategy could be working especially on the Democrats. They can't sort of coalesce around

one particular issue, you know, because they have so many different things that they're trying to oppose at the same time. You know, it's obviously impossible to focus if there are hundreds of seismic radical things happening every day. An unrelenting pace with a president forging ahead in record speed. Chris Reyes, CBC News, New York. A fifth hostage and prisoner release has taken place as part of the Israel Hamas ceasefire deal. Hamas paraded the three Israeli hostages, all men, on a stage in front of hundreds of people in the Gaza Strip. They were then handed over to the Red Cross to be returned to Israel. In Gaza, Thousands gathered to greet some of the 183 prisoners released under the deal. Concern and shock has been expressed about the health of both the hostages and the prisoners who appeared gaunt.

The Red Cross has criticized the conditions under which releases take place, calling for more private and dignified settings. Israeli and Hamas negotiators are expected to meet mediators in Qatar to discuss the next stage of the ceasefire deal. In Latvia, workers stand on a cherry picker, detaching large electrical cables. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are now disconnected from Russia's power grid. Plans for the Baltic countries to decouple from Russia's grid go back decades to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The idea gained traction in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea. All three Baltic countries are members of both the EU and

NATO. In Ukraine, Russia now controls a different source of power, buried underground, mineral deposits worth trillions of dollars. The US also has its eyes on those minerals. And as Dominic Velaitis explains, it's looking to cut a deal with Ukraine to get to them. We're going to stop that ridiculous work. Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump had a proposition for Ukraine, the country's rare earth resources in exchange for US military support.

We're handing them money hand over fist, we're giving them equipment, so we're looking to do a deal with Ukraine where they're going to secure what we're giving them with their rare earth and other things. Ukraine is rich in rare earth resources such as lithium and cobalt and the US, like other countries, is racing to secure access to the minerals which power the modern world. Without them we don't have a lot of those advanced technologies that we take granted in our everyday lives. Chris Yakimchuk is a geologist at the University of Waterloo. They have special magnetic and optical properties that make them important raw ingredients in

a lot of communications, energy and transportation technologies. Although Ukraine's president is open to Trump's proposal, others aren't so impressed. Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz described it this week as selfish and self-centered. While Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said it was nothing more than a commercial proposal for Ukraine to buy aid. But President of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute David Perry thinks Trump's proposal might not be such a bad thing. If that captures President Trump's interests and that's potentially enough to get him to

continue supporting the Ukrainian war effort, that's incredibly important at this moment in time because if American support stops, I think the Ukrainian war effort unfortunately stops not long after. Awesome country. The scenery coming in was just spectacular. Just very excited to be here. Do you have a message from your father? He says hello. Last month, Trump dispatched his son Donald Trump Jr. to Greenland after expressing his

interest in owning the autonomous Danish territory, which is also rich in rare earth resources, a market dominated by China. We have to find alternative sources of supply. So Ukraine's got some supply of this, Greenland's got some supply of this, Canada actually has at least the holdings and in some cases to do both extraction and processing of these and we could certainly do more. The scramble for these valuable resources is reshaping geopolitics. Ukraine it seems is caught in the crossfire, holding a hand of cards which may well be vital to its very survival. Dominic Velaitis for CBC News, Riga, Latvia. In the UK, Lucy Letby is considered the most notorious child serial killer in modern history.

She was convicted of killing seven babies in a neonatal ward where she worked and of attempting to kill seven others. But now a Canadian doctor is leading a group that says there were no murders. Anna Cunningham spoke to him and brings us this story. Hello Lucy is it? Police body cam footage shows the moment detectives detained neonatal nurse Lucy Letby. I'm going to put you in the back seat over here. At trial, prosecutors accused Letby of deliberately injecting vulnerable newborns with air, poisoning them with insulin or overfeeding them with milk.

The jury found her guilty. You have coldly denied any responsibility for your wrongdoing and sought to attribute some fault to others. You have no remorse. Sentenced to 15 whole life terms with no parole. Letbee's appeals were all rejected. Case closed. Or is it? As a panel, we came to the conclusion that there was no murder.

Retired Dr Shu Lee led a group of international experts, including six Canadians, examining the medical evidence. He tells CBC News what they found. These babies died either of natural causes or poor medical care. His conclusion, a stark contrast to judge and jury. Dr Lee nearly didn't get involved. An email from Letbee's defence lawyers arrived

when he was on his family farm near Edmonton. But this was different. The prosecution leaned heavily on a paper he co-authored in 1989 about air embolism. What they said and interpreted to use to convict her wasn't what I said in the paper. The prosecution said skin discolourations found in the dead babies were linked to air embolism in the bloodstream. At a London news conference, Lee said he found no link between discoloured skin and air embolism. Two bags of IV fluid during that period of time.

According to Lee, poor medical care was likely a contributing factor. If this happened at a hospital in Canada, we would close it down. There was other evidence. Tens of thousands of pages of medical notes, text and social media messages and hospital swipe card data confirming Letby was on shift when the babies died. The jury also saw handwritten notes found at Letby's home, which included phrases such as I killed them and I am an evil. Notes she was encouraged to write as part of therapy work for stress,

criminologists have since claimed. According to Letby's lawyer, Mark McDonald, the case against her has crumbled. The reason why Lucy Letby was convicted was because of the evidence, the medical evidence that was presented to the jury that today has been demolished. Canadians have a sense of right and wrong, Dr Lee says. If there was no murder, there cannot be a murderer. So what is she doing in jail? In the eyes of the law, Lucy Letbee is a convicted criminal.

Her case is now with the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the only place with power to send it back for review under a possible miscarriage of justice. Anna Cunningham, CBC News, London. For more on the Lucy Letbee case, Anna Cunningham has a story up on our website. That's cbcnews.ca. [♪upbeat music playing.♪ Donald Trump's tariff threat is putting renewed attention on Canada's opioid crisis. The federal government has proposed several measures to ward off the tariffs, including appointing a fentanyl czar and listing Mexican cartels as terrorists. This week in Vancouver, Pierre Pauliev, the Conservative leader, proposed harsh punishments

for fentanyl dealers. 40 milligrams is enough to kill 20 people. Anyone who is involved in trafficking that amount of fentanyl will get a life sentence. We will lock them up and we will throw away the key. Toxic drugs have killed tens of thousands of Canadians but drug dealers are rarely charged directly in those deaths. Jason Proctor has been looking at the way the justice system handles drug deaths. So Jason, what kind of charges are drug dealers currently facing

when they can be linked directly to a death? I mean you're most likely to face a charge of trafficking and the Supreme Court of Canada has weighed in there saying the proper range for sentencing is between 8 and 15 years. The toughest charge as a dealer in Canada is likely to face for actually killing somebody though by selling them fentanyl is criminal negligence causing death or manslaughter. And sentences range from around 30 months to 10 years. And the details of the cases I've looked at give you an idea of how tough the issue is to navigate because many of the dealers are users themselves. So I mean in one case a woman who got three years for criminal negligence causing death

claimed she didn't know what she was selling was fentanyl and not cocaine. Some people charged with manslaughter were buying for friends. And these aren't like most manslaughter cases where violence plays a role in sentencing. But one judge said that doesn't mean they're any less serious. And he gave a dealer eight years for his crime saying fentanyl is as dangerous to Canadians as firearms. We found out though it's a very different story in the States where dealers are increasingly facing murder charges. And why is that happening? Well, one of the reasons is parents like Matt Capilouto in California, his daughter Alexandra died of a

fentanyl overdose in 2019, he's campaigned for a law in her name that provides drug offenders with a last chance warning to help build a murder case against them if they kill someone. So what Alexandra's law is, it's an admonishment that would be given to anybody convicted of a drug offense, making them aware of the dangers of those drugs and that if they continue in this activity and someone dies as a result of drugs that they supply, they can be held accountable for murder. And Alexandra's law was passed by California voters last November. It's worth noting that just a few months ago, a dealer was sentenced in that state for 20

years for second degree murder and a fentanyl-related death. LARISSA It seems like whether it's murder or manslaughter, Alexandra's law seems to speak to these challenges of holding individuals accountable for toxic drug deaths. So what do you police have to say about building these cases? MARK I spoke with an RCMP officer involved in a recent overdose investigation on Vancouver

Island. They'll tell you the burden of proof in these cases is immense. And one of the big problems is the medical evidence. You have to prove that the drug in a person's system is actually what killed them. And remember coroners are often finding multiple drugs in people's systems, some of which like alcohol or benzodiazepines make fentanyl even more deadly and the bar for a prosecution in Canada is quite high. So prosecutors are often reluctant to go ahead with tougher charges. Well what do Canadians think about these calls for tougher sentences or for charges like murder? I mean you got some groups like Trace the Lace in

Ontario which was started by mums who have lost children to toxic drugs, calling for deaths linked to street drugs containing substances like fentanyl to be investigated as homicides. They've also asked for a federal-level team to investigate and trace the source of drugs in all overdose deaths. We've also spoken to users here in BC like Bruce Brown. He told me many of the dealers who sell to him are also addicted and he doesn't think charging them with murder would solve anything. The people that are selling fentanyl, do you think they think about the possibility you

could kill someone like you? about the possibility you could kill someone like you? No, I think the only thing that's on the mind is money. And I mean, that very much echoes what many of the people we've spoken to have said. Prosecution for fentanyl dealers is only one part of a puzzle that has to also address demand. Yeah. Okay, Jason, thank you.

Thank you. That's Jason, thank you. Thank you. That's Jason Proctor in Vancouver, and you can watch Jason's full report online on The Nationals YouTube page. Chappell Rohn's influence is growing. The 26-year-old just earned Best New Artist at the Grammys last week, and she used that influence and that win to deliver a headline-grabbing speech calling out record labels. I told myself, if I ever won a Grammy and I got to stand up here in front of the most powerful people in music.

I would demand that labels and the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a livable wage and health care especially to developing artists. She talked about being signed to a label really young, then getting dropped in 2020, and like a lot of people, not being able to find a job during the pandemic or afford health insurance. So record labels need to treat their artists as valuable employees with a livable wage

and health insurance and protection. Labels, we got you, but do you got us? It was dubbed the speech of the night. But then came the takedowns. Mainly a guest essay in the Hollywood Reporter by music exec Jeff Rabhan that blasted Rhone for being green, uninformed and quote, taking aim at the very machine that got her there. Saying things like healthcare and wellbeing are personal responsibility and that labels are not morally or ethically obligated to pay anything other than advances and royalties. Chappell Rhone has hit back on Instagram challenging Rabhan to match her $25,000 donation to struggling artists.

And the conversation is still picking up steam. Another guest essay by musician Kay Hanley says, Major labels, it's time to change your ways. The shot heard around the world has just been fired by a 26 year old icon. Good luck. That last bit's a reference to the Chappell Rhone song we're gonna leave you with. This is Good Luck Babe on Your World Tonight. I'm Stephanie Scanderis.

Thanks for listening. It's not fair. I just need a little love and I just need a little air. I think I'm gonna call it off, even if you call it love. I just don't love someone who calls me baby.