Your World Tonight - Amazon layoffs in Quebec, Ukraine’s wary soldiers keep fighting, bacterial infection spreading in Canadian homeless encampments, and more

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Online retail giant Amazon is closing all its facilities and slashing as many as 2,000 jobs in Quebec. The move comes after the recent unionization of employees at a Laval, Que., warehouse. But the retailer insists the decision is about cost-savings, not organized labour.Also: CBC News is on the ground in Ukraine’s Sumy region, three years into Russia’s invasion of the country. With no clear end in sight, Ukrainian troops are tired, cold and longing for peace — but willing to fight on.And: The bacterial infection shigella is spreading in homeless encampments across Canada. It causes intense diarrhea, and in some cases, is resistant to antibiotics.Plus: Team Canada meets again, cold temperatures in Canada and the southern U.S., President Trump axes DEI departments and more.

Hi, I'm Josh Block, host of Uncover Escaping Nexium from CBC Podcasts. I pull back the curtain on the secretive self-help group that experts call a cult and follow one woman's harrowing journey to get out. The podcast was featured in Rolling Stone Magazine and named one of the best podcasts of 2018 in the Atlantic. Listen to Uncover Escaping Nexium on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. I'm so angry. We have to pay about everything, you know, the house, car, the kids, family.

It's so bad. It's so sad. On time delivery of bad news. Amazon is cutting more than 1 than 1700 permanent jobs in Quebec, closing warehouses, including one in Laval that recently voted to unionize. The company says that is just a coincidence. Welcome to Your World Tonight. I'm Susan Bonner. It is Wednesday, January 22nd, coming up on 6 p.m. Eastern.

Also on the podcast. To see your friends dying around you the whole time, and it's the whole time. You know, like when you have one or two traumatic experiences, it's something else. But the whole time, it kind of gets to you. Soldiers in Ukraine are frightened, exhausted, and worried that they continue to fight a losing battle against an enemy who is bigger, better equipped, ruthless. Breyer Stewart with a report from near the front lines. We'll also look at storms in the United States, a political storm over a decision from the White

House to get rid of DEI officers at every level of government and a winter storm that is battering the usually balmy southern states. It is the largest job cut in Canada so far in 2025. Today, Amazon suddenly announced a decision to close all of its facilities in Quebec, throwing as many as 2,000 people out of their jobs. Amazon says it's a cost-saving measure, but as Nisha Patel reports, critics say it's actually a backlash to unionization. Nobody saw this coming. Workers at Amazon's warehouse in the Montreal suburb of Lachine

were blindsided this morning. Over the next two months, the company will shut down all seven of its facilities in Quebec, laying off more than 1,700 permanent workers and about 250 temporary staff members. Bad news. We'll see what we can do to survive. Amazon says employees will be given severance of up to 14 weeks' pay. The e-commerce giant, which opened its first facility in Quebec just five years ago, will instead outsource its deliveries to small local contractors, and says that will deliver savings for customers. We'll stand with our workers until the conclusion of this.

Caroline Sunville thinks it's no coincidence the closures are happening in Quebec, home to Amazon's only unionized workforce in the country. Sunville is the union's president. Amazon is really anti-union. Everything they do, everything they say is anti-union. Workers in the LaValle warehouse successfully organized last May, though Amazon challenged their efforts. Sunville says they've been in the process of negotiating their first collective agreement.

They were treating workers like a disposable. People were getting hurt. So that's why the people got unionized. They were tired of being exploited. The union was looking for a wage increase of $6 an hour and better working conditions from the $2 trillion company. Stephen Tufts, an associate professor at York University, says it's tough to believe that didn't impact Amazon's decision to shut things down.

This is the business model of Amazon. It's always been low-cost labor, flexible labor. Tufts says this could weaken other efforts to unionize at Amazon. When workers see other workers struggle and organize and unionize and get good collective agreements and increase their wages, they're likely to do the same. And that's something that Jeff Bezos and Amazon want to prevent. This is a very powerful message and it will send a chill.

Nadim Sabaheddin worked as a supervisor at the Laval warehouse for four years. It's so bad, it's so sad, you know, I'm so sad. In 2025, it's now hard to find one stable job and we have to just start over, like we have to start at the beginning. The union says it will challenge Amazon's actions, though a resolution could take years. Nisha Patel, CBC News, Toronto. Now to the threat of US tariffs and some new plans here in Canada to fight them both inside the country and on the global stage.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met virtually today with provincial and territorial premiers, their first meeting since Donald Trump returned to the White House but not their last Tom Perry reports. As I said to the premiers you can't bring a knife to a gunfight usually the guy with a knife loses one in a gunfight. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has been a lead voice demanding a tough Canadian response to tariffs which he is convinced are coming from US President Donald Trump.

We need to match those tariffs dollar for dollar, tariff for tariff, and make sure that it hurts the Americans as much as it hurts Canadians because it's gonna hurt Canadians right across the board. Trump has mused about imposing a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico by February 1st. Quebec Premier Francois Lagot says provinces need to be ready, but it's still hard to know what Trump actually plans on doing. So far, we don't have tariffs from Mr. Trump. So we study all kinds of scenarios, all kinds of retaliation measures, but it's too soon to say okay

that's what I'll do and my first objective it's important to repeat that is to convince Mr. Trump not to put any tariff so I don't want to provoke him. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been urging Ottawa to focus on diplomacy over threats of retaliation. She posted on social media today the discussion with her fellow leaders was, in her words, more positive. Smith has insisted there should be no export tax or restrictions placed on Alberta oil exports to the U.S. as a way of putting pressure on the Trump administration.

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe says he agrees with Smith on that point while also siding with Ottawa on the need for a united front. Export tariffs put on by our own national government on products that we might produce here in Saskatchewan or anywhere else in Canada, Saskatchewan most certainly is not supportive of. Moe says he's also against Canada trying to match US tariffs dollar for dollar, arguing that could badly harm the Canadian economy. The premiers say there is common ground on the need to work toward breaking down

inter-provincial trade barriers so Canadians can buy and sell more to each other, an issue that's dogged this country for many years. They also agree on the need to start looking to other markets for Canadian goods. But right now, all eyes are on the looming threat south of the border, everyone still waiting to see whether Donald Trump's words turn into action. Tom Perry, CBC News, Ottawa. Coming up on the podcast, On the Ground in Ukraine, where soldiers face a fierce fight with Russians and North Koreans, the Trump administration ends government funded diversity programs and Prince Harry's major legal victory.

US President Donald Trump says if Russia does not make a deal to end the war in Ukraine and soon he will introduce more sanctions and will increase tariffs on Russian products. Trump made the comments today calling the war ridiculous. He added sanctions could be applied to what he called participating countries but he did not name them. It's nearly three years since Russia invaded Ukraine, a war many expected to end quickly. As Briar Stewart reports, for exhausted Ukrainian troops, peace cannot come soon enough. On a frozen field in northeastern Ukraine in the region of Sumi, half a dozen soldiers load ammunition before firing at targets.

They're gearing up before they head over the border into Russia, which lies just 15 kilometers away. I honestly don't think we're going to be able to hold it for much longer. This foreign fighter goes by the call sign Chappie, which is how he and others CBC News spoke with are being identified under Ukrainian military rules. Chappie has been in Ukraine since 2002 and is working with two men who were recently mobilized. Put fire down on the position.

Like many who were drafted, they have little or no military experience. It's really hard. We are all tired. 26-year-old Gugul used to work as a sales manager. We want peace. I want to have back to civilian life, of course. But they're headed to the Kursk region. Russia is trying to take it all back with the help of thousands of North Korean troops. Ukraine has captured two of the soldiers who are now in Kiev. They keep on fighting. But these troops tell CBC News that the North Koreans they've encountered refuse to become

prisoners of war. Like North Korean guys don't came to Ukrainian prison. He choose to kills himself with a grenade or something like this. There are reports that around a thousand of them may have been killed in Kursk. The Ukrainian troops who spoke to CBC News described a worsening situation on the frontline. Some units pulling back from positions because of a lack of soldiers and experience. All we're saying is like Western countries, just step in, let's just stop this thing now. Let's just freeze it. Do you think that's a popular opinion among soldiers to just freeze it where it is right now?

I think so. All of us think let's freeze it a bit. But I can also tell you in the same breath, if they want to keep on fighting, we say no problem. Google believes this fight should now rest with the politicians. I want to hear from politics, hear from my president, hear from Trump maybe or another country can go with his soldiers and patrol all our borders. But Jari, another recent conscript, believes the only way there can really be peace is if Russia gives back the 20% of Ukrainian territory it occupies.

Russian guys go back to their territory, we take our territory. That's peace. Any other deal, he says, would only be temporary. Both countries would end up at war again and men like him forced to take on the same fight. Briar Stewart, CBC News, Sumi, Ukraine. Prince Harry has settled a lawsuit against a UK tabloid publisher who will pay him damages and give a rare public apology. The publisher used illegal tactics to gather information on the royal for years.

Harry calls it a monumental victory even though it's not the outcome he initially wanted. Thomas Dagler takes us through the legal saga. Instead of opening an explosive trial that was set to begin this week, Prince Harry's lawyer emerged from a London courthouse claiming victory. News UK is finally held to account for its illegal actions and its blatant disregard for the law. In a last-minute deal Harry has now agreed to settle his lawsuit against the company behind the Sun tabloid. Its publisher admitting for the first time the newspaper's private investigators broke the law to dig up dirt as early as 1996. For years, Harry has accused the tabloids of illegal phone hacking and other dirty tricks.

And this, says his lawyer David Sherbourne, is vindication. The truth that has now been exposed is that News Group newspapers unlawfully engaged more than 100 private investigators over at least 16 years on more than 35,000 occasions. Controlled by the family of billionaire Rupert Murdoch, the publisher now says it's sorry for what it describes as the damage inflicted on Harry's relationships, friendships and family. Newsgroup even apologizing for snooping into the private life of his late mother Diana. The Duke of Sussex will receive a big payout as well, reportedly worth $20 million or more. Still, it's not the outcome he said he wanted.

Harry, the Duke of Sussex. At a New York Times event just last month, Harry insisted his lawsuit would go to trial. I know why people have settled. They've settled because they've had to settle. So therefore one of the main reasons for seeing this through is accountability because I'm the last person that can actually achieve that. The company had already paid settlements to some 1,300 other claimants, including actors Hugh Grant and Sienna Miller

and the family of a murdered schoolgirl. In that especially egregious case, the 13-year-old's voicemail was hacked after her death for tabloid fodder. Prince Harry's lawyer calls Newsgroup a criminal enterprise that deleted 30 million emails to cover its tracks. But media law expert Sean Harrison points out News Group will be very pleased that this isn't going ahead and that all of those allegations will be aired in open court. Harry has said his father, King Charles, didn't approve of his legal battle against the tabloids, but it's not over yet.

With the fifth in line to the throne targeting the Daily Mail, in another case set to go to trial next year. Thomas Daigle, CBC News, Toronto. MUSIC Every U.S. federal employee who works in diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives or DEI is about to be fired. The Trump administration has placed them all on leave with plans to scrap the DEI departments completely. The president calls them radical and wasteful. As Paul

Hunter reports, the restructuring of the US government is well underway. At a rally in Washington the day before he was sworn back in as US President, Donald Trump made his promise yet again. But we're going to stop the destructive and divisive diversity, equity and inclusion mandates all across the government and private sector in return our country to the merit system. And indeed, among the many executive orders signed off on by President Trump soon after the inauguration. Here's the big deal, merit. Our country is going to be based on merit again.

One aimed at dismantling federal DEI practices, which are aimed at promoting fair treatment for everyone in the workplace. Indeed, in a step that kicked in today, all federal workers that oversee DEI practices have been put on administrative leave. It was expected, but it's reprehensible. Mark Morial is president of the National Urban League, a civil rights organization based in New York. What this is about is saying we're no longer going to have protections in the government against discriminatory practices. That's what this is all about. It returns us to a 1950s American.

It was President Lyndon Johnson who kick-started federal affirmative action programs decades ago, pushing federal agencies to hire more women and minorities. Trump is changing all of that, arguing merit should be the true deciding factor. Mindful countless of his supporters dismissed DEI as so-called woke culture,

which they say wrongly puts white people at a hiring disadvantage. And lately, a number of massive American corporations have likewise backed away from DEI. Walmart, Amazon, McDonald's, Metta, and Molson Coors among them. Then came Trump's decisive win on election night, Republican Senator John Kennedy. I think the American people have spoken very clearly that the best way to stop discriminating

against people on the basis of race or gender is to stop discriminating against people on the basis of race or gender is to stop discriminating against people on the basis of race and gender. All of it underlining in no small way this is Donald Trump's country now. He's shaping it the way he told voters he would if they elected him. And they did. Paul Hunter, CBC News, Washington. Well the same surge of Arctic air that's bringing frigid temperatures across Canada is hitting parts of the U.S. hard.

And not just the northern states that are used to winter storms. Nine southern states are dealing with extreme cold, blizzards and snow. Lots and lots of snow. Jamie Strashan has more. In Canada, the sound of car wheels spinning on ice is quite familiar. In Atlanta, Georgia, not so much. It's one of many surreal scenes across the southern United States. Beaches coated with ice, palm trees drooping under the weight of snow. From the Carolinas to Florida to Texas,

a once in a century winter storm has canceled hundreds of flights, snarled traffic and caused 10 deaths, mostly on icy roads. South Carolina trooper David Jones says the message is simple for the next 24 hours is just to stay home. We're seeing numerous collisions. I mean, hundreds of single car crashes where vehicles run off the road. The snowfall in many areas. Historic breaking century old records in Pensacola, Florida, 20 centimeters, more than double the previous largest dump back in 1895 in New Orleans, where the famous French quarter resembled a skating rink 25 centimeters, the most

in more than 130 years. We've been doing everything that we can to let people know that they should stay at home. Councilman Eugene Green says the city is simply not equipped for winter weather, relying on outside agencies for equipment to move the snow. So those who don't recognize that type vehicle, it is a snowplow. We have 14 of them right now going throughout the City of New Orleans. At the same time many are relishing the white stuff embracing something they may never see again in their lives. A snowball fight in Houston snowboarding in Greenville, North Carolina.

I've been up all night for this I've been excited for Greenville to finally have snow. I'm out here snowboarding on a skateboard deck with no wheels. One group not laughing the thousands of Canadian snowbirds who travel south to escape winter. I've been coming here since 83 I never had snow so and you know I was completely shocked. For Burlington Ontario's Don Collins Destin Florida has always been a warm refuge. We come down here to get rid of the damn snow and here we have snow, you know.

So, but, you know, like, everything is still closed down here because, you know, they have no snow clouds or anything. Collins says the sun is breaking through and the snow is slowly melting. But it will be a long time before this once-in-a-century blast of winter will be forgotten. Jamie Strash in CBC News, Toronto.

The federal government says it's sending more than $90 million to cities in Ontario and Saskatchewan to help people who are homeless. The money will go to new shelter spaces and to help people find are homeless. The money will go to new shelter spaces and to help people find and keep permanent housing. This winter is highlighting the pressing need for help. And as Jennifer Yoon reports, it's not just the cold. A highly infectious illness is making life on the streets even more difficult.

We all, my whole family had it. I had it twice. Diarrhea, stomach cramps and exhaustion. All while living in a homeless encampment. One man living in a Toronto park who calls himself Uncle says not having a toilet while sick was unbearable. He asked CBC not to use his real name because he fears for his safety. I demanded a toilet from the city.

We are human beings. He's not the only one. A stomach bug with telltale symptoms of a shigella infection is hitting those without a home in Toronto hard, says night nurse Karen Ellemere. We've been seeing a lot of people coming in complaining of diarrhea, severe fatigue, belly pain. There's an outbreak in Toronto.

11 confirmed cases of the bacterial infection among people experiencing homelessness. But that's probably a gross underestimation, says Toronto Public Health's Dr. Shavita Patti. Most people will resolve the infection on their own. So we're really only capturing those who are seeking medical attention. The infection spreads easily from person to person and can be prevented through hygiene measures. It's truly a clinical disease of poverty. Dr. Rohit Vij is a medical health officer at Vancouver Coastal Health.

He says in Vancouver and Toronto, the bacteria are getting more difficult to treat with antibiotic pills, and infections are getting more severe. If they require antibiotics, they have to either go to the emergency department or go to the hospital to be able to receive IV antibiotics. And even then, IV drugs don't work on all cases. Extensively drug-resistant shigella infections have been reported in Europe, Australia and the US. Dr. Aleksandra Sifanovic studies antibiotic resistance patterns in shigella infections have been reported in Europe, Australia and the US. Dr. Alexandra Stefanovic studies antibiotic resistance patterns in shigella. There's been cases of it in Seattle and we occasionally see cases in Vancouver,

but luckily it's not that well established. In Edmonton, where there's been an outbreak on and off since 2022, health authorities were helping people find a place to take a shower, use the washroom and get a change of clothes. But there's still an outbreak ongoing. Elizabeth Klingeberg is the manager of health services at Hope Mission in Edmonton. We all knew the path to take. We had so many extra resources than we've ever had before on this and it still took

us months. Experts say the best way to protect against cases that are most difficult to treat goes back to prevention, like giving homeless people urgent access to toilets, sinks and showers. Jennifer Yoon, CBC News, Toronto. Finally, it can help to remember that all over the world there are people working a way to make a difference no matter how small, sometimes as small as an insect, a hungry, hungry insect.

It's called the black soldier fly. It's a beneficial insect that eats enormous quantity of waste. So they eat all the food waste that we give them. After we harvest them and we extract protein and oil. That's Dr. Haytham Riahi, co-founder of a biofuel company in the United Arab Emirates. The black soldier fly looks a little like a gnat or a mayfly. And Riahi raises hundreds of them in a warehouse in the desert. Their larvae can grow 500 times their size in just a few days.

Food waste is not a UAE problem. It's a global problem. Just to know one third of the food produced globally is wasted. And the major part of it ends up in landfills. After the feasting, the adult flies live out their final few days mating. And when they die, they're put through a press. The oil that comes out, used in aviation. The protein, animal food.

From scraps to food and fuel in just a couple of weeks. How time flies. Thank you for joining us. This has been Your World Tonight for January 22nd. I'm Susan Bonner. Talk to you again.