Your World Tonight - Fire fears, tariff turmoil, White House targets Chinese students, and more

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

It is hot. It is dry. It is windy. That’s the bad news for communities threatened by fire in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. And – it’s likely to get worse. Thousands of people are already out of their homes. Both Saskatchewan and Manitoba have declared a provincial state of emergency.And: Tariff whiplash. A U.S. federal court ruled most of the tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump should be lifted. The Canadian government was pleased with that decision. Then the tariffs were reinstated by an appeal court. Prime Minister Mark Carney says no matter what happens, Canada is looking for reliable trade partners. Meanwhile, Canadian businesses are looking for clarity.Also: As Harvard fights attempts to ban it from accepting international students, the White House moves to severely restrict Chinese students studying in the United States. About a quarter of all foreign students are Chinese. Beijing says restrictions on them would be discriminatory.Plus: A CBC News/ICIJ investigation looks into China’s attempts to interfere with its own citizens while they are abroad, one of the former Canada Junior hockey players on trial for sexual assault testifies, job interviews by AI, and more.

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It was a matter of 20 minutes to load up the vehicle and get out because it was mandatory. We hard work for everything that we have and then all of a sudden if there's really gonna be a fire then we're gonna be back to zero. Thousands of people on the prairies on the run from wildfires. Leaving home, traveling for hours to cities to wait out the danger and worry about what will happen to their homes and communities and one Manitoba First Nations leader says the evacuations have been chaotic. Shame on you Canada. Manitoba and Saskatchewan declare provincial emergencies as the fires spread. Welcome to Your World Tonight. I'm Susan Bonner. It is Thursday, May 29th coming up on 6 p.m. Eastern.

Also on the podcast, you need a program to track what's happening with Donald Trump's global tariffs including some on Canada. After a trade court blocks the tariffs late Wednesday, an appeals court reinstates them today as the White House vows to fight any attempt to block the president's plan. America cannot function if President Trump or any other president for that matter has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges. People across the West are scrambling and stressed in three prairie provinces tonight. Dozens of wildfires are intensifying, forcing people from their homes with little more than

a bag of belongings. Officials are trying to organize places for people to stay as they work to fight the fires in this early stage of fire season. Caroline Bargout reports from Winnipeg. I kind of feel misplaced right now. Standing in the parking lot of an evacuation center, Mary Daniels and her husband Leonard made it to Winnipeg after escaping the fires nearing their home in Flynn Flawn. Leonard is elderly and blind,

making the evacuation even more difficult. It's kind of stressful for me when I have to leave so suddenly and I can't see what I'm doing, can't see where I'm going. The fire has grown to about 20,000 hectares, but officials in Flint Fonse say it has not crossed into town. Still, everyone needs to get out, says Town Councillor Alison Dallas. This is a mandatory evacuation. We will not be able to find you if you do not leave right now. An hour after Gina Malantes got the notice, she and her family got in the car and made the eight-hour drive to Winnipeg.

Everybody was just scared because we never know what's going to happen. There's lots of what if. What if there's a fire ahead of us and you know and then we're gonna be trapped. So it's very scary. Firefighters across the country are heading to northern Manitoba to battle the out-of-control blaze that has triggered a province-wide state of emergency. 5,000 people from Pimichikamakri Nation were sent to a nearby reserve where military aircraft were supposed to fly them to Winnipeg.

By the time they send the planes, only two of the three could land. The smoke was pretty bad. David Monius is the chief of Pimichika Makri Nation. He's frustrated with Canadian officials. Having to coordinate everything, and it's like meeting a bureaucratic wall. I'm talking to a bureaucratic wall. Excuses after excuses. Just not acceptable.

Same on you Canada. There's panic in Saskatchewan too, where there are at least 17 active wildfires. Premier Scott Moe has declared a province-wide state of emergency. It's a very serious situation that we're faced with in Saskatchewan. We do need some rainfall. We need that sooner rather than later. The fire threatening many communities and First Nations is known as Shoe Fire and has grown to approximately 300,000 hectares. Candle Lake Fire Chief Jim Arnold says it's the largest burning in Canada right now.

A fire of this size and it's a magnitude 6 which is the largest possible fire they can have. It makes it very tough to do any sort of attack on that. There are also more than 20 out of control wildfires burning in Alberta. What the prairies need is rain and lots of it but so far showers are not in the forecast, only scorching heat and strong winds. Caroline Bargout, CBC News, Winnipeg. Now to the latest head spinning changes in American tariff policy. Just hours after a U.S. court issued a landmark ruling declaring Donald Trump's tariffs on almost every country in the world, including Canada, illegal, an appeals court weighed in, allowing the tariffs to remain. As Paul Hunter reports, it's just the beginning of a potentially lengthy legal battle

over the president's favorite word and economic tool. Hello everybody. No matter where this ends up, at the White House press briefing today, press secretary Caroline Levitt was clear. Last night, the Trump administration faced another example of judicial overreach. In the view of the White House, the problem is not with Trump's broad tariffs. It's the, as Levitt labeled them, activist judges who overruled those tariffs. Worth noting, two of the three judges on this case were appointed by Republicans, one of

them by Donald Trump himself. The courts should have no role here. There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process. America cannot function if President Trump, or any other president for that matter, has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges. It's our declaration of economic independence. It all goes back to earlier this year when the U.S. president imposed broad tariffs worldwide, citing a national emergency, the U.S. trade deficits with other countries,

or when it comes to Canada and Mexico, border security and fentanyl, with tariffs to be applied to most goods not covered by the current free trade agreement. Trump's stated aim to raise money and create jobs in the U.S. It sent financial markets into turmoil. In yesterday's ruling by the U.S. Court of International Trade, the Court said that the emergency powers cited by Trump don't apply, and that Trump, as President, simply doesn't have the authority to impose them. This afternoon, a federal appeals court granted an emergency motion from the

Trump administration and now pending an appeal the tariffs will remain in place. Indeed the White House says it expects the case will go all the way to the US Supreme Court. It's pretty simple ruling. Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield who led the lawsuit against Trump's tariffs, said the ruling underlines, as he put it, that laws matter, that the U.S. Congress determines tariffs, not the president. And as Rayfield told CBC News today, if we need the Supreme Court to sit there and tell the president what the Constitution says, I'm all for it. the president, what the Constitution says, I'm all for it. Financial markets in the U.S. and worldwide were a mixed bag after the ruling.

No major swings one way or the other. Perhaps an indicator. The true bottom line for now is that no one knows where this will land in the end. The White House promises to fight on. Tariff opponents emphasize they've got the courts on their side, at least for now. Paul Hunter, CBC News, Washington. People across Canada on the shop floor, in boardrooms and in the halls of power, first claimed victory, then vexation as the latest tariff twists and turns played out. Ashley

Burke has that part of the story from Ottawa. Mr. Speaker, the government welcomes yesterday's decision by the U.S. Court of International Trade. An American court decision the Prime Minister said backs up Canada's case. That the U.S. IEPA tariffs were unlawful as well as unjustified. Speaking in the House of Commons this morning, Mark Carney welcomed the news of last night's tariff ruling, but even then acknowledged the trade war is far from over. We recognize that our trading relationship with the United States is still profoundly and adversely threatened. The court's decision would not have lifted tariffs against Canadian steel, aluminum and auto industries,

and that's why Carney said the government isn't changing course. It therefore remains the top priority of Canada's new government to establish a new economic and security relationship with the United States and to strengthen our collaboration with reliable trading partners and allies around the world. But it didn't take long for the Trump administration to regain the upper hand and secure that emergency motion. The tariffs remaining in place for now.

Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne. One thing that I know we're going to fight for Canadian industry, Canadian workers, that has been always our modest operand. We always say we're going to fight these tariffs, they're unjustified. The Mayor of London, Ontario, Josh Morgan Morgan says all of the instability has to end. The sooner we can have certainty in this, the sooner that upward pressure of cost escalation ends. It's been really uncertain with ordering from our U.S. vendors.

In Kelowna, B.C., Kara Arding was already looking at raising prices soon. She runs an online store that ships pickleball equipment across Canada, some of it imported from the U.S. She says her bills from the trade war are adding up. We would definitely have to sit down in the next month or two and sharpen our pencils and try and figure out, you know, slowly increasing those prices just to manage the tariffs that we've been eating for the last couple months. She wants all of the tariffs and Canada's countermeasures against the US lifted.

But it's unclear if there's any chance of that happening now, even if the case makes its way to the US Supreme Court. Canada's still in talks with Washington to try and come up with a new deal and get all of the tariffs lifted. Ashley Burke, CBC News, Ottawa. [♪upbeat music playing -♪》 Coming up on the podcast, the latest on the Trump administration's fight with academia. One of the hockey players accused of sexual assault testifies in his own defense.

Plus how artificial intelligence is stepping in for human resources in recruiting. Chinese students go to the United States to further their education, paying large sums of money. Tonight, there are fears they'll be pushed out. The Trump administration says it will aggressively revoke visas for some Chinese students. As Diana Sumanak-Johnson reports, it's the latest in a struggle between the White House and post-secondary institutions. Humanity rises and falls as one.

That's Yurong Luanna Jiang, a Chinese international student at Harvard, delivering an address at Harvard's convocation ceremony today. We rise by refusing to let one another go. A theme of unity and understanding at a time when Donald Trump's administration delivered another salvo in its war on academia, this one targeting Chinese students. Tammy Bruce is a spokesperson with the U.S. State Department. The United States is putting America first by beginning to revoke visas of Chinese students as warranted, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.

That may include advanced science, engineering, technology and medicine, fields in which the US and China are bitter rivals. The move gives the White House the power to potentially take away status from around 270,000 Chinese students currently in the US. That's about a quarter of all foreign students. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson says the US has unreasonably cancelled Chinese students' visas and called it a discriminatory practice. It's really horrible. It's so sad. It's degrading. Margaret Wong is a managing partner of an immigration law firm in Nashville.

She arrived to America decades ago as an immigrant from Hong Kong. I'm getting at least one or two or three emails a day from our clients saying, oh, thank you so much for helping me getting my stupid visa approved. Should I come immediately before they revoke it or should I not come and wait till August? Institutions have a lot to worry about too. Charles Cook is a law professor at Emory University in Atlanta. Chinese and other international students pay higher tuitions, a large chunk of the revenue that keeps schools running.

They keep state schools afloat. They keep private schools afloat. None of this makes an economic sense. None of that makes policy sense. The only way this makes any sense is through a nativist lens. Experts expect this matter could be challenged in courts where the White House was delivered a blow today. In a Boston courtroom just a few kilometers away from the Harvard commencement, a judge extended the block on Trump's attempt to bar Harvard from enrolling international students, including Canadians. Deanna Sumenak-Johnson, CBC News, Toronto. Followed, threatened and slandered, China is ramping up its attacks on its critics both in Canada and around the world. That's the finding of an investigation by

CBC News and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. And almost a year after the government passed a law to counter foreign interference, there's little to show for it. Elizabeth Thompson reports. We are not safe. It was a call that changed Mehmet Toti's life. The Uyghur rights advocate had just left a dinner with guests in Montreal. One of those guests was on the line. Two cars were following Toti. Their license plates were covered. Since then I don't follow even sometimes it takes a little longer.

Every day I take a different route to my office and a different route from office to my home. Attacks on dissidents by the Chinese government or its proxies are on the rise. Questioning family members in China. Surveillance. Threatening phone calls. Online attacks. Spammaflage. Many are targeted for talking about what China calls the five poisons,

Hong Kong democracy, treatment of China's Uyghur minority, Tibet, Falun Gong, Taiwan. Michael Kovrig is a former diplomat who was detained by China. He says China wants to influence how it's perceived. You're either trying to incentivize people to be supportive of the PRC of China, or you're trying to censor and silence and coerce potential critics and dissidents to be afraid to speak out. And that's the repression part.

Last June, Parliament adopted Bill C-70. It called for a foreign agent registry and a foreign influence commissioner. Nearly a year later, they're still not in place. NDP MP Jenny Kwan has been advised by CSIS that she's an evergreen target. She says the government needs to move quickly. In light of the CBC investigation and the reports has now come out, you would think that this would be a priority for the government. But so far I have yet to hear the Prime Minister say foreign interference, transnational repression is a top priority for them.

Bloc Québécois MP Alexis Brunel-Dussap says the government will be sending China a message if it doesn't act. The message will be this one. You can do whatever you want, we won't move. That's what the message will be. And this is very dangerous. Conservative MP Michael Chong has also been targeted by China. He says the government has to take the threat to Canadian democracy seriously. We've had more than enough reports, public inquiries, commissions that have highlighted this transnational repression and foreign interference.

It's now time for action. Government officials say they're working on it. Public safety is taking the steps to draft regulations and set up a commissioner's office and a registry. Global Affairs raised concerns about an online attack with the Chinese embassy. It also reached out to victims of the attack and is continuing to monitor foreign interference online. All the while, victims like Toti continue to look over their shoulders.

Elizabeth Thompson, CBC News, Ottawa. In the London, Ontario trial of the former Canadian junior hockey players accused of sexual assault, the Crown closed its case and the defence called its first witness, one of the five accused, former Philadelphia Flyers goalie Carter Hart. Karen Pauls reports. This is the opportunity that he has to clear his name. Nick Cake and Allison Craig are criminal defense lawyers who are not involved in this case

but closely watching it. Neither of them were surprised to see former NHL goaltender Carter Hart testify. Because there are at least two sides to every story, he's telling his version of events. It's in my view very dangerous not to call your client in a sexual assault case where the issue is consent. Hart is one of the five former World Junior Hockey players accused of sexually assaulting a woman in June 2018.

They have all pleaded not guilty. Hart's defence lawyer Megan Megan Savard, asked about his response to Michael McCloud's text inviting players to his room for a three-way. Hart texted back saying, I'm in. Under questioning, Hart told court, I was open to sexual encounters, a single guy. I was having a good time that weekend and I was open to it. He admitted to getting oral sex from the complainant, known under a publication ban as EM, but he said it was consensual. I'm 19 years old and there's a naked girl in the room that was doing these things and well it was something I'd never seen before. Hart said he had a

good buzz going that night, a hangover the next morning, and gaps in his memory. Hart was cross-examined by the other defense lawyers but Craig says it wasn't hostile. It wouldn't be the type of cross-examination that you see on TV with the lawyer finger pointing and yelling and you know making accusations yet would be a whole lot of softballs. Cake agrees. Is that everyone is pretty friendly with each other they have all towed the party line from day one that nothing wrong happened in that room. Hart was asked about Kel Foote doing the splits in the room. He said Foote was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and did not touch the complainant's body. EM has testified

someone did the splits with his bare genitals on her face. She also said someone hit her on the bare buttocks without her consent. At least one other hockey player has testified that Dylan Dubay hit her on the behind. Hart said he didn't see that. Hart was an NHL goalie for the Philadelphia Flyers for six seasons. He's now a free agent which means he could sign a new contract as of July 1st. You know this has an impact obviously on his career. Craig says today's testimony was crucial both personally and professionally.

Perhaps as a chance that he can rejuvenate his his hockey career if he's acquitted and walks away from this all but more importantly I mean if it goes badly and he's convicted he'll almost certainly serve jail. His life will be ruined by a criminal record. I mean, it's probably the biggest moment of his life to date. Hart will be back in the witness box tomorrow when the Crown has her chance to cross-examine him. Karen Pauls, CBC News, London, Ontario. Police in Liverpool, England have formally charged the driver involved in a car ramming incident earlier this week. 53-year-old Paul Doyle faces seven charges, including dangerous driving and causing grievous

bodily harm. Prosecutor Sarah Hammond says police are reviewing a wide body of evidence. This includes multiple pieces of video footage and numerous witness statements. It is important to ensure that every victim gets the justice they deserve. Close to 80 people were injured when a car drove through a crowd of Liverpool soccer fans celebrating their team's win. Doyle could face life in prison if convicted. This is Your World Tonight from CBC News. If you want to make sure you stay up to date

and never miss one of our episodes, follow us on Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcasts. Just find the follow button and lock us in. Artificial intelligence might help you apply for a job and as it turns out it may end up interviewing you. Some companies are relying on the technology to have initial conversations with candidates, claiming it saves the valuable time of those in charge of hiring. Nisha Patel reports. Welcome to the interview for the Marketing Specialist Team Position. We're excited to learn more about you and your background.

When Wafa Shafiq logged on for her latest virtual job interview, she realized she was speaking to artificial intelligence. I was caught off guard. I was shocked that it was asking such good follow-up questions. She says the AI was extremely polite, but she felt something was missing. There's no small talk, nothing personal, and I wasn't able to really tell if my answers were landing or not. These AI hiring bots can now screen, shortlist and interview job applicants. It's set up like a Zoom meeting.

Candidates have a conversation with a synthetic voice. The AI will then summarize the call and score the candidates for someone at the hiring company to review. Do you have any questions about how this interview will go? For some applicants, AI can add confusion to the process. Maureen Green had to end an interview herself because the AI wouldn't stop talking. So at an hour in, I'm like, so I don't mean to interrupt, but you know, it's been more than half an hour after the scheduled time of range of you.

I just want to be mindful of your time, even though I'm like, it's an AI agent. I decided to give it a try and test the AI's reactions. How much do you get paid? Haha, well, I'm just here to help with the interview process so I don't have a paycheck. But for this role, compensation details would be discussed later in the hiring process. Anything else you're curious about? My conversation went pretty smoothly with no glitches, though I probably didn't score the job.

There are a handful of startups working on this software. One of them, Toronto-based Ribbon AI, was founded just two years ago. CEO Arsham Garamani says he already has 400 customers. I do think this will become the norm for a lot of industries. So I think like a manufacturer, really large restaurant chains, warehousing. These are all areas where it's often really hard to hire for those roles. He says the AI recruiter works around the clock, so it saves employers from running hundreds of interviews a day and it frees up human

employees from tedious tasks like scheduling. Though Garamani insists humans make the final call on hiring. I think a lot of people are scared because AI is getting so good so fast and I understand those fears there but I think ultimately humans are always making decisions. I think they'll always be a human in the loop. Still it's clear as more companies embrace the technology, Who knows what's next? workers will have to expect changes too.

Nisha Patel, CBC News, Toronto. And finally, you may have heard of snakes on a plane, but… You ready for this? There's a pigeon on the airplane. There's a pigeon on the airplane and it won't go away. Ha ha ha, we opened the door. That's a first for me, wow. Two pigeons tried to stow away on a Delta flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Saturday. Perhaps the pigeons were looking for a faster way to fly to Wisconsin.

Passenger Tom Caw took a video of the response on board as one of the birds flapped around the cabin. Then the pilot got on and said, attention ladies and gentlemen, we have a wildlife situation on the plane and this is not something I'm prepared to deal with. So we are summoning folks to come, some crew to come on. A baggage handler managed to get that bird off the flight. But after the plane left the gate, another bird appeared. The pilot turned the jet around so someone could remove the second stowaway.

The woman next to me obviously was quite panicky about it. The pilot turned the jet around so someone could remove the second stowaway. The woman next to me obviously was quite panicky about it. She said to me, she said, oh, I'm going to need to free wine. Thanks for joining us. This has been Your World Tonight for Thursday, May 29th. I'm Susan Bonner. Talk to you again. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.