Your World Tonight - Fires, smoke, floods, heat; Trump gives Russia 50 days; Carney ethics screen; and more

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

Canada is vying for all the wrong kinds of records: It’s already the second-worst wildfire season on record. This morning – thanks in part to all the smoke – Toronto was the second-most polluted major city in the world. In Quebec, residents are cleaning up after a massive storm knocked out power, and flooded streets and homes.And: U.S. President Donald Trump says Russia has 50 days to reach a peace deal in Ukraine. After that, Trump says he will impose secondary tariffs of 100 per cent on Russia.Also: The opposition is calling on Mark Carney to sell all of his assets, and get someone else to reinvest them.Plus: Canadians got more obese during the pandemic, the U.S. debates legislation on cryptocurrency, and more.

I'm Joshua Jackson, and I'm returning for the Audible original series, Oracle, Season 3, Murder at the Grandview. Six forty-somethings took a boat out a few days ago. One of them was found dead. The hotel, the island, something wasn't right about it. Psychic agent Nate Russo is back on the case, and you know when Nate's killer instincts are required, anything's possible.

This world's gonna eat you alive. Listen to Oracle Season 3, Murder at the Grandview, now on Audible. This is a CBC Podcast. Oh my goodness, look at that. Let's get out of here. Let's get out of here. Let's get out of here. Let's get out of here. Let's get out of here.

It is fight and flight across the Canadian prairies. In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, as more wildfires burn and crews desperately battle advancing flames, more residents are moving in the opposite direction, closer to safety, but far from home. Welcome to Your World Tonight. I'm Stephanie Scanderis. It's Monday, July 14th, just before 6 p.m. Eastern, also on the podcast.

You get out and try to get some exercise and you don't want to breathe that in. It's obviously hazy. I feel the smoke in the back of my throat. As evacuees flee to hotels and shelters, wildfire smoke is heading wherever the wind takes it, drifting into densely populated parts of the country in Central, Eastern and Atlantic Canada,

already smothered by a humid heat wave, getting hit with a haze that makes it hard to breathe. And... We are very unhappy, am with Russia we're going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don't have a deal in 50 days a deal a deadline and Donald Trump's new approach to the war the US president promising more weapons for Ukraine while trying to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin. More than 150 wildfires are burning across Manitoba and Saskatchewan tonight. As the flames close in, another community is getting ready to airlift its residents out. And while some parts of the prairies got some much-needed rain to slow slow the fires it hasn't been enough. Alexander Silberman reports. In northern Manitoba's Garden Hill First Nation a raging wildfire is burning dangerously close to the edge of the community. Bright orange flames rising high above the treetops. Th thick black smoke blanketing the community. Thousands from Garden Hill are being flown to safety by Hercules military aircraft. Crews are starting to

evacuate hundreds more from the island lake region as two nearby First Nations are now under threat. Very stressful for everyone. Alex McDougall is Grand Chief of Unchinanoo Okimoen, an organization which represents four First Nations in the region. He says vulnerable people will be evacuated from St. Teresa Point and Wasagamak First Nations. Both are under local states of emergency.

Everybody's sort of on high alert watching and monitoring the situation. Nearly 500 kilometers south, Garden Hill community members are running a command center out of a Winnipeg hotel. I'm very tired but I'm trying to make sure I have my energy today. Coordinator Oberyn Munro says volunteers have been working non-stop, making sure more than 2,000 people have a place to stay, have rides to medical appointments and are provided essential supplies. We try and make sure all the needs are met.

It took us probably two or three days to get organized. Garden Hill evacuees are among more than 12,000 Manitobans forced out of their homes by fire. The entire province remains under a state of emergency and more communities including the northern city of Thompson are preparing for possible evacuations. We've had some pretty decent weather to assist us in the firefighting effort. Kristen Hayward is with the Manitoba Wildfire Service. She says rain has helped crews in some parts of the province. We've been able to make some really good progress building dozer guards

working any hot spots along the highway. Wow! Across the border in Saskatchewan, the raging Muskeg fire has nearly surrounded the village of Boval. Mayor Rick Laliberté says firefighters have managed to protect all homes. But conditions remain dangerous and unpredictable. It's a defensive fight. The wind direction is dictating which way it's rolling. With lightning strikes causing new flare-ups in the forest,

officials say rain is desperately needed to get the fires under control. Alexander Silverman, CBC News, Regina. The smoke from those prairie wildfires and others is drifting far from the flames and tonight it's combining with a heat wave across much of central and eastern Canada creating an air mass that's hazy, humid, uncomfortable and unhealthy. Colin Butler has more. It's just it's not comfortable. Mike Bacci-Galupo and his dog Farley paused for a drink in London, Ontario's Victoria Park. Most summers you'd find them out on the boat, but not this year. You know, I've got a sailboat in Bayfield

I usually spend the summer on. I don't have air conditioning on it though. It's not worth driving out. They're not the only ones staying put in the heat almost nothing moves only the relentless buzz of cicadas cuts through the heavy stillness. The air is thick not just with heat but smoke from far-off wildfires, draping itself across Ontario from Windsor to Ottawa and stretching into Quebec and Atlantic Canada. A haze hangs low softening skylines thickening the air over much of central and eastern Canada. In Toronto the air is especially bad. As of this morning, the city ranked the second most polluted in the world according to IQ Air.

It's definitely a bizarre, like heavy smog. Dave McKenzie was planning on a canoe trip, now maybe not. Just makes it a little bit more depressing, right? Like you get out and try to get some exercise and you know you don't want to breathe that in. It's not just the east. Smoke is choking Saskatchewan too. New air quality warnings are in effect

with Saskatoon hitting very high risk levels. When smoke gets this thick, everyone's health is at risk, no matter your age or fitness. Dr. Christopher Carlston, a pollution health expert, warns those with chronic conditions suffer most, facing brain fog, confusion and headaches. So it's kind of a problem for everyone but thankfully for the healthier amongst us more

of a nuisance. Still better safe than sorry Angela Ferreira took her dog for an early walk before it got too hot. She says it's a great day to work at the office. I'm actually going to work and I'm going to be inside air conditioning all day, so I'm okay. Smoky air is expected to clear tomorrow, but the heat will linger for most of the week. Humidity in some parts of the country will make daytime highs of 30 feel like 40. Even nights won't cool you off, with lows hovering in the low 20s. The heat is expected to ease by Thursday night.

Until then, the public is advised to drink plenty of water, check on the vulnerable, and limit outdoor time. Colin Butler, CBC News, London, Ontario. In Montreal, the environmental trouble started in the air before surging through rivers, creeks, sewers, backyards and basements. The cleanup continues in parts of the city after major flooding over the weekend and for some residents, it's not the first time. Sarah Levitt reports.

Jean Chalifoux points to a flood line more than half a meter above his basement floor, a streak of mud visible on the walls. He says he's exhausted. Sunday afternoon, the skies in and around Montreal Montreal opened dark and ominous with rolling thunder followed by the rain. A deluge pouring down, sheets of water that made it almost impossible to see. 70 to 80 millimeters of rain fell in the span of three hours. That's nearly as much as a typical rainfall for the entire month of July. I'm sitting on the couch, you know, and I look at a movie and I listen.

Shalifou said he rushed to the bathroom only to see water burst out of the toilet and bathtub. The city pipes were full, unable to handle the downpour. This is the fourth time in 15 years Chalifoux's apartment has flooded. On Sunday, an 82-year-old man was pulled out of his car after it was submerged in an underpass. Four families have also been taken in by Red Cross. We're working really hard to find long-term solutions. Down the street from Chalifoux, Montreal's mayor Valérie Plante says the city has done work to prevent flooding, including creating sponge parks, which soak up excess water and redoing sewer systems.

But she admits it's not easy. There's not a unique solution for the entire territory. Every neighborhood, every street is different. Across the island, Jagmeet Singh Gill is taking stock of his basement. Last year it was about one feet water in the basement, but this year it's about two feet about the knee. He says this as he stares at the sludge on his floor. He already cleared out all the ruined furniture.

Singh Gill had completely renovated the basement after last year's flood. Insurance covered a large portion of it, but he still paid $10,000 out of pocket. His neighbour Gerald Katz fixed his basement after last year's flood too. But the insurance is, you know, they're just going to, we call it, keep bracing the deductible if we make claims and we have a pretty high deductible right now because of last year. Experts say though citizens have to rethink how they renovate after a flood, including if a basement space should be lived in. Jean-Luc Martel is a professor in the Construction and Engineering Department

of the École de Technologie Supérieure. The network was designed based on historical events that before were actually considered as exceptional. Of course with climate change, these are not exceptional anymore. It means making changes to make homes more flood proof as storms like this one become more frequent and damaging. Sarah Levitt, CBC News, Montreal. Still ahead on the podcast, Canadians are getting their eyes on more details about the Prime Minister's blind trust and how Mark Carney's investments will be managed.

Plus, US President Donald Trump gives Europe and Ukraine a weapons deal while giving Russia a 50-day deadline to end its war. That's coming up on Your World Tonight. Mark Carney's previous career could be having a big impact on his present one. A declaration to Canada's Ethics Commissioner shows the Prime Minister has investments or connections to more than a hundred companies, meaning he'll have to avoid taking part in decisions that affect them. Carina Roman has more from Ottawa.

I've more than complied with all the rules and I've more than complied with all the rules in advance. During the election campaign, Prime Minister Mark Carney was asked repeatedly about the potential conflict of interest his private assets create. All those assets were divested into a blind trust, which is managed by a trustee and it literally means exactly what it says. I don't know what's in it. Carney did know what was in it at the time he put it into the blind trust.

And now so do Canadians, thanks to a filing he had to make with the federal ethics commissioner. It's a long list. And Conservative Party leader Pierre Pauliev argues Carney needs to go even further than he has. We're calling on the Prime Minister to sell his investments, turn them into cash, hand them to a trustee who can invest them in a way that is completely blind to him. That is the spirit of a blind trustee. Carney also had to arrange ethics screens because of two companies on whose boards of directors he sat, Brookfield Asset Management and Stripe, and the many corporate entities those companies own or are connected with.

The total number of screens set up for Carney? 103. And this will put him in a possible position where he will be conflicted at every turn. So either he will have to get up three or four times every cabinet meeting to avoid stumbling over the 100 plus potential conflicts or he will act in the cabinet to potentially favour his own interests. Neither of those possibilities is acceptable. That might be overstating the situation. Carney will not have to recuse himself if the discussion, decision or legislation is to be applied across a swath of industry, companies or

the general population and is not specifically targeting those for which he has screens. But those who have had ethics screens themselves, Warren Carney is still vulnerable to suspicion, criticism and formal complaints. Lisa Raitt is a former Conservative cabinet minister. The ethics commissioner is going to be an extremely busy individual and the reason being is that it's not really built to deal with this many screens in place and regardless of whether or not the prime minister is dealing with a matter of general application a complaint is going to be made that he shouldn't have been in the room during this discussion or was he in the room in this discussion. But Raitt says that simply shows the system is working in that the law forces public office

holders to be transparent and the official opposition can then hold them to account. Karina Roman, CBC News, Ottawa. In a pair of moves that signal a shift in Donald Trump's stance on the Russia-Ukraine war, American weapons will soon be sent to Ukraine, as the U.S. president levels a new threat against Russia, demanding an end to the war in the next 50 days. Katie Simpson is in Washington with the details. We are very unhappy, I am, with Russia. In the Oval Office, U.S. President Donald Trump sat next to the head of NATO to announce

a series of new measures aimed at supporting Ukraine. A mix of carrots and sticks in the hopes of bringing Russia's war to an end. NATO countries will be footing the bill according to Trump, who says allies will surge weapons to the front lines in Ukraine, including Patriot missile systems. The US will in turn manufacture and sell replacement weapons to those countries. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte says there is plenty of buy-in to this new strategy as the details are sorted out. Germany, massively, but also Finland and Denmark and Sweden and Norway,

we have Kingdom, the Netherlands, Canada, they all want to be part of this. This is just one aspect of Trump's plan. He is also attempting to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into peace talks. And we're going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don't have a deal in 50 days. Trump threatened 100 percent tariffs on Russia, but since the U.S. does very little trade with its adversary, it might not have a significant impact. He also promised what he calls secondary tariffs, which will likely target countries purchasing Russian oil and gas,

including India and China. The White House has yet to clarify with any specifics. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky saying he is grateful to President Trump, thanking him for his commitment to protecting Ukrainian lives. Their relationship appears to be in a much better place after months of tension and questions about continued US support. And it comes as Trump grows frustrated with Vladimir Putin. And I always hang up and say, well that was a nice phone call and then missiles launched into Kiev or some other city. Strange.

And after that happens three or four times you say, the talk doesn't mean anything. Most Western leaders don't trust Putin. They haven't for years and that has shaped how they try to deal with him. A Kremlin spokesman downplayed concern about the announcements coming out of the US, accusing Ukraine of trying to stall, adding it's waiting for clarity on peace talk proposals. Katie Simpson, CBC News, Washington. It's a big week for Bitcoin.

Cryptocurrencies may be volatile and kind of hard to understand but at the moment they are once again surging in value, getting a big boost from US Congress. At the urging of the president, the House of Representatives is preparing key legislation this week that would make crypto more regulated and potentially even more valuable. Business reporter Nisha Patel has more. Welcome to the greatest show on Wall Street. I think that Wall Street's full undivided attention now is on Bitcoin.

On the American Financial Morning shows, Bitcoin stole the spotlight. The world's biggest cryptocurrency hitting a record high of $120,000 US. Bitcoin is now up 30% for the year, riding a wave of investor enthusiasm, says Wedbush securities analyst Dan Ives. Trump is a pro crypto, pro Bitcoin president. And for the next three and a half years, I mean, that's going to be bullish for not just the price, but I think the regulatory landscape. In fact, US lawmakers today kicked off what they're calling Crypto Week, debating three bills that could make it easier for companies to launch new digital asset products, helping crypto go more mainstream.

A promise Donald Trump made on the campaign trail. If crypto is going to define the future, I want to be mined, minted and made in the USA. It's going to be. It's not going to be made anywhere else. The proposed legislation has critics. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren warned new rules could allow volatility in the crypto market to spill over into the traditional financial system. Trump has also faced criticism over conflicts of interest regarding his family's crypto ventures, which have earned them hundreds of millions of dollars.

Still crypto proponents have long called for revamped regulations. What we're seeing in the U.S. is a truly monumental pieces of legislation that will further legitimize and cement crypto into the history books, clear rules so that people can gain more trust and confidence that this asset class is here to stay. Lucas Matheson is CEO of Coinbase Canada, an international exchange for cryptocurrency. He hopes Canada will follow the US's lead.

Given that we have 13 provincial securities regulators in Canada, there's a coordination challenge. We need a strategy coordinated at the federal government to embrace this technology and to legitimize it in the mind's eye of Canadians. Bitcoin has now been around for about 15 years, riding something of a roller coaster. A crash back in 2021 wiped out nearly one trillion dollars in market value. Analyst Dan Ives predicts an upswing in the sector for now.

For crypto investors, a likely payoff thanks to a tech-friendly US president. Nisha Patel, CBC News, Toronto. You're listening to Your World Tonight from CBC News. And if you want to make sure you 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. Researchers call it the weight of the COVID-19 pandemic, a sharp rise in obesity rates in Canada being linked to those lockdown years full of mental health struggles

and limited access to exercise routines and the researchers are warning health problems could continue for years to come. Jennifer LaGrasa breaks it down for us. Toronto resident Angela Martin is chopping vegetables. Her kitchen was where she found comfort during the COVID-19 pandemic. We cooked that's what we would do you couldn't really go out. She was also a nurse who had recently separated from her partner. Just a troubling time like if social supports were away you couldn't go to the gym like where my social life was.

While she always struggled with obesity she says the stress and isolation during COVID-19 caused her to gain even more weight and according to new research she's not alone. And we found that the rate of obesity was steadily increasing. Laura Anderson is the study's lead author. Her research published in the Canadian Medical Association journal looked at body mass index data over 15 years. It found that in 2023 about one-third of Canadians were considered obese. That was up about eight percentage points from 2009. And during the pandemic the rate of obesity nearly doubled. You know many different reasons have been hypothesized for this, such as increased sedentary

behavior and a shift towards not being able to go out as much. Another main reason might be factors associated with mental health. There was isolation and depression. Sean Wharton is an internal medicine doctor in Ontario. He helps people struggling with obesity. People who are living with depression, their depression may have got even worse and that's where we saw people having an increase in their weight. The research also found that since 2009 obesity increased the most in young adults and that more women became severely obese.

With the more severe rates of obesity we're gonna see more of the complications. So the complications end up being type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, coronary artery disease. The lockdowns also meant closed gyms, fewer supports. Priti Chawla founded Obesity Matters at the start of the pandemic. It's an advocacy and support group for people struggling with their weight. She says despite the health issues that come with obesity, stigma often keeps people from getting help. I just want to reiterate that obesity is not a personal failure. It is a complex health issue that deserves

empathy not judgment. We want to replace stigma with support. The new research has some drawbacks, mainly that BMI is not a direct measure of body fat and doesn't consider differences across ethnic groups or sex and gender. Despite this, many researchers still use it to look at broader trends. Jennifer LaGrasa, CBC News, Toronto. Finally tonight, a small Canadian community is claiming a big contribution to baseball. Swing and a miss. And he strikes him out with the slider. Good pitch by Otani, a tight slider. And he gets a nasty slider.

When thrown well, it can be impossible to hit. Now the town of Ridgetown, Ontario is taking a swing at being recognized as the birthplace of the slider pitch. It's a type of curveball thrown with special grip and a snap of the wrist that moves the ball laterally as it approaches the batter. According to some baseball historians, it was invented by Ridgetown ballplayer Harry O'Neill, who made it to the big leagues after serving in the first World War. He was playing for Windsor Chicks and while he was playing there, it was Connie Mack. They were in town playing the Detroit Tigers and they

come across Windsor, I guess they were looking around and they spotted Harry and signed him up to the Philadelphia A's and that's how he started his career. Ridgetown resident Jim Brown knows there are several other slider origin stories, all based in the United States. None have definitive proof. Neither does Ridgetown. What it does have is a giant sculpture. Let the people not just locally know, but worldwide.

You know, this is the home of the slider pitch. Woodworker Mike Zinnia hopes his creation gets that message across. It's a massive wood carving of a pitcher's arm holding a baseball in the slider grip. Finely detailed carved out of a tree trunk standing about three meters tall right on Main Street outside the Ridgetown Legion. And unlike the hard-to-hit slider, this monument to a local legend is pretty hard to miss. This has been your World Tonight for Monday, July 14th. I'm Stephanie Scanderis. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.