Your World Tonight - Food prices climb, children’s flu cases up, Mexico’s FIFA stadium, and more

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

Food prices in Canada are climbing faster than most people can keep up. And a new report suggests there won’t be a break on grocery bills anytime soon.And: Canada’s flu season is off to an early, and virulent start. Some pediatric hospitals say they are getting flooded with young patients – and cases are likely to keep rising.Also: It’s one of the most famous soccer pitches in the world. Mexico’s Azteca Stadium will host the first game of next summer's FIFA World Cup. But in the shadow of the glitzy tournament and towering stadium, a nearby community is struggling to access the most basic of services: clean water.Plus: CUSMA hearings in Washington, British inquiry into Russian poisoning, political posturing over government’s hate legislation, and more.

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Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo. This is a CBC podcast. I work a full-time job in a factory, and I'm barely scraping by. Prices are up, the rent is up, but the paycheck is still the same. Maybe change diets. I think I might just cut off the meat a little bit. Hard choices for hard times. As new research suggests, the high food prices pushing some Canadians to cut back on meat,

and others to fill up at food banks are expected to continue in the new year. Welcome to Your World Tonight. I'm Susan Bonner. It is Thursday, December 4th, just before 6 p.m. Eastern, also on the podcast. It is the most consequential trade agreement on the planet, benefits the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and it would be a mistake to break up such a proven partnership. American business leaders backing Kuzma as the U.S. President considers backing out with the North American Trade Pact up for review next year and...

He's had like the fever, the chills, all of it. I got it on Sunday and I couldn't even open my eyes. It's just been horrible all around. Flu season off to a fast start, keeping some kids home sick and sending others to hospital. There is more data tonight backing up the sticker shock sensation many Canadians experience at the grocery store. Food prices are climbing and economic forecasts are not predicting a break anytime soon. Nisha Patel has more on new warnings and which items on your shopping list could get pricier. Please place item in the bagging area.

Inflation continues to take a back. died out of budgets, especially at the grocery store. Food prices rose at a rate of 4% this year, and researchers forecast they'll jump 4 to 6% in 2026. The cost of meat could see the biggest hike as much as 7%. We're expecting another difficult year due to beef prices, and because people are pivoting towards chicken, chicken prices are also on the rise. Silvan Charlebois is a professor at Delhousie University in Halifax. He says, says there are many factors driving these increases. A lot of cattle ranchers are leaving the industry, so supply is falling while demand is strong. The ongoing trade war with the U.S.

is also putting some pressure on prices. Climate change is having a significant impact too, especially on products like coffee and cocoa. So that's not going to stop. So we need to think about how to make our supply chain more resilient from Farmgate to store. Outside a grocery store in Toronto, Giacomo Lojako says his grocery budget is stretched as far as it can go. I work a full-time job in a factory and I'm barely scraping by. I live paycheck to paycheck. A family of four is expected to spend $17,600 on food in 2026, almost $1,000 more than this year. So more Canadians are turning to food banks to fill their fridges. The average food bank client, after paying their rent and their utilities, has $8.3 a day.

to survive on. Nobody can survive on that. Neil Hetherington is CEO of the Daily Bread Food Bank. He says food bank use jumped 13% in just one year. We're the community coming together to be able to fill and fulfill a need in the community. The real solution is affordable housing and income supports. Sabra Al-Harty is buying just the essentials and says she'll have to make some adjustments. Well, maybe change diets. I think I might just cut off the meat a little bit, make it a week.

thing. As the overall cost of food has soared 27% over the past five years, she's looking for a little relief. The prices are up, the rent is up, but the paycheck is still the same. For many Canadians, 2026, may bring more tough choices. Nisha Patel, CBC News, Toronto. From tough choices to tough talk, Donald Trump is looming over Kuzma hearings in Washington. The U.S. President and his team are again threatening to up. end the Free Trade Pact. At the same time, some business leaders are defending the deal and urging U.S. officials not to pull out.

Katie Simpson reports. It is the most consequential trade agreement on the planet. Kevin Brady is one of the American business leaders throwing his support behind Kuzma. A fairly consistent message delivered directly to the Trump administration on day two of the closed-door consultation hearings in Washington. Feedback sessions where companies and associations are given the chance to weigh in ahead of next year's review and renegotiation. Just to renew the USMCA, get this done, start normalizing trade relations, tone down the temperature, and get to work.

Thomas Medrecki with Consumer Brands Association represents some 22 million American food processing workers. He's among the more than 70 witnesses who have testified so far, a broad range of sectors from electronics to aviation, farming, and tech. But as the hearings unfold, threats to abandon the agreement by the U.S. President and his top trade representative overshadowed the testimony. It expires at about a year, and we'll either let it expire or we'll maybe work out another deal with Mexico and Canada. The deal does not actually expire, but the U.S. could leave the agreement with six months' notice. Kevin Brady, with the Coalition for North American Trade, says that would be a disaster.

I think it'd be an economic catastrophe for all three countries. Though Goldie Hider with the Business Council of Canada says it appears to be more bark than bite from Trump. I think they said it's possible and it's also possible that Toronto Maple Leaf might win a Stanley Cup one year, but it doesn't mean it's going to happen anytime soon. I think it's classic negotiation tactics. Trump wants concessions from Canada and Mexico, and one industry he made target is steel. Today, a dozen industry leaders complained about Canada and Mexico, allowing cheap Chinese steel to flood the market, including Brandon Ferris with the Steel Manufacturers Association. We cannot allow North America to continue to be a dumping zone for excess capacity for steel.

Trade tensions will be put on the backburner Friday when Prime Minister Mark Carney meets with Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Shane Baum in Washington for the FIFA World Cup final draw. Carney will meet privately with Trump for a brief conversation, though Canadian sources are downplaying expectations for any sort of breakthrough. Katie Simpson, CBC News, Washington. Coming right up, some Canadian hospitals are seeing more sick children as flu season ramps up early and a fiery speech from the Bloch-Quebecoa leader about changes to Canadian hate speech laws. Later, we'll have this story. I'm Jorge Barrera in Mexico City, where the World Cup is returning to one of international soccer's most iconic venues.

But for the indigenous community that lives in the shadow of Azteca Stadium, the global tournament brings little joy. Water belongs to the people, says one resident, who is part of a battle to take back a water well controlled by the owners of the stadium. That's coming up on your world tonight. When kids get the flu, it can hit pretty hard and fast. Across Canada, cases have shot up in recent weeks, and as Lauren Pelly tells us, hospitals are seeing more children than usual and earlier than years past. He's had, like, the fever, the chills, all of it.

In Pembroke, Ontario, Michelle McPhail suspects her 15-year-old son recently caught the flu. Then she did, too. I got it on Sunday, and I couldn't even open my eyes. It's just been horrible all around. Her family's far from alone. Canada's flu season is in full swing, and some pediatric hospitals say they're getting flooded with patients. So we did see kind of unprecedented numbers of patients coming to our emergency department on Monday.

Karen McCauley is vice president of acute care at Chio, the Children's Hospital in Ottawa. She says close to 300 young patients came through emergency in a single day. That's a 20% increase from the same time. last year, putting pressure on the hospital's limited capacity. But definitely not at our peak yet. We are just beginning. After a quiet start to November, the Montreal Children's Hospital is getting busier as well. Dr. Harley-Eisman is head of emergency medicine. I worked last night and we were seeing sort of 12, 15 new patients register an hour,

which is certainly above our hourly capacity. Positive tests for influenza A across Canada's pediatric hospitals jumped, late November, with more than four in 10 tests now coming back positive, and flu cases are expected to keep rising. This strong and early surge involves heavy circulation of H3N2, a strain of influenza A that's known for sending more people to hospital. This year, it also acquired more mutations that could make it a tougher foe for the latest flu vaccine. But doctors say, get the shot anyway. It's really that the vaccine, regardless, we'll have. have benefit to prevent the severe disease, which is what we all end up caring about the most.

Dr. Srinivis Berthi is with the BC Children's Hospital. He says there's still time for Canadian families to get vaccinated, as influenza makes its way from coast to coast. If we're seeing more surges in one part of the country, it's likely that the rest of the country will start to see those surges in the next few weeks. Public health officials expect Canada's flu season won't peak until later in December, and data shows it's spreading among all age groups. Influenza typically strikes older adults and young children the hardest.

Lauren Pelley, CBC News, Toronto. The Liberal government's high-profile hate crime legislation could be in jeopardy. The bloc Quebecois is accusing the government of backing off an amendment the party's pushing for. It would remove religious protection from hate crime laws. Now the bloc is threatening to remove its support. Kate McKenna has details from Ottawa. We have to stand up and we have to be clear. Block Quebecois leader E. Francois Blanchet says if the liberals want to pass their anti-hate bill, they must change it.

And adopt our amendment very rapidly. If not, there might be a price to be paid. Bill C-9 seeks to make it a crime to promote hate against identifiable groups and intimidate people outside places of worship like churches, mosques and synagogues. It was tabled in response to a surge of hate targeting Muslims and. and Jews. The criminal code includes an exemption for hate speech if it's made about a religious subject or a religious text. In order to support Bill C9, the Block Quebecois wants to see that exemption removed. Blanchette says they have a deal with the liberals to do that. It is absolutely clear that without the removal of the religious exception from the criminal code,

there's no way the Block Quebecois will even look at this law anymore. Earlier this week, Canadian identity minister, Mark Miller, seemed to support the idea. The reality is, I don't think people should be using the Bible, the Quran, or the Torah to escape from committing a hate crime. But when news of the proposed amendment was made public, religious groups started speaking out against it, saying it could criminalize forms of worship. Khaled Al-Kazaz is the executive director of the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council. Peaceful protest, cultural expression, and political advocacy. are increasingly framed as threats to public order.

These amendments intensify rather than mitigate the bill's most harmful elements. Conservatives already oppose the bill, but now say if the bloc's amendment goes ahead, then it tramples on freedom of expression. Andrew Lawton is a conservative MP. If Canadians are alarmed by what the liberals are doing, it's because they should be. This is an amendment that the Liberals in the Block, it seems like, cooked up, to take aim at religious freedom, to erode long-standing safeguards for religious Today, the Justice Committee was set to debate the bill and the proposed amendment, but the meeting was abruptly cancelled, prompting Blanchette to call out the government for dragging its feet. The committee's chair, Liberal MP James Maloney, says he made the decision.

Look, it became very apparent to me quickly that the committee was having a great deal of trouble, emotions were running high, and they didn't have a path forward to deal with some very important legislation that was before the committee. In this minority parliament for a bill to pass through committee, liberals need the help. of either the Block Ibecois or the Conservatives. In this case, the Liberals may not have the support of either, leaving the future of Bill C-9 uncertain. Kate McKenna, CBC News, Ottawa. The leader of the BC Conservatives has quit. One day after the party's board said he was fired.

John Rustad says he's stepping down as leader of the official opposition, but will remain as an MLA. Yesterday, Rustad refused to resign after a majority of his caucus, said they'd lost confidence in his leadership. Trevor Halford has been installed as interim leader. He says he's focused on building the party. I'm feeling confident that this caucus is focused on the next chapter ahead, and that's going to be a great leadership race,

and really making sure that British Colombians know that they have a government waiting, and we're ready to take on that work. Halford says he's not seeking to take charge of the party permanently. He started a war with Ukraine that has killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict. Tonight, Vladimir Putin is being blamed for the death of a 44-year-old mother of three in Britain, a bystander, killed in a plot targeting a former Russian agent. A British public inquiry has found the plan was orchestrated. from the very top. Chris Brown walks us through the findings. Dawn Sturgis died an innocent victim. While most of the details about how

Don Sturgis was murdered have been known, the inquiry by retired British judge Anthony Hughes was about accountability, in particular, determining who ordered the hit that ended with Sturgis's death. And I've concluded that the operation to assassinate Sergei Scrippel must have been authorized at the highest level. indeed by President Putin. The movements of the Russian agents in 2018 were retraced from Moscow to Salisbury, England. Sergei Scrippel was a former Russian agent

who had fed information to the British and he'd been returned to the UK as part of a spy exchange. He'd been living in Salisbury and on the day of the hit, his daughter, Yulia, was visiting. The Russians smeared the door handle of his home with Novichok, leaving both five. mother and daughter in critical condition.

Months later, Don Sturgis handled the discarded fake perfume bottle that contained the toxin, and she was killed. The assassins returned to Russia and mocked their victims, laughably claiming they were merely in Salisbury as tourists to see the famous cathedral spire. Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmor called Russia's behavior reprehensible.

Moral responsibility lies with Putin, and it's further evidence of the shocking and reckless, hostile activity on UK soil. Stanley Sturgis, Don's father, expressed relief that the inquiry made it clear his daughter was blameless. We can have Dawn back now. She's been public for seven years. We can finally put her to peace. Russia, though, has not stopped with its hybrid attacks on Europe.

If anything, it's been escalating, including the suspected cutting of the suspecting. of undersea cables, sabotaging railways, and allegedly using drones to shut down major European airports. Ukraine's president, Vladimir Zelensky, has repeatedly warned that Putin is preparing for much larger attacks. He will try to find weak places in Europe, in NATO countries. He will try to do it. Russia's government has always denied it poisoned anybody, and there were more denials Thursday. Britain's response now, as back in 2018, was to hit Russia's spy agency with sanctions, which the Kremlin dismissed as meaningless. Chris Brown, CBC News, London. Nearly a year since the Assad regime was overthrown in Syria, leaked photos and files are shedding

new light on a dark period. Syrians starved, tortured, and murdered. The evidence emerging in graphic images. CBC has partnered with international consortium of investigative journalists, which has verified the authenticity of those images. Senior international correspondent Margaret Evans has more. The brutal secrets of Bashar al-Assad's killing machine have long festered in the dark. Occasional glimpses smuggled out of prisons turned death camps. A year after the former Syrian president, was forced from power, they're still being unearthed, the latest, a catalogue of death shared with a German broadcaster. Photos of more than 10,000 bodies, most bearing signs

of starvation and abuse, many naked, stick-like limbs spread out on the floor, some surrounded by bloodstains, and the white boots of someone else in the room. All detainees in Assad's vast network of prisons between 2015 and 2024. The photos originated with a Syrian officer. He was the head of an evidence preservation unit for military police in Damascus. We're withholding his identity for his own security. How we typically photograph the body is we take three pictures. He told the German broadcaster.

in an interview, a long image, a frontal image, and a bust. These are the legal parameters. The regime's meticulous documentation of its own atrocities is now what offers hope to at least some of the Syrians still hunting for news of more than 180,000 people. The dictatorship is believed to have disappeared. The case-building process is extremely easy if you have the primary source materials. Everything was documented to the end's degree.

Canadian war crimes investigator Bill Wiley and his team have collected more than a million pages of evidence against Assad, smuggled out of Syria during the war and stored in a secret location for security reasons. He says the path to accountability is still a long one. There is no international tribunal for Syrian war crimes. Western governments seeking to prosecute have to rely on universal jurisdiction.

And the new government in Syria is still rebuilding its own justice system. Keep in mind that 70,000 pages, or even the 1.3 million that we extracted from Syria during the war is, in fact, a drop in the bucket compared to what's sitting unprocessed now in Syria. Much of it is confirmation of what the world already knew about the Assad regime and its horrors. but it's also a reminder that there is still much more to be done. Margaret Evans, CBC News, London. 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. In 202026, Europe comes together again to celebrate what unites us. The motto of Eurovision is united by music, but a vote today shows the song contest is deeply divided. Public broadcasters in Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Slovenia have all withdrawn from the competition. They wanted Israel banned over its conduct in the war in Gaza. At a meeting today in Geneva, the European Broadcasting Union refused a vote on a band. Director General Katya Wildermuth says they allowed a vote to restrict how much governments can be involved in promoting their country's entries.

In the end, rules and values and impartiality of public service media has been stronger than emotional public debates of the day. And we're talking about the biggest song contest in the world. And it's a contest that stands for building bridges, for diversity. for tolerance. There were protests against Israel at the last two competitions and allegations Israelis had manipulated the contests voting earlier this year. It is one of the most famous soccer pitches in the world, and if you're not familiar with Mexico cities as TECA Stadium,

it will be hard to miss during next summer's FIFA World Cup. But in the shadow of the glitzy tournament and towering stadium, a nearby community is struggling to access the most basic of services, clean water. Jorge Barrera has that story. Maradona put it in with his hands. Historic sounds from Mexico's legendary Azteca Stadium, where some of the most iconic World Cup moments have played out. It was a fitting end to Pele's World Cup career.

This legacy continues in 2026 when Mexico co-host a World Cup again in June. But for the indigenous community living next to the stadium, the famed soccer tournament's return brings no joy. We've had two World Cups and the people have not benefited, says Ruben Ramirez, who leads the indigenous people of Santa Ursula Coapa. He says the stadium was built on their land. The conflict now, is over water, he says. Across from one of Azteca's entrances sits a water well controlled by the stadium's owner.

While next door in Santa Ursula, people go days without water. When there's water, this is the maximum pressure, says Maria Estella Alejandro, as she washes dishes beneath a thin, weak stream of tap water in her small restaurant. I think it's ridiculous a company owns a water well The waters for the people, she says. The Mexican government gave Televisa Group, one of Mexico's biggest corporations, their right to drill the well six years ago.

Televisa also owns the World Cup broadcast rights in Mexico. The community has started anti-World cup protest, demanding the city take over the well and use it to feed the people of Santa Ursula Coapa. They painted over ads by World Cup sponsors and say they'll escalate unless the government acts. Mexico City's mayor, Clara Brugada, said during a recent press conference

that the stadium's well was in the city's hands. However, the company created by Televisa that owns the stadium, told CBCN. they hold the water rights until 2027 and say most of the water they've pumped has gone back into the city system since 2023. Ramirez says it's all just empty words as people continue to face water shortages.

As for launching protests to disrupt the World Cup matches, he says that's for the people to decide. Jorge Barrera, CBC News, Mexico City. We end tonight in Winnipeg where the knives are out at a city park, known for its wood carvings, but now officials would like to see the activity whittled down. It's called a magical forest for a reason

because of those amazing carvings. I truly enjoy them. For more than 20 years, Winnipeg residents have enjoyed Bois des Ispri, a section of forests that became known for its large and intricate carvings, wizards, owls, tributes and memorials, engraved into the trunks of dead trees, or at least that was the idea.

Well, it started off as this nice tradition in Bue des Espri with carvings on dead trees and there were a couple quite big ones and then it kind of got out of hand and people started to complain saying there are people carving into live trees and there are too many of these. Brian Mays is a local counselor. He says new rules will try to chip away at the proliferation of carvings that took off during the pandemic. The city says artists will now have to ask permission. and will only be approved if they can demonstrate woodworking skill. Designs will also be limited to natural themes and text will not be allowed.

I don't think it's a bad idea because you want to preserve the forest. It's a living, breathing thing, and so I think that's kind of fair for everybody. I'm not sure if more rules are needed here. So personally, I don't think it is necessarily. Officials say they're not trying to stifle creativity. They hope the rules strike a balance, allowing the forest and allowing. local tradition to grow in harmony. Thanks for joining us for your world tonight for Thursday, December 4th.

I'm Susan Bonner. Talk to you again.