Your World Tonight - Hockey trial jury discharged, Canada Post’s continued troubles, Canada and Eurovision and more

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

Jury Discharged. The turn of events in the sexual assault case of five former Canada Hockey juniors. It will continue as a judge alone trial, after its jury is dismissed for the second time.And: Canada post recommendations released. If accepted they could mean an end to door-to-door postal service. All this as workers gear up for another possible strike. Also: Something to sing about. Contestants get set to belt their hearts out in the Eurovision final, as Canadians wonder whether, if, or when, our country could join the competition.Plus: How gene editing helped a desperately ill infant with a Canadian connection, the new plan to bring coal mining to the Canadian Rockies, missing kids in rural Nova Scotia, Israel intensifies attacks in Gaza and more.

How did the internet go from this? You could actually find what you were looking for right away, bound to this. I feel like I'm in hell. Spoiler alert, it was not an accident. I'm Cory Doctorow, host of Who Broke the Internet from CBC's Understood. In this four-part series, I'm going to tell you

why the internet sucks now, whose fault it is, and my plan to fix it. Find Who Broke the Internet on whatever terrible app you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Very, very few matters that are in court are anything like this. I would say it's probably in the single digits percentage-wise. These are not common types of issues every day in the courts. Stick handling more courtroom drama in the emotionally charged and high-profile trial of five hockey players. The judge alone will now decide after another twist in a case under the spotlight.

Welcome to Your World Tonight. I'm Stephanie Scanderis. It's Friday, May 16th, coming up on 6 p.m. Eastern. Also on the podcast, Delivering a Jolt, as Canada Post prepares for another potential strike. A federal report says the mail carrier is in crisis, effectively bankrupt, and in need of sweeping changes now if it wants to survive. And these little kids could get lost in the woods for that long and you

have 150 people a day looking and scouring and dogs and drones. Heartbreaking and hard to believe. Two weeks of searching for two missing children in Nova Scotia and still no answers. There was a surprise turn of events today at the sexual assault trial of five former Team Canada junior hockey players. Three weeks into the proceeding, the judge discharged the entire jury after a complaint. The CBC's Katie Nicholson tells us what happened and where the trial goes from here. She was scared. She was older than the boys. She was scared and she did what she needed to do to get out of that situation. Everybody was an adult.

Supporters of EM and supporters of the hockey players accused of sexually assaulting her clash outside the courthouse. The drama outside, eclipsed by the drama unfolding inside. On Thursday the jury sent a note to the judge which accused Alex Fermenton's lawyers Daniel Brown and Hilary Dudding of judging and making fun of them. Every day when we enter the courtroom they observe us, whisper to each other and turn to each other and laugh as if they are discussing our appearance the note said. This is unprofessional and unacceptable. After arguments from the Crown and Defense on what

to do next, Justice Maria Carosia decided this morning to discharge the jury. Formenton's legal team, Brown and Dudding, sent out a press release calling the incident an unfortunate misinterpretation. No defense counsel would risk alienating a juror the statement said. The defense teams argued the accusations threatened to tank the jury and the trial. It just contaminates everything and so like you can't put it's very difficult to put that back together. Rishi Gill is a criminal defense lawyer and former crown in Vancouver. He has no involvement in this trial. And I think once that accusation is made, whether there's foundation or not, it's really going to put things in jeopardy and that's what's happened.

It's the second time this trial was almost derailed. A mistrial was declared the first week after Hilary Dudding and another juror had an interaction at a food court over lunch. There were differing accounts of what happened, and the defense called for and got a mistrial, and a second jury was selected. After the jury went home today, the trial picked up where it left off, and former World Junior player Tyler Steenbergen

faced cross-examination on the sex acts he said he saw his former teammates engage in with a naked woman. Michael McLeod, Alex Fermentin, Carter Hart, Dylan Dubay and Cal Foote have all been charged with sexual assault and have all pleaded not guilty. In court, business as usual with one exception. The fates of the five accused now up to a judge alone. Katie Nicholson, CBC News, London, Ontario. A new federal report says Canada Post is facing an existential crisis and bankruptcy,

and it's recommending immediate changes to keep the Crown Corporation afloat. It comes as postal workers are nearing another potential strike. The CBC's Raffi Boujikaneen has more from our Parliamentary Bureau. So Raffi, this report paints a pretty dire picture of the state of Canada Post's finances and the recommendation is stark for individual mail delivery. Can you take us through the report's key points? Stephanie, it's quite comprehensive. You mentioned the potential insolvency. The report warns the publicly funded postal service should phase out letter delivery to individual addresses.

And there should also be an end to the moratorium on shuttering rural post offices. The government retained lawyer and labor arbitrator William Kaplan back in December to examine Canada Post's viability. You might remember at the time postal workers were on strike and the Canada Industrial Relations Board ordered them back to work. Kaplan calls the current door to door delivery standards impossible. He says businesses should continue getting daily delivery but Canada Post should install community mailboxes wherever it can. The report says collective agreements should also be amended to allow the employer to hire part-time employees so they can deliver on weekends and have shorter hours during the week to help out.

This is something the union has resisted, suggesting it would be like hiring gig workers. Kaplan says that's not how they should be treated, but rather the employer should ensure part-time workers get the same kinds of benefits and pay as their full-time counterparts. He also says Canada Post should be able to introduce dynamic routing, meaning it should not be locked into delivery routes when mail volumes do not require them. So we're now potentially less than a week away from another strike. The question people will want to know is what does this mean for mail service? In just a week the Union could go on strike again indeed or the employer could lock them out and Canadians and businesses could be where they were right before Christmas. On

Tuesday Canada Post hit pause on negotiations saying it wants to return to the table with comprehensive proposals. The union called it reprehensible to keep workers and the public on edge. Today the new federal jobs and families minister, Patty Hajdu, and the new Secretary of State for Labour, John Zeruccelli held separate meetings with leaders at both the Postal Service and the union. Hajdu's office says it is encouraging both sides to think of this report as a stepping stone to resume negotiations. Canada Post is calling the document a frank and straightforward

assessment of the challenges it faces, while the union has made no comment on it other than saying it is reviewing details. And speaking of details, that recommendation to get rid of door-to-door delivery, the minister's office says it would require a vote by MPs who don't even get back to Parliament until four days after that strike deadline, Stephanie. Okay, Rafi, thank you. You're welcome. Rafi Bouchicanean in Ottawa. Steady rain is helping in the battle against forest fires in eastern Manitoba,

but the effort is far from over. The wet weather hit areas including Lac de Boni where a fire this week destroyed more than two dozen homes and left two people dead. The Alberta government says it's sending two wildland firefighting crews and support staff to Manitoba in the coming days. Meanwhile, two wildfires burning near a resort village in northeast Saskatchewan could also lead to evacuations. They are two young children missing without a trace for two weeks. Now the search effort in rural Nova Scotia is shifting again, but with little

hope of finding Lily and Jack Sullivan alive. Nicholas Sagan reports. It's more than likely to be recovery. Late this afternoon, a search and rescue leader confirming the search for missing children Lily and Jack Sullivan is resuming Saturday. This coming more than a week after RCMP scaled back the operation in rural Lansdowne Station, 140 kilometers northeast of Halifax. Kevin McLean is the president of Colchester Ground Search and Rescue. We reached him on his cell phone at a base planning the new search. I believe it's more just to search areas that didn't get covered as well as we, the search teams, would have liked to have seen them covered before it was scaled back.

RCMP have confirmed a ground and air search is planned after saying last week it's unlikely Lily and Jack are alive. Police said the four and six-year-old wandered away from their home leaving no clues two weeks ago. RCMP didn't announce until days later the involvement of the major crimes unit and that it hadn't ruled out that the disappearance was suspicious. Robert Parker, the county's top elected official,

says the community has been in a state of shock. These little kids could get lost in the woods for that long and you could have 150 people a day looking and scouring and dogs and drones and everything else. They threw everything at it but the kids will sing. Police say they've conducted dozens of interviews and received more than 180 tips from the public. Still no answers.

It doesn't add up at many levels. Michael Arnfield is a professor of criminology at Western University in Ontario. He questions the way RCMP shared information about the case, relying on the public for tips, but giving few details. Based on appearances, this went in the wrong direction early on and key momentum and leads were lost when they were out in the fields looking for kids that maybe were never there. RCMP maintained they have no evidence Lily and Jack were abducted, but experts are zeroing in on some aspects of the disappearance, like school being closed, then the kids being home sick the following day. Michelle Jenis is a professor of criminal justice at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The two days unaccounted before the missingness is just a red flag. RCMP would not say why investigators are so certain the children were not abducted

and whether they know who, other than their family, last saw the kids. Nicholas Sagan, CBC News, Lansdowne Station, Nova Scotia. Still ahead, permission granted. A coal mining project held up over environmental concerns can now begin exploratory work after getting approval from Alberta's energy regulator. Plus, how doctors were able to treat a baby's deadly metabolic condition by rewriting his DNA,

in part thanks to Canadian tech. And Celine Dion's already won it, so should Canada be the next country to enter Eurovision? That's coming up on Your World Tonight. Talks in Istanbul between Ukraine and Russia have ended abruptly and with no ceasefire deal. The delegations did agree to another swap of war prisoners, the largest of the three-year conflict. Rustem Umarov is the Ukrainian defence minister. Our first priority was people and that's why we negotiated to free 1,000 people and we reached an agreement to free 1,000 people and we reached an agreement to exchange

1,000 people. Despite the POW exchange, the two sides are reportedly far apart on ways to end the fighting. They have agreed to keep talking and discuss the possibility of a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Israel's deadly bombardment of Gaza continued today, with the territory getting pounded from land, air and sea. Dozens of people have been killed, and Israel's military is now calling for the evacuation of northern Gaza, preparing a new ground attack against Hamas.

Paul Hunter has the latest. And so it is that yet again Palestinians in what's left of the Gaza Strip are on the move. In a sobering parade of misery, making their way through mountains of crumbled buildings carrying with them what little they have left of their own. It had been another night of stepped up assault from Israeli forces. Bang! The bombs above our heads, said this man. I swear, he said, that since the beginning of the war until now, I'd never seen a night like this. Local officials say hundreds of Gazans have been

killed just since Sunday, with the expectation it's about to get significantly worse. Israel pledging an escalation of its assaults in the days to come, insisting again it needs to destroy Hamas, the terror group that governs Gaza, which reignited the fighting there with its attacks on Israel October 7, 2023. More than 53,000 Gazans have been killed in Israel's retaliatory assault since then, say local health authorities, as Hamas continues to hold hostages taken on October 7. Palestinians throughout Gaza caught up in all of it. We're hungry. We're lost, said this woman.

Our children are gone. Our homes are gone. You know, a lot of people are starving. U.S. President Donald Trump on his way back to the U.S. after a trip to the broader Middle East region, telling reporters he wants to end the misery. Well, we're going to see what happens. I think a lot of good things are going to happen over the next month. And we're going to see. We have to help also out the Palestinians. But as the United Nations warned this week, even setting aside whatever Israeli forces

do in the days ahead, the situation for countless Palestinians right now is beyond dire. Here's Tom Fletcher, UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs. Every single one of the 2.1 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip face the risk of famine. One in five face starvation. And so in Gaza they walk, looking for food, water, fuel, refuge, and any reason to believe anything will change anytime soon. There's no bread, no flour, he says, no food coming in. Where should we go live now, said this woman.

We'll go to the streets, adding, may God curse the one who did this to us. Paul Hunter, CBC News, Washington. Vancouver's mayor says last month's tragedy at a Filipino festival has the city rethinking its safety plans. Officials today released an early review of the incident. Ken Sim says all the proper checks were made but it doesn't mean those measures went far enough. We owe it to those who we we've lost. We owe it to every single person who calls Vancouver home to take every step possible to prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again.

11 people were killed when a car drove through the crowded festival on April 26th. The driver has been charged with eight counts of second-degree murder. Police say they will be increasing security for future events, but no official policy is in place just yet. Alberta regulators have changed their stance on a controversial coal mining project on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains. It was rejected in 2021 over environmental concerns. Now the province's energy regulator says the project is in the public interest and the company behind it can start preliminary work. Colleen Underwood has the details. It's frustrating. It's tiring. I mean

we're calving right now, right? For the past five years, rancher Laura Lange says she's been researching the environmental impacts of coal mining on the land she and her neighbours rely on and cherish. She's part of the Pekisco Group, a collective of landowners between the Highwood River and Pinscher Creek in southwestern Alberta who consider themselves stewards of that land. Their biggest concern is their main water source, the Old Man River Basin. We need to start making decisions that support our number one resource and that's water. If a metallurgical open pit coal mine goes ahead, the mine would use a lot of water, a scarce resource in drought-ridden

southern Alberta. And there is worry about selenium contamination, as has happened in British Columbia's Elk Valley. Chris Spearman with the organization Water for Food represents ranchers and food processors who rely on the Old Man River. There's 40,000 of those people who depend on the agri-food economy in downstream from this mine. So why would we put our whole agri-food economy at risk? The project on an inactive legacy coal mine site was initially rejected by a joint federal

provincial review panel over environmental concerns back in 2021. Two years later, the company North Back Holdings tried again. Protesters came out in numbers to several public hearings. The regulator said it was satisfied overall with the company's plans on drawing water and dealing with its runoff. It also said the project was in the public interest, providing jobs to nearby residents including First Nations communities. The mayor of Crowsnest Pass, Blair Painter says they've been told the mine would create

hundreds of jobs in the area. Which would no doubt benefit our schools, strengthen our schools, our hospital, our local businesses and just our municipality in general. In a statement, Northback thanked the regulator for its decision and says it continues its commitment to bring benefits to Albertans while adhering to the highest environmental standards. Meanwhile, Alberta's Minister of Energy Brian Jean also issued a statement, vowing any development in the eastern slopes is done to the highest environmental standards. Still, those opposed to the decision, including rancher Laura Lange, say they have no plans to give up their fight.

You know, we have this old saying in ranching, don't say woe in a mud hole and so we won't. The permits granted for the exploration are valid for five years. The last three years would be set aside for reclamation work. Colleen Underwood, CBC News, Calgary. The Prime Minister will be at the Vatican this weekend. Mark Carney will be among world dignitaries attending Pope Leo's first official mass. The ceremony at St. Peter's Square marks the start of Leo's term. While he's in Italy, Carney is also expected to hold meetings on international trade. Other officials expected at the mass include US Vice

President JD Vance and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Some scientists are calling it a breakthrough, a medical treatment that has healed a baby with a rare genetic disorder. The nine-month-old Pennsylvania infant had a 50-50 chance of survival when doctors tried an experimental gene editing therapy that was tailor-made just for him. As Jennifer Youn tells us, Baby KJ's

successful treatment is in part thanks to Canadian technology. He was a beautiful little boy, you know. Little creamy. Kyle and Nicole Muldoon didn't expect Baby KJ to arrive early, but the joy of having a newborn was suddenly shattered when KJ was diagnosed with a rare genetic disease, an error in his DNA, making it hard to break down protein and causing a toxic buildup of ammonia. Half of the infants with CPS-1 deficiency survive. You Google CPS-1 deficiency and it's either fatality rate or liver transplant. And time was running out.

In these really severe metabolic diseases of infancy, we know that we have to act quickly. Dr. Rebecca Arens-Nicholas knew her colleagues were working on a new treatment, personalized for kids like KJ. She thought there was a chance it could help. My biggest fear in all of this was giving false hope to a family. But we got to a point where we thought there might actually be a clinical team or a drug development team that could make a drug for KJ.

The treatment needed to go through the 3 billion bases or letters of DNA that make up a person. Find the one causing the problem, then fix it. The drug is really designed only for KJ. So the genetic variants that he has are specific to him. But the messenger RNA therapy needs to avoid being broken down by the body before finishing the job. To do that, researchers wrapped it in a protective cocoon, Canadian technology previously used for COVID vaccines. Yeng Tam helped develop it at

Acutis Therapeutics, a Vancouver-based biotechnology company. Now he's hoping it can be used for other patients too. It gives us the pathway by which we can use a very similar approach to treat another baby with a slightly different disease. BC Genomics Federica De Palma says this could be a breakthrough moment for personalized gene editing treatments. But she cautions more needs to be done before the technology can be used more widely. How can we ensure that we create a framework and a path to adopt in an ethical way but also in a faster, rapid way, this type of transformation. There's still a long road ahead for little KJ, says Dr. Ronald Kohn, who also works in

personalized medicine at Toronto's Sick Kids Hospital. And for the first seven weeks, the results have been really very promising, but we need to follow over time. Are there any unexpected side effects that we are not thinking about? KJ might still need a liver transplant down the line, but his parents are feeling relief and hope for the first time in months that he'll be okay and coming home soon. Jennifer Yoon, 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. It's a continental competition that has evolved into a global spectacle. Millions of people are expected to tune in this Saturday for the grand finale of the Eurovision Song Contest. While many people in this country will be watching, there's hope that Canada may be able to compete one day. Mactag Evras-Lessa has more. Fiery performances, elaborate sets, and a sea of fans and flags. Eurovision 2025

shines with 37 countries from Europe and beyond, battling it out with original songs. It is literally the Hunger Games of music. It's wild. Canadian Laurel Barker has been in the thick of it several times. In 2019, she wrote three songs for the UK, Germany and Switzerland that made it into the final. And while she's thrilled to lend her talent to other nations, she also wishes Canada would be allowed to compete.

Eurovision really is this warm, fuzzy, love fest, celebration of people from all cultures, all walks of life, all orientations, and I really believe that Canada represents all of that. Over time, several Canadians have represented other countries. Most famously, Celine Dion took home the win for Switzerland in 1988. If we're good enough to sing and win for another country, why aren't we making the effort to feel our own? Karen Fricker is a Eurovision expert that would love to see Canada directly involved. And there could be a way.

If Canada was invited like Australia was 10 years ago as an associate of the European Broadcasting Union. But it's up to the CBC to express interest. The organizer says that CBC is the only Canadian broadcaster that could hypothetically hope to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest. Previously, an outside production company pitched a show to CBC to pick a Eurovision contestant for Canada. But CBC passed on the idea, saying it is prohibitively expensive. Fricker says the cost to compete can add up. Because you are having to create an act and then transport a whole delegation over to

Europe and put them up and support them to compete at the level of Eurovision. Meanwhile, Canadian fans are getting in on the action in other ways. My passion led me to attending two Eurovisions in a row. I had a taste of 2015 and I loved it so much I went back again in 2016 in Stockholm. Arianna Vink from Timmins, Ontario votes for her favourites for a small fee. And she's not alone. The EBU says Canada was number two for when it comes to the wave of votes submitted from non-competing countries.

I'd love to see us in it one day. For now, Vink will keep rooting for her favorites like Sweden... Nooo! ...to take the win on Saturday. Makta Gebre-Salesa, CBC News, Toronto. Finally tonight, British Columbia resident Justin Simporios hasn't been able to sleep lately. And just yesterday, he couldn't stop crying.

But you shouldn't feel bad for him. It's life changing, right? Like, it's just too much right now, but thank you so much, thank you so much. It's not sad tears, it's happy tears. That's all you guys know, it's happy tears. Tears of joy and those sleepless nights have been from excitement after the 35-year-old learned he'd won last Friday's Lotto Max Draw, the biggest jackpot in BC history.

It's also the largest prize ever paid out to a single winner anywhere in Canada. $80 million. Mani Simporio says we'll buy him something even more valuable, time with his family. I'm an immigrant. I came from a poor country. Like this money's a lot, right?

Like I've been struggling. Like I'm a father. I work full time. I have a daughter. I want to go home. I want to spend time with them. But, you know, as a father, should work full time. I have a daughter, I wanna go home, I wanna spend time with them, but you know, as a father, should I work or should I, you know, spend time with my daughter and not have food, right?

You're like, those kinds of stuff. So I know the struggle for every Canadians around, so with this amount of money, I'll be able to spend more time with my daughter, with my wife, with my family, like, I don't know, thank you, just thank you. Symporios got the winning ticket the night of the draw. An impulse buy while he was picking up hamburger buns for dinner.

He's already quit his job at a logistics company and plans to use the money to buy his first home, pay off his sister's student loan, and donate to charity. This has been Your World Tonight for Friday, May 16th. I'm Stephanie Scanderis. Thank you for being with us, and I'll talk to you tomorrow. [♪ music playing, fades out. [♪ music playing, fades out.

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