Your World Tonight - Jewish communities on alert, statement from Iran’s new leader, Northern security, and more

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

Jewish communities across North America are on alert after another attack. A man drove his car into — and through — a synagogue in Michigan. He was armed, and the car burst into flames inside the building. It’s another incident, adding to the fear felt at synagogues and Jewish schools.And: The first statement from Iran’s new leader Mojtaba Khamenei says the military should keep up its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. It also says Iran will continue to target U.S. military bases, and wants reparations for the deaths of Iranians killed by American bombing.Also: Prime Minister Mark Carney goes to Yellowknife to detail plans to reinforce security in Canada’s north.Plus: Manitoba considers ban on pay-for-plasma, airline prices going up again, a bill to make it easier for police and Canada’s spy service to investigate online activity, and more.Music credit: Chan Chan by Buena Vista Social Club

In the fall of 2023, Romana Diedelow, a woman calling herself the Queen of Canada, drove into Richmond, Saskatchewan with a fleet of RVs and set up her kingdom in an abandoned school. So the town banded together to get the cult out by any means necessary. My name is Rachel Brown, and in this season of Uncover, I explore what happens when a conspiracy theory lands in your backyard, the Cult Queen of Canada, available now on CBC Listen, everywhere you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. One individual came to the temple.

Security saw him, engaged him in gunfire. Places of worship becoming places of fear, another attack on a synagogue this time in Michigan. It follows shootings in Toronto and Ottawa spending millions more on security to combat rising hate in volatile times. The region is being. push to the breaking point, and the consequences are cascading around the world.

As tension from the Middle East spills out across the globe, the conflict itself is far from contained. A wave of new attacks from the U.S. and Israel, Iran hitting back as its new supreme leader promises revenge. Welcome to Your World Tonight. I'm Susan Bonner. It is Thursday, March 12th, just before 6 p.m. Eastern, also on the podcast. Most of us will approach. Most of us will appreciate how much the world has changed when it comes to the technologies that we use. We need to ensure that Canada's laws, like many of our allies around the world, evolve to address these modern threads. The federal government retools its legislation aimed at giving police more power to track social

media, cell phones and AI chatbots, trying to keep up with technological changes in crime while balancing Canadian's right to privacy. We begin in Michigan. A suspected attacker is dead tonight after crashing his car, reportedly packed with explosives, into a synagogue near Detroit. That synagogue is home to a daycare center and school. Young children were inside. The attack comes as anti-Semitic attacks have surged across the U.S. and Canada, with tensions over the war in the Middle East, pushing authorities to warn there could be more.

Philip Lyshanock reports. Training certainly helped to mitigate what happened here today. Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard says officers who descended on a large synagogue and school complex had been preparing for such an attack amid a surge of anti-Semitism. Early Thursday afternoon, police say a man rammed a vehicle into the Temple Israel complex, located in West Bloomfield, Michigan, a suburb northwest of downtown Detroit. It's a sprawling complex that has a daycare and a Hebrew school for pre-kindergarten to grade 12 students. He breached the building, drove down the hall.

and he was engaged by security. Police say a guard at the school was injured before security could open fire on the driver. Smoke could be seen billowing from the complex. Bouchard says something ignited in the vehicle, so bomb-sniffing dogs were brought in. To make sure there's no IEDs or other secondary potential, but we believe there's nothing active at the moment.

The FBI says its Detroit field office held active shooter attack training for clergy and staff. of Temple Israel at the end of January. And Bouchard says authorities had been on high alert for weeks. And I know the chief had communicated directly with their head of security weeks ago. Michigan State Representative Noah Arbitt represents West Bloomfield and is a member of the synagogue. West Bloomfield has the largest Jewish community in Michigan. This is Temple Israel is the largest synagogue in Michigan in the United States in North America by membership.

He says the Jewish community had been on edge and rightfully so. This is now the fifth synagogue attack this week, two in Toronto, one in Baltimore, and one in Lege, Belgium. Police in Ontario say along with attacks on two synagogues in Toronto last week, another was shot at in Vaughn, just north of the city. Shots were also fired at the U.S. consulate in downtown Toronto early Tuesday morning. Public safety minister, Gary Anandasangari, promising more resources Wednesday to investigate the attacks. This is unacceptable. The forms of anti-Semitism we see that's turning into violence is not the Canadian way. We will not tolerate this, and this has to stop.

Ottawa allocating $10 million to beef up security at Canadian synagogues and Jewish schools as fears around safety linger. Philip Lishanak, CBC News, Toronto. After days of silence, Iran's newly elected Supreme Leader has released a written statement. Moshtaba Hamenei is defiant and vowing revenge for his father's death. He says Iran is not backing down and will continue to tighten its chokehold on international oil shipments. CBC Senior International correspondent Margaret Evans has more. Dramatic images and sound released by Iranian state television,

showing an apparent Iranian attack overnight on two oil tankers off the coast of Iraq. setting off a ball of fire on dark waters. And by daylight, as residents in Tehran took stock of recent U.S. Israeli strikes and bulldozers attempted to clear rubble from damaged buildings, state television broadcast a first message said to be from Iran's new supreme leader, not a video nor even a voice recording, but a statement delivered in his name and read out loud by a news anchor. It outlined Mostaba Hamenei's apparent war priorities,

including blocking off the Strait of Hormuz, opening other fronts where the enemy is considered highly vulnerable, and to keep attacking U.S. bases in the region. Hamenei hasn't been seen in public since his father was killed in an attack on the first day of the war. Iran's ambassador to Cyprus has said Mostaba was injured at the same time. Today's statement is a clear regime effort to assert authority and continuity in the wake of Ali Khamani's death and to deliver a defiant message to Iran's enemies as the war is poised to enter a third week.

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is asking the warring parties to head to the negotiating table. citing the chaos unleashed on the world by the conflict. And as always, the most vulnerable are being hurt first and worst. The region and the world desperately then off ramp. But not everyone wants one, at least not yet. When negotiations are not successful, the next step is to use force. So now they are using force and I think they cannot go back to the previous situation. They should move forward.

Mohamed Sharif Ibrahimi is a Kurdish-Iranian academic and exile in neighboring Iraq, who hopes the U.S. will still go for regime change. If it's not possible to change the regime by force in the future, for sure, so Iranian people will change the regime. But if anything, the regime appears to be digging in even deeper, making the future a pretty hard time frame to predict. Margaret Evans, CBC News. Erbil, northern Iraq.

As Iran's new leader signals a shift towards a prolonged war of attrition, one that aims at making the conflict too costly for the U.S. to continue, the U.S. president has promised a quick victory, saying the fight is a short-term excursion and already very complete. Paul Hunter is in Washington. Paul, do we know anything about Donald Trump's response to today's news? what have we heard from the president on Hamanese's statement? No, well, not yet, not directly.

He was speaking this afternoon at a White House event commemorating International Women's Month, but at it made no specific mention of Hamanese comments. Here's what we do know. Yesterday, he said basically that the war had ended almost as soon as it began, quote, the first hour it was over, he said. And then he added, we don't want to leave early, do we?

We've got to finish the job, but he gave no other details. And even though his defense secretary, Pete Hakesh, has said the war is just getting started. Trump has also said the war is very complete. And he said often that oil prices will be coming down soon. And that's where Hamani's comments now come in. Trump is hyper aware that Americans are freaking out about the price of oil and gasoline,

both of which have spiked because of the war and the inability of oil tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. And though the U.S. by its count has now struck some 6,000 targets in Iran, including the Iranian leadership and its missile capability, and with unconditional surrender as the stated endgame, Khamani's statement and the defiance within it raises the question,

so where's the U.S. on this? There's been a change in leadership in which the new supreme leader sounds just like the old leader in terms of rhetoric, anti-U.S. stance, and indeed defiance, now threatening to use the Strait of Hormuz as leverage, the very place that's already driving up oil prices in the U.S. with no known, clear plan of how this now ends. So the big question then is what next from Trump and the U.S.?

Well, no one knows. I mean, Trump critics have certainly suggested he's making this up as he goes along, what with all the mixed messaging and lack of clarity on all kinds of fronts. Even on the straight, Trump this week saying the U.S. will release oil from its strategic reserve, but A, that's a short-term thing only. And B, a bunch of countries did likewise this week, and oil prices still went up. Meanwhile, Trump had suggested the U.S. military could escort oil tankers through the strait, then it comes out that the U.S. is, in fact, not in a position to do that,

as if the U.S. neither anticipated nor prepared for the strait to become instantly problematic for oil tankers, something most people would probably say was an entirely predictable circumstance. All of this with Trump now also saying high oil prices, in fact, benefit the U.S., because the U.S. is itself such a big producer of oil. It leaves Americans, Susan, wondering the same question you just asked me, What next? And they're left with the same answer. No one knows. Thank you, Paul. You're welcome.

Paul Hunter, reporting from Washington. On the war's second front, Israel says it is expanding operations across southern Lebanon against Iran-backed Hezbollah. An Israeli air strike crumbled part of a building in central Beirut. Israel's military says it was targeting a Hezbollah facility, and it warned people ahead of time. A separate overnight Israeli strike in Beirut killed at least eight people. Israel and Hezbollah renewed fighting last week. There have been daily strikes and bombings on both sides of the border between Lebanon and Israel ever since. Ottawa is pledging $37 million in humanitarian aid for Lebanon.

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anan says the funding will go through the UN. Because of this conflict, families are suffering and are displaced. Food and clean water insecurity is rising. Hospitals and critical health care infrastructure are closing. Aid groups say the recent violence has driven more than 800,000 people from their homes in both Lebanon and Israel. Coming right up, Prime Minister Mark Carney travels north to talk Arctic security, stopping in Yellowknife before heading to Scandinavia. And you have the right to remain silent.

But what does your social media or search history have to say? Canadian police could soon have more power to find out. Later, we'll have this story. It's about to cost you more to fasten your seatbelt and return your seat back to an upright position. Because as jet fuel costs take off, so are airline fares. Airlines pretty much everywhere in the world are in. increasing their fares or fuel surcharges were both to account for the higher cost of jet fuel.

I'm Nis Hadari in Calgary, coming up on your world tonight, how the conflict in the Middle East could make your next flight more expensive. The Prime Minister is expected to outline a plan tonight on military spending in northern Canada. Mark Carney will be in Yellowknife before heading overseas to observe NATO training exercises in the Arctic Circle. Senior Defence correspondent, Murray Brewster joins us with some details. Murray, what can you tell us about this announcement? Well, the Prime Minister is heading off to Europe.

He'll be in Norway and in the UK. But before going there, he is going to be in Yellowknife. And he's expected to make a major defense announcement that will help put Canada's defense of the Arctic on a much more clear footing. because over the last several years, there have been a number of promises to increase the defense infrastructure and other aspects of Canada's defense in the north. And there's been money that's been set aside and has been committed, but we've not really seen the details. And Murray, every Prime Minister of Canada has a moment where they make announcements and they talk about the importance of the Arctic, the importance of Canada's north.

what do we know about what the Prime Minister will say is different about his approach? Previous governments, both conservative and liberal, have made many promises about increasing Canada's presence in the Arctic, but it has been a piecemeal approach, mostly because of the fact that any type of construction or basing or infrastructure in the North is incredibly, expensive. So Prime Minister Carney is promising to be able to make significant investments in the region. He has talked about this for a while. A lot of the details are still to come, but one of the biggest problems has been actually getting programs organized and put together up there. And how much of this, Murray, is being driven. by the fierce urgency of now when it comes to international security?

Well, I think a lot of it is being driven by the complaints about Arctic security that have come from the White House and come from U.S. President Donald Trump. A lot of this has been in the planning stages for many years because at the center of Canada's northern defense has always been NORAT, the binational. Air Defense Command that is well over half a century old, but a lot of the infrastructure that is a part of that is also very old and has been in need of modernization. Murray, thank you very much. You're welcome. Senior defense correspondent Murray Bristair, a security bill criticized for overreaching on police powers and privacy is back on the table in Parliament.

The government is reintroducing legislation with changes. But as Olivia Stefanovic tells us, critics say the legislation is still lacking and lagging behind the latest technology. Canada is woefully behind our most important allies. Public safety minister, Gary Anandesangaree, unveiling a revised bill to help law enforcement catch up with the speed of technological change. So this is a package of targeted reforms that tackle the world as it is, not as it was. Canada is the only country in the G7 without a legal framework, allowing law enforcement and national security agencies to search, intercept, and seize digital information. Bill C-22 would change that.

When timely access to data is delayed, so is our ability to protect victims. Ottawa Police Chief Eric Stubbs joined Anandisangery for the announcement. He's urging parliamentarians to pass the proposed legislation quickly. after the original bill faced backlash over privacy concerns. To be clear, this is not about asking for unchecked powers, and it is not about setting aside rights. Bill C-22 removes some of the government's previous controversial proposals, such as the ability for security and intelligence services to open and inspect mail. But the newly proposed legislation retains and even expands other aspects,

deemed troubling by Tamir Israel, director with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, including an expectation for digital companies to keep closer tabs on users. You can't create a door that only police will walk through. Once you create it, it's a vulnerability and other entities will walk through it. But after the Tumblr Ridge shooting,

pressure is mounting on Ottawa to regulate social media and artificial intelligence companies. Larry Brock is the conservative justice critic. It has to be addressed in some. some fashion. I'm waiting to see how the government addresses it. Bill C-22 would authorize police to access data from foreign electronic service providers, including OpenAI. The platform facing a lawsuit for failing to report troubling conversations from the Tumblr Ridge shooter on chat GPT. And up until this bill being introduced,

we had no way to even request what was being communicated. Francis Sims is an associate dean at Humber Polytechnic in Toronto. He, He says the change is long overdue. Canada has been slow, I think, because we've wanted to be careful. But what we do know is if you wait too long, then tragedy unfolds and that it's too late to do anything about it. Although Bill C-22 could lead to more cooperation from international social media and AI companies, it would not compel them to alert Canadian authorities of troubling behavior on their platforms. Olivia Svanovich, CBC News, Ottawa.

The war in the Middle East is causing economic consequences around the world and getting around the world is on that list. Jet fuel prices have increased drastically. And some airlines are already charging more for tickets. Anise Hadari reports. It's getting more expensive to fly because jet fuel costs are taking off. Many airlines around the world increasing some prices to account for it. Aviation fuel represents approximately 25%.

of an airline's cost. Jeff Morrison is president of the National Airlines Council of Canada. Globally, aviation fuel has gone up about 58% over the past week. So we have seen some significant increases. Clearly, that has impacts on an airline's bottom line. Canadian carrier Air Transat has already responded. CEO and Nick Gayard told investors on Tuesday it's charging more. What we're also doing is currently raising fares on peak travel dates

and routes where we see less competition, where we have more flexibility. In preparation for departure. Over email, Air Transat also said transatlantic flights will see increased surcharges, $25 or 15 euros more. As for the rest, Porter Airlines wrote, it's too early to forecast the influence on ticket prices. WestJad said pricing adjustments are likely. Air Canada wrote pricing has been and continues to be adjusted. We are avoiding Dubai.

And Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific is now including fuel surcharges on all tickets. Their departures from Canada could pay around $100 extra starting next week. Quantus Air New Zealand. It's not just them, says Harry Hartleveldt, a travel analyst in San Francisco. Airlines pretty much everywhere in the world are increasing their fares or fuel surcharges or both to account for the higher cost of jet fuel. However, if you are facing a higher travel bill, it's hard to say how much to blame on fuel.

We're also coming up to March break, which is a very busy travel period. And that does have an impact on pricing and does have prices rise. Anita Emilio is executive vice president at Travel Agency Flight Center Canada. She says surcharge or not. If you want to pay less, don't wait. Flights don't tend to get cheaper at the last minute. The earlier that you can book and get the base fare at the best rate, you won't feel the impact of those surcharges to the same degree.

if you wait till the last minute. As for whether fuel surcharges will drop, if the price of fuel drops... But they do tend to fall off once things have stabilized. But whether things stabilize all depends on when and if more oil tankers

start moving out of the Persian Gulf. Enes Hadari, CBC News, Calgary. 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. Manitoba is considering a ban on clinics paying for blood plasma donations.

And it comes after a CBC investigation revealed two people died from adverse reactions. Health Canada is reviewing the cases and has not made a link between the plasma collection and the deaths. Health correspondent Christine Birak reports. devastated for these families. You know, immediately I had a number of questions. Manitoba's health minister says it was shocking to learn two people who donated plasma at private for-profit clinics in Winnipeg had died. Public safety is top priority.

Uzoma Asagwara says the province is waiting for Health Canada to finish investigating the deaths before taking any action. You know, banning Paid Plaza in Manitoba is an option that is on the table. It would give us a lot of closure to know what actually happened. Mary Ann Chica identified 22-year-old Rodiat Alibede in hospital after her death in October. She says her friend was an international student from Nigeria, studying to become a social worker.

Chica says doctors told her alibete's heart stopped beating while she was donating plasma. Before she arrived at the hospital, she had already passed. The second death occurred in January, three months later. No information about that victim has been released. Experts say donating plasma is widely considered safe. The probability of someone getting very seriously harmed by donating plasma is like getting struck by lightning.

Like, it's that uncommon. Dr. Ryan Zarykansky is a hematologist who specializes in blood disorders. The two-hour process of plasma donation draws blood from a donor's arm, pulls out the yellow plasma, and returns the red blood cells back into the donor's body. Zary Chansky says two deaths in such a short period of time raises a lot of questions. Like, are donors screened properly? Our staff who do the procedure training properly, are the machines working correctly? as a proper oversight of programs in general.

Griffles, the Spanish company that owns the clinic, said in a statement, every donor undergoes an extensive health history of valuation and physical examination before donating. Adding it followed Health Canada's rules on reporting deaths that happen within 72 hours of donating. The biggest implication is that it incentivizes people to lie on the questionnaire. For example, if they're trying to use this as a money-making proposition. Curtis Brandel heads British Columbia's chapter of the Canadian Hemophilia Society. BC and Quebec do not allow paid donations. Brandel says, unlike other countries, Canada has no limit on how often people can donate.

The Griffle's website incentivizes donors to come twice weekly for higher payouts. Canadian blood services only allows you to donate once a week. Published studies show donating twice a week can significantly affect a donor's own antibody levels. This week, Griffiths changed its' work. website to say patients must now wait at least two days between donations. Christine Beirak, CBC News, Toronto. Finally tonight, Cuban music to accompany a story about another lucrative export from the island nation. As the country struggles with a deepening energy crisis, it's also becoming a

slow burning problem for Canadian cigar shops. Most of the distributors of Cuban cigars globally have informed their customers. is that they're on a rationing system. So we don't know when we'll get product shipped from Cuba again, so everybody has to make do with what we've got left here in Canada. It's definitely not a smoke-em-if-em-if-you-got-em situation for Jay Henderson. Owner of La Casa del Habano in Windsor, Ontario, the store specializes in Cuban cigars,

world-famous for their flavor and craftsmanship. But Henderson says humedores across Canada are running low on Cuban cigars. and alternatives from the Dominican Republic or Nicaragua just aren't the same. There's something that, again, no one else can do. The complexity, the depth of the flavors, the burn, the aroma, it's just unique. Canadian Airlines are no longer flying to Cuba because of a lack of jet fuel there. Henderson says that makes it much more difficult for suppliers to source cigars and bring them home. According to the Cigar Association of Canada, production is also sluble.

flowing in Cuba. That energy crisis brought on by the loss of Venezuelan oil and the U.S. embargo means cigar factories don't have fuel for trucks. They're struggling to power their facilities and laying off workers. With the crisis only getting worse, there's no timeline for increasing production and exports. Thank you for joining us on Your World Tonight for Thursday, March 12th. I'm Susan Bonner. Talk to you again. For more CBC podcasts, go to CBC.A.