Your World Tonight - “Lost” Canadians surge, testing kids for cholesterol, wearable tech for butterflies, and more

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

Staff picks: More and more Americans whose ancestors moved from Canada to the U.S. long ago, are trying to get Canadian citizenship. A new law offers them a track to citizenship, no matter how far back their connections go.Also: Kids as young as two should routinely be tested for high cholesterol. Leading doctors say many heart attacks and strokes can be prevented with early detection.And: Monarch butterflies leaving for Canada from Mexico have been fitted with tiny transmitters that can track their long flight in detail. You and your phone can help.Plus: Australia’s social media ban for kids, climate change and fishing gear are trapping humpbacks, World Cup soccer fans can’t afford to stay in Vancouver, and more.

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This is a CBC podcast. Great grandmother, great-grandfather, great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. It does not matter. For people who want to become Canadian, their ancestors' movements suddenly have renewed importance. Under a new law, foreigners who can prove their ancestors were Canadian-born, no matter how far back, can get on a fast track to citizenship. The interest has just soared over the past year.

It's yet another way this country is feeling the effects of the Trump presidency. Hello and welcome to a special edition of Your World Tonight. I'm Stephanie Skandaris. Also tonight, people thought getting tickets to a FIFA World Cup match was hard. Then they tried to book hotel rooms in Vancouver. I've seen some Reddit posts about people actually staying in Washington State, then driving in to Vancouver to watch the games and then going back. The intention of Canada's new citizenship law was to restore a simple right,

the one allowing Canadian parents to pass their citizenship onto children they had outside the country. But Bill C3 has gone a lot further, as in further back. It'll make it easier to get Canadian citizenship if an applicant can prove their ancestors were Canadian-born, no matter how long ago. As Alexander Silberman tells us, that applies to millions in the U.S. alone, and word is spreading fast. The state shows its age a little bit. Sarah Hanaham is spending a lot of time these days carefully thumbing through centuries-old birth registries. She works at the National Archives in Montreal and has never been so busy.

Been pretty phenomenal. The normally sleepy archives is now overwhelmed, flooded. with interest from Americans who want to become Canadian citizens. In January alone, Quebec archivists like Hanaham got more than a thousand requests to authenticate birth records. That's 30 times the number received this time last year. The process is lengthy. We have to go back to the original register, which is not always in a great state just because

it's so old. The reason for the surge is a new law nicknamed the Lost Canadians Act. It offers citizenship to any foreigner who can prove they have Canadian ancestors. Great grandmother, great-grandfather, great-great-great-grandfather. It does not matter. Cassandra Fultz is an immigration consultant based in Toronto. There's no limit as long as you can prove it. Fultz says the applications are mostly coming from Americans, some saying they want a second passport due to the political climate.

The interest has just soared over the past year. There are a lot of them. because it's estimated nearly a million Quebecers moved to New England in the mid-1800s to escape rural poverty by taking work in U.S. factories. So there could be as many as 10 million Americans, now eligible for Canadian citizenship, and a lot are eager to reconnect,

says David Vermet, a Franco-American historian. They're very excited to have this sense that there's an official recognition, that they still belong to something. Ryan and Mary Hamill are among those excited by that recognition. I know, and he's born in Notre Dame de Ham, which feels like a great name for a hamlet. The couple is sifting through birth records and grainy photographs that tell their family story.

They grew up in a small town in Massachusetts, but they've always known their roots were in French Canada. It was a part of their daily life. French meat pie was a staple, a slippery soup. Ryan's great-grandfather left Quebec for the U.S. in the early 1900s. Mary's great-great-grandfather did the same in the late 1800s. Now the Hamels are set to become Canadians. They're already building a new life for their family in Montreal. I love now that I live in Quebec and we're getting the lay of the land

and visiting more places, I can look in the maps and say, oh, this is where Nana was born or this is where Papa's family was from. Ryan says they're planning to stay in the city, driven north by the political climate in the U.S. I already feel Canadian in at least my heart. Finding a new home and sense of belonging through ancestors, generations apart. Alexander Silberman, CBC News, Montreal. While that new law will make it easier for some Americans to come to Canada, another will make it harder.

It applies to a very select group who live in or want to visit, an unusual part of the state of Minnesota called the Northwest Angle. It's a quirk in the international border, American territory that could only be accessed by road if people first drive through Manitoba. As Karen Pauls tells us, Americans who used to have free access will have to start checking in first with Canadian border officials. It's still dark out. Jason Goulet is taking clients ice fishing. Basically just making sure the heat's on, their holes are still open. They got bait. Goulet is a Minnesota outfitter and resort owner. He's not. Not happy, Ottawa is scrapping a border entry program that made it easy for people like him to travel into and through Canada.

Go to school, grocery shopping, doctor's appointments, go see your accountant. Northwest Angle is the only part of the U.S. outside of Alaska north of the 49th parallel, the boundary between Canada and the U.S. Three sides surrounded by Canada with no road connecting it to the rest of Minnesota. So if you want to drive here, the only way is through Manitoba. We have a family of 10. There's almost somebody traveling every day. It's a pretty big deal to us.

Right now, Goulet and about 100 or so year-round residents are part of Canada's remote area border crossing program. It pre-clears them to freely cross the border in five remote areas. There are about 11,000 permits issued each year, 90% of them to Americans. But in September, that ends. People will have to stop at the nearest Canadian border station or use a dedicated telephone reporting site. I get to grab it from there.

If I catch four or five of these today, I'd be happy as heck. Some tourists get pre-cleared, but others, like Gary and Mary Jokamson, have to wait in line to use the phones to call Canada Customs. We were there for over two hours that time. So luckily we didn't have to get anywhere quick to get home. But if you were in an emergency, you'd be getting a little antsy on it. We're going to do extreme bloodies and extreme seizures this weekend.

Nathan Truesdale owns Jerry's bar and restaurant, the community's gathering place. He says there's an easy solution. Do what the Americans do. You know, now that it's 2026, right, we've been working with apps. We all have smartphones. then as long as we have good cell signal and we do, then it would make life so much easier. Ottawa says this is all part of a $1.3 billion security upgrade,

in part because of pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump. But folks here don't think swapping pre-clearance for a phone call will bolster the border. Karen Paul's, CBC News, Northwest Angle, Minnesota. The countdown is on for one of the biggest sporting events in the world, just over two months until the opening game of the FIFA World Cup. Canada will host matches in Toronto and Vancouver

and it's been a mad scramble to get tickets. But for thousands of fans heading for Vancouver, finding a place to stay is turning into an expensive headache. Yes, Mineranea tells us why. Shuterte Ossaha has tickets to go from Winnipeg to Vancouver to watch

two World Cup soccer matches in less than 100 days. Problem is, he and his wife still have no place to sleep. He says he can't find anything for less than $1,500 a night. It's going to be a struggle. A lot of people are going to be frustrated. It's going to leave a sour note on a lot of people as well. Vancouver is set to host seven games in June and July.

It's expected to draw tens of thousands of visitors during the city's already busy cruise season. But Vancouver is chronically short of hotel rooms. Because of red tape, restrictions on design and zoning, few new hotels have been built. Andy Ann is an urban planner and associate professor at Simon Fraser University. When it comes to the actual physical planning and the economic planning at both the local and the provincial level, it's been lacking. He says the city has actually lost hotel rooms in recent years. For example, some smaller hotels converted to social housing during the pandemic, but for other non-hotel uses too. We've seen a certain number of hotels come on down for purpose-built rental or condominations.

that we've seen a loss of upwards about 550 hotel rooms since 2020. The result is that Vancouver has roughly 10,000 fewer hotel rooms than Canada's other World Cup host, Toronto. One other reason rental accommodation is so scarce, BC imposed strict rules on short-term rentals in recent years in response to the explosion of the Airbnb market. Hosts are only allowed to rent out their primary residence. And while there are many advertisements online, Yan doesn't think it's enough to fill the gap. Some folks may not want the inconvenience of leaving their units, unless, of course, they're traveling for a prolonged period of time.

The BC government says hundreds of hotel rooms are in the development pipeline for Vancouver, but they're not expected to open between now and the World Cup. And that leaves people like Winnipex-Ritrethosaha scrambling. There are a lot of Facebook groups that I joined. He's looking at taking something far away from the World Cup games. I've seen some Reddit posts about people actually staying in Washington State, then driving in to Vancouver towards the games and then going back. Just last week, FIFA organizers canceled hotel bookings they made for referees and staff.

The BC Hotel Association says that amounts to as many as 15,000 nights, but doesn't know how many rooms could actually become available and doesn't think it will do much to bring down prices. Yasmin Ganea, CBC News, Vancouver. right up, doctors are now saying kids as young as two should be tested for high cholesterol, why there's a new push to look for early warning signs of heart disease, and a new threat to humpback whales. More are getting caught in fishing gear, and it may be linked to warming waters in the Pacific.

Later, we'll have this story. I'm Jorge Barrera in Mexico, where a new high-tech device is being used in hopes of unlocking the secrets of the monarch butterfly's epic migratory journey all the way from Canada. This is new and is really important. This new technology is using crowdsourced data to give the most detailed view to date of the path of the butterflies

that's coming up on your world tonight. Heart attacks and strokes are killing a lot of people in Canada. So many that doctors are now arguing a new approach is needed to uncover the danger signs sooner. It involves screening children for high cholesterol, Lauren Pelley reports. There's lots of heart attacks, lots of artery issues, and quite a few people died fairly young as a result of it.

High cholesterol runs in Mike Heathcote's family. The Edmonton father of two says a genetic condition passed on to both his kids. There's no symptom externally. They had a healthy active lifestyle, just normal kids. If you didn't do the test, you never would have known. That test was simple blood work to screen for high cholesterol. It gave Heathcote a chance to get his children on statin medication early to protect them from heart disease later in life.

His daughter Haley is 15 now and started medication five years ago. Hopefully when I'm 40-50, I won't be at the same stage as someone who might have not caught it. Researchers say one in 300 Canadians has familial hypercholestrolemia, or ph, a genetic condition that causes lifelong elevations in blood cholesterol, starting in childhood. The vast majority of those people don't know they have it. The risk for early heart attacks and strokes is dramatically increased in these individuals. Dr. Michael Corey is a pediatric cardiologist in Edmonton. He's one of the researchers behind a new paper from the Canadian Pediatric Society.

It calls for all Canadian children to be screened for high cholesterol between the ages of 2 and 10 years old. It is easy to diagnose and we just simply are missing it. Treatment ranges from diet and lifestyle changes. to lifelong medication. Ontario family physician Dr. Alikan Abdullah welcomed the idea of catching more cases before it's too late. Sometimes, if we're very successful, we can actually reverse diseases before they become actual problems

that we have to medicate people for. But Abdullah warns it could be challenging to get more Canadian children to have their blood drawn, especially in a health care system that's already under strain. That's going to be very hard to do. They're not readily available in clinics out in the community, community, children don't like getting their blood taken. Back in the Heathcote home, 11-year-old Ryan says it's worth it.

It's like no downside the test that there's literally no reason not to take the test. And one good reason to have it done, staying healthy for years to come. Lauren Pelley, CBC News, Toronto. Changes to the climate have been full of surprises. Few of them are good. There's now new research that indicates warming waters are posing an unexpected danger to humpback whales. It's being connected to the high number of Pacific humpbacks,

getting entangled in fishing gear. As Tanya Fletcher reports, the surge appears to be climate-related. That's the sound of crews cutting free a humpback whale caught up in fishing gear off California. And now research reveals warming ocean water may be increasing that risk. That's the upshot of a new study from the U.S.-based National Oceanic an atmospheric administration. Really, I think this is a key unexpected surprise that climate change is throwing at us. Jeff Chester is a senior scientist with Oceania. He says the cold water pockets

ideal for humpbacks to thrive are shrinking with more frequent marine heat waves forcing the whales closer to shore. So that warmer water is really compressing the areas where these whales can actually go to find food. And so when those areas are overlapping with where some of our major fisheries are for things like dungeness crab. That's basically creating this higher interaction between the whales and where this fishing gear is. So we've created a traffic jam. Andrew Trites is a marine mammal expert at UBC. He says while this particular study looks at the U.S. coast, the findings extrapolate north to Canadian waters too. We do have the same issues here. They're getting caught in the ropes that are used to attach to crab pots. They're getting caught in gill nets. Before 2014, yearly stats showed

fewer than 10 entanglements off the U.S. West Coast. But in 2024, that number spiked to 31 whales. And on average, three quarters of them don't survive. Humpbacks, unfortunately, when they get caught in something, they have a tendency to roll in it. And they can wrap them up so tight, and they have an inability to get out of it. The good news, he says, are new tools that use technology

to predict the likelihood of these encounters based on oceanic forecasts. Chester adds that index can help guide decision-making, on when and where to close areas to fishing if there's a higher risk. One of the exciting parts now is that there are new innovations, for example, ropless fishing gear. So fishermen are now going back in to these areas that are closed with fishing gear that does not pose the entanglement risk. And that, he says, will ultimately calm the waters for coexistence between whales and humans.

Tanu Fletcher, CBC News, Vancouver. Imagine an electronic device so small, it can be carried by a butterfly. It's not sci-fi, it's reality, and it's arriving soon, literally. Millions of monarch butterflies are heading north from the mountains of Mexico, and some are carrying a tiny transmitter that scientists hope will reveal the secrets of their journey. Jorge Barrera is in Mexico with that story. This is the sound of thousands of monarchies. butterflies swirling like orange leaves in pools of sun.

It's beautiful because you see a branch with a cluster and then all is started to fly in. Adriana Avalina Ruiz Marquez works for Mexico's monarch butterfly biosphere reserve. Sometimes there are branches that fall because of the weight. The reserve includes six butterfly sanctuaries in the state of Michoacan, the wintering grounds of the vast majority of the monarch population east of the Rocky Mountains. Nobody teach them how to arrive here. Nobody showed them the journey. And they arrive always in the same forest. They arrive here in Mexico after an epic migratory journey of between 4,000 to 5,000 kilometers from Canada and parts of the Midwestern and

northeastern U.S. states. But mystery still shrouds the monarch, like how they navigate urban spaces and how they react to changing weather. That has scientists trying a new high-tech tool, they hope will unlock the monarch's secrets. This is the first time when we are going to see how the monarchs move during the spring migration. Eduardo Rendon Salinas is with the World Wildlife Fund in Mexico. It helped fund a project that's tagged 160 monarchs with a new type of tiny transmitter, one that's glued just behind the head of the butterfly.

This is new, but it's really important. The device is powered by a solar panel. the size of a grain of rice, and sends a signal that connects with any iPhone with its Bluetooth turned on to receive. The idea is to crowdsource the monarch's flight path so it can be tracked in detail with an app. Anyone can download. Literally, they're flying over roads and people are driving down the road and it's giving us a location. David Lapluma is the vice president for New Jersey-based cellular tracking technologies. The developers of the device...

One day, I think we will have a transmitter that can go on a monarch, Talk about altitude of flight, all sorts of really cool other data. All the data that we have with this project is very important for it. Luis Matquez says this new data will provide the clearest picture to date on how climate change has altered migration patterns, a key piece in figuring out how to better protect the monarch butterfly. Jorge Brera, CBC News at Rosario, Mexico. Australia's bold move to protect kids from the dark side of

social media use is off to a rocky start. Three months in, the government says Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and others may have terminated some accounts, but overall are failing to truly enforce the ban on under 16s. A new survey of parents says about 70% of kids who had social media access still do. Australian officials are investigating and are looking at whether to start issuing big fines. Still, as Deanna Suminac Johnson found, since the ban took effect, people are seeing some positive effects as well as the shortfalls. I just had this major fear of sitting back and thinking the strangers that you wouldn't welcome into your house

are being welcomed onto their screens. Australian radio broadcaster and father of three Michael Whipley poured his passion for his children into advocacy for age restriction for social media use. At the end of last year, Australia became the first country in the world to ban social media for teens under 16. A move the government said was necessary to stem harms like the addictive nature of the platform's cyberbullying and mental health impacts. These services must take reasonable steps to prevent under 16s from holding accounts.

And three months in, Michael Whipley says it brought about some positive changes. You know, I have mum's messaging saying, today we played in the backyard as a family. We threw a ball and created a ridiculous game we've never done before because the kids are off the screen. But not everyone thinks the ban is. is working. A social media ban was a bit of a non-event for our family. We instead have policed our kids,

parented our kids online always. Kate Gotham is a mom of three boys. She says what kids consume online should be the parents' responsibility, not the government. Her eldest, Ilias, was 15 at the time the ban kicked in and said he had no troubles fooling the age

verification steps. Very easy. I didn't find any troubles getting online at all. That could have been because I'd settle my accounts to an older age. Experts say whether the ban is really working or not will be seen in longer term, looking at metrics like teen eating disorder rates and concentration in the classroom. And watching that Aussie experiment with eager eyes, Canadians, who say we need some sort of restrictions here, including Jenny Perez.

The Vancouver mom is also a founder of the parent network, Unplugged Canada, who want an Aussie-style ban here in Canada. We know about what happened with tobacco, with drunk driving, and many other topics that require the norm to change. And I learned that things change only we all as a society step up, including parents, schools, leaders of the community, and government. When asked, Prime Minister Mark Carney said that a possible age restriction on social media use in Canada merits a parliamentary debate.

but internationally the momentum is growing. Deanna Sumanak Johnson, CBC News, Toronto. This has been a special edition of Your World Tonight on this Friday, April 3rd. I'm Stephanie Skanderas. Thank you for being with us. Good night. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.