Your World Tonight - Manitoba wildfires, challenge to Terrebonne election result, lessons from Canada’s work E.coli tragedy, and more.

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

Manitoba’s premier is urging people in the province to heed wildfire evacuation orders, after a deadly incident Wednesday in Lac du Bonnet, northeast of Winnipeg. Two people were killed after getting trapped by a blaze. More than 20 fires are burning across Manitoba right now, fuelled by hot and dry conditions.And: The Bloc Québécois is going to court over the election result in the riding of Terrebonne, near Montreal. The Liberals won the seat over the Bloc by one vote after a judicial recount. But an Elections Canada error led to the rejection of a local woman’s mail-in ballot. She says she voted for the Bloc.Also: Looking back on a national tragedy. 25 years ago, water tainted with E. coli killed seven people in the town of Walkerton, Ontario. The crisis led to standards in testing, but experts warn there is still more work to do.Plus: Uncertainty shrouds Ukraine-Russia peace talks, Israel launches new strikes in Gaza, RX-Canada Hockey player testifies at teammates’ sex assault trial, and more.

Other People's Problems was the first podcast to take you inside real-life therapy sessions. I'm Dr. Hilary McBride, and again, we're doing something new. The ketamine really broke down a lot of my barriers. This work has this sort of immediate transformational effect. Therapy Using Psychedelics is the new frontier in mental health. Come along for the trip. Other People's Problems Season 5, available now. This is a CBC Podcast.

It's quite unique for us in May to experience it to this extreme and it's probably the first time in my life that I remember it being this close to the community. This is truly exceptional. A state of emergency in a province hit with tragedy. Wildfire season in Manitoba is off to an early and dangerous start. As crews continue to battle back flames and evacuate communities under threat, the province mourns two residents who didn't make it out. Welcome to Your World Tonight. I'm Julianne Hazelwood. It's Thursday, May 15th, coming up on 6pm Eastern. Also on the podcast…

We have to bring this situation in front of a judge in a court in order to do the election all over again. The Bloc Québécois wants some voters to return to the polls because a handful of mail-in ballots. It may not sound like much, but this is a riding the Liberals won by a single vote. Now the Bloc says it's willing to go to court to demand a do-over. Flags at the Manitoba Legislature were lower today, honoring two people killed in a wildfire that's still burning around a community northeast of Winnipeg. Several out-of-control fires are threatening communities across the province, forcing hundreds of people from their homes. And officials are now looking to other provinces for help.

Rosanna Hempel has the latest. Of course I'm worried. I mean we just lost a friend. The community of Lactobani northeast of Winnipeg is in shock. While mourning two of their own, Sue and Rich Noel have been identified as the couple who died. Manitoba RCMP say they were trapped by an out of control wildfire outside town. Eric Macalas says he knew them.

She was a lovely lady. A lot of people are very sad about it. Officials say crews are making progress on the Lactobani fire, but it's still out of control. Lauren Schenkel is Reeve of the rural municipality of Lactobani. It's heart wrenching. It's, you know, we lost 28 dwellings in that area, you know, and then it goes without saying the loss of life in that area. It just, you know, you can't really describe it in words. Several other out-of-control wildfires

continue to burn in southeastern Manitoba, near the Ontario border. Today, Premier Wabkanoo declared a state of emergency in one of Manitoba's largest parks, Whiteshell Provincial Park. This loss of life changes what was an emergency into a tragedy. The park closed this morning, and campers, cottagers and residents were expected to leave by 1 o'clock this afternoon.

Judy and Stuart Cornell have owned a resort in the park for 45 years. Hopefully it'll be there when we get back. We've been there for 45 years, it's our home. Yeah, yeah, but it's okay. It's okay, we trust. Mike Adie runs two businesses near the park. He's been packing since five this morning. In a perfect world, yeah, you'd have notice, but in this kind of a situation when it's emergency stuff,

you don't always get a, you don't always get a notification like you need. Manitoba's Wildfire Service currently has 40 firefighters from British Columbia helping out with a different fire in northern Manitoba. Kristen Hayward is the service's Assistant Deputy Minister. We also made a request through the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre for an additional 80 firefighters to come to Manitoba. Hayward hopes they'll arrive by the end of this may-long weekend. Meanwhile, Premier Canou is pleading with Manitobans across the province.

No fires, please. Any fire that goes out of control, even in an area that's not dealing with wildfire, could potentially pull resources away from the front lines. He's urging people to listen to evacuation orders. Flags at the Manitoba Legislature are at half-mast to honour the two victims, while police continue to investigate. Rosanna Hempel, CBC News, Winnipeg. A lesson now in why every vote matters in an election. In one Quebec writing, there are calls for

voters to go back to the polls after a mail-in ballot that wasn't counted turned up. And the margin of victory in the writing was just a single vote. Vanessa Lee has the details. The judges will decide. Bloc Québécois candidate Nathalie Sinclair-Dégagné was initially declared the winner in the suburban Montreal riding of Terrebonne. But after a judicial recount she lost by a single vote to her liberal rival. It's a roller coaster. Nevertheless I'm lucky to be well surrounded not only by my party but also by peers in the population that supports me is very confident in our case as well. Today, Bloc leader Yves-Francois Blanchet announced plans to challenge that result

because of a mistake that led to at least one mail-in ballot not being counted. We have to bring this situation in front of a judge in a court in order to do the election all over again. Elections Canada has declared the result in Terrebonne final, even though the agency admitted there was a misprint on a mail-in ballot envelope. The last three characters of the postal code on the Elections Canada return envelope were wrong. As a result, the marked ballot was returned to the sender. That voter is Emmanuel Bosset. I voted for the Bloc Québécois.

Maybe it's the vote that could have changed the outcome, she says. Adding a new election is the right thing to do. Elections Canada says most of the mail-in ballots were received on time and tallied. 16, including Bosset's, were not returned to the local office. 5 arrived late and could not be legally counted. It's not known if the delay was due to the incorrect postal code. I think there's a reasonable argument to be made here. Jean-Francois D'Aoult is a professor at the School of Applied Politics

at the University of Sherbrooke. He says the situation is extraordinary because there is a lot at stake. This seat, this extra seat for the liberals might potentially, not right now, but it might potentially make a huge difference. You know, for example, if they manage to convince two or three MPs to switch from the party they were elected, that could make a difference because they might reach the threshold for a majority government. So this is very exceptional. In the hotly contested writing today, many voters say a new election is necessary for the sake of democracy,

despite the cost, which Elections Canadas at around $1.7 million. Blanchette wants the case to be addressed quickly, in case one MP's vote has the potential to affect the outcome of decisions in Parliament. Vanessa Lee, CBC News, Terrebonne, Quebec. There are three other recounts that could alter the final tally in the House of Commons. One is in the Newfoundland and Labrador riding of Terra Nova, the peninsulas, where the Liberals won by 12 votes over the Conservatives. The others are in Ontario, Milton East Halton Hills South, which is currently held by the

Liberals and Windsor-Tacumse Lake shore, which was won by the Tories. Coming right up, Russia-Ukraine peace talks get underway, but Vladimir Putin isn't taking part. And dozens have been killed across the Gaza Strip as Israel intensifies its attacks on Hamas. Then, how the Walkerton water crisis is still affecting the community 25 years later. Hope is fading for a breakthrough in Russia-Ukraine ceasefire talks getting underway in Turkey. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he won't meet with the Russian delegation because Vladimir Putin isn't a part of it.

And although the United States negotiators are there, Donald Trump isn't. Briar Stewart reports. Do you have a message for Vladimir Putin? I'm here. I think this is a very clear message. As Ukraine's president arrived at the airport in Ankara, Turkey, he wanted to show that he was ready for peace talks. But Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, was a no-show for the talks he suggested over the weekend. At the same time, he again refused to agree to a 30-day ceasefire. How are you?

Good. Zelensky met with Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but said he had no intention of going to Istanbul for talks because Russia was disrespecting the process. Putin wasn't there and neither were his country's top diplomats. The priority is peace. The priority is ceasefire. The priority is to be here today. And that's why I'm underlining the high level of representatives of our group.

Russia's delegation is headed by a presidential aide named Vladimir Medinsky. He led Moscow's negotiations with Ukraine in the early days of the war, talks which collapsed in April 2022. But even before Ukraine's team arrived in Istanbul, U.S. President Donald Trump, who's continuing his tour of the Middle East, said the talks were floundering because he wasn't there. Nothing's going to happen until Putin and I get together, OK? And obviously, he wasn't going to go.

He was going to go, but he thought I was going to go. He wasn't going if I wasn't there. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who's in Turkey, said he wasn't optimistic anything would be achieved in Istanbul. In order for there to be a breakthrough, he said Trump and Putin will have to meet. But where and when is very unclear.

Sergey Ryachenko was with the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and wrote a book about the Kremlin's drive for global power. At the moment, they haven't even started talking in Istanbul. So how can we have a summit before? This idea is actually quite absurd. But Trump believes that he can achieve this kind of miracles. Rodchenko says Putin covets a summit with Trump, but he's not going to hastily head

to Istanbul to get one. Before you actually agree in the negotiations on who has what and how it's going to work out, why would Putin even risk going out there meeting with Trump? But Radchenko still believes the meeting in Istanbul is a positive step because it would mean the sides are talking, even if it's unlikely to lead to any breakthrough. Briar Stewart, CBC News, London. The death and despair in Gaza have been unrelenting this week.

New Israeli airstrikes in the coastal enclave have left dozens of people dead, and the military escalation is happening as a humanitarian crisis deepens. Paul Hunter reports. It is a sound as horrifying as it is familiar in the Gaza Strip. More blood, death and agony after yet another strike by Israeli forces. The latest, a wave of attacks including on homes and tents in southern Gaza with more than a hundred killed. As Israel continues to go after what it says are Hamas militants. 15-year-old Ahmed Al-Safi stands on a pile of cinder block rubble in what's left of his neighbourhood.

Look at the bodies here, he says, body parts there, skin, ears. I don't know what we'll do, he says, it's indescribable. Since fighting erupted in 2023 after the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas, Hamas-run health authorities say Israeli attacks have killed more than 52,000 Gazans, a third of them under the age of 18. All of this as today Palestinians commemorate what they call the Nakba or catastrophe the 1948 war in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes in what is now Israel well Let me just say I spoke to the Prime Minister today of Israel in Turkey US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on a new US-backed

Foundation aimed at restarting aid into Gaza, blocked by Israel since the beginning of March. The foundation itself criticized for failing to respond properly to Gaza's needs, where countless face famine. We're troubled by the humanitarian situation there. Both the Israelis, with American backing and support, have offered a plan to deliver aid that doesn't get diverted or stolen by Hamas. I've heard criticisms of that plan.

We're open to an alternative if someone has a better one. U.S. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, continues his trip to the broader Middle East region. His plan for the U.S. to somehow acquire the Gaza Strip and turn it into, as he's put it, the Riviera of the Middle East has also faced broad rejection. Today, in United Arab Emirates, he put it this way. You know, I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good. Make it a freedom zone. Let the United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone.

Back in Gaza, a woman with what appears to be the bodies of children killed in the latest Israeli attacks, wrapped in tiny white sheets stained with blood. My baby, my baby, my love. My loves, she says, what did they do wrong? May God make the Israelis and Trump taste what we tasted. Paul Huntress, CBC News, Washington. At the sexual assault trial of five former Team Canada junior hockey players, court heard from a witness in the hotel room on the night in question. Another player, who's not charged, testified about what he saw back in 2018 and also shared information about what team members discussed in a group chat after they found out an investigation was underway. Katie Nicholson has the details.

Tyler Steenburgen scores the gold medal winner for the 2018 World Junior Hockey Team. Seven years later Steenburgen found himself giving unflinching testimony about some of his former teammates and what he says he saw happen in a London hotel room in June of 2018. Michael McLeod, Alex Fermentin, Carter Hart, Dylan Dubay and Cal Foote are all charged with sexually assaulting a woman known as EM. They have all pleaded not guilty. Steenbergen told court he met other players in the hotel room, where he saw a naked woman walk out of the bathroom, lie on the floor, and ask the men to have sex with her.

He said he saw her give Hart and McLeod oral sex, and said Dubé slapped her butt. It wasn't hard, but it didn't seem soft either, he said. The woman went to the bathroom clearing a path to the door, so he left. Steenbergen then shared details of a June 26th group chat involving 11 players who were in the room once Hockey Canada started an investigation into the matter. We all need to say the same thing if we get interviewed. Can't have different stories or make anything up, McCloud wrote.

Later in the chat, Dubé wrote, let's not make her sound like too crazy because if she gets wind of this and then she can get even more angry and we don't need that. Dubé wrote, the boys who did stuff got consent. It's really an unvarnished look at what these players were thinking at the time. George Gray is a Toronto-based criminal defense lawyer who isn't involved in the trial. Often what a Crown is trying to prove when they rely on evidence that post-dates the offence,

that the way this person is acting in the days following the offence shows consciousness of guilt, meaning that they're sort of aware that they did something wrong. Steenburgen also testified he received two calls, one from Dubay and one from Foote, both asking him not to tell Hockey Canada investigators what they did. His testimony was put on hold when a matter arose, prompting the judge to send the jury home to work through the issue with the lawyers. Katie Nicholson, CBC News, London, Ontario.

Two of North America's largest grocery chains are warning shoppers that tariffs are starting to impact supply and prices. Loblaw executives say their stores are running out of inventory brought in before the trade war. They say that means prices could soon spike as those products are replaced with ones that are being hit with tariffs. Walmart today delivered a similar message to U.S. consumers. Its executives say they plan to raise prices on goods because of higher costs from tariffs and a decline in first quarter profits. Tariffs are also having a big effect on Ontario's fiscal future. The province unveiled its budget today that focuses heavily on weathering the U.S. trade war. Madam Speaker, I move, seconded by the Premier, that this House approves in general the budgetary

policy of the government. The Doug Ford government says its $232 billion fiscal roadmap will help go towards stimulating the economy. It includes a $5 billion fund for business relief and another $5 billion to finance infrastructure projects. The province is also projecting a $14.6 billion deficit that's up nearly triple from last year. It was chaotic and traumatizing, and ever since the 2023 wildfire season, officials in the Northwest Territories have spent the past two years trying to be better prepared. Now, a new report suggests the Territory's emergency response plan should have worked

that summer, but not enough people knew about it. Juanita Taylor explains. I've been waiting for answers for nearly two years. Alaina Katz remembers the day she fled her home in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories from a raging wildfire like it was yesterday. Every time I closed my eyes, all I would see was sitting in this burning truck and escaping. The town of Fort Smith evacuated residents to nearby Hay River, only to be evacuated again because of another encroaching wildfire.

We're actually alive today because a woman pulled over on the side of the highway and told us get in. In 2023, 70 percent of the territory's population experienced evacuations from wildfires. Many citizens expressed feelings of abandonment, confusion and really long-term trauma from the events. Erica Thomas is with Transitional Solutions Inc. It produced a 164-page report for the government of the Northwest Territories looking back at the wildfire and evacuation response in 2023. It found the territory's emergency plan should have worked, but very few people knew about it. Nobody knew how they fit into the plan, what their responsibility was within the plan.

And so you had a number of people when the evacuation was called confused. The report says the emergency plan was neither tested nor updated to address evolving risks of climate change, and that most government staff at different levels didn't know enough details or how to access the plan itself. We did find that a number of staff, whether it was those that were actually mandated to be part of the emergency management response or those that stepped up into roles that they were never trained or mandated to do, that lack of training really impacted that response. Since that year, the territorial government

has been working on updating its emergency plan and collaborating with Indigenous governments, which the report found lacking as well. Glenn Smith is with the town of Hay River. If we had more time or better data coming to us on our 2023 evacuations, then things probably would have looked a lot different. Elena Katz says she still doesn't have clear answers. When you get answers, it helps with some of the healing that needs to happen.

The report recommends the territory create an agency dedicated to emergency management to provide clarity and authority for future emergencies. The government of the Northwest Territories says it's reviewing the report before responding. Juanita Taylor, CBC News, Yellowknife. It's a small Ontario town that for many Canadians is known for a massive public health crisis. It's been 25 years since Walkerton's drinking water was contaminated with E. coli. Seven people were killed, thousands were sickened. Many live with long-term complications and there are still important lessons being learned. Lisa Shing reports. At home, anytime Trudy Fraser drinks water, it's filtered from her fridge dispenser. For the last

two decades, she hasn't trusted what comes out of the tap. But you lose that trust when when you see people have passed away, people you know that passed away and were very ill and your own family what they went through. In May of 2000 a heavy rainstorm washed cow manure carrying a deadly strain of E. coli from a farm field into a nearby well in Walkackerton, about three hours north of Toronto. Improper chlorination, a lack of training and checks and balances due to budget cuts caused the bacteria to quickly taint the town's water supply. It ravaged residents for days before officials announced there was an outbreak.

Seven people died, including a toddler. More than 2,000 were sick, about half the town. Fraser says her daughter Alyssa, 17 at the time, was one of them. It was terrifying. The doctors told me probably the day or two after she got there that she probably wasn't going to live and I just told her I said they said you're a very girl. You have to fight with everything you've got. Fraser is thankful her daughter survived, though she lost a portion of her kidney. And she doesn't remember a lot of it, thank heaven. From the trauma? Yeah, I think that's the body's way of protecting itself.

Many are still living with the consequences. Gastrointestinal illnesses like IBS. Others have permanent liver damage. This is the memorial plaque for Well 5. Bruce Davidson says it's essential to remember the lessons. He's a co-founder of the concerned Walkerton citizens, a group that pushed for answers. We took water completely for granted and pretty well did everything wrong you could do. The Walkerton inquiry recommendations revolutionized how the province protects drinking water sources. It sets standards for testing, treatment and training for water systems operators. For municipal water it's very very well

protected. Teresa McLenahan, head of the Canadian Environmental Law Association and one of the lawyers representing residents during the inquiry says there's still work to be done especially for Canadians who rely on private water wells. For non-municipal water, I fear something like that could happen again because they have no barriers in place. Nobody's testing it routinely. In Walkerton, every spring, Fraser now spends afternoons gardening at a memorial. We're a close family and we just, you go with the good.

Try and forget about the bad. The tragedy left an indelible mark on her family, but she says it does not define them nor their community. Lisa Sheng, CBC News, Wankerton, Ontario. We end tonight with some small footprints that are creating a big rethink of an important stage in the evolution of life on Earth. We were over the moon. We knew we were under something really big, but we didn't really know how big it was until the rest of the team had studied the material. And then we knew we had something really spectacular, like an early reptile trackway, probably the oldest one in the world and that's exactly what we found. That's Professor

John Long, a paleontologist at Australia's Flinders University, talking about a slab of sandstone uncovered near Melbourne. Imprinted on the slab are the oldest known footprints of a reptile-like animal capable of living on land. It dates back about 350 million years. Long and his team were able to identify claws and nails in the prints and they argue it's evidence of life emerging from water much earlier than previously thought. So this signifies that instead of an amphibian it was actually a reptile-like animal, an early amniote, And this is the group that today includes the reptiles, the mammals, the birds, and

so on. And it pushes it back by 35 to 40 million years older than the previous records in the Northern Hemisphere. Researchers were able to prove the slab was dry land by identifying fossilized raindrop divots on it. They estimate the creature was about 80 centimetres long. The findings were published this week in the journal Nature and along with the recalibrated timeline they also have geographical significance. Previous

footprint fossils were discovered in Nova Scotia but the new discovery suggests this stage of life originated much further south. Thanks for being with us. This has been Your World Tonight for Thursday, May 15th. I'm Julianne Hazelwood. Take care. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.