Your World Tonight - Shipping tax, online gambling, whale songs and more

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

The tariffs have been paused, but changes to U.S. import rules are already wreaking havoc with small businesses in Canada. The U.S. will stop allowing goods below a certain amount to be sent duty-free. We talk to companies who say their livelihoods will be dramatically hurt.And: Sports fans are expected to wager a record amount on this Sunday's Super Bowl.But that parlay could parlay itself into a public health risk. And experts want governments to do more to mitigate the health harms from gambling.Also: Scientists have long known that whales have their own language. Researchers now say it is structured very much like human language – and the way they learn it is a lot like how a toddler learns to speak.Plus: Gaza fallout, India deportations, H5N1 in cattle and more.

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This is a CBC Podcast. It's been an absolute nightmare for the past three or four days. The way that we tried to approach it through the temporary layoff was to try to buy ourselves time to be able to preserve as many of these jobs as possible. A taxing time for Canadian exporters as officials continue to push the White House to retreat from its tariff threat. Donald Trump's reshaping of international trade is already delivering a hit to some Canadian businesses that depend on shipping abroad. Welcome to Your World Tonight.

I'm Susan Bonner. It is Thursday, February 6th, coming up on 6pm Eastern, also on the podcast. It's this kind of characteristic fingerprint of human language. So it's a really surprising thing to find it in this completely unrelated species. Deep connections. New research is shedding light on whale songs, how the animals learn to sing and the links to human language. The tariffs may be on pause, but for many Canadian businesses it feels like fast-forward into a new uncertain reality.

And a 30-day reprieve doesn't mean Donald Trump's changes aren't having an impact. There are already scaled back plans and even layoffs. Some of it linked to the closure of a little-known loophole used for e-commerce. Nisha Patel explains. It's been an absolute nightmare. Tyler McCombs is worried tariffs will turn off his U.S. customers. His Calgary company Devin and Lang make specialty underwear. He can only source his raw material from China, which is now subject

to a new 10% tariff on the products he ships south of the border. Another 25% duty could hit his goods next month. 25% to 35% tariff increases is too much for most people to pay and so we're probably gonna have to eat some of that cost and that's definitely gonna hurt our bottom line. Donald Trump's executive order would also end something called the de minimis exemption. It allowed businesses like McCombs to ship packages valued at less than $800 to the US without the buyer having to pay extra tax. It is gonna potentially hurt our ability to sell in the US

which is not an insignificant amount of our business. Trump said closing the loophole would crack down on fentanyl trafficking from China. It would also cut the advantage for Chinese e-commerce giants like Tmoo and Shien which have put pressure on American retailers. International trade lawyer Jesse Goldman says Canadian companies are getting caught in the crosshairs. It's a blow to Canadian small business, a blow to courier industry as well. Shipping and logistics costs go up dramatically for small businesses.

This week, customers of Vancouver company Understands received an email warning it was pausing U.S. shipments of its products and reconsidering its plans to open new stores. Goldman says businesses need to plan for the worst-case scenario. My view is that tariffs are here to stay, perhaps not in the amount of 25% on Canada. It might be 10%.

Montreal-based Shear-Tex's finances were already strained. The looming threat has made matters much worse. CEO Catherine Homoth says the women's clothing maker will lay off about 140 employees for six months. This is an incredibly difficult decision to make. The way that we tried to approach it through the temporary layoff was to try to buy ourselves time to be able to preserve as many of these jobs as possible. The move will save ShearTechs one million dollars.

It's facing higher costs as it rushes to move its product across the border before March 4th. With the removal of the de minimis exemption, ShearTechs faces huge tariffs in the U.S. Hometh says other strategies like trying to pivot manufacturing wouldn't be easy. We've made a very very big bet on Canada. We've invested tens of millions of dollars in the infrastructure that we use for our manufacturing here. If she loses sales in the US she's hopeful she can make up the difference with more customers at home who want to buy Canadian. Nisha Patel, CBC News, Toronto. Donald Trump's threat of tariffs continues to dominate political discussions at all levels of government.

Justin Trudeau spoke with the premiers yesterday and sat down today with big city mayors, all of them trying to plan for what the U.S. President may or may not do. Tom Perry reports. Our work does not take proposed tariffs completely what the U.S. president may or may not do, Tom Perry reports. Our work does not take proposed tariffs completely off the table. That's why over the coming month, Team Canada will be stepping up. It's a message that by now should be very familiar. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reminding mayors from across Canada this country is not out of the woods yet when

it comes to U.S. tariffs. We'll be engaging closely with the U.S. administration to underscore why tariffs hurt us all and explain that the better path forward for our two countries, the only path for the United States to usher in the new golden age that President Trump desires is to partner with Canada not to punish us. Trudeau says municipal leaders need to spread that message to their fellow mayors and city councillors in the U.S. Josh Morgan, mayor of London, Ontario, says a trade war will drag down cities on both sides of the border. You know, this is an economic relationship that is the envy of the world.

And to try to take a step back to dismantle that or do damage to it, you know, I think the the rest of the world could be just sitting back and laughing at us because... Right now, no one here is laughing about what may or may not come next. Federal ministers continue to make the rounds in Washington, among them Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson who says Canada may need to reconsider the idea of an east-west pipeline to carry Alberta crude to eastern Canada and beyond. I'm not being prescriptive in terms of saying necessarily we need to do this but I do think it's a conversation that premiers and the prime minister will want to have. Wilkinson acknowledges any pipeline would be a long-term project.

As for right now, Public Safety Minister David McGinty says the government is working on a pledge it made to US President Donald Trump, who agreed to his 30-day pause on tariffs after Canada said it would appoint a fentanyl czar to stem the flow of the deadly drug across the border. We understand the constituent parts of the fentanyl Czar to stem the flow of the deadly drug across the border. We understand the constituent parts of the Fentanyl crisis in Canada. The Fentanyl Czar's role will be to help us integrate what is a whole of society challenge. McGinty says the government will fill the new position before Trump's pause runs out. Meanwhile, the lobbying efforts continue, with Canada's premiers making a

pilgrimage to Washington next week, a Team Canada approach to a problem and a president made in America. Tom Perry, CBC News, Ottawa. A U.S. federal judge has blocked a Trump administration plan to offer federal government employees a buyout if they quit. The offer from Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency had initially set a deadline for midnight, but a judge in Boston ordered the deadline extended until Monday to hold a court hearing on the legality of the buyouts. The White House says at least 40,000 of the government's 2 million employees have accepted the offer. Coming up on the podcast, Israel's defense minister calls for a plan to

voluntarily move Palestinians out of Gaza, suggesting Canada in a list of resettlement countries, shackled and shamed, the US sends a plane load of illegal migrants back to India in handcuffs and chains and what humans might have in common with whales. Trump is doubling down on his plans for the US to take over Gaza and for the Palestinians to be relocated. But as Paul Hunter reports, there are still no details on how this plan might work, and in Gaza, defiance and determination

to make sure that it doesn't. In the cold, wet muck of a displacement camp in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, tents torn apart by the wind flap open to the elements. Shelter for the many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by the war remains almost non-existent, with so much of Gaza in ruin. But say so many, in the face of US President Donald Trump's proposal to relocate them in some other country for Gaza to be redeveloped as a so-called place for

the people of the world is flat out not an option to them. The idea of displacement is very difficult, said this man. We have nothing but our land. This is our land. We can't leave it. God says this is our land, said this woman. We will stay on it. Before attending the national prayer breakfast in Washington this morning, Trump reiterated

his proposal rejected by so many in the Arab world and beyond, posting on his Truth Social platform, Gaza would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of the fighting," he wrote. The Palestinians would be resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities in the region, adding, no soldiers by the U.S. would be needed. Indeed, the notion the U.S. military might be needed to carry out the proposal has been one of the litany of questions on it ever since Trump first raised the idea earlier this week. From Israel on using its military, the country's defense minister.

I have instructed the Israeli defense force to prepare a plan, said Israel Katz, that will allow any resident of Gaza who wishes to leave to do so to any country willing to receive them. Katz adding in a post on social media, countries like Canada, he wrote, which has a structured immigration program of previously expressed willingness to take in residents from Gaza. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued his visit to Washington, meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Fielding a shouted question from a reporter, does he think Israeli troops are needed in Gaza to make Trump's plan feasible? His one word answer?

No. Back in Khan Yunus, misery is unrelenting, but so too defiance. It's impossible that we leave, said this woman. Life can't be any harder than what we're living right now. We're staying put. Paul Huntress, CBC News, Washington. Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration has sparked protests in India over the treatment of deportees, some of them handcuffed and chained. Prime Minister Narendra Modi isn't saying much though. He's set to visit the White House next week and the US is

India's biggest trading partner. South Asia correspondent Salima Shivji unpacks the protests and the politics. The fury was hard to contain outside India's Parliament as members of the opposition streamed out of the building, outraged and not hiding it. Humans not prisoners, one sign says. Another reads, India in handcuffs, we will not tolerate this insult. The cuffs and chains were used on Indian nationals forcibly returned to their country Wednesday on an American military plane. That was a first even though deportations to India are not new. This time, 104 Indians living illegally in the United States

were abruptly sent back as part of US President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. An ordeal Harvinder Singh is struggling to recover from. One he says he wouldn't wish on anyone. Our hands and feet were cuffed Singh says. They told us we were going to a detention center but took us to the plane instead. The shackles didn't come off he says until after the 40-hour journey back to Amritsar in northern India was over. Even the women were tied up other deportees say but not the children. It was so harrowing, says Robin Handa, sitting back in his family home in Haryana state.

I don't even know what to say. It's not the dream of a better life we were all looking for. The reports of mistreatment erupting into a political issue for the Modi government. It's really unacceptable. Shashi Tharoor is a lawmaker with the opposition Congress party. If they are proven to be Indian nationals, we have a legal obligation to admit them, to accept them in our country. But the manner in which it was done, with handcuffs,

squeezed into a military aircraft, in such an abrupt manner, that is not acceptable. New Delhi is keen to appease Trump on the immigration file, worried about potential punishing tariffs down the road. And so Indian officials have repeatedly said they're open to taking back illegal migrants. They're also hoping that will encourage the US administration to improve legal routes into the country for skilled Indian workers.

A message India's Foreign Minister Subramaniam Jayashankar repeated in Parliament even as he promised a follow-up on how deportees are being treated. We are of course engaging the US government to ensure that the returning deportees are not mistreated in any manner during the flight. But he says his government's focus is on cracking down on illegal migration, a key issue that threatens to derail the close India-U.S. ties that India desperately wants to preserve. Salima Shivji, CBC News, Mumbai. At least four Nevada cattle herds have tested positive for bird flu,

infected by a strain that's never been linked to dairy cows. As Sarah Levitt reports, this development has sparked concern here in Canada with experts closely monitoring the spread. I think we shouldn't panic. We have to watch out. Cautiously optimistic. That's how Christian Kaiser says he's feeling. The dairy farmer in Quadicot, Quebec says he feels that way

even with more bad news about bird flu. At least four cattle herds in Nevada have tested positive for a strain of H5N1 or bird flu, a strain never found in cows before. The United States Department of Agriculture says it detected the D1.1 strain through its national milk testing strategy. Kaiser says that news is worrying but he'll take every precaution suggested by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to prevent it from coming to his farm. CFIA is watching it closely and they gave us

directions and kind of things we should and shouldn't do. There's no reported cases in Canada yet. D1.1 has been found in birds and so far two people. A man in Louisiana died after contracting it and a 13-year-old girl in British Columbia became seriously ill. CFIA is warning farmers to mask up and wash their hands frequently. This latest development has some experts concerned. Robert Chapman Wood is a professor of strategic management at San Jose State University.

The key question is, how well are we going to be able to control the disease itself? And that's not so clear. So far, the number of cows infected has not had the same kind of impact as the number of birds infected, but that could happen. The other worry is the uncertainty. We have a lot of data and studies when it comes to risk factors in poultry.

In dairy, this is totally new. Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt is a professor at the University of Montreal's Veterinary College. We're still studying all this and trying to figure out a virus that is now pandemic in animals in over 80 countries, something we've never seen before. So there are a lot of firsts. One thing is clear. The risk to consumers is low. Should cattle in Canada contract this strain?

Cheyenne Sharif is a professor at the Ontario Veterinary College at University of Guelph. You know, is it still safe to drink milk? Yes, absolutely, because this virus is quite susceptible to pasteurization so pasteurization can kill the virus. Still it is possible that we've only scratched the surface and probably this virus is going into many other host species either domestic or non-domestic that we haven't't really tested. So as a result of that, if we don't look for it, you're not going to find it. Sarah Levitz, CBC News, Montreal. The Super Bowl is this weekend with the Kansas City Chief set to face off against the Philadelphia

Eagles. Fans are expected to use online betting to wager billions of dollars on the game. And as Alison Northcott reports, experts are warning the growing online gambling industry is a growing public health problem. The two best teams in football are about to collide. This NFL ad sets the stakes for Sunday's big game. Millions of fans will tune in, many of them with their own stake in the action. American fans alone are expected to wager a record 1.39 billion US dollars

on this year's Super Bowl according to the American Gaming Association, a sign it says of the growing enthusiasm for legal sports betting. Canadian fans like it too. Hopefully I can make a few bucks tonight on my little betting app here. The Canadian Gaming Association says the regulated online betting market has grown since Ottawa legalized single event sports betting and Ontario opened the door to private online gambling companies in 2022. Offshore betting apps are accessible in many parts of Canada but are unregulated.

Young people may start to see gambling as just a routine part of enjoying sports. Luke Clark, director of the Centre for Gambling Research at the University of British Columbia, says that comes with risks. And those changes also extend to advertising and marketing, and they also include the emergence of some new and riskier forms of gambling. So from a public health perspective, this has been generating a lot of concern. Betting ads have become a familiar part of the sports landscape, troubling for 27-year-old Theodore Oliver, who sought help for a gambling addiction after losing more than just money

playing online poker. This was a seriously destructive problem. It had already been harming me but it was harming the people in my life that I cared about. A recent report by the Lancet's Public Health Commission on gambling urges governments to do more to address the public health harms. Anxiety, depression, loss of sleep. Heather Wardle, professor of gambling research at the University of Glasgow and the commission's co-chair,

says the effects can include loss of employment and a heightened risk of suicidality and domestic violence. It doesn't just affect them, it affects their families, their partners, their children, their parents. Psychology professor Steve Jordans at the University of Toronto Scarborough wants Canada to do more like restricting ads. Those gambling companies have their marketing intertwined with everything. Last year, Ontario banned celebrities from appearing in gambling commercials.

We should be saying, okay, people can gamble if they want, but we are not going to push it aggressively, we are not going to glorify it, we are not going to normalize it. We want to have a healthy relationship with our players. But Canadian gaming association CEO Paul Burns says Ontario's regulated industry has oversight and rules to help identify risky behaviour and encourage healthy play. Alison Northcott, CBC News, Montreal.

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. European Union scientists say last month was the hottest January ever recorded. The global average temperature was 1.75 degrees above pre-industrial levels. That continues a streak of temperatures exceeding 1.5 degrees over the last 18 months, despite a shift towards the cooling La Niña weather pattern. Samantha Burgess is with the EU's Copernicus climate change service. When we look at air temperatures across the globe we've seen really large anomalies particularly

over the Arctic region where those anomalies have been 20 degrees above average so that's a huge anomaly so that gave us an insight early on in the month that January would be much warmer than average. Burgess also says La Niña may not be enough to bring temperatures down because of the continued burning of fossil fuels. The sounds of nature can be so captivating. Waves crashing, seagulls squawking. Further out, whales calling to each other. Well, new research shows that last one, whale song, is strikingly similar to human language.

Science reporter Anand Ram explains. Let's get this out of the way. We're not any closer to figuring out what it means, but this soul-stirring communication between whales may actually have a lot in common with human language. This was a really exciting and novel finding. Inbal Arnon is with Hebrew University of Jerusalem, part of a team that broke down humpback whale song and found a similarity in how children learn language. One of the first challenges that infants face in breaking into language

is discovering what the relevant units are. In other words, the relevant sounds. She says babies don't know it, but they use statistical reasoning, figuring out what sounds are more likely to follow other sounds as they learn from us. Humpback sounds sounds are more likely to follow other sounds as they learn from us. The same seems true for humpbacks as they teach new generations to sing. Simon Kirby is a co-author and studies language evolution at the University of Edinburgh. It's this kind of characteristic fingerprint of human language. So it's a really surprising

thing to find it in this completely unrelated species of humpback whales producing song deep in the ocean. Another hallmark of human language, efficiency. And when you gotta push a long message underwater holding your breath. It's extremely costly to sing. Mason Youngblood is a researcher at Stony Brook University in New York. His latest study found some whale song, including from blue and bowhead whales, also follows human laws of efficient communication. It's important to do so in the cheapest way possible.

The easiest way to do that is by reducing vocalization time. Shane Garrow, a whale communication expert at Carleton University, finds the parallels interesting, but says don't go thinking we know what's in those messages. Detecting a pattern like this doesn't make any direct connection to semantics. In fact, there's plenty of science that shows you can find this in like improvisational jazz. But that comparison of music to whale song is a good one, says Tecumseh Fitch, cognitive biologist at the University of Vienna. I think the term song is perfectly appropriate.

They're like melodies, you know, da da da da da da. It has some meaning, but it's not word meanings the way language does. And that may be the ultimate takeaway of this research. What we think makes us unique just puts us in the good company of other complex communicators. Anand Ram, CBC News, Toronto. Finally we end with the tourism industry on Prince Edward Island and hopes for a boost thanks to a foreign adaptation of a Canadian classic. foreign adaptation of a Canadian classic.

The trailer for the new Japanese anime series, Anne Shirley, the latest spin on Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. The 1908 novel set in PEI is one of the best selling books of all time. It's also one of the most translated pieces of literature in the world and it has a huge following in Japan. The 1979 Japanese anime version of the story was a massive success, and it helped create a generation of Japanese visitors to PEI. But that number has dipped since 2020, thanks in part to the pandemic and a week in.

Japanese tourism operators like Katsu Masuda are hoping the new show can inspire a new wave of travelers. A lot of travel agent is doing a promotion, tying up with this new anime series. So they will advertise, let's go to see Anne of Green Gables. The Japanese broadcaster NHK is planning to release the new series in April with people in PEI hoping it makes a splash in Japan and the ripples are felt in Anne's home province.

Thank you for joining us. This has been Your World Tonight for Thursday, February 6th. I'm Susan Bonner. Talk to you again.