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Hi there, Steve Patterson here, host of the Debaters. We're very excited to be celebrating our show's 20th anniversary and we can't believe our years either. If you're a longtime fan, thanks for being a glutton for punishment. If not, come laugh with us to all the topics you didn't even know were funny until we started arguing about them. Find us wherever you get your podcasts for extended episodes and special behind the scenes features you won't hear on any other airwaves. The debaters 20th anniversary season comedy worth arguing about. This is a CBC podcast. That guy President Trump is a real piece of work. You know something? What my message to the prime Minister is? If you can't get a deal, let's start hitting him back. Let's start hitting the US Back hard. Gearing up for a fight as a global auto giant downshifts Canadian production. Stellantis moving jobs Ontario to the United States, a clear casualty of Donald Trump's trade war that has Canada threatening legal action. And some leaders asking if it's time for Ottawa's focus to shift from renegotiating to retaliating. Welcome to youo World Tonight. I'm Susan Bonner. It is Wednesday, October 15, just before 6pm Eastern. Also on the podcast, 50 trucks entered Gaza today, so that is good news. At the same time, 600 trucks are needed. Half the number of children will go to bed hungry tonight. Much more is needed. An early and difficult hurdle in the Mid east ceasefire. Israel is threatening to take action if Hamas doesn't fulfill its promise to return the remains of hostages. It's keeping a key border crossing closed as the peace plan faces its first real test. It is the biggest blow yet to Canada's auto sector, already struggling with the impact of US Tariffs. Now an entire assembly plant set to open in Brampton, Ontario, is heading south instead taking away thousands of jobs and leaving a community and an industry reeling. Thomas Dagla has more. Very disrespectful and disgusting behavior by the company in Brampton, Ontario. Stellantis workers learned the news through an automated phone message yesterday evening. The auto giant is backtracking on plans to build a Jeep crossover SUV at its plant near Toronto, instead shifting production to Illinois. Union President Vito Bellato is just as incensed as the Brampton workers he represents. A lot of them are very anxious, very worried and rightfully so. But they don't deserve this. For over 40 years, we've been building cars in this plant, providing big, big profits for the company. Stellantis temporarily shut down the plant last year, laying off all 3,000. The closure was meant to allow the company to retool the facility to assemble both electric and gas powered models of the Jeep Compass. This past February, though, Stellantis paused those plans amid the threat of tariffs from the White House, all of it now serving as a cautionary tale for multiple sectors of the economy, says Uniform National President Lana Payne. We can't continue to allow corporations to shift Canadian jobs out of our country and into the United States because of this trade. Canada's auto sector has been in limbo since US President Donald Trump returned to power, vowing to reinvigorate manufacturing, his tariffs disrupting an industry that long relied on workers on both sides of the border. We are investing in the United States. $13 billion Stellantis chief executive Antonio Filosa invited CNBC to the floor of an assembly plant in Ohio, highlighting how the auto giant is injecting more money into the economy stateside. We are renewing all our lineup and this is because we want to grow here in US as for the Brampton assembly plant, Stellantis won't say what the future holds, and that signals even bigger trouble, says McMaster University engineering professor Greg Mordue. It's a situation reflecting the dire circumstances that the Canadian auto industry has found itself in. But it's also a damnation, frankly, of the lack of commitment that some of the automotive actors have demonstrated to. Stellantis insists it's committed to Canada and investing here, including at its facility in Windsor. But the company is hardly denying it's feeling pressure from Trump. Thomas Dagg, CBC News, Toronto there's no denying Canadian leaders feel the pressure. For months, federal officials have been trying to lessen the impact of the trade war on the Canadian economy. But after this latest blow, the frustration is growing and the calls to fight back are getting louder. Kate McKenna has that side of the story. He drives me absolutely crazy, he does. And we aren't going to roll over. He's not going. I'm not going to let him roll over Ontario. I'll tell you that Ontario Premier Doug Ford has a message for Donald Trump following Stellantis decision to move Jeep manufacturing from Brampton to the US with thousands of jobs on the line, Ford wants Canada to punch back. I am sick and tired of sitting and rolling over. We need to fight back, folks. We we are an economic powerhouse. For Canada, it's a lost battle in the ongoing trade war. The White House put out a statement bragging that Stellantis plans to expand to the US Build on A wave of commitments underscoring the administration's vision for American economic dominance. Well, let me be clear on Stellantis. I'm extremely disappointed about this decision. And not only am I disappointed, it's completely unacceptable. So we will fight for these jobs. Industry Minister Melanie Joly says she learned the company's plans yesterday. And by the way, 150,000 cars made by Stellantis are sold every year in Canada. And so Canadians know what to do when a company doesn't necessarily have the interests of Canadians at stake. Now, a letter shared with CBC News shows the federal government has threatened legal action against Stellantis. Ottawa has pledged billions of dollars in support for ongoing investment in Canada. The letter signed by Joly. Situation changes. Stellantis isn't holding up their side of the bargain. The company has obligations and the government is not going to let them off those obligations. Flavio Volpe is the president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association. He says there's more at stake than these jobs. Those are serious billion dollar obligations. And we're not going to set the precedent here that you can say I don't care about consequences. In Canada, the Trump administration has clearly stated its goal is to absorb auto manufacturing jobs, using tariffs as incentives for companies to move south. Our thoughts go out to all of those workers. Conservative Leader Pierre Poliev amped up the pressure on the prime minister. My message to Mark Carney is it's time for you to keep your promise to negotiate a win. Stop betraying our workers. Canada's top negotiators, including U.S. canada Trade Minister Dominic Leblanc, are in Washington this week as talks with the US Administration continue. Those talks are more likely to yield relief for other sectors like steel and aluminum, leaving Canadian auto workers wondering about their industry's future. Kate McKenna, CBC News, Ottawa. Coming right up, Hamas says it has handed over more remains of Israeli hostages as Gaza waits for more aid and how Newfoundland and Labrador's new premier plans to handle a politically charged hydroelectric deal. Later, we'll have this story. The highest levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 800,000 years. That's what a UN agency is reporting in its annual bulletin on greenhouse gases. This is last time when We've seen over 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. The temperature was 2 to 3 degrees higher. The sea level was 10 to 20 meters higher, but there was no humans. I'm Inayat Singh in Toronto. Later on youn World tonight, why carbon dioxide levels are rising faster than ever despite global efforts to cut emissions in the Middle East. There is relief mixed with frustration and fear as the bodies of Israeli hostages are repatriated and aid flows into Gaza. There's more concern that complications surrounding the return of hostage remains could restart a war that only just ended. Tom Perry has more A funeral procession in central Israel. Mourners lining the streets to say farewell to Guy Iluz, shot by Hamas during its attack on the Nova Music Festival on October 7, 2023. Iluz was kidnapped by the group and taken back to Gaza, a hostage. I come here to express my so sad feelings with the family, mira Ghazal says. The grief of the Illuz family is felt by the entire nation. Hamas pledged to return the remains of 28 hostages as part of its ceasefire deal with Israel, but has so far failed to do so. The group says the widespread devastation in Gaza makes finding individual bodies difficult, but Israeli government spokesperson SH Bedrosian today berated Hamas for putting hostage families through more pain. Hamas also released another body overnight, and after going through the proper identification process at the Forensic Institute in Yafo, it is confirmed the body is not of a hostage. We stand clear when we say this. Hamas, the terror organization, is required to uphold its commitments to the mediators and return all of our hostages. As part of the implementation of this agreement, Israel has begun returning the bodies of Palestinians killed in the fighting to health officials in Gaza. But it's also putting pressure on Hamas by refusing so far to open Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza and allow more humanitarian aid into the territory. Assistance has been allowed in through other corridors, but Samir Abdel Jaber of the World Food Program in Egypt says all entrances to Gaza must be opened up and aid allowed to flow freely. We're all advocating for opening the crossings, facilitating our access inside Gaza, making sure there is law and order so people can actually also move freely inside the Gaza Strip and be able to reach the distribution points and make sure that they're able to feel safe while moving around. Safety and security are still far from certain inside Gaza, with Hamas clashing with armed rivals and executing those it claims have collaborated with Israel. And with Israel's military still firing on Palestinians it claims have approached its line, some violence still lingering in spite of the ceasefire. Tom Perry, CBC News, Cairo. Ukraine has implemented emergency power cuts across much of the country after a series of Russian strikes. Moscow has been stepping up attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities. They have seriously damaged gas production, affecting power in major cities including the capital Kyiv. NATO Secretary General Mark Ruta says the attacks must stop. Day after day, night after night, Russia continues to strike Ukraine, targeting its people and civilian infrastructure, including its energy networks, as winter approaches, leaving people without heat, light and water. Our support for Ukraine is crucial and it will continue unabated. Ruta says. NATO has agreed to boost its own counter drone measures. Russian drones have repeatedly violated airspace in Poland and several Baltic countries. This is yous 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. After a decade of liberal rule, Newfoundland and Labrador has a new progressive conservative majority government. The result of last night's election surprised some observers and could mean more twists in the province's long and controversial hydroelectric dealings with Quebec. Heather Gilliss explains why and we have a new PC majority government. Premier designate Tony Wakem. It's an unexpected change in government for Newfoundland and Labrador. The province is flipping from red to blue. Pollsters and pundits were saying it was going to be another Liberal majority, but we knew, all of us. Tony Wakem, now premier designate, campaigned on change, especially around one of the central Liberal planks, the Churchill Falls Power agreement with Quebec. It aimed to fix what's seen as a heavily lopsided unfair contract from 1969, bring 225 billion to the province, thousands of jobs, and build a new massive hydropower plant on the Churchill River. The Liberals wanted to finalize the new deal this spring, but the incoming premier says he doesn't want to rush. Wakem wants it reviewed, renegotiated and subject to a province wide referendum. I personally think it's bonkers, but we'll see. Political scientist Kelly Baduk says an independent expert review of the deal could be worth it, but says the referendum could kill it. With Quebecers going to the polls next year, he says Premier Francois Legault doesn't have the time. The best negotiating partner you're going to get is the current Quebec government, and that government will change a year from now. Legault, meanwhile, took to social media to congratulate Wacom and says he thinks the deal is beneficial for both provinces. It's a sentiment Hydro Quebec, which would develop the new power, echoed, calling the deal equitable. Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro's CEO chimed in too, saying it's focused on the best interests of this province, but wants to talk with Wacom about how vital their electricity assets are to the province's future. Wacom is yet to be sworn in, but the Liberals he defeated last night are urging him to stay the course on Churchill Falls. Heather Gillis, CBC News, St. John's mail started flowing again this week after Canada Post workers moved to rotating strikes. But the development didn't come fast enough for some upcoming elections. The work stoppage meant some communities had to make other arrangements for voter cards and mail in ballots. And it's prompting calls to protect election materials from future postal strikes. Marina von Stackelberg explains. In the municipal building of the town of Chelsea, Quebec, returning officer Mecharles Harveaca is prepping boxes of voter register registration cards. Canada Post was supposed to mail them. But with municipal elections across Quebec just weeks away, communities like his scrambled to send the information to voters in other ways. We decided to deliver the card by a courier. The courier will ensure that everyone will receive a card and we will have approved of that. The strike was so disruptive, Montreal is calling for all election materials to be deemed essential so voter information and mail in ballot ballots aren't held hostage in any future Canada Post strikes. The city of Gatineau paid a bailiff to deliver its registration cards. Instead of serving legal notices, they served voter information. In most elections across Canada, you can register on election day. Not in Quebec. In that province, voters have to make sure they are correctly on the list this week to cast their ballot next month. We're really focused on getting all the polling places organized. Now the elections Yukon office is also busy with a vote this November. The territory launched a major contingency plan. Mail in ballots were sent through road air and courier elections. UConn also loosened the rules for in person voting. People can now show up at any poll in their electoral district. Max Harvey is the chief electoral officer. We have kind of a philosophy and approach here that everything is figureoutable and obviously we want to make sure that we keep the integrity, the access, the services to the electors. So we put a lot of focus on that. Alberta's municipal elections are next week. That province made voter registration accessible on its website, if they didn't already. The strike forced jurisdictions across Canada to make many of those details searchable. Online voter information cards are actually really quite important. Hollyann Garnett is with the Electoral Integrity Project, which recently researches election processes around the world. She says while a voter card isn't essential, it does play a vital role. The best way after personal contact to get somebody to be mobilized to go to the polls is through this sort of direct mailing information. Garnett says those details are particularly important in provincial, territorial and municipal elections where the rules can all be different and voter turnout already tends to Be low. Marina von Stackelberg, CBC News, Gatineau, Quebec. At least one person was killed and two are still missing after a powerful storm battered parts of Alaska. The remnants of a typhoon caused severe flooding, damaging winds, displacing hundreds of people and leaving some communities devastated. Juanita Taylor has more. I tried my best not to scream. I tried my best to keep composure. Tristan. Carl thinks back to the moment his house started floating in water when a storm surge caused by the typhoon hit his village of Kipnuk in western Alaska. And I quickly called my cousin who's at the generator plant that we were moving, and I stayed on the phone with him. It was the middle of the night. Power had been cut off by winds of up to 160 kilometers per hour. Carl was with 13 family members inside the home. That felt more like a boat out of control because I knew we were spinning and then we stopped spinning. They were in so shock, all that adrenaline. A couple of them started, you know, vomiting from all that rush. The house was adrift for five hours. Then it stopped moving nearly a kilometer away just before almost hitting another house. And then I started yelling, brise, brist, brist. They eventually got rescued by boat. Others from the village were rescued by helicopters after climbing onto rooftops. About 6ft of flood water from Typhoon Halong hit 49 Alaskan villages that night, causing extensive damage. Mark Roberts is the incident commander with the Alaska State Emergency Operations Center. We're moving as fast as we can. We know that folks are miserable. We know that communications are poor. We're doing everything we can to get reinforce some communications. The flood came with little warning. The remoteness of some of these villages, it's hard to get information to people in a lot of these areas. Andrew Kozak is a meteorologist with CBS News in Philadelphia. He says it's difficult to get constant forecasting in rural areas. And for some people, the storm came so quickly. The flood waters rose so quickly, it was too late before they got the warning. Oh, my gosh. Nepakiak is another Alaskan village that got hit. Jamie Jenkins and her family of nine stayed together that night to wait out the storm. I didn't sleep that whole night. I kept on checking out the window. But Jenkins said fear set in. When the waters started rising, they all started crying. My youngest daughter asked if we were all going to die. Jenkins house stayed put, but they left in boats to get to higher ground. There's like, I want to estimate, like 20 houses that are off their foundations. Evacuation centers are being set up in Bethel, Alaska, while emergency crews assess the damage. Working against the clock, focusing on bulk fuel oil storage facilities needed to get through the winter. Juanita Taylor, CBC News, Yellowknife. Greenhouse gas levels are rising faster than ever, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now at record levels, and scientists say the ecosystems that Earth relies on to absorb carbon are not keeping up. Anayat Singh reports. Water bombers take to the skies in Nova Scotia this year, part of Canada's second worst wildfire season on record. Those fires are supercharging the climate problem by adding even more carbon into a warming atmosphere. Oksana Tarasova is the senior scientific officer at the World Meteorological Organization, a UN agency monitoring the global climate. The current levels of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide are the highest during the history of observation and going back to at least 800,000 years. In the WMO's latest greenhouse gas bulletin, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rose the highest amount ever recorded between 2023 to 2024. Growth rates have tripled since the 1960s, despite global efforts to cut emissions. The WMO says that's partly because natural systems like forests that absorb some of that carbon are also struggling to keep up. Kirsten Ziegfeld is professor of climate science at Simon Fraser University. This is very devastating news because it indicates that we are losing the ability of Earth's land ecosystem in the ocean to mop up our carbon pollution. The oceans and forests are essential for keeping the Earth's weather system in balance. But researchers have found that forests are sometimes emitting more carbon than they absorb. David Bowman at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development worked on a study that found this to be the case in Australia's tropical forests, partly due to extreme weather like heat and drought weakening and killing trees. So tropical forests are among the most important terrestrial ecosystems in mitigating climate change. We heavily rely on them, and these results really emphasize both the urgency and the added difficulty that we now have to actually preserve those forests and continue to make them count. The WMO's report comes ahead of the COP30 climate conference, which will see world leaders meet in Brazil in the Amazon rainforest to discuss climate action. Last time, when we've seen over 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, the temperature was 2 to 3 degrees higher, the sea level was 10 to 20 meters higher. But there was no humans. A very different world and a warning for the future of human civilization if action on climate doesn't ramp up. Inayat Singh, CBC News Toronto. We end tonight with a high flying hazard on a Saskatchewan highway and one woman's very fishy insurance claim. I'm driving home from my friend's place, and all of a sudden there was this loud bang and the windshield on the passenger side instantly shattered. That's Marie Ahlstrom from Turtle Lake, about 200 km northwest of Saskatoon. She was driving responsibly a few weeks ago with her eyes firmly on the road when something came out of the sky. You know, I actually thought that somebody must have thrown a rock at me. Yeah, to me, I thought it was a rock. And then I saw blood. And I'm like, well, rocks don't have blood. Sadly, Ahlstrom had hit a creature of some sort, airborne at the time, so she assumed it was a bird. But then she noticed fish scales all over the windshield. Living near a lake, Ahlstrom says fish do sometimes appear on dry land far from the shore, dropped there by ospreys and other birds that pluck them from the water. But until now, she'd never heard of a fish landing on a moving vehicle. Neither had her insurance company. The fellows. He said, no, it's not covered because it's not wildlife. I'm like, but it comes out of the lake and it's kind of wild. Ahlstrom was able to smooth things over with her auto insurance and get her car repaired. Turns out damage caused by a fish falling from the sky is covered by her policy. Thank you for joining us. This has been youn World Tonight for Wednesday, October 15th. I'm Susan Bonner. Talk to you again. For more CBC podcasts, go to CBC CA podcasts.