Canada meets NATO target, IOC bans trans athletes, Susan Bonner leaves CBC, and more

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We embarked on this mission to protect Canadians to defend our territory,

to protect our borders and to boost our sovereignty.

We control our destiny.

It has been a Canadian military week spot for decades, hard to camouflage

or avoid with evasive maneuvers, not on the battlefield, but on the budget sheet.

NATO's 2% spending target has finally been met.

After the Prime Minister's last minute pushed to get Canada over the line just barely.

Welcome to your world tonight. I am Susan Bonner.

It is Thursday, March 26th, just before 6 p.m. Eastern, also on the podcast.

They are begging to make a deal. We'll see if we can make the right deal.

And they'll tell you, we're not negotiating. We will not negotiate.

Of course, they're negotiating. They've been obliterated.

Bold strokes and more pressure on Iran from a U.S. president who values the art of the deal.

But with conflicting signals coming out of Washington and Tehran

and attacks still hammering the Middle East,

Donald Trump's diplomatic canvas is open to interpretation.

And at the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat.

The International Olympic Committee weighs in on a bitter fight over gender, sports, and fairness.

Under pressure for decades by NATO, Canada has now reached a long-standing target

for defense spending, 2% of the country's GDP, or just over $61 billion annually.

Senior defense correspondent Murray Brewster breaks down the numbers

and the questions about how Mark Carney's government got there.

Happy 2% day. Apparently, we have achieved it.

Lieutenant General Greg Smith, Canada's military representative at NATO.

Speaking in Calgary today, he spent little time dwelling on the milestone.

Instead, he wanted to look forward to how statistics can be turned into troops and equipment.

We got to keep moving. We need capability.

Across the country and Halifax, though, the government wasn't finished celebrating.

This is the beginning of a new era for Canada's defense.

One that is stronger, more self-reliant, and built here at home.

Defense Minister David McGinty basking in the glow of a political mission accomplished,

spending an additional $9.3 billion defense dollars by March 31st in order to achieve NATO's target.

Canada, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal just squeaked over the line at exactly 2%.

Prime Minister Mark Carney says it was no small feat.

For the last 10 months, Canada's new government has been working with unprecedented speed and scale.

In 10 months, we have invested over $60 billion in our defense and security.

That's the largest year-on-year increase in defense investment in generations.

That is true. However, many of those investments are long-term plans to buy new equipment and build bases.

Most of the money being spent this year came from salary increases for troops and infrastructure repairs.

Significantly, some of the money counted towards the NATO 2% target came from a reorganization of the federal government,

putting agencies such as the Coast Guard under defense.

That makes conservative defense critic James Bazan skeptical.

We know that through creative accounting, that government spending in national defense has increased by over $10 billion.

That hasn't actually resulted in increased capabilities for the Canadian Armed Forces.

Defense expert Phil LaGasseh says questions about how the government is spending defense dollars

will only grow louder in the coming months.

It's a lot of all that the government is finally meeting our NATO commitment,

but it should be able to account to Canadians as to how exactly it's doing that.

Canada has been under enormous pressure from allies to meet the goal.

US President Donald Trump made the lack of defense spending a cornerstone of his criticism of Canada.

American officials will tell you other presidents have asked nicely,

Trump stopped asking nicely and threatened to cut off allies.

Canada arrives at the 2% milestone several months after NATO raised its spending benchmark to 5% of GDP,

a target to be achieved by 2035.

Marie Brister, CBC News, Ottawa.

Donald Trump took aim at NATO today.

The US President again lashed out at the Alliance for not helping to secure the Strait of Hormuz.

Traffic on the strategic waterway remains heavily reduced because of the US-led war with Iran.

Trump says the Iranian regime is beaten down near defeat and begging to make a deal.

Katie Simpson is in Doha tonight with the details.

They want to make a deal. The reason they want to make a deal is they have been just beat to shit.

US President Donald Trump boasting about what he views as America's military success so far in Iran.

During a cabinet meeting that lasted nearly two hours,

Trump shifted back and forth at times, emphasizing progress toward a peace deal.

At other times, he delivered emboldened threats.

We'll see if they want to do it. They don't.

We're there worst nightmare.

In the meantime, we'll just keep blowing them away.

Trump's top negotiator, Middle East Special Envoy Steve Wakeoff,

confirmed the US gave Iran a 15-point plan to end the war,

delivered by intermediaries in Pakistan.

We will see where things lead, and if we can convince Iran that this is the inflection point

with no good alternatives for them, other than more death and destruction.

Iran has publicly denied there are direct negotiations,

but there have been reports he'd countered with a five-point plan.

Trump appears ready to give the talks a chance.

Writing on social media, he'll hold off on his threat to destroy Iran's power plants for another 10 days.

This is the second extension he's given citing progress in the discussions.

Still, the US and Israel continue to carry out intense attacks across Iran.

While Iran is trying to demonstrate that its military capabilities are not as diminished as the US claims,

broadcasting new videos of missile and drone launches on state TV.

And it continues targeting Israel with cluster munitions breaching air defenses in Tel Aviv today.

And across the Gulf region, the attacks are relentless.

Two people in Abu Dhabi were killed by falling debris from a missile interception.

We're at a very perilous moment. There's deep anxiety,

and there's foreboding in the air by everyone.

Miran Kamrava, a professor at Georgetown University in Doha, says this could be a tipping point in the war.

If negotiations don't succeed, then we're looking really into the abyss, into the unknown,

of how the Iranians might react, what the Americans might do.

And if there's boots on the ground, we're looking at a very different ballgame.

Deep concern as a new front may soon emerge.

The leader of the Houthis, the Iranian linked group in Yemen, says it is prepared to enter the conflict.

Any developments in the battle that require a military response, he says, we will promptly undertake it.

In the past, the Houthis have targeted ships in the Red Sea, raising the possibility of more blockades and chaos.

Katie Simpson, CBC News, Doha.

That kind of chaos is what many Americans are probably hoping the president will avoid.

Senior correspondent Paul Hunter is in Washington. Paul, how is all of this playing within the United States?

Susan Donald Trump is increasingly under pressure to get this war ended.

Look at this way. This country is at once deeply, but is well fairly evenly divided along political lines.

But there's no denying a strong majority of Americans want no part of this war.

Paul, this week by the Pew Research Center, put it at a smidge over 60, 60 percent of Americans opposed Trump's handling of the war.

And what do they see from it? Higher oil prices, higher gas prices, higher prices down the line.

In the run up to the midterm elections, it's a mess for Trump.

At that cabinet meeting today, Trump turned to defense secretary Pete Hegseth, who used the longstanding Trump tactic of blaming the media, or as Hegseth put it today, the dishonest hate Trump media.

As is the case with the old Trump term fake news. The message to Americans is, again, don't believe what you hear on radio, see on TV or read online when it comes to the war.

So under pressure to end the war, Donald Trump said today the U.S. is way ahead of schedule.

The straight of hormones will open soon. The underlying message on all of it, believe only Donald Trump.

And that is a tactic that he has used repeatedly and has proven effective. Has it not?

It has. I mean, look at that same cabinet meeting, Scott Besson, U.S. Treasury Secretary, described the straight of hormones as, quote, a choke point that we believe does not exist.

And yet on its face, that's exactly what it is, effectively, literally.

And it's at the root of those spiking oil prices. All that said, Susan, for Americans watching and wanting to know more about the status of the war, Trump also talked for two full minutes about the intrinsic value of a $5 sharpie pen.

And how much smarter it is to use them for official signings rather than $1,000 pens that other presidents use.

And despite all the points you've just made, there remains a lot of support for Donald Trump.

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? I mean, it goes back to your time reporting here in Washington, Susan, and the rise of the Tea Party 2009, thereabouts. We covered that together, didn't we?

Yes, we did.

Millions of people dissatisfied with status quo politics who strongly wanted something or someone completely different who'd come in, breaks and dishes and do stuff.

Importantly, someone who they could believe in. Rightly or wrongly, they found that person in Donald Trump.

And while there's now pressure on him to end this war, make no mistake, Susan, millions of Americans still believe he's doing right by them.

Paul Hunter, thank you.

Susan, it is always, has always been my pleasure.

The CBC's Paul Hunter in Washington.

Coming right up, it is one of the most controversial issues facing international sports.

Now the Olympic Games has a firm position on the participation of transgender athletes.

And from long ballots to long distance threats, new federal legislation aims to protect Canadian elections.

Later we'll have this story.

I'm Kayla Hounsel in Halifax.

Across the Maritimes, people are upset about a plan by the new Brunswick government to erect a toll booth at its border with Nova Scotia.

It feels like we're almost betrayed in a way.

It comes as governments across Canada have been trying to knock down barriers to inter-provincial trade.

This is just very counterintuitive and counterproductive to the work that's being done across this country right now.

What it will mean for border towns and how the cost could be passed on to consumers across the country.

Coming up on Your World Tonight.

Transgender women are now banned from women's events at the Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee announced the policy today saying it is meant to protect fairness and integrity in sport.

Experts argue the move is discriminatory and politically motivated.

Alexander Silberman reports.

I understand that this is very sensitive topic.

Kirstie Coventry, the first woman to be president of the International Olympic Committee, announcing a policy she says protects women's competitions.

The Olympic body will bar transgender athletes from women's events starting at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

A change Coventry says ensures fairness, safety and integrity.

Every athlete must be treated with dignity and respect and athletes will only need to be screened once in their lifetime.

Under the new rules, all participants in women's events must undergo gene testing.

The decision follows months of deliberation by the IOC over how to tackle one of the most contentious issues facing global sports.

You need to have a sport by sport athlete by athlete process.

Jamie Taylor is a political science professor at the University of Toledo in Ohio and an expert on LGBTQ politics.

She says there are instances where trans women may have a competitive advantage, creating questions of fairness.

But argues in other sports, such as shooting, a blanket ban doesn't make sense.

If there's no evidence that there's an advantage and you still ban them, the IOC is given the game way.

It's really about bigotry.

Until now, transgender athletes were allowed to compete in the Olympics once cleared by their respective sport federations.

Track and field, swimming, cycling, boxing and rugby had already introduced their own sweeping ban.

In 2021, New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard became the first openly transgender woman to compete in an Olympics.

There have also been several high profile cases of athletes with differences in sexual development, meaning a person's hormones, genes or organs are a mix of male and female characteristics.

South African runner Caster Semenya, a two-time Olympic champion, has male XY chromosomes and will also be banned from competing.

It's stigma-based.

Paiyoshni Mitra is executive director at Humans of Sport.

They rushed into this decision, which tells me this is all because of where the Summer Olympics is going to be hosted next.

U.S. President Donald Trump has zeroed in on the issue as the Los Angeles Games approach, threatening to rescind funds for organizations that allow transgender athletes to compete.

The IOC's new rules will likely be challenged at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland.

Alexander Silverman, CBC News, Regina.

They are the very foundation of Canada's democracy, elections.

And now the Liberal government is proposing changes to strengthen this country's voting systems with new rules around everything from foreign interference to deep fakes and disinformation.

Tom Perry has more from Ottawa.

The government is introducing new measures to maintain the strength and resilience of Canada's electoral system.

The government host leader Steve McKinnon unveiling new legislation with a sprawling set of goals.

Bill C-25, what the government calls its strong and free elections act, is aimed at tightening up rules across the electoral system, looking to tackle some long-standing issues as well as some new ones.

In the digital, online, social media world, things are happening all of the time.

One of the bill's targets, deep fake images and videos, content created often with artificial intelligence that falsely depicts political candidates doing things they shouldn't do or saying things they never said, spread online to sway votes.

You know what, I don't think any government is ever going to have the silver bullet here.

Elizabeth Dubois is an associate professor at the University of Ottawa who specializes in politics and technology.

She says online disinformation is a serious and growing problem.

Deepfakes we've seen in the last few election cycles. None of them have been particularly convincing. None of them have made a major splash in terms of the Canadian's ability to understand what different politicians are saying.

That said, they have made a difference in elections externally. We do know that elsewhere deepfakes have been a problem.

And we also know that the technology underpinning deepfakes is advancing really quickly.

Bill C-25 also takes aim at foreign interference and would make rules that are right now only applicable during election campaigns around things like broadcasting, partisan political information from outside Canada, apply outside the campaign period as well.

Heidi Torrick, candidate research chair at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at the University of British Columbia says it all sounds good.

But whether we'll see foreign actors comply, I think is a very open question. It's going to depend on who the candidates are, what the interests of those foreign actors are.

The government's legislation also seeks to rein in another recent phenomenon so called long ballot activists who have flooded by elections with dozens of candidates.

Organizers of these long ballot campaigns say they're trying to bring about electoral reform, though the government takes a different view, calling it harassing behavior.

Tom Perry, CBC News, Ottawa.

Prime Minister Mark Carney says there should be an apology for the RCMP spying operation that targeted indigenous groups and individuals for more than a decade.

But obviously it's reprehensible practice never should have happened ever would happen.

An investigation by CBC indigenous found thousands of documents dating back to the late 1960s.

They detailed the amounties efforts to spy on, infiltrate and disrupt peaceful indigenous political organizations.

AFN National Chief Cindy Woodhouse-Nipenak called for an investigation into the RCMP along with the public apology.

RCMP Commissioner Mike Duem has issued a statement of regret but did not offer an apology.

He has however pledged to meet with indigenous leaders. Quebec MNAs have passed a motion calling for the resignation of Air Canada CEO.

Russo has been under fire for not speaking in French in a statement about that Air Canada crash earlier this week.

Russo says his French isn't good enough.

Quebec's Minister for the French language Jean-François Roberge tabled the load motion and he says Russo's explanation isn't good enough.

I am a Francophone of course. I'm the Minister of French language. I was born and raised in the Francophone family.

But I do my best to speak in English to show some respect to our Anglophone community and to respect the right to live in Quebec.

So if I can speak in English Mr. Russo can speak in French.

The MNAs voted 92-0 in favor of the motion.

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.

New Brunswick is trying to reduce the province's deficit one trip to Moncton at a time.

But a proposal for a toll booth at its border with Nova Scotia is being met with opposition from across the Maritimes.

As Kayla Houncil explains critics warned this could undermine efforts to break down inter-provincial barriers and hit border communities, especially hard.

There is only one stretch of road linking Nova Scotia to New Brunswick and the rest of Canada.

It's a key trade link in the Atlantic region.

Now the New Brunswick government wants to put a toll booth in the community of Alak on its side of the border.

Alex Poplar lives on the Nova Scotia side but attends university on the New Brunswick side crossing the provincial border every day.

It feels like we're almost betrayed in a way.

Philip Mosley also lives on the Nova Scotia side.

The glaring question is why the province of Quebec on the other end of the province gets a pass on this.

A longstanding agreement with the federal government prohibits the province from putting tolls along its border with Quebec.

New Brunswick tabled its budget last week with a nearly $1.4 billion deficit.

Finance Minister Renee Legacy says the toll is part of the province's solution to tackle mounting debt.

If we put $3, $4 on people coming into our province to help pay for our infrastructure, I think that's fair.

It comes as governments across Canada have been trying to knock down barriers to inter-provincial trade in the face of a trade war with the US.

The federal government recently reduced the tolls on the confederation bridge from Prince Edward Island from more than $50 down to 20.

PEI Premier Rob Lance says he was as surprised as anyone by New Brunswick's toll announcement.

I think that governments are looking for any way they can to raise additional revenue. I don't think that's a great idea.

Communities and economies across Atlantic Canada are extremely interconnected.

Ronda Tulk Lane is president and CEO of the Atlantic Chamber of Commerce.

We really, really want to see our foreframers work together to remove the barriers so we can actually live each of our days and do business across our borders freely.

Chris McKee with the Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association says an estimated $2,500 commercial vehicles cross this particular stretch of highway every day carrying $35 billion in goods a year.

He says the toll cost will affect truckers nationwide and will inevitably trickle down to consumers.

This is just very counterintuitive and counterproductive to the work that's being done across this country right now.

New Brunswick doesn't plan to install the tolls until 2028, but says they'll then bring in around 10 million a year in revenue.

Kayla Hounsell, CBC News, Halifax.

Finally tonight, and it is final. My last broadcast at CBC. I am moving on. It's the right time for me to do this. And yet it is hard to say goodbye.

It was 1985 when I joined CBC News, posted first to Saskatoon, then Calgary, Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, a decade in our parliamentary bureau in Ottawa, then Washington, D.C., all of that in television.

I joined radio and this program then called the world at 6 in 2014.

I have been so lucky to live and travel all over Canada to cover major news stories across the US and beyond.

I brought a little bit of everywhere I've been to this job. And I hope I brought it to you.

And that's what's special about CBC, not me. If you listen to this program, you care about what is happening in your community, your country, your world.

And you care about context, you want the facts, the meaning, the impact on people. I am just one of many people at CBC who try to deliver on that with what we have seen, what we have learned, what we know.

It's my voice supported by many who approach this work as a mission of sorts.

As I leave this place I have loved, I want to thank all the people I've worked with on all the programs in all the places, the camera and sound crews, the editors, researchers, the signers, writers, producers, directors, the technicians, the reporters, hosts, the support staff, my wonderful colleagues across this country and beyond.

And huge gratitude to the stellar team here at your world tonight. I cannot thank them enough for everything.

And I want to thank you our listeners for letting us tell your stories, letting us into your work and your lives, giving us your expertise, your time.

It is a shared endeavor that I have cherished. So, for one last time, thank you for joining us. I say proudly, for CBC News, I'm Susan Bonner, over and out.

You'll be seeing that Olympic logo on a lot more things, a lot more often. But we are still more than 300 days away from the 1988 Winter Olympics. For Olympic diary, I'm Susan Bonner.

On the morning before a Trump rally in Houston, we found our hotel lobby buzzing. It was filled with people decked out in red hats and T-shirts labeled the Mighty Texas Strike Force.

This is a community in lockdown. Authorities have told everyone to stay inside. You can see the police vehicles whizzing by us now. They are looking for this suspect. It is a massive manhunt.

75 years ago today, Soviet soldiers liberated the largest industrialized Nazi extermination camp in Europe. Auschwitz-Berkenau. What they found here was unfathomable.

A sense of crisis deepened in this country today about the spread of the coronavirus, about the spiraling markets and the damage to the economy, about the ability to handle it all.

We're in Ramallah tonight speaking with Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

It is a siren cry on Quebec's Magdalene Islands, vulnerability. Climate change is not a future threat on this archipelago in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It's happening now.

It's been another tight election campaign. A majority government is possible but the numbers suggest a minority parliament is far more likely.

We are about to find out what you have decided.

The president of the United States is one of the most protected men on the planet, but the secret service couldn't protect him today from an errant elbow in a game of basketball with family and friends.

As many as three birds wearing little cowboy hats have been spotted in the city over the last week, going about their business seemingly unbothered by their accessories.

The video kicked off a bit of a viral craze.

At least two of the birds have been given names.

Kulamadi, Jane and Clark Horace.

One rescue is still trying to capture.

It's the first time since the election that Harper has said he needs a majority to do what he was elected to do.

It won't be the last time you hear that.

Susan Bonner, CBC News, Ottawa.

Susan Bonner, CBC News, Saskatoon.

Toronto.

Halifax.

Montreal.

Jerusalem.

Ramouski.

Edmonton.

Lannigan.

Northeast of Calgary.

Susan Bonner, CBC News, Washington.

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