Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Treena Orchard, Associate Professor, School of Health Studies, Western University

Most Canadians have access to workplaces that are safe, promote health and autonomy and, most importantly, are protected by the law. But for people in criminalized professions, including sex work, it’s a different story.

In Canada, sex work itself is legal. But most aspects associated with doing sex work — purchasing sexual services and communicating for that purpose — are illegal.

R. v. Kloubakov, a recent Supreme Court of Canada case, demonstrates how basic elements of the workplace for sex workers are not only contested under the law, but they’re also being decided upon without the input of people in the profession.

This ruling upholds the constitutionality of Canada’s sex work legislation, which many sex workers advocated against in 2014 when the laws were changed to include the criminalization of clients. This legislative shift negatively impacts sex workers because it creates a climate of anxiety among clients, who can become more aggressive with workers because they fear being “outed” or arrested by police.

For more than two decades, I have had the privilege of learning about these issues directly from women, men and transgender people in India and several Canadian cities, including Vancouver, London and Kitchener-Waterloo, who do this work.

Alongside their intelligence, wit and deep insights into human nature, the sex workers I’ve known cultivate profoundly meaningful communities and care for one another in exemplary ways.

The ‘legal-but-illegal’ paradox

When it comes to sex work, there are three primary approaches to legislation, beginning with the abolitionist framework, sometimes called the Sex Buyer Law or the Swedish or Nordic model. This system decriminalizes people who sell sex, provides supports to help workers exit sex work and makes the purchase of sex a criminal offence.

Canada adopted this framework in 2014 as part of Bill C-36, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act.

Next is legalization, a legislative model in which governments introduce specific laws and regulations allowing certain forms of sex work to take place under controlled conditions. Authorities can impose a very controlled framework governing numerous aspects of the sex industry, including forced HIV/STI testing, restrictions on advertising and strict workplace-licensing rules.

Examples of this legislative approach are seen in countries like the Netherlands, Germany and Greece.

The third approach is decriminalization, which removes all laws and regulations that criminalize or penalize sex work, including its sale, purchase, advertisement and involvement of third parties such as managers and brothel keepers. This framework allows sex workers to retain agency and control over their work.

New Zealand and Belgium are examples of countries that have decriminalized sex work.

Over the past decade, Canada’s sex work laws, however, have grown increasingly punitive, even though the number of arrests has decreased. Canadian sociologist Chris Smith found sex work–related arrests peaked at nearly 2,800 in 1992 and fell to just 11 by 2020.

And, as Smith argues, there is a mismatch between legislation and the actual crime, which significantly affects sex workers’ conditions and safety.

Inside the R. v. Kloubakov decision

In a unanimous decision on July 24, 2025, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the constitutional challenge by Mikhail Kloubakov and Hicham Moustaine against Canada’s sex work laws. At issue were two parts of Canada’s sex-work criminalization legislation: receiving material benefits from sex workers and the procuring of sexual services.

The men, who were drivers for an escort agency in Calgary and were also responsible for transferring money earned by sex workers to the agency operators, pleaded guilty of separate charges related to human trafficking.

The trial judge had found them guilty of violating the Criminal Code by profiting from sex workers. She stayed proceedings on whether current sex work laws impacted the safety of sex workers.

The case challenged the constitutionality of the sex work laws, but ignored the difficulties of working in a criminalized profession subject to intense police surveillance stemming from receiving material benefits and procuring offences.

These offences make sex workers vulnerable to a range of harms, including institutional abuse, targeted violence, xenophobic raids leading to deportations and closures of safe indoor workspaces, constant threats of surveillance, and unwanted contact with law enforcement.

Research shows that in some Canadian cities, fears associated with police surveillance (such as being outed as a sex worker and racially profiled) are so prevalent that sex workers hesitate to contact police after facing violent armed robberies.

The court overlooks dignity

In R. v. Kloubakov, the Supreme Court of Canada did not prioritize the safety and security objective in its analysis. Instead, it treated it as just another issue among others. The court also failed to engage meaningfully with evidence relating to the lived experiences of sex workers. Decisions about sex workers’ rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms should not be made without sex workers at the table.

Criminalizing sex work is not a benign act with abstract consequences.

It isolates sex workers from society and resources, and positions them as targets for violence, discrimination and labour exploitation. It also contravenes regulatory approaches from the United Nations Human Rights Council, which views the criminalization of sex workers as a form of gender-based discrimination and advocates for a human-rights framework that aligns with decriminalization.

In a country that claims to care about all of its citizens, it’s imperative that we stand with those among us who are forced to struggle for basic human rights in their chosen profession — whether taking up that profession is dictated by pleasure, empowerment or survival.

What to expect going forward

This debate is far from over. Some of the issues the court declined to rule on will be raised in the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform v. Canada case that is currently pending before the Ontario Court of Appeal after being struck down in 2021 by the Ontario Supreme Court.

This case challenges several sex work prohibitions on the grounds that they violate sex workers’ rights to freedom of expression, life, liberty, security of the person and equality, all of which are protected by the Canadian Charter.

While the case is on hold, Canadians can enhance what they know about sex work from organizations who advocate for sex worker rights, sex workers who write about their experiences and a host of other cultural spaces.

Treena Orchard has received funding from CIHR, SSHRC, and Western University, but no research funds were used in the creation of this article.

– ref. Sex work on trial: What the recently dismissed constitutional challenge means – https://theconversation.com/sex-work-on-trial-what-the-recently-dismissed-constitutional-challenge-means-267163

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Rashid Sumaila, Director & Professor, Fisheries Economics Research Unit, University of British Columbia

The world’s oceans are vital for life on Earth. Drifting phytoplankton provide almost half the oxygen released into the atmosphere. Marine and coastal ecosystems provide food and protect communities from storms.

Nearly 30 per cent of the world’s population lives in coastal areas. However, rapidly changing climate and massive biodiversity losses represent an unprecedented threat to these ecosystems and to life on Earth as we know it. Research shows that coastal regions bear the brunt of climate change and extractive impacts.

Industrial fishing can extract in a day what a small boat might take in a year. Since 1950, carbon dioxide emissions from global marine fisheries have quadrupled. Bottom trawling — where a ship tows a large net along the seafloor — adds further damage by disturbing carbon-rich seafloor sediments.

Scientists estimate that between 1996 and 2020, 9.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide were released into the atmosphere due to bottom trawling — about 370 million tons annually, double the emissions from fuel combustion of the entire global fishing fleet of four million vessels.

By the middle of this century, 12 per cent of nearshore ocean areas could be transformed beyond recognition. In the tropics — Earth’s life ring — human-driven impacts are expected to triple by 2041-60. Our planet’s oceans are facing a critical risk, and we must act urgently to protect them in ways that also benefit the people who rely on them.

As COP30 gets underway in Belem, Brazil, developing measures to protect the world’s oceans and fisheries must be on the agenda.

The key lies in empowering those who have long stewarded these ecosystems: Indigenous and coastal communities. Their traditional fishing practices, passed down through generations, offer a model for balancing ecological recovery with human well-being. Governments must listen to and learn from them.

The industrial threat

To include climate-regulating habitats in global conservation goals, governments must develop policy solutions that prioritize small-scale fishers and Indigenous and coastal communities and mitigate the destructive impacts of industrial fishing fleets.

One in every 12 people globally — nearly half of them women — depend at least partly on small-scale fishing for their livelihood. In contrast to destructive industrial fleets, small-scale fisheries are among the most energy-efficient, animal-sourced food production systems, with low environmental impacts in terms of greenhouse gas and other stressors and outsized economic and social value.

An important measure that could both support small-scale fisheries and contribute to countries’ contributions under global frameworks such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is the formal exclusion of destructive industrial fishing from nearshore waters.

Inshore exclusion zones (IEZs) — also called preferential access areas — are coastal areas that prohibit certain methods of industrial fishing and grant preferential access to small-scale fishers.

When paired with co-management between governments and communities, IEZs can help restore fish populations and strengthen food security and livelihoods.

A promising example is in Ghana, where a bill has just been signed by the president to extend IEZs from six to 12 nautical miles, protecting more coastal waters for small-scale fishers.

An inclusive solution

To support these essential producers while meeting climate and biodiversity goals, governments must apply existing policies in ways that centre people.

The UN’s Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in 2022, recognizes Indigenous Peoples and local communities as custodians of biodiversity. It also commits governments to protect at least 30 per cent of land and sea by 2030.

But governments must avoid the trap of “paper protection” — designating areas as protected without real enforcement or community involvement. Instead, we need practical, inclusive approaches that uphold both conservation and equity.

Locally led protection

I’m an adviser to Blue Ventures, a non-governmental organization working with coastal communities to restore their seas and build lasting prosperity. The organization helped pioneer the Locally Managed Marine Area (LMMA) model, which blends traditional knowledge and spiritual belief with modern conservation science.

LMMAs protect coral, mangrove and seagrass habitats, increase participation in biodiversity stewardship, enhance food security and build climate resilience.

Supporting coastal communities to establish functional and legal LMMAs — while excluding carbon-intensive industrial fishing from these areas — and recognizing and embedding the approach into global biodiversity frameworks and targets would mark an important shift in valuing conservation outcomes in areas where humans and marine life coexist.

If inclusive marine protection methods, like LMMAs and similar areas under traditional governance, were recognized as key tools to protect biodiversity, we could see a welcome alliance of formally protected areas and those under local governance, all contributing to global conservation targets.

Ultimately, governments should aim to protect more than just 30 per cent of the ocean. To do so, they must pursue equitable, inclusive solutions that align with global goals. We need a future where community-led management of nearshore waters supports both people and nature. We owe it to each other, and to the ocean that gives us life.

Rashid Sumaila receives funding from SSHRC, NSERC and the World Bank. He is affiliated with Blue Ventures, Oceana, Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Tyler Prize Foundation as a board member.

– ref. Governments can protect marine environments by supporting small-scale fishing – https://theconversation.com/governments-can-protect-marine-environments-by-supporting-small-scale-fishing-265651

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Nadia Delanoy, Assistant Professor, Leadership, Policy, and Governance and Learning Sciences, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary

Since ChatGPT and other large language models burst into public consciousness, school boards are drafting policies, universities are hosting symposiums and tech companies are relentlessly promoting their latest AI-powered learning tools.

In the race to modernize education, artificial intelligence (AI) has become the new darling of policy innovation. While AI promises efficiency and personalization, it also introduces complexity, ethical dilemmas and new demands.

Teachers, who are at the heart of learning along with students, are watching this transformation with growing unease. For example, according to the Alberta Teachers’ Association, 80 to 90 per cent of educators surveyed expressed concern about AI’s potential negative effects on education.

To understand comprehensive policy needs, we must first understand classrooms — and teachers’ current realities.

As a researcher with expertise in technology-enhanced teaching and learning at the intersections of assessment, leadership and policy, I interviewed teachers from across Canada, with Erik Sveinson, a Bachelor of Education student. We asked them about their experiences with generative AI (GenAI) in the classroom.

Their stories help contextualize a reality of AI in a K-12 context, and offer insights around harnessing AI’s potential without harming education as a human-centred endeavour.

AI policy and teaching wisdom

This qualitative study involved 10 (grades 5 to 12) teachers from Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and British Columbia.

We recruited participants through professional learning networks, teacher associations and district contacts, seeking to ensure a variety of perspectives from varied grade levels, subjects and geographic locations.

We thematically coded interview data, and then cross-referenced this with insights from a review of existing research about GenAI use in K-12 classrooms. We highlighted convergences or tensions between theories about assessment, teaching approaches in technology-enhanced environments, student learning and educator practices.

Across interviews, teachers described a widening gap between policy expectations and the emotional realities of classroom practice.

What we heard

The following themes emerged from our interviews:

1. The assessment crisis: Longstanding tools of assessment, such as the essay or the take-home project, have suddenly become vulnerable. Teachers are spending countless hours questioning the authenticity of student work.

All teachers interviewed consistently said they struggled with their current assessment practices and how students may be using GenAI in work. Confidence in the reliability of assessments have been challenging. The majority of teachers shared they felt they needed to consider students cheating more than ever given advancing GenAI technology.

2. Equity dilemmas: Teachers are on the front lines of seeing firsthand which students have unlimited access to the latest AI tools at home and which do not.

3. Teachers perceive both opportunities and challenges with AI. Great teaching is about fostering critical thinking and human connection. Ninety per cent of teachers interviewed faced complex challenges relating to equity and how best to support critical thinking in the classroom while building foundational knowledge. In particular, middle and high school teachers in core subject areas indicated students were using GenAI tools in their own time outside class without ethical guidance.

‘One more thing piled on’

One teacher from central Alberta said:

“AI is definitely helpful for my workflow, but right now it feels like one more thing piled onto an already impossible workload. The policy says, ‘embrace innovation,’ but where’s the guidance and support?”

Classrooms are dynamic ecosystems shaped by emotion, relationships and unpredictability. Teachers manage trauma, neurodiversity, language barriers and social inequities while delivering curriculum and meeting student achievement expectations.

Teachers say there’s little recognition of the cognitive load they already carry, or the time it takes to vet, adapt and ethically deploy AI tools. They say AI policies often treating educators as passive implementers of tech, rather than active agents of learning.

A high school teacher from eastern Canada shared:

“AI doesn’t understand the emotional labour of teaching. It can’t see the trauma behind a student’s meltdown. As much as I appreciate professional learning, when it is all about what tools to use, it misses the mark.”

This perspective highlights a broader finding: teachers are not resisting AI per se; they are resisting implementation that disregards their emotional expertise and contextual judgment. They want professional learning initiatives that honour the human and relational dimensions of their work.

Burnout, professional erosion

This disconnect is not just theoretical, it’s emotional. Teachers are reporting burnout, anxiety and a sense of professional erosion. A 2024 study found that 76.9 per cent of Canadian educators felt emotionally exhausted, and nearly half had considered leaving the profession. The introduction of AI, without proper training or support, is compounding that stress.

---

Read more:
Solving teacher shortages depends on coming together around shared aspirations for children

---

There’s also a growing fear reported by the Alberta Teachers’ Association that, if not implemented properly with support for teachers new to the profession, AI could deskill the profession.

A teacher in Vancouver shared:

“I am a veteran teacher and understand the fundamentals of teaching. For beginner teachers, when algorithms write report cards or generate lesson plans, what happens to teacher autonomy and the art of teaching?”

Turning teaching into a checklist?

Overall, the interview responses suggest what’s missing from AI policy is a fundamental understanding of teaching as a human-centred profession. As policymakers rush to integrate AI into digitized classrooms, they’re missing a critical truth: technology cannot fix what it may not understand.

Without clear guardrails and professional learning grounded in teacher and student-informed needs, AI risks becoming a tool of surveillance and standardization, rather than empowerment.

---

Read more:
Children’s best interests should anchor Canada’s approach to their online privacy

---

This tension between innovation and de-professionalization emerged across many teacher responses. Educators expressed optimism about AI’s potential to reduce workload, but also deep unease about how it could erode their professional judgment and relational roles with students.

A northern Ontario teacher said:

“There is hope with new technology, but I worry that AI will turn teaching into a checklist. We’re not technicians, we’re mentors, guides and sometimes lifelines.”

Teachers fear that without educator-led frameworks, AI could shift schooling from a human-centred practice to a compliance-driven one.

Responsible AI policy

If we want to harness AI’s potential without harming education as a human-centred endeavour with students and teachers at the core, we must rethink approaches to AI innovation in education. That starts with listening to teachers.

Teachers must be involved in the design, testing and evaluation of AI tools. Policies must prioritize ethics, transparency and equity. That includes regulating how student data is used, ensuring teachers can ascertain algorithmic bias and ethical implications and also protecting teacher discretion.

Third, we need to slow down. The pace of AI innovation is dizzying, but education isn’t a startup. It’s a public good. Policies must be evidence-based and grounded in the lived experiences of those who teach.

Nadia Delanoy receives funding from the University of Calgary.

– ref. We asked teachers about their experiences with AI in the classroom — here’s what they said – https://theconversation.com/we-asked-teachers-about-their-experiences-with-ai-in-the-classroom-heres-what-they-said-265241

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kashif Raza, Postdoctoral Fellow, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia

When Zohran Mamdani campaigned for New York City mayor, he didn’t sound like a typical American politician, speaking only English at his rallies and public appearances.

Instead, he switched between Arabic, Bangla, English, Hindi, Luganda, Spanish and Urdu to connect with diverse communities. He also made appearances on transnational media outlets to discuss issues that crossed borders.

I am a post-doctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, studying the integration patterns of immigrants and how they’re shaped by the intersection of language, ethnicity and migration.

For me, Mamdani’s story is more than a local success. It signals how politics is being reshaped by migration and multilingualism and how language itself has become a foundation of belonging in diverse democracies.

Multilingual politics

Mamdani’s campaign began with a simple but powerful line:

“It’s time to take back our power and unleash the public sector to build housing for the many.”

This message resonated across the city’s working-class neighbourhoods — taxi drivers, nurses, delivery workers and students, many of them immigrants trying to make ends meet. What made it even more effective was how he delivered it: not just in English, but in the many languages New Yorkers speak.

He repeated his call for affordability and fairness in Arabic, Bangla, Urdu-Hindi, and Spanish. His campaign videos and flyers mixed languages the way people do in everyday life, switching easily between English and the languages of home.

This was about more than translation; it was about recognition and connection with people.

New York is one of the most linguistically diverse cities in the world, with more than 800 languages spoken. Nearly 35 per cent of its residents are born outside the United States.

Mamdani understood that voters don’t leave their languages behind when they migrate. They use them to make sense of work, community and politics. By speaking to them in those languages, he showed that their voices mattered in shaping the city’s future.

Political integration

This approach reflects what scholars of migration linguistics — the study of how language and mobility shape one another in the process of migration, settlement and belonging — describe as multilingual political integration.

It is a way migrants connect identity to civic participation. Mamdani’s campaign turned that bridge into a political strategy: one that viewed multilingualism not as an obstacle to democracy, but as its living proof.

It also serves as a quiet reality check on the long-standing “melting pot” ideal in the United States, which assumes immigrants must shed their languages and traditions to blend into a single American identity.

A transnational campaign

Mamdani’s multilingual strategy also reflected the transnational reality of modern migration. His Urdu interview on Pakistan’s Geo News and his criticism of India’s Narendra Modi during conversations with Indian-origin voters in the U.S. blurred the line between domestic and global audiences.

These appearances were not campaign gimmicks; they acknowledged that diaspora communities are shaped by more than one national story.

Migration linguistics helps explain this dynamic. It studies how language practices move across borders and connect places of origin, settlement and diaspora. In Mamdani’s case, multilingual communication created what scholars call transnational publics — shared spaces of conversation that stretch from New York to Karachi and Delhi.

When a politician addresses issues such as Islamophobia, immigration or housing in multiple languages, they are not only appealing to voters at home. They are engaging with a wider world of shared experiences that migration has woven together.

---

Read more:
How Zohran Mamdani’s ‘talent for listening’ spurred him to victory in the New York mayoral election

---

Culture as communication

Language was only part of Mamdani’s strategy. His campaign also used cultural expression — food, music and festivals — as forms of communication.

From Iftar gatherings during Ramadan to Diwali celebrations and South Asian street fairs, these events became spaces of multilingual interaction where taste, sound, and ritual carried political meaning.

Migration linguistics views such practices as intercultural competence: the use of cultural forms to express belonging and solidarity.

Mamdani’s campaign showed that civic participation doesn’t only happen in speeches or debates; it also happens in shared meals, songs and celebrations that remind people they belong to the same city.

Lessons for Canada

Mamdani’s brand of of politics holds lessons for Canada. Since I wrote on this topic earlier this year, immigrant and racialized voters are already changing how campaigns are organized and how communities mobilize.

---

Read more:
How racialized voters are reshaping Canadian politics through digital networks

---

Canada’s largest cities, in particular Toronto and Vancouver, are among the most linguistically diverse in the world. Yet a lot of political outreach still assumes an English- or French-only audience.

Mamdani’s campaign suggests another path. By engaging multilingual voters through their languages, stories and digital networks, politicians can build deeper, more authentic relationships.

It’s time for Canadian politicians to move beyond teleprompters and translators and learn and use minority languages as a genuine way to connect with multilingual voters as they make up a significant portion of the electorate.

Kashif Raza receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada.

– ref. Zohran Mamdani’s win shows how multilingualism bridges divides in diverse democracies – https://theconversation.com/zohran-mamdanis-win-shows-how-multilingualism-bridges-divides-in-diverse-democracies-269232