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July 1, 2025

Why Canada’s Strong Borders Act is as troublesome as Donald Trump’s travel bans

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Benjamin Muller, Professor & Program Coordinator in Migration and Border Studies, King’s University College, Western University

Was it just a coincidence that within days of Canada’s Liberal government announcing Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act, Donald Trump’s administration in the United States released its long anticipated travel ban?

Perhaps. But the timing also highlights the longtime shared border saga between Canada and the U.S. — and should compel Canada to carve its own path.

Like Trump’s 2017 travel ban, his 2025 directives significantly prevent or limit access to the U.S. for citizens from 12 mostly African and Middle Eastern countries, with more possibly on the horizon. It’s likely to face judicial challenges and may not survive for long.

In contrast, Bill C-2 could lead to several significant and broad statutory changes that Canadians will contend with for years to come.

Data privacy concerns

Days before Trump’s announcement, the Canadian government advanced the controversial Strong Borders Act covering a wide swath of proposed legislative changes, from intensified border security measures to more restrictive immigration and asylum policies.

Embedded within the proposed legislation, as Canadian law professor Michael Geist and others have pointed out, are significant risks to digital privacy, along with increased executive authority — also known as “warrantless” powers — without judicial or civilian oversight.

In these respects, the proposed Canadian legislation could be considered more worrisome than Trump’s travel bans.

In the fog of the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and Canada, the focus is on American tariffs and their economic impact. But little attention is being paid to Canada’s longstanding co-ordination and co-operation with the U.S. in terms of border management.

Unfortunately, Canada has a history of appeasing the U.S. on the border. The period following 9/11 is worth noting.

Increased co-ordination post 9/11

Successive Canada-U.S border agreements have brought about significant institutional change and reform. These include the Smart Border Declaration — signed shortly after 9/11 — and Beyond the Border, inked a decade later between the Barack Obama and Stephen Harper governments.

These agreements included greater reliance on biometric and surveillance technology, binational information-sharing and accelerated, robust co-ordinated and co-operative border enforcement (specifically the Shiprider program and the Integrated Border Enforcement Team or IBET).

The early 2000s saw the rise of new institutions such as the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA), along with significant policy changes that included prolific and more robust American pre-clearance of people and goods, and authorizing CBSA agents to carry firearms (which was once controversial).

Frequently, these reforms were in response to American pressure or reactionary U.S. policies. The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), for example, is an American policy that has compelled travellers to produce passports when crossing the U.S. border for almost 20 years.

In contrast to the “elbows up” rhetoric of the last several months, Canada hastily made changes to its border policies.

The narrative of co-operative and collaborative Canada-U.S. border management, however, has not always been as it appeared. Frequently, negotiations and co-operation were difficult, and not without cost to some autonomy in Canada’s border management.

Asylum seekers

In the past year, there have been increasing concerns about the impact of potential increases in asylum claims in Canada because of American policies. Those raising concerns often make reference to Roxham Road, the unofficial border crossing that thrived during the last Trump administration due to a loophole in the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA).

Such gaps in legislation were modestly addressed, including in the proposed Bill C-2, which will require arriving migrants to claim asylum within 14 days of arrival. After that time, claimants will not receive a hearing and be subject to deportation.

It’s troubling to contemplate deporting asylum seekers amid the ongoing deportation spectacle in the U.S. being carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration

Amid renewed American pressures under Trump and a history of border co-operation, it’s not surprising Prime Minister Mark Carney is following his predecessor in trying to appease the U.S. president via Canadian border policy. And because asylum claimants often languish for up to two years in Canada’s immigration and asylum system, it’s clear there are problems.

But that doesn’t preclude the need to think critically about the sweeping powers proposed in Bill C-2.

In particular, enhanced executive powers — in many cases by institutions that have no civilian oversight — must be scrutinized.

Many of these changes are reminiscent of the kind of co-operative — and sometimes coercive — border policies that emerged in the post-9/11 years. It could be argued that Canadians should have expressed “elbows up” responses to American pressures to reimagine our border almost 25 years ago.

Furthermore, these changes serve as reminder that co-operative and co-ordinated management of our border is increasingly “baked in,” and despite tariff rhetoric, that’s unlikely to change dramatically without significant pushback from Canadians.

Revisionist history

It’s worth reflecting on the nostalgic and revisionist accounts of the coercive — not truly co-operative and collaborative — post-9/11 era of border security management, especially in the heat of the ongoing Canada-U.S. trade war.

Canadians should remember they live during a time of deep integration in border management — but Canada can always assert its own interests and marshal its own resources to manage borders and those who cross it.

In the long Canada-U.S. relationship, coercion has often masqueraded as co-operation. There are far fewer coincidences in border policy than we might think, possibly including the timing of the Strong Border Act. But Canada must always evaluate its policies in terms of whether they serve Canadian, not American, interests.

Unlike the Trump administration’s travel bans and deportations, Bill C-2 introduces a wide swath of changes Canadians could grapple with for decades.

Benjamin Muller receives funding from SSHRCC and King’s University College at Western University.

– ref. Why Canada’s Strong Borders Act is as troublesome as Donald Trump’s travel bans – https://theconversation.com/why-canadas-strong-borders-act-is-as-troublesome-as-donald-trumps-travel-bans-258366

July 1, 2025

Computers tracking us, an ‘electronic collar’: Gilles Deleuze’s 1990 Postscript on the Societies of Control was eerily prescient

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Cameron Shackell, Sessional Academic, School of Information Systems, Queensland University of Technology

Our cultural touchstones series looks at influential works.

Gilles Deleuze was one of the most original and imaginative thinkers of postwar France. A lifelong teacher, he spent most of his career at the University of Paris VIII, influencing generations of students but largely shunning the mantle of public intellectual.

His complex, creative books mix philosophy, literature, film and politics – not to give clear answers, but to spark new ways of thinking.

Postscript on the Societies of Control, published 35 years ago in the countercultural L’Autre Journal is Deleuze at his most accessible and prophetic.

Written at a time when the Cold War was ending, computers were becoming more common, and the internet was beginning to connect institutions, the essay describes the emergence of a new kind of society – one not ruled by a single stern voice but by the soft hum of networks.

How societies work

Postscript was written as an update to the work of Deleuze’s contemporary Michel Foucault, who had died in 1984. Deleuze called it a “postscript” not just because of its brevity (it’s only around 2,300 words in English translation) but to highlight he wasn’t refuting Foucault, just building on his work.

A black and white photo of a man in a polo neck jumper. — Gilles Deleuze.
Tintinades/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-NC-SA

From the 18th to early 20th centuries, Foucault had argued, Western societies were “disciplinary societies”. Schools, factories, prisons and hospitals – institutions with walls, schedules, routines and clear expectations – moulded behaviour. People were trained, observed, tested and corrected as they passed from one institution to the next.

But in the late 20th century, Deleuze saw something shifting. He thought the stodgy old disciplinary institutions were “in a generalized crisis” due to technological advances and a new form of capitalism that demanded more flexibility in workers and consumers.

New systems of management and technology were starting to reshape people without sending them through traditional institutions. Deleuze wrote presciently, for example, that “perpetual training tends to replace the school, and continuous control to replace the examination”.

In business, he saw a growing idea of “salary according to merit”, transforming work into “challenges, contests, and highly comic group sessions” – something much at odds with the old model of the standard wage and the assembly line. Traditional government institutions like hospitals and the classic factory were embracing the model of the corporation, driven always by a profit motive and the need for better human tools.

To Deleuze, all this meant people were becoming more “free-floating” – they could be still playing socially useful roles but were being gently steered into them. This greater freedom, however, required a new system to keep everyone in line. He called this “modulation” to underline its dynamic, enveloping nature.

Like nudging, but everywhere

Deleuze described modulation as “a self-deforming cast that will continuously change from one moment to the other”. He meant that people were beginning to live in an environment where everything shape-shifts to encourage or discourage us in the right direction without explicitly putting up walls.

A prime example of how modulation has since become commonplace is nudging – the use of psychological techniques, often subtle and data-driven, to shape people’s behaviour.

Nudging didn’t really exist in 1990, but governments and tech companies use nudges all the time now. We’re nudged to eat healthier, buy, save, recycle, donate. Web sites use “dark patterns” – tricky designs that steer (or nudge) us toward certain choices. Social media feeds use algorithms to exclude us if we say the wrong thing. In fact, entire teams of behavioural scientists operate behind the scenes to manipulate many aspects of our lives.

Nudges can be good and can save us from poor choices, but their newfound moral acceptability (sometimes called libertarian paternalism) is very much a clue that Deleuze’s control society has arrived.

Control in your pocket

Deleuze, who died in 1995, wrote Postscript before the advent of the smartphone, but he foresaw that an “electronic collar” would assume a central role in society. He envisaged a “computer that tracks each person’s position – licit or illicit – and effects a universal modulation.”

Smartphones more than fit the bill. In the old disciplinary ways, they track where we go, what we search for, what we buy, how many steps we take, even how well we sleep. But if we apply Deleuze’s ideas to these phones, detailed surveillance is no longer their most important function. Our phones present and curate options.

In effect, they shape how we see the world. When you scroll through news or social media, for instance, you’re reading about a version of the world built just for you, designed to keep you looking, clicking and reacting – and keep you very finely attuned to what is acceptable or dangerous behaviour.

In Deleuze’s terms, this is pure modulation: not a forceful “No” but a softly spoken, “How about this?” Your phone doesn’t lock you in – it draws you in. It shapes what you see, rewards your cooperation, ignores your silence, and always keeps score. And it does this 24/7. You might unlock it hundreds of times a day. And each time it’s updated to guide your next move more precisely.

At the same time our phones quietly turn us into a set of credentials useful for regulating physical access to workplaces, bank accounts, information: In the societies of control, writes Deleuze, “what is important is no longer either a signature or a number, but a code: the code is a password.”

Data points not people?

Deleuze warned that, in a control society: “Individuals have become ‘dividuals,’ and masses have become samples, data, markets, or ‘banks.’” A dividual to Deleuze is a person transformed into a set of data points and metrics.

You are your credit rating, your search history, your likes and clicks – a different dataset to every institution. Such fragments are used to make decisions about you until they effectively replace you. In fact, for Deleuze a dividual has internalised this treatment and thinks of themselves as a net worth, a mortgage size, a car value – psychological anchors for control.

He illustrates this point with healthcare, predicting a

new medicine ‘without doctor or patient’ that singles out potential sick people and subjects at risk, which in no way attests to individuation.

How many health decisions are now made for us collectively before we ever see a doctor? We should be grateful for advances in public health and epidemiology, but this has certainly impacted our individuality and how we are treated.

Hard to detect

An unsettling part of Deleuze’s perspective is that control doesn’t usually feel like control. It’s often dressed up as convenience, efficiency or progress. You set up internet-linked video cameras because then you can work from home. You agree to long terms and conditions because your banking app won’t work otherwise.

One problem is there are no longer clear barriers we can rail against. As Deleuze said:

In disciplinary societies one was always starting again (from school to the barracks, from the barracks to the factory), while in control societies one is never finished with anything.

Control doesn’t always crush – it can enable. Digital networks bring real freedom, economic possibility, even joy. We move more easily – both mentally and geographically – than ever before. But while we move, it always inside a kind of invisible map shaped by capitalism.

It’s no conspiracy because nobody has the whole map. So it’s difficult to work out exactly what action, if any, to take. As Deleuze concludes: “The coils of a serpent are even more complex than the burrows of a molehill.”

So what can we do?

Postscript doesn’t offer a political program beyond the sardonic comment that:

Many young people strangely boast of being ‘motivated’ […] It’s up to them to discover what they’re being made to serve.

There are ways to resist control. Some people demand more privacy or digital rights. Others opt out selectively – logging off, turning off, refusing to be nudged. Some look to art as a way of resisting its smooth grip. These acts – however small – may offer what Deleuze and his collaborator, the French psychiatrist and philosopher Félix Guattari, called lines of flight: creative ways to move not just against control, but beyond it.

The real message of Postscript, however, is its invitation to consider a timeless perspective. Any society must have a way to make people useful. So, what kind of society do we want? What kinds of restrictions are we willing to live under? And, crucial to this current age, how explicit should control be?

Cameron Shackell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Computers tracking us, an ‘electronic collar’: Gilles Deleuze’s 1990 Postscript on the Societies of Control was eerily prescient – https://theconversation.com/computers-tracking-us-an-electronic-collar-gilles-deleuzes-1990-postscript-on-the-societies-of-control-was-eerily-prescient-254579

July 1, 2025

Coral reefs face an uncertain recovery from the 4th global mass bleaching event – can climate refuges help?

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Noam Vogt-Vincent, Postdoctoral Fellow in Marine Biology, University of Hawaii

The Great Barrier Reef stretches for 1,429 miles just off Australia’s northeastern coast. Auscape/Universal Images Group via Getty Image

Tropical reefs might look like inanimate rock, but these colorful seascapes are built by tiny jellyfish-like animals called corals. While adult corals build solid structures that are firmly attached to the sea floor, baby corals are not confined to their reefs. They can drift with ocean currents over great distances to new locations that might give them a better chance of survival.

The underwater cities that corals construct are home to about a quarter of all known marine species. They are incredibly important for humans, too, contributing at least a trillion dollars per year in ecosystem services, such as protecting coastlines from wave damage and supporting fisheries and tourism.

Unfortunately, coral reefs are among the most vulnerable environments on the planet to climate change.

Since 2023, exceptionally warm ocean water has been fueling the planet’s fourth mass coral bleaching event on record, causing widespread mortality in corals around the world. This kind of harm is projected to worsen considerably over the coming decades as ocean temperatures rise.

A healthy coral reef in American Samoa, left, experiencing coral bleaching due to a severe marine heatwave, center, and eventually dying, right.
The Ocean Agency and Ocean Image Bank., CC BY-NC

I am a marine scientist in Hawaii. My colleagues and I are trying to understand how coral reefs might change in the future, and whether new coral reefs might form at higher latitudes as the tropics become too warm and temperate regions become more hospitable. The results lead us to both good and bad news.

Corals can grow in new areas, but will they thrive?

Baby corals can drift freely with ocean currents, potentially traveling hundreds of miles before settling in new locations. That allows the distribution of corals to shift over time.

Major ocean currents can carry baby corals to temperate seas. If new coral reefs form there as the waters warm, these areas might act as refuges for tropical corals, reducing the corals’ risk of extinction.

Coral reefs made up of many individual coral polyps. — A close-up of double star corals (*Diploastrea heliopora*) off Indonesia.
Bernard DuPont/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Scientists know from the fossil record that coral reef expansions have occurred before. However, a big question remains: Can corals migrate fast enough to keep pace with climate change caused by humans? We developed a cutting-edge simulation to find the answer.

Field and laboratory studies have measured how coral growth depends on temperature, acidity and light intensity. We combined this information with data on ocean currents to create a global simulation that represents how corals respond to a changing environment – including their ability to adapt through evolution and shift their ranges.

Then, we used future climate projections to predict how coral reefs may respond to climate change.

We found that it will take centuries for coral reefs to shift away from the tropics. This is far too slow for temperate seas to save tropical coral species – they are facing severe threats right now and in the coming decades.

How coral reefs form.

Underwater cities in motion?

Under countries’ current greenhouse gas emissions policies, our simulations suggest that coral reefs will decline globally by a further 70% this century as ocean temperatures continue to rise. As bad as that sounds, it’s actually slightly more optimistic than previous studies that predicted losses as high as 99%.

Our simulations suggest that coral populations could expand in a few locations this century, primarily southern Australia, but these expansions may only amount to around 6,000 acres (2,400 hectares). While that might sound a lot, we expect to lose around 10 million acres (4 million hectares) of coral over the same period.

In other words, we are unlikely to see significant new tropical-style coral reefs forming in temperate waters within our lifetimes, so most tropical corals will not find refuge in higher latitude seas.

Even though the suitable water temperatures for corals are forecast to expand poleward by about 25 miles (40 kilometers) per decade, corals would face other challenges in new environments.

Our research suggests that coral range expansion is mainly limited by slower coral growth at higher latitudes, not by dispersal. Away from the equator, light intensity falls and temperature becomes more variable, reducing growth, and therefore the rate of range expansion, for many coral species.

It is likely that new coral reefs will eventually form beyond their current range, as history shows, but our results suggest this may take centuries.

Two fish hide among the spikes of coral. — Fish hide out in the safety of Kingman Reef, in the Pacific Ocean between the Hawaiian Islands and American Samoa. Coral reefs provide protection for many species, particularly young fish.
USFWS, Pacific Islands

Some coral species are adapted to the more challenging environmental conditions at higher latitudes, and these corals are increasing in abundance, but they are much less diverse and structurally complex than their tropical counterparts.

Scientists have used human-assisted migration to try to restore damaged coral reefs by transplanting live corals. However, coral restoration is controversial, as it is expensive and cannot be scaled up globally. Since coral range expansion appears to be limited by challenging environmental conditions at higher latitudes rather than by dispersal, human-assisted migration is also unlikely to help them expand more quickly.

Importantly, these potential higher latitude refuges already have rich, distinct ecosystems. Establishing tropical corals within those ecosystems might disrupt existing species, so rapid expansions might not be a good thing in the first place.

A temperate reef near southern Australia, which could be threatened by expansions of tropical coral species.
Stefan Andrews/Ocean Image Bank, CC BY-NC

No known alternative to cutting emissions

Despite enthusiasm for coral restoration, there is little evidence to suggest that methods like this can mitigate the global decline of coral reefs.

As our study shows, migration would take centuries, while the most severe climate change harm for corals will occur within decades, making it unlikely that subtropical and temperate seas can act as coral refuges.

What can help corals is reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are driving global warming. Our study suggests that reducing emissions at a faster pace, in accordance with the Paris climate agreement, could cut the coral loss by half compared with current policies. That could boost reef health for centuries to come.

This means that there is still hope for these irreplaceable coral ecosystems, but time is running out.

Noam Vogt-Vincent receives funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

– ref. Coral reefs face an uncertain recovery from the 4th global mass bleaching event – can climate refuges help? – https://theconversation.com/coral-reefs-face-an-uncertain-recovery-from-the-4th-global-mass-bleaching-event-can-climate-refuges-help-255804

July 1, 2025

The politics of blame: Accusing immigrants won’t solve Germany’s antisemitism problem

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Oliver Schmidtke, Professor, Director of the Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria

In response to a report on the virulence of antisemitism in Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently cast the blame on attitudes held by immigrants.

Merz stated in a Fox News interview that Germany has “imported antisemitism with the big numbers of migrants we have within the last 10 years.”

Merz is pointing to a real and pressing issue. Yet his emphasis on so-called “imported antisemitism” serves as a convenient diversion from Germany’s persistent failure to confront home-grown antisemitism.

His remarks also risk emboldening those who weaponize antisemitism as a rhetorical tool to fuel anti-immigrant sentiments.

Antisemitism in Germany

Antisemitic incidents in Germany have been on the rise since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza.

According to a survey by the Research and Information Centre on Antisemitism (RIAS), antisemitic occurrences rose by more than 80 per cent in 2023. That year, 4,782 occurrences were documented, the highest number since the organization began tracking such cases in 2017.

However, RIAS’s most recent report found that the primary motive behind antisemitic crimes remained right-wing extremist ideology (48 per cent). It also noted that, since 2023, there has been a marked increase in incidents attributed to “foreign ideology.” These are understood as originating outside Germany and often linked to Islamist or anti-Israel sentiments, which accounted for 31 per cent of cases in 2024.

It should be noted that RIAS’s approach to classifying antisemitism has been subject to controversy, especially with regard to its treatment of criticism of or protest against the Israeli government’s actions.

The ‘imported antisemitism’ narrative

A recent survey of antisemitic attitudes among immigrants in Germany found that such attitudes are more prevalent among Muslim respondents compared to their Christian or religiously unaffiliated counterparts. The study revealed particularly high levels of antisemitism among individuals from the Middle East and North Africa.

Approximately 35 per cent of Muslim respondents — especially those with strong religious convictions and lower levels of formal education — “strongly agreed with classical antisemitic statements.” These statements reflect classical antisemitic tropes, such as attributing too much influence over politics or finance to Jews, accusing Jews of driving the world into disaster or relativizing the Holocaust.

At the same time, there is evidence that immigrants successfully integrating into German society is associated with lower levels of antisemitism.

Yet blaming a rise in antisemitism on “imported” attitudes or “foreign ideologies” signals a crude simplification. Antisemitism has remained prevalent in German society even after the Second World War, and political movements or leaders can easily mobilize it.

Although Holocaust education is mandatory in German schools, knowledge about the Shoah and the legacy of antisemitism remains limited among younger generations. A recent study by the Jewish Claims Conference found that among Germans aged 18 to 29, around 40 per cent were not aware that approximately six million Jews were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators.

According to a 2023 MEMO survey, more than 50 per cent of 14- to 16-year-old students in Germany did not know what Auschwitz was.

Blaming immigrants for challenges in Germany’s memory culture oversimplifies a deeper issue: the growing difficulty of making the country’s dominant remembrance — centred on the horrors of the Nazi dictatorship and the Holocaust — politically meaningful and emotionally resonant for younger generations.

For many young Germans, the memory of the Holocaust feels increasingly remote, lacking the emotional immediacy that vanishing eyewitnesses once provided.

This problem is further exacerbated by the absence of innovative, impactful teaching capable of conveying the continued relevance of Holocaust memory and its political message.

In a 2023 article, American journalist Masha Gessen highlighted how Holocaust remembrance in Germany was becoming an elite-driven ritual, one that risks preventing a meaningful connection between its moral imperatives and today’s political realities.

The threat from Alternative for Germany

At the same time, the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party poses a direct threat to Germany’s culture of remembrance.

The AfD has made it a central objective to challenge the primacy of Holocaust memory, calling for a U-turn in Germany’s remembrance culture.

Leading party members have labelled Holocaust memorials “monuments of shame,” reflecting the party’s broader effort to promote nationalist reinterpretations of history.

Furthermore, the AfD’s staunchly anti-immigrant stance exposes a fundamental flaw in the imported antisemitism narrative. Across Europe, populist right-wing movements have increasingly mobilized anti-Muslim rhetoric under the banner of defending so-called “Judeo-Christian values,” even as they simultaneously draw on classic antisemitic tropes targeting “globalist elites” and conspiratorial power structures.

This use of Jewish identity as a rhetorical weapon against Islam, while perpetuating antisemitism in other forms, reveals the deep contradictions and opportunism underlying imported antisemitism claims.

Blaming Muslim immigrants for the rise of antisemitism offers German political leaders a convenient excuse for their own failure to confront entrenched antisemitic beliefs within German society.

In addition, Holocaust remembrance can sometimes exclude immigrants. For example, Germany recently added questions about the Holocaust and Nazi crimes to its citizenship test, committing newcomers to its memory culture.

Research shows this kind of policy can have unintended effects. It can make immigrants feel excluded if they are seen as not fully sharing in “our” nation and “our” history. Given the universalist values it is meant to embody, the commemoration of the Holocaust can also serve to alienate immigrants from full cultural citizenship.

Framing antisemitism primarily as an imported problem risks strengthening those forces that actively seek to undermine and ignore Germany’s confrontation with its Nazi past.

Instead, what is needed is a more nuanced approach, one that bridges the divide between antiracist and anti-antisemitism efforts, and aligns more faithfully with the moral and political commitments that this collective memory is meant to uphold.

Oliver Schmidtke receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. The politics of blame: Accusing immigrants won’t solve Germany’s antisemitism problem – https://theconversation.com/the-politics-of-blame-accusing-immigrants-wont-solve-germanys-antisemitism-problem-258705

July 1, 2025

Brazil’s ‘bill of devastation’ pushes Amazon towards tipping point

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Philip Fearnside, Biólogo e pesquisador titular (Departamento de Ecologia), Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA)

A bill essentially abolishing Brazil’s environmental licensing system is just days away from likely passage by the country’s National Congress. Despite the environmental discourse of President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, what is known as the “bill of devastation” (PL 2159/2021) apparently has his tacit approval. Even if Lula vetoes the bill, anti-environmental voting blocks in the National Congress have more than the 60% in each house needed to override a veto.

The “bill of devastation” has been promoted as relieving “low impact” projects of unnecessary bureaucracy, but it is very much more than this. First, it is for both “low” and “medium” impact projects, two categories that are vaguely defined, allowing projects with major impacts to be benefitted. The bill applies to licensing at both the state and federal levels, and at the state level there is expected to be a “race to the bottom” as states compete to attract investments by loosening environmental restrictions.

The “medium impact” category is a misnomer, as it includes most mining projects such as the mine tailings dams that broke in 2015 at Mariana and in 2019 at Brumadinho to create two of Brazil’s worst environmental disasters.

Under the bill, these “low” and “medium” impact projects would be licensed by what is known as “self-licensing,”. This eliminates the need for an environmental impact assessment, public hearings and specification of compensatory measures in the event of accidents or other impacts. Basically, this self-declared statement consists of checking a series of boxes on an online form.

Bypassing any public or committee debate, at the last minute before the Senate’s plenary vote the bill was modified with an amendment that increased its environmental impact even more. The amendment created a “Special Environmental License” that would allow any project considered to be “strategic” to have an accelerated approval process, regardless of the magnitude of its impacts.

The amendment is believed to be specifically intended to facilitate the controversial mouth-of-the-Amazon oil project, which has major potential impacts both from potentially uncontrollable oil spills and from its impact on climate change.

Brazil’s imminent climate disaster

Global climate and the Amazon forest are both approaching tipping points where the process of collapse escapes from human control. These imminent disasters are intertwined: if the Amazon forest were to collapse it would release more than enough greenhouse gases to push global temperatures beyond the point where human society loses the option to contain climate change by cutting emissions to zero, and if global temperatures rise uncontrollably, it would soon push the Amazon forest to collapse.

The Amazon forest is on the verge of tipping points in terms of temperature, the ongoing increase in dry season length, the percentage of forest cleared and a combination of various climatic and direct anthropogenic impacts.

The loss of the Amazon forest that would result from crossing any of these tipping points would, among other impacts, sacrifice the forest’s vital role in recycling water.

A volume of water greater than the Amazon River’s total flow is released as water vapor by the leaves of the trees, providing rainfall that not only maintains Amazon forest but also maintains agriculture and city water supplies in other parts of Brazil and in neighboring countries. The water vapor is transported by winds known as “flying rivers” to São Paulo, the World’s fourth largest city, which depends on this water supply.

Amazon destruction

Given these catastrophic prospects, Brazil’s government should be acting decisively to halt the country’s greenhouse gas emissions and to lead the World in combatting climate change. These necessities are interrelated, as effective leadership is done through example and Brazil cannot continue to merely exhort other countries to reduce their emissions when its domestic decisions are acting to increase global warming. This includes the “bill of devastation”.

Rapidly phasing out fossil fuel use is fundamental to containing global warming. The amount by which human society must reduce its emissions and the trajectory in time that this reduction must follow are determined by analysis of the best available data and climate models.

The “Global Stocktake” by the Climate Convention, released at COP-28 in 2023, showed that anthropogenic emissions must decline by 43% by 2030 compared to 2023, and by 84% by 2050 to stay within the limit currently agreed under the Paris Agreement of 1.5 ºC above the pre-industrial average global temperature.

This limit represents a tipping point both for the global climate system and for the Amazon forest. Above this point there is a sharp increase in the annual probability of uncontrollable feedbacks driving the system to a catastrophic shift or collapse.

The mouth-of-the-Amazon project is critical. A massive auction of drilling rights, both onshore and offshore, is scheduled for 17 June, including 47 blocks in the mouth of the Amazon River.

Environmental approval of the first “experimental” well (FZA-M-59) is viewed as the key to international oil companies being willing to bid on these blocks. The head of the Brazilian licensing agency (IBAMA) has been under intense pressure to approve the project.

Oil project

Within the licensing debate, the focus is almost entirely on whether Petrobras has the infrastructure and personnel to mount a rescue operation for marine wildlife in the event of an oil spill, rather than the more basic question of whether a leak could be plugged if it should occur.

Unfortunately, there are strong indications that a leak could not be plugged for months or years, as the site has double the 1.5-km water depth at the Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico that spilled uncontrollably for five months in 2010, and the ocean currents are much stronger and more complex in the mouth of the Amazon.

Petrobras constantly brags about its long experience with offshore oil extraction, but neither Petrobras nor any other company has plugged a leak at a location with the depth and complexity of the mouth-of-the-Amazon site.

Containing global warming is inconsistent with opening new oil fields due to the economic logic of these projects, which is different from the economics of continued extraction of existing oilfields. This is what led the International Energy Agency (IEA) to recommend that no new oil or gas fields be opened anywhere in the World.

In the case of the mouth of the Amazon project, the expectation is that it would take five years to begin commercial production and another five years to pay for the investment; since no one will want to stop with zero profit, the project implies extracting petroleum for many years after that – far beyond the time when the World must stop using oil as fuel.

Petrobras claims that the mouth-of-the-Amazon project and other planned new oilfields are needed for Brazil’s “energy security” to guarantee that Brazilians will not lack fuel for their vehicles.

The falsity of this argument is obvious from the fact that Brazil currently exports over half of the oil it extracts, and this percentage is expected to rise with the planned expansion. The reserves in Brazil’s existing oilfields are far greater than what the country can consume before fossil-fuel use must cease. In other words, the expansion of oil extraction is purely a matter of money.

Another argument promoted by Petrobras and by President Lula is that the oil revenue is needed to pay for Brazil’s energy transition. While the energy transition must indeed be paid for, it should have a guaranteed place in Brazil annual budget, like health and education, and not be treated as something optional that depends on windfall financial gains.

President Lula’s sleepwalk

President Lula apparently lacks understanding of Brazil’s suicidal course towards a climate catastrophe. He has surrounded himself with proponents of projects with enormous climatic consequences, such as his minister of transportation who presses for Highway BR-319 and his minister of mines and energy and the president of Petrobras who push for the mouth-of-the-Amazon and other new oil and gas projects.

Clearly, Lula does not listen to his minister of environment and climate change on these issues. He lives in a “disinformation space,” to use the term coined by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinski to describe Donald Trump. The question of whether President Lula will awake from his sleepwalk before COP-30 in November is critical, as this is his opportunity to assume global leadership on climate change. Although there is no indication that this is likely, efforts to penetrate his disinformation space must continue.

Philip Fearnside receives funding from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), the Amazonas State Research Support Foundation (FAPEAM), and the Brazilian Research Network on Global Climate Change (Rede Clima).

– ref. Brazil’s ‘bill of devastation’ pushes Amazon towards tipping point – https://theconversation.com/brazils-bill-of-devastation-pushes-amazon-towards-tipping-point-259027

July 1, 2025

Canadian international relations experts share their views on global politics and Canada’s role

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Anessa L. Kimball, Professor of Political Science; Director, Centre for International Security, ESEI, Université Laval

A survey of Canadian international relations professors has found they disagree on how to respond to potential Chinese aggression against Taiwan and which global regions will matter most to Canada in the future.

For the past 20 years, the Teaching, Research and International Policy (TRIP) survey has asked university professors about how they teach international relations and what they think about global affairs. Originally based in the United States, the survey expanded to Canada in 2006 and is now conducted regularly in many countries.

The Canadian faculty survey was conducted from March 5 to July 12, 2024. Of the 109 who participated, most held permanent academic positions, including 22 full professors, 31 associate professors and six emeritus professors.

Participants were asked to agree or disagree with statements about global politics. Seventy-five experts agreed that states are the main players in global politics, but there was less agreement on the importance of domestic politics.

Most felt that international institutions help bring order to the chaotic global system. However, whether globalization has made people better off — even if there are some losers — divided experts, with 21 believing no one is better off due to globalization while two-thirds believed the opposite.

Major themes

When it came to more critical or less mainstream ideas — such as whether major international relations theories are rooted in racist assumptions — opinions were split.

More than 50 agreed, but more than a third disagreed, and many gave neutral responses. Disagreement over the role of racism in shaping world politics highlights the difficulty of decolonizing international relations and incorporating post-colonial perspectives — particularly when trying to understand complex “failed cases” like United Nations peacekeeping efforts in Haiti.

Professors were also asked where they get their international news. Most rely on major newspapers, international media and internet sources.

When asked which world region is strategically most important for Canada today, nearly half — or 43 of 97 experts opting to respond to the question — chose North America (excluding Mexico); in other words, the United States. Sixteen selected the Arctic and another 16 chose East Asia.

Very few picked regions like the Middle East, Europe or Russia. Looking ahead 20 years, 10 experts shifted their answer from North America to the Arctic.

Views on China and Taiwan, and Justin Trudeau

Experts were asked what Canada should do if China attacks Taiwan. Most supported non-military responses: 72 supported sanctions and 69 supported taking in refugees.

About half supported sending weapons or banning Chinese goods. Fewer supported cyberattacks (18), sending troops (15) or a no-fly zone (14).

Surprisingly, six said Canada should launch military action against China.

Justin Trudeau was prime minister when the survey was conducted. When asked about his performance, 50 per cent rated him poorly or very poorly, 30 per cent were neutral and only a small minority rated him positively.

Key takeaways

Canadian international relations professors don’t always agree, but a few trends stand out.

Despite recent government focus on the Arctic in terms of its Our North, Strong and Free policy, many professors still view the U.S. as Canada’s most important strategic region. East Asia drew some attention, but few see it growing in importance.

With a new government under Prime Minister Mark Carney, there may be opportunities to improve on areas where Trudeau was seen as weak by respondents to the survey.

For example, despite having developed a strategy for the Indo-Pacific region, vital Canadian trade and maritime security interests were minimized by the previous Liberal government. Carney could therefore contemplate expanding Canada’s maritime assets, improving its artificial intelligence and cybersecurity capacity and investing in digital infrastructure and quantum computing.

Carney had pledged to fulfil Canada’s commitment to NATO’s target of two per cent of GDP spent on defence, saying Canada will meet the threshold by the end of 2025.

However, Canada will still lag behind. NATO is calling on allies to invest five per cent of GDP in defence, comprising 3.5 per cent on core defence spending as well as 1.5 per cent of GDP per year on defence and security-related investment, including in infrastructure and resilience.

Canada’s 2024 GDP was $2.515 trillion, which means a five per cent defence investment of nearly $125 billion annually would have accounted for more than a quarter of a federal budget (which was under $450 billion in 2024-2025).

Canada, a founding NATO member, leads a multinational brigade in Latvia and supports Ukraine in other ways.

Ukraine seems on an irreversible path towards NATO membership. Though 69 per cent of respondents supported NATO membership for Ukraine, only 44 per cent felt it was likely. Though the U.S. tariff crisis attracts attention, some experts are increasingly looking to the Arctic to understand Canada’s strategic interests — a trend sure to be reflected in future surveys of Canadian international relations experts.

Anessa L. Kimball does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Canadian international relations experts share their views on global politics and Canada’s role – https://theconversation.com/canadian-international-relations-experts-share-their-views-on-global-politics-and-canadas-role-257949

July 1, 2025

Canada’s ‘jail not bail’ trend: 4 ways to support victims

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Carolyn Yule, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Guelph

Tough-on-crime rhetoric is reshaping bail laws to correct a perceived imbalance that “tips the scales in favour of the criminals against the victims.”

But do these changes reflect what victims actually want and need?

We argue that victims are positioned as both “sword and shield” in bail reform debates — as a sword, to advocate for more restrictive laws, and as a shield, to defend those laws from criticism.

The appeal of ‘jail not bail’

Victims have been a central focus of those arguing in favour of changes to the bail system as they suggest a need to “crack down with tougher rules” to “protect victims” and to stop turning “loose the most violent, rampant criminals into our communities to destroy our families.”

These concerns culminated in the passage of the federal government’s Bill C-48, which introduced additional reverse-onus provisions — shifting the burden onto the accused to demonstrate why they should be released as opposed to the Crown — in cases involving weapons and repeat intimate partner violence.

Largely absent from these discussions is the possibility that more restrictive measures may actually have negative consequences for victims.

In cases of intimate partner violence, for instance, dual charging policies — when both parties involved in a domestic incident are charged with an offence, even when one person may be primarily the victim and the other primarily the aggressor — risks criminalizing and incarcerating women pre-trial. These victims are also disproportionately Indigenous, Black and racialized. This risks deepening systemic inequalities rather than providing meaningful protection for survivors.

Furthermore, victims may hesitate to call the police, knowing that doing so may result in indeterminate detention before trial. Expanding reverse-onus provisions could also lead to false guilty pleas to avoid pre-trial detention.

Politicizing crime victims

While media coverage on victims’ experiences at bail hearings is emotionally compelling and expedient, it does not necessarily reflect what victims want with any accuracy.

Certainly, some victims view the bail system as a slap in the face. Others call for a stronger social safety net to address the root causes of crime.

Our preliminary research exploring how victims are presented in news media amid bail proceedings supports other evidence that victims’ voices are often used strategically by politicians and lobbyists to amplify concerns about public safety.

News media can be an effective tool to provide education about the causes and consequences of victimization. When it comes to bail, however, victims are often characterized as “ideal types” — people who were subjected to severe violence at the hands of a stranger while engaging in “respectable” activities at the time of the offence.

In reality, victims represent a diverse group, with a wide range of needs, identities and experiences that are not always captured in media coverage or political debates.

What do victims really need at bail hearings?

Prior research focuses on the rights of the accused concerning bail reform, yet pre-trial decisions are a pivotal moment for crime victims. They can determine whether those accused of crimes are detained or released with conditions.

The Canadian Victims Bill of Rights stipulates victims have the right to be informed of case matters, to express their views and to have their perspectives considered at all stages of the legal process, including at bail. During bail proceedings, justices must record that they have considered victim safety and security when imposing conditions, and victims may receive a copy of a bail order upon request.

In practice, however, victims are rarely consulted on how the release of an accused may affect their safety, and are often left unaware of bail outcomes. That’s because there’s no legal requirement for police or Crown attorneys to inform them.

While programs are available to support victims during the pre-trial phase — such as those offered by Victims Services and Victim/Witness Assistance — access can vary widely across jurisdictions.

4 ways to support victims’ needs at bail

We offer four strategies to create more responsive and equitable bail processes to better support victims:

Better understand victims’ needs: Victims have diverse perspectives and differing priorities regarding how to protect their safety, and their voices deserve to be meaningfully included in decision-making processes.
Uphold victims’ rights: Protecting the rights of the accused at bail is not incompatible with upholding victims’ rights. Access to information and communication concerning bail decisions should be better prioritized to position victims to undertake informed safety planning.
Invest in victim resources: Dedicated and sustained funding for community-based supports will directly enhance the safety and well-being of victims, including access to social services, advocacy and legal resources, as well as counselling.
Address the causes of crime: Long-term victim and community safety depends on addressing underlying causes of crime like poverty, mental health, addiction, trauma and systemic discrimination.

Systemic reform needed

Throughout the criminal legal system, victims’ voices are frequently ignored, disbelieved or dismissed. Too often, victims are excluded from the very policy decisions made in their name.

While high-profile bail cases tend to dominate media coverage, policy on criminal and legal matters must be guided by evidence, not headlines.

Without broader systemic reform, legislation will remain an important but insufficient tool for upholding victims’ rights and community safety.

Carolyn Yule receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Kaitlin Humer, Laura MacDiarmid, and Sophia Lindstrom do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Canada’s ‘jail not bail’ trend: 4 ways to support victims – https://theconversation.com/canadas-jail-not-bail-trend-4-ways-to-support-victims-258365