Category: English

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Elliot Goodell Ugalde, PhD Candidate, Political Economy, Queen’s University, Ontario

When OpenAI’s Sam Altman told reporters in San Francisco earlier this year that the AI sector is in a bubble, the American tech market reacted almost instantly.

Combined with the fact that 95 per cent of AI pilot projects fail, traders treated his remark as a broader warning. Although Altman was referring specifically to private startups rather than publicly traded giants, some appear to have interpreted it as an industry-wide assessment.

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel sold his Nvidia holdings, for instance, while American investor Michael Burry (of The Big Short fame) has made million-dollar bets that companies like Palantir and Nvidia will drop in value.

What Altman’s comment really exposes is not only the fragility of specific firms but the deeper tendency Prussian philosopher Karl Marx predicted: the problem of surplus capital that can no longer find profitable outlets in production.

Marx’s theory of crisis

The future of AI is not in question. Like the internet after the dot-com crash, the technology will endure. What is in question is where capital will flow once AI equities stop delivering the speculative returns they have promised over the past few years.

That question takes us directly back to Marx’s analysis of crises driven by over-accumulation. Marx argued that an economy becomes unstable when the mass of accumulated capital can no longer be profitably reinvested.

An overproduction of capital, he explained, occurs whenever additional investment fails to generate new surplus value. When surplus capital cannot profitably be absorbed through the production of goods, it is displaced into speculative outlets.

Tech investments mask economic weakness

Years of low interest rates and pandemic-era liquidity have swollen corporate balance sheets. Much of that liquidity has entered the technology sector, concentrating in the so-called “Magnificent Seven” — Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. Without these firms, market performance would be negative.

This does not signal technological dynamism; it reflects capital concentrated in a narrow cluster of overvalued assets, functioning as “money thrown into circulation without a material basis in production” that circulates without any grounding in real economic activity.

The consequence of this is that less investment reaches the “real economy”, which fuels economic stagnation and the cost-of-living crisis, both of which remain obscured by the formal metric of GDP.

How AI became the latest fix

Economic geographer David Harvey extends Marx’s insight through the idea of the “spatio-temporal fix,” which refers to the way capital temporarily resolves stagnation by either pushing investment into the future or expanding into new territories.

Over-accumulation generates surpluses of labour, productive capacity and money capital, which cannot be absorbed without loss. These surpluses are then redirected into long-term projects that defer crises into new spaces that open fresh possibilities for extraction.

The AI boom functions as both a temporal and a spatial fix. As a temporal fix, it offers investors claims on future profitability that may never arrive — what Marx called “fictitious capital.” This is wealth that shows up on balance sheets despite having little basis in the real economy rooted in the production of goods.

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Read more:
Yes, there is an AI investment bubble – here are three scenarios for how it could end

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Spatially, the expansion of data centres, chip manufacturing sites and mineral extraction zones requires enormous physical investment. These projects absorb capital while depending on new territories, new labour markets and new resource frontiers.

Yet as Altman’s admission suggests, and as U.S. President Donald Trump’s protectionist measures complicate global trade, these outlets are reaching their limits.

The costs of speculative capital

The consequences of over-accumulation extend far beyond firms and investors. They are experienced socially, not abstractly. Marx explained that an overproduction of capital corresponds to an overproduction of the means of production and necessities of life that cannot be used at existing rates of exploitation.

In other words, stagnant purchasing power prevents capital from being valorized at the pace it is being produced. As profitability declines, the economy resolves the imbalance by destroying the livelihoods of workers and households whose pensions are tied to equities.

History offers stark examples. The dot-com crash wiped out small investors and concentrated power in surviving firms. The 2008 financial crisis displaced millions from their homes while financial institutions were rescued.

Today, large asset managers are already hedging against potential turbulence. Vanguard, for instance, has shifted significantly toward fixed income.

Speculation drives growth

The AI bubble is primarily a symptom of structural pressures rather than purely a technological event. In the early 20th century, Marxist economist Rosa Luxemburg questioned where the continually increasing demand required for expanded reproduction would come from.

Her answer echoes Marx and Harvey: when productive outlets shrink, capital moves either outward or into speculation. The U.S. increasingly chooses the latter.

Corporate spending on AI infrastructure now contributes more to GDP growth than household consumption, an unprecedented inversion that shows how much growth is being driven by speculative investment rather than productive expansion.

This dynamic pulls down the rate of profit, and when the speculative flow reverses, contraction will follow.

Tariffs tighten the squeeze on capital

Financial inflation has intensified as the traditional pressure valves that once allowed capital to move into new physical or geographic markets have narrowed.

Tariffs, export controls on semiconductors and retaliatory trade measures have narrowed the global space available for relocation. Since capital cannot readily escape the structural pressures of the domestic economy, it increasingly turns to financial tools that postpone losses by rolling debt forward or inflating asset prices; mechanisms that ultimately heighten fragility when the reckoning comes.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s openness to interest rate cuts signals a renewed turn toward cheap credit. Lower borrowing costs let capital paper over losses and pump up fresh speculative cycles.

Marx captured this logic in his analysis of interest-bearing capital, where finance generates claims on future production “above and beyond what can be realized in the form of commodities.”

The result is that households are pushed to take on more debt than they can manage, effectively swapping a crisis of stagnation for a crisis of consumer credit.

Bubbles and social risk

If the AI bubble bursts when governments have limited room to shift investment internationally and the economy is propped up by increasingly fragile credit, the consequences could be serious.

Capital will not disappear, but will instead concentrate in bond markets and credit instruments inflated by a U.S. central bank eager to cut interest rates. This does not avert crisis; it merely transfers the costs downward.

Bubbles are not accidents, but recurring mechanisms for absorbing surplus capital. If Trump’s protectionism ensures that spatial outlets continue to close and temporal fixes rely on ever riskier leverage, the system moves toward a cycle of asset inflation, collapse and renewed state intervention.

AI will survive, but the speculative bubble surrounding it is a sign of a deeper structural problem — the cost of which, when finally realized, will fall most heavily on the working class.

Elliot Goodell Ugalde 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. The AI bubble isn’t new — Karl Marx explained the mechanisms behind it nearly 150 years ago – https://theconversation.com/the-ai-bubble-isnt-new-karl-marx-explained-the-mechanisms-behind-it-nearly-150-years-ago-270663

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Tyler Eddy, Research Scientist, Fisheries & Marine Institute, Memorial University of Newfoundland

In June 2024, the Canadian government lifted the moratorium on northern cod fishing in Newfoundland and Labrador after 32 years. The decision was controversial because cod numbers had not recovered since they collapsed in the early 1990s.

The collapse of Atlantic cod stocks in Newfoundland and Labrador had a huge impact on the economic and social fabric of the province. The subsequent fishing moratorium in 1992 put nearly 30,000 people in the province out of work.

Several explanations have been put forward for the stalled cod recovery, including environmental conditions, historical overfishing and prey availability.

Another explanation has identified predation by harp seals as the reason cod numbers have remained low. However, given the severity of historical overfishing that occurred, Atlantic cod population growth may be impaired by a number of factors.

The Northwest Atlantic harp seal population was estimated at 4.4 million in 2024, the second-largest seal population in the world. Fishermen have long been concerned about the amount of fish that harp seals consume. However, a 2014 Fisheries and Oceans Canada study concluded that harp seals do not strongly impact the northern cod stock.

The concerns of fishermen about the impact of seals on fish stocks were heard by the Canadian government. In September 2023, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans announced funding for independent seal science. It was through this funding opportunity that I recruited postdoctoral fellow Pablo Vajas and MSc student Hannah West to dive deeper into the issue.

Historical overfishing

The magnitude and duration of overfishing increase the time fish stocks need to recover. By 1993, northern cod had declined by 99 per cent of its historical biomass, while the other Newfoundland Atlantic cod stocks declined by 77 per cent to 95 per cent. During the fishing moratorium on the offshore fishing fleet, inshore and recreational fisheries continued to operate, but fisheries catches were very low.

Capelin, a small forage fish that is important prey for cod and other predators, is linked to cod population growth and is included in the northern cod stock assessment. Capelin also collapsed in the 1990s and has not recovered to pre-collapse levels, limiting ecosystem productivity. It remains unknown why capelin has not recovered.

Do harp seals eat more than fisheries catch?

Harp seals eat a range of items — their diet varies by prey availability, season, location and time. In our recently published study, we compared diet estimates from stomach content analyses from 7,710 harp seals as well as laboratory analyses of muscle tissue using fatty acids and stable isotopes.

In general, our findings told a consistent story: harp seals are generalists that eat a range of prey, including American plaice, Arctic cod, Atlantic cod, Atlantic herring, capelin, flounder, redfish, sand lance, shrimp, squid and zooplankton. We incorporated these results into a food-web model of predator and prey interactions to calculate the total harp seal consumption of prey and their contribution to mortality. We compared these consumption and mortality rates to those from fisheries.

Our analysis revealed that harp seals consume a higher biomass of shared target species than caught by fisheries. Harp seal consumption rates were 24 times higher than fisheries catch rates for Atlantic cod, Greenland halibut and American plaice from 2018 to 2020.

We also found that harp seals caused 17 times more deaths of shared target species than fishing did. Stock assessments have reported elevated levels of northern cod natural mortality since the collapse. Consistently, our research found that the impact of harp seals on other species in the ecosystem has increased since the fish stocks collapsed.

The harp seal population has declined by 41 per cent since 1998, when it peaked at 7.5 million. This has happened while the number of harp seals harvested for their meat and pelts has also declined. Harp seals have recently been listed as near-threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature due to Arctic sea ice loss.

Marine ecosystems in a changing world

Newfoundland and Labrador’s marine ecosystems are highly dynamic. Since the cod collapse, ecosystems have been less productive, leading to a declining harp seal population and limiting the recovery of collapsed fish stocks.

Despite the decline in harp seal numbers, our findings show that harp seal predation remains an important factor that should be included in Atlantic cod stock assessments.

It should be noted that climate change is an additional factor affecting marine ecosystems and fisheries. More than ever, it is crucial to track the productivity of fish stocks and marine ecosystems to achieve sustainable resource management.

Tyler Eddy receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Sustainable Fisheries Science Fund, and the Canada First Research Excellence Fund.

– ref. Are harp seals responsible for the stalled recovery of Atlantic cod? – https://theconversation.com/are-harp-seals-responsible-for-the-stalled-recovery-of-atlantic-cod-269337

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jonah Corne, Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Theatre, Film and Media, University of Manitoba

Even as it claims to champion the stories of global injustice, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) has struggled, if not refused, to meaningfully acknowledge Palestine for more than a decade.

Its newly announced exhibition to launch in the summer of 2026 — Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present — marks a significant reversal for an institution that has often been criticized for its silences.

The omission of Palestinian history dates all the way back to before the museum’s official opening in Winnipeg in 2014, when Palestinian-Canadian community advocate Rana Abdulla replied, fruitlessly, to the museum’s call for suggestions for content.

After years of continued advocacy from the Palestinian community in Winnipeg and across Canada — and in the midst of so much tragedy and what a UN commission of inquiry has called genocidal violence in Gaza — the announcement comes as a remarkable sliver of good news.

The development is also surprising because the museum, Canada’s first federal one located outside the nation’s capital, has historically had difficulties with the living legacy of settler colonialism — a key issue in discussions about Palestine — in Canada.

Prior to construction, the museum was criticized for failing to provide sufficient funds for a full excavation of the archeological heritage on the sacred Indigenous site where the museum is located. Until the stance was reversed in 2019, the museum had resisted describing the experience of Indigenous Peoples in Canada in terms of genocide.

Naming Palestinian dispossession

Bringing exhibition-level attention to the massive dispossession of Palestinians that occurred by the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 — an event known as al Nakba (Arabic for “the catastrophe”) — emerges as an ethically and educationally responsible move for the museum. It also signals a shift under CEO Isha Khan, who came on board in 2020 in the wake of the museum struggling to present an accountable and consistent message of human rights.

Despite its recent recognition of Palestinian statehood, the Canadian government has repeatedly resisted calls to grant the Nakba, and by extension Nakba Day, official acknowledgement. Neither has the Nakba had a place in the curricula of Canadian schools.

The CMHR’s Nakba exhibit therefore stands as an important repositioning in relation to these concerning national absences.

Of course, we don’t know how the exhibit — slated to involve oral histories, art and artifacts — will turn out. But judging only the title, the naming of the Nakba is immensely consequential and allows an opening to inquire further into the constellation of terms — dispossession, ethnic cleansing, settler colonialism, occupation and genocide — that cluster around it.

Meanwhile, the word “uprooted” to describe what befell 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 is, if perhaps muted, not inaccurate.

Holocaust memory and Nakba denial

Pro-Israel groups have predictably condemned the museum’s announcement of the exhibition in statements consistent with a trend of Nakba denial in mainstream pro-Israel discourse.

What underpins such a trend, implicitly or explicitly, is a Zionist narrative that sees the Holocaust as both radically unique and as the ultimate justification for the founding of the Israeli state.

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Accordingly, to acknowledge the Nakba introduces a perceived impermissible rival to the Holocaust for suffering and remembrance, as well as a complicating factor that casts the founding of the Israeli state as something other than a strictly unimpeachable redemption for the Nazi genocide against Jews.

Attending to the Nakba requires that we see the creation of Israel as entailing a radical — and violent — escalation in a project of settler colonialism that, by 1948, had been underway for several decades, having received decisive momentum under the auspices of British colonialism from the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

This history deserves to be recognized, first and foremost for the sake of Palestinians living in and outside of Palestine who continue to endure the Nakba’s rippling aftermath. In addition, historical ignorance and amnesia are detrimental for the well-being of a society. Not to mention, the CMHR has an extensive and permanent Holocaust gallery.

This new exhibit might also help us to consider the ways in which the Holocaust and the Nakba can be thought of in constructive relation to one another. Such co-thinking is part of the project of an edited collection of essays, The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History, where in the foreword, the late Lebanese intellectual, novelist and longtime activist for Palestinian liberation, Elias Khoury, articulates a compelling moral argument.

Khoury movingly affirms:

“The Holocaust is my responsibility as a member of the human race, despite it having been a product of European fascism. As such, my deeply ingrained moral duty is to be an active participant in the struggle against antisemitism as well as all other forms of racism anywhere in the world. This path leads me to continue the struggle against the Zionist colonialist occupation project in Palestine. Two wrongs do not make a right, one crime does not wipe out another, and racism is not remedied by counterracism.”

Khoury’s argument is consistent with what I have come to extract from the well-known mantra of Holocaust education, “never again.” I take the mantra’s lack of a specified referent as an open space where, without the burden of exact equation-drawing, one can speak out against racist, oppressive, eliminationist logics in any form that they may appear.

Historical accuracy and relevancy

Something must also be said about the claims by pro-Israel groups that the CMHR Nakba exhibition will be invalidatingly one-sided because of inattention to the Jewish (Mizrahi and Sephardi) displacement from Middle Eastern and North African countries in the wake of 1948.

The larger regional repercussions of the founding of the Israeli state bear no pertinence to the Palestinians’ own experience of dispossession: the focus of the exhibition and a topic that has been historically overlooked.

Moreover, the exoduses that occurred in Iraq, Yemen, Morocco and elsewhere were not perpetrated by Palestinians, so the call for “balance” in considering the Nakba vis-à-vis Mizrahi and Sephardi refugeehood is a non-starter.

In the face of such baseless attempts to cast doubt on the credibility of the exhibit, I hope that the CMHR will hold the line.

With its long overdue decision to engage substantially with Palestinians, who continue to endure a world-shaking crisis of displacement, occupation and genocide, the institution sets out on a crucial journey towards reestablishing its own credibility and fulfilling its ambitious aim of serving as a leading, capaciously inclusive space for exploring and educating about human rights.

Jonah Corne 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. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights finally grapples with the Nakba – https://theconversation.com/the-canadian-museum-for-human-rights-finally-grapples-with-the-nakba-270351

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Celeste Pedri-Spade, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, McGill University

Years ago, when I first began researching Indigenous identity theft — something that intrigued me intellectually and impacted me personally — I remember trying to explain it to my Indigenous family members back home in northwestern Ontario.

We are Anishinaabeg and member citizens of Nezaadiikaang (Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation).

The women in my family responded with humour, seeing the absurdity of it all. My mother laughed and said: “Geez, I remember when not even Natives wanted to be Native … whatever happened to those times!”

Her comment highlighted a major shift in how desirable Indigenous identity has become, and how false claims tend to rise after events that draw public attention to the harms settler states have caused our families and communities.

This desirability is, indeed, heightened as educational institutions engage in processes of Indigenization and seek to recruit Indigenous people into faculty and administrative roles that assist them in advancing their reconciliation plans.

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Read more:
Stolen identities: What does it mean to be Indigenous? Don’t Call Me Resilient Podcast EP 8 Transcript

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Think of how many white settlers were quick to shake a Cherokee “princess” from their family tree after the Civil Rights Movement, or how recent cases of Indigenous identity fraud in Canada align with the era of Truth and Reconciliation. This era, we know, has revealed very hard truths about Canada’s relationship with Indigenous Peoples.

Cultural phenomenon

These patterns reveal more than individual acts of deception. They expose
a cultural phenomenon: when non-Indigenous people appropriate our lived experiences — our stories, struggles and traumas — on such a wide scale, it signals a broader cultural and social sickness and deterioration.

What we come to learn through the public “outings” of author Thomas King, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, Michelle Latimer and Joseph Boyden is that they offer a projection of “Indigenous success” that is often nothing more than settler fantasies: commodified versions of Indigeneity that Canadians find palatable.

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These figures become a kind of counterfeit currency, granting Canadians easy access to digestible versions of Indigenous identity and experience. But they are not ours, they are not us and they are not our stories. My mother believes this happens because Canadians do not truly want the truth of who we are, past or present.

This raises a hard question: how did these figures become Indigenous icons in the first place?

Western ‘hero’ narratives

Many Indigenous cultures caution against the concept of “heroes,” which is rooted in western narratives that elevate people as saviours. Turning people into heroes isolates collective struggles, conceals the systemic problems behind them and reinforces colonial ideas of individual exceptionalism — celebrating those who manage to succeed in oppressive systems instead of valuing relationships and community resilience.

Liberation doesn’t hinge on extraordinary individuals; it requires
structural transformation. When we elevate “heroes,” we risk distorting accountability and reinforcing inequity.

The truth is, these heroes were largely created by settler-controlled industries like publishing, media and academia — not by us. Their success was sustained by gatekeepers who valued marketable versions of Indigeneity over authentic voices. And while community voices questioned their authenticity from the start, we must ask why those warnings were ignored.

Concerns raised

In cases of a “pretendian” — false claims of Indigeneity — there are people firmly grounded in community who raise concerns right from the beginning because they cannot find themselves in the paragraphs and crescendos of those who don’t sing or speak truth. As Indigenous Peoples, we need to reflect on why such voices are often not collectively amplified and protected.

Underlying identity fraud is a belief that Indigenous Peoples are “not good enough” — that impostors can be better Natives than us. They reconcile their theft by convincing themselves they can achieve what we cannot, that we need them to “be us.” That is profoundly damaging.

It reinforces colonial hierarchies and perpetuates the idea that our worth must be validated through settler recognition.

Power to repair harm

In King’s recent opinion piece in The Globe and Mail, he wrote he was devastated to learn, contrary to what he believed, that he did not have Cherokee ancestry. He discovered this, he said, after he requested a meeting with Tribal Alliance Against Frauds, an American Cherokee organization, because he was aware of “a rumour that appeared” accusing him of not being Cherokee.

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Fraudulent claims of indigeneity: Indigenous nations are the identity experts

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He said he’ll need to “survive a firestorm of anger, disbelief and betrayal” and will then “sort through rubble to see if there is anything left of my reputation, of my career.”

This was the most troubling for me — not only because it sounds like self-victimization, but because King has the power to repair harm. Accountability begins with truth-telling: admitting the false claim, making no excuses and disclosing and returning all benefits gained.

It means returning awards, redirecting funds and submitting to processes defined by the affected Nation — in King’s case, the Cherokee Nation. It means investing in long-term reparations that strengthen Indigenous self-determination, such as funding community priorities, supporting displaced Indigenous writers and investing in the brilliance of future generations.

We are more than stories

Accountability is not a one-time op-ed; it is an ongoing commitment, verified by Indigenous oversight and grounded in relational ethics.

King once wrote: “The truth about stories is that that’s all we are.” I admit to referencing it in my own writing. It is poetic, but incomplete.

We are more than stories. We are land. We are family. We are community. And we deserve a future where our identities are not commodities, where our truths are not distorted for profit or prestige and where accountability is measured not by words but by actions that build trust and repair harm.

Celeste Pedri-Spade 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. Thomas King: As we learn another ‘hero’ is non-Indigenous, let’s not ignore a broader cultural problem – https://theconversation.com/thomas-king-as-we-learn-another-hero-is-non-indigenous-lets-not-ignore-a-broader-cultural-problem-270773

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Goodnews I. Oshiogbele, PhD Student, Sociology, Western University, Western University

What comes to mind when you hear the word “dependant?” A child relying on a parent, or an elderly family member needing care? In Canada’s immigration system, the term is applied much more broadly than that.

It includes all spouses and common-law partners of immigrants or principal applicants, regardless of whether they rely financially on their significant other or not. According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s (IRCC) current definition, a dependant is “a spouse, common-law partner or dependent child of a permanent resident or principal applicant.”

On paper, this seems neutral and clear. But in practice, it flattens the diverse realities of migrant families.

This definition does not adequately reflect the diverse experiences of many accompanying spouses and partners who are highly skilled, financially independent, co-providers — or even the primary breadwinners — in their households.

“Dependant” as a catch-all term

Words matter in immigration policy because they shape perceptions, and those perceptions shape policies, which in turn shape identities.

Generally, the term “dependant” carries connotations of financial reliance, vulnerability and even passivity. Labelling all spouses and partners “dependants” suggests they are passive followers rather than active contributors, not only in family migration decisions but also in immigrant integration outcomes such as socioeconomic standing and a sense of recognition and belonging.

As one principal applicant and migrant partner in London, Ont., shared with me in an interview for this piece regarding her family’s experience using IRCC’s online application portal:

“The application page was confusing because of the word ‘dependant.’ For us, my partner is never a dependant. He has a secure job and earns more than I do. We are a dual-income household and no one is an economic dependant. So, when I saw the word ‘dependant’ on the website, I wondered if I was on the wrong website and thought it was application information for children or older parents who are true dependants.”

Furthermore, research tells us a different story that challenges the dependant label.

A Statistics Canada study found that many spouses and common-law partners of economic immigrants had similar qualifications to the principal applicants, partly thanks to what sociologists call “positive assortative mating” or homogamy. This concept refers to the tendency for people to enter romantic relationships with partners of similar background or social status.

Similarly, research by immigration and family economist Ana Ferrer and the Pew Research Center suggests that immigrant wives in professional households frequently contribute income comparable to or greater than their husbands, challenging the idea of passive dependency.

Furthermore, some accompanying spouses enter the workforce faster than their principal applicant spouses. This is common in situations where, for example, the principal applicant is retraining or seeking credential recognition. Many others contribute financially across borders, sending remittances to family members living abroad.

A matter of equity and inclusion

This issue is not simply about accuracy in terminology, although that is essential. It is also about inadvertently classifying others unfairly, promoting gender inequality and marginalizing some migrant family members.

Most accompanying spouses and partners are women and labelling them uniformly as dependants even when they include co-providers and primary earners, reinforces outdated stereotypes.

Migrant male spouses and partners also face their own identity struggles, despite their qualifications.

Statistics Canada data reveals persistent gender differences in labour market outcomes among newcomers, with immigrant women having a labour force participation rate of 78.2 per cent in 2021, significantly lower than the 90.2 per cent for immigrant men. While this arguably reflects global gender norms that many migrant families bring with them, it could also be linked with their sense of identity.

Canada prides itself on being a leader in immigration policy and in creating an inclusive society. Therefore, while other long-established immigration systems across the globe may continue to use this term this way, IRCC could consider clarifying it. Currently, the dependant label may unintentionally reinforce perceptions of dependency that do not reflect the evolving realities of modern migrant families.

Making invisible contributions visible

Gendered assumptions about who earns, who cares and who follows continue to shape how immigrant families are represented, and, in turn, treated by institutions. In addition to ongoing commendable efforts to make Canada more gender-inclusive, a long-term rectification of this issue requires more societal refinement in how we think about gender and work among newcomers.

Addressing this issue constructively would involve both policy reflection and a broader social conversation. In policy terms, it begins with precision — recognizing that not all spouses or partners depend economically on the principal applicant. In social terms, it means valuing the visible and invisible work migrants do, whether it is paid labour, unpaid care or transnational remittances.

In the meantime, here’s a simple fix that can address the semantic problem: In its current definition of a dependant, IRCC already distinguishes between dependent children and non-dependent adult children. The department could consider a similar approach for accompanying spouses and partners.

A small but meaningful change — such as specifying “a dependent spouse or common-law partner” — could help clarify the definition and better reflect the realities of today’s migrant families. For those affected, it will help improve their sense of identity, how they are perceived in public, the bureaucratic policies and practices affecting them and their overall integration experiences.

Alternatively, particularly in the immigration application system, the term dependant could be replaced with “secondary applicant” or “accompanying family member” to clearly distinguish the principal applicant from those accompanying them. While IRCC may have operational considerations, exploring better alternatives could lead to significant systemic improvements.

Goodnews I. Oshiogbele is a member of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) and the Canadian Population Society (CPS).

– ref. Dependants? Why Canada should recognize migrant spouses and partners with more accuracy – https://theconversation.com/dependants-why-canada-should-recognize-migrant-spouses-and-partners-with-more-accuracy-265744