Category: English

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Meg D. Lonergan, Contract Instructor and Doctoral Candidate, Legal Studies, Carleton University

The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in the Attorney General of Québec v. Senneville struck down one-year mandatory minimum sentences for accessing or possessing child pornography. Immediately, politicians and commentators denounced the ruling.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith have urged Ottawa to invoke Section 33, also known as the notwithstanding clause, of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The clause allows Parliament or provincial legislatures to override certain Charter rights for five years.

Their alarm fits a broader pattern of constitutional populism in which politicians move to sidestep court rulings and Charter protections whenever they obstruct political objectives — whether that’s targeting the unhoused, trans rights, labour rights or now criminal sentencing.

One media commentator accused the Supreme Court of trying to “help” sex offenders, while Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew declared offenders should be “buried underneath prisons.” His reaction echoes last year’s episode in which he apologized for his caucus’s move to expel Mark Wasyliw — a criminal defence lawyer and NDP member of provincial parliament — after Wasyliw’s colleague, Gerri Wiebe, represented convicted sex offender Peter Nygard.

What the court actually did

In her seminal 1984 essay “Thinking Sex,” queer theorist and scholar Gayle Rubin observed that few political tactics are as effective at generating moral panic as invoking the need to “protect children.”

That remains true today, in part because voices across the political spectrum are vulnerable to the same knee-jerk, sensationalized responses whenever sexual harm involving children is at issue.

While the furious response to Senneville shows Canada in the grip of a new moral panic, the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down mandatory minimums for child pornography offences reflects constitutional fidelity — not leniency.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms must apply to everyone if it’s to have any meaning at all. Section 12 of the Charter, in fact, guarantees that everyone has the right not to be subjected to cruel or unusual punishment.

Generally, mandatory minimums are constitutionally suspect, since they remove judicial discretion in sentencing based on the evidence and the specific situation at hand, and infringe upon the legal doctrine of stare decisis that requires precedence be followed.

In Senneville, the court held that mandatory minimums violate Section 12 Charter rights because they prevent judges from imposing proportionate, individualized sentences based on the facts of the case. The court also noted that Section 12 acknowledges innate human dignity and the inherent worth of individuals.

Proportionality, the Supreme Court emphasized, is a constitutional limit on state punishment, not a discretionary preference. At no point did the court diminish the gravity of child exploitation; on the contrary, it devoted an entire section in its ruling to detailing the profound harm caused by these offences.

This is consistent with the similar R. v. Friesen ruling in 2020, when the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the seriousness of child pornography does not erase the need for principled, proportionate sentencing. To cast this careful reasoning as “helping” sex offenders is not only wrong, it distorts the role of sentencing in a constitutional democracy and diminishes justice and rehabilitation in favour of punishment for its own sake.

A ‘flimsy’ hypothetical isn’t flimsy at all

An overlooked part of the majority decision in Senneville is that the appellants (the Attorney General of Québec) did not argue that, if the mandatory minimums were found to infringe the Charter’s Section 12, those minimums could be saved by Section 1.

Section 1 of the Charter guarantees that rights and freedoms are protected, but allows for “reasonable limits” that can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

This section gives governments the power to override Charter rights and freedoms when they can justify limiting them — most often in the name of protecting the rights and freedoms of others. Historically, this is what has made obscenity and hate speech laws constitutionally valid.

Many commentators claimed the Supreme Court relied on a “flimsy” and “far-fetched” hypothetical of an 18-year-old who receives an intimate image of a 17-year-old girl from a friend as one example of why the mandatory minimum sentences violate Section 12 of the Charter.

But there is nothing flimsy about this scenario. Canadian criminal justice scholars ranging from Alexa Dodge to Lara Karaian and Dillon Brady have shown that peer-based image-sharing among youth is common, and that criminal law routinely miscasts such behaviour through the lens of child porn, casting ordinary sexual expression as exploitation.

Karaian, in particular, shows how moral panic over “sexting” has long cast teenagers — especially girls — as simultaneously lacking agency and being responsible. This framing has helped create a legal landscape in which consensual, near-age image sharing is reinterpreted as criminal behaviour.

Familiar outrage

Since their introduction in 1993, Canada’s child-pornography laws have been criticized as overly broad.

One of the first tests came in the Eli Langer case, when police raided a Toronto art gallery and seized works — an early alarm bell about the law’s sweeping reach and capacity to criminalize artistic expression unconnected to exploitation.

The Supreme Court confronted these issues directly in the 2001 case R. v. Sharpe _[2001], ruling that existing child-pornography laws ensnared materials that posed no realistic risk of harm, including fictional writings and drawings. The court also carved out narrow exceptions to prevent criminalizing constitutionally protected expression.

Read more:
Why Canada’s Supreme Court isn’t likely to go rogue like its U.S. counterpart

Canadian law professor Brenda Cossman observed that moral panic around child pornography shields the law “from any and all criticism” to the point that: “Nothing can be said. And if it is, the speaker is denounced as a pedophile.”

The Senneville case reflects the realities of life, not some abstraction — and definitely not the carceral mindset that sees harsh punishment as moral and treats empathy as a weakness.

To normalize overriding Charter rights using the notwithstanding clause erodes not only public trust in judicial independence, but also the very rights and freedoms it enshrines.

The outrage of Poilievre, Smith, Ford and Kinew serves to assert their own moral authority and to repeat a familiar message: only incarceration protects the innocent. But if Canada is serious about keeping children safe, it must also invest in the social services, education and community supports that prevent harm.

As the Supreme Court itself reminded us in its ruling: “Criminal justice responses alone cannot solve the problem of sexual violence against children.”

The authors 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. Reality check: The Supreme Court actually did the right thing in its child pornography ruling – https://theconversation.com/reality-check-the-supreme-court-actually-did-the-right-thing-in-its-child-pornography-ruling-270014

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Giselle Thompson, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta

The devastation in Jamaica caused by Hurricane Melissa exposed a harsh reality that’s been hidden in plain sight for decades — most schools were not structurally sound enough to sustain high winds, heavy rainfall and storm-surge flooding.

Almost 800 government schools were designated as community shelters before Hurricane Melissa descended. More than 600 were damaged when the hurricane hit. Roofs were blown off. Walls collapsed. Windows broke. Debris scattered everywhere.

Citizens found themselves in “shelters” that could not protect them from the elements and for this reason have had to find alternative living arrangements.

As education researchers based in the Jamaican diaspora whose combined work has examined the Jamaican education system, we are deeply concerned about the future of Jamaica’s schools and their ability to not only serve students and teachers — but to be safe havens in natural disasters.

These thoughts came to mind as we watched reels of footage of Hurricane Melissa’s destruction on social media with feelings of helplessness and regret.

Personal exchanges with friends, research collaborators and family members — who are fortunate to have electricity, cellular service or access to WiFi — told us about harrowing experiences on the ground, especially in communities in western and southern parishes such as Hanover, Westmoreland, St. James and St. Elizabeth.

Principals raise red flags

Previous research carried out by Giselle Thompson, the lead author of this story, has examined education spending in Jamaica and how members of the Jamaican diaspora in Canada support schools “back home” through formal and informal fundraising initiatives.

This research was undertaken in partnership with a primary school community, including the principal, teachers, students, families and neighbours in Hanover. They welcomed Giselle to work with them as a supply teacher, recess monitor and in other supportive roles they needed in 2018.

Being immersed in their everyday, under-resourced environment and having one-on-one conversations with them forged lasting personal and professional bonds that form the foundation of current research. It also offered insight into the structural inequities and related vulnerabilities inherent in the Jamaican school system.

At a media briefing before Hurricane Melissa struck, Jamaica’s minister of local government and community development criticized schools that were designated emergency shelters for electing not to open to the public.

But in June 2025, the Jamaica Gleaner reported that some principals raised concerns about the schools, saying they lacked adequate sanitation facilities, weren’t furnished with items that people would need in a shelter or were in need of repair.

These issues were recently echoed in a conversation with a Jamaican principal and research collaborator on Giselle’s current research project, funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada and Killam Trusts. The study involves three public primary schools in Hanover and Westmoreland and examines Afro-Jamaican women teachers’ care work in these rural areas.

The principal noted her concerns were ignored when she brought them to the attention of personnel from the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) when her school was assessed and put on the emergency shelter list before the hurricane. Ninety per cent of ODPEM-designated shelters were schools, and close to 78 per cent of them were destroyed.

She also said the expectations of school staff during sheltering periods were unclear, and she was worried about the implications of leaving schools with scant resources unlocked without oversight.

Given the extensive and likely irreparable damages to her school, her decision to keep its doors closed may have been a life-saving move.

An account like this stands in contrast with the Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth and Information’s announcement that it had “taken deliberate and comprehensive steps to ensure the resilience of the education sector” and that the school “facilities are prepared for what is forecast to be an active hurricane season.”

Structural vulnerabilities

Approximately $5.5 million (J$628 million) was spent to prepare 204 schools for hurricane season in the 2025-26 academic year after Hurricane Beryl, a Category 4 storm, damaged 101 institutions in 2024.

This injection of capital was part of a more than $50 million (J$5 billion) government infrastructure preparation project for Hurricane Melissa’s descent.

Although not all schools were damaged in the hurricane, the high percentage of those impacted is a cause for concern. But the structural vulnerability of many Jamaican schools to the effects of climate change is nothing new.

Read more:
COP30: Pacific leaders now have world court backing to call countries to account over climate risk

It is directly linked to decades of under-resourcing, particularly in the “era of structural adjustment” (1977 to present) as the state has had to adopt severe austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund and other international financial institutions to reduce its spending on public goods such as education.

Such fiscal belt-tightening is meant to help Jamaica and other heavily indebted countries placate their debt to external creditors. But this economic growth formula is seldom associated with social development.

The cost of inflation and the forced devaluation of the Jamaican dollar — additional austerity measures required by international financial institutions — have reduced government capacity to adequately resource school infrastructure.

Jamaica Teachers’ Association advocacy

Since 1977, the year that structural adjustment programs took root in Jamaica, education spending has fluctuated between five and six per cent of the country’s GDP. However, many stakeholders, including the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA), have been vocal about the negative implications of inadequate spending on education for several years.

In 2024, the JTA president said such low spending puts the nation “woefully” behind. Much needed physical infrastructure and maintenance (and, we might add, books and other learning materials, nutritional programs and transportation) have lagged as a result.

It’s therefore not difficult to comprehend why the scale of Hurricane Melissa’s assault on schools was so significant.

Casting a hopeful vision

Through our ongoing engagements in Jamaica as scholars, educators, activists and community members, we have borne witness to, and are involved in, ongoing efforts to support numerous aged, decrepit and crumbling school structures, which are the result of the state’s neglect and weather systems that are growing increasingly harsh.

We write with hope for the future, one that includes new ecologically resilient schools for teaching and learning and where community members can shelter safely when natural disasters hit. This is essential because Jamaica, and the wider Caribbean region, is susceptible not only to hurricanes, but also floods, landslides, earthquakes and other hazards.

Yet we are not optimistic that the state alone can effect necessary changes because of its heavily indebted status, and therefore, relatively weak capacity.

Read more:
4 urgent lessons for Jamaica from Puerto Rico’s troubled hurricane recovery – and how the Jamaican diaspora could help after Melissa

Although not an explicit admission, the creation of the National Education Trust in 2010 to raise funds and resources for schools, demonstrates this. The state has already begun its official solicitation of support from the international community.

But as members of the Jamaican diaspora in Canada, we urge others in our communities who are interested in supporting the reconstruction of schools in Jamaica to engage with principals, teachers, students and local community members directly so they are able to convey their institutions’ immediate and long-term needs.

This will increase the efficacy of our support and strengthen our ability to work together as Jamaicans at home and abroad.

Giselle Thompson received funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Killam Trusts. She is affiliated with the not-for-profit organization, World Class Jamaica.

Meshia Brown 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. Weak infrastructure leaves Jamaican schools devastated in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa – https://theconversation.com/weak-infrastructure-leaves-jamaican-schools-devastated-in-the-aftermath-of-hurricane-melissa-269783

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Oriane Couchoux, Assistant Professor of Accounting, Carleton University

Mothers aren’t just losing the income, promotions and career advancements that we’ve known about for quite some time. They’re also quietly spending their own money, absorbing more day-to-day costs and making financial sacrifices that place them at a long-term disadvantage.

We already knew about the impact of motherhood on women’s income. A 2015 study by Statistics Canada shows that mothers earn 85 cents for every dollar earned by fathers. Ten years after the birth of their first child, mothers’ earnings are still around 34.3 per cent lower than they would have been without children.

But our research also reveals that women’s relationship with money is rewired with motherhood and that having children changes their financial decisions and spending habits.

Study participants describe two competing narratives when discussing their personal finances. On the one hand, they view motherhood as a financial project they must manage independently, within the limits of budgets and cost-benefit considerations. On the other hand, they also see motherhood as a role that requires financial sacrifice, where children’s needs and well-being take priority over all financial considerations.

The true cost of motherhood

Motherhood comes with a price. Studies have shown that becoming a mother negatively affects women’s finances and career.

Some research suggests that among other changes, their colleagues might start to perceive their competence and commitment to their professional work less favourably. Mothers also face intensified work-life balance pressures, often leading to part-time employment.

Women are 19 times more likely than men to cite “caring for children” as the primary reason for working part-time.

But beyond the well-documented motherhood penalty — the name given by social scientists to this phenomenon of workplace disadvantages — and the impact of motherhood on women’s income, our qualitative study reveals that motherhood alters the relationship women have with money.

We interviewed mothers living in the Canadian province of Québec to better understand how they manage their finances after having children, and found that motherhood reshapes how mothers spend and think about money.

When asked about how they manage expenses related to their children, participants in our study said they feel they must navigate competing societal expectations that drive them to juggle two narratives — seeing the financial aspect of motherhood as, one, a project to manage, and, two, as a sacrifice to make for their children.

Taking on the role of financial strategist

Mothers, on one hand, strive to be autonomous financial managers capable of developing financial strategies and making decisions considered economically responsible for their families.

As a study participant described:

“Everything goes through my account, I manage everything. I like it that way too. I’m a very meticulous person […] I like to be in control of the budget.”

This leads them to create “baby budgets,” tracking and comparing the prices of different diaper brands in spreadsheets, or setting up savings strategies for their children’s potential future education.

This vision of themselves as independent financial managers, coupled with their desire to fully take on the financial responsibilities of having children, sometimes leads participants in our study to shoulder certain child-related expenses on their own without sharing full details with their co-parent or asking the co-parent to contribute to everyday costs such as food, clothing or family activities.

Another person in the study explained:

“I know that I buy more things for the children. I put them on my card so I know that there are more expenses that I incur as extras … But, at the same time, that’s what I like. I love shopping for them. It’s a gift for me too. But sometimes, I find it a little annoying. I really devote myself a lot to the family, buying things for the house, the family.”

The cultural script of maternal self-sacrifice

Mothers also see themselves as the primary caregivers responsible for making financial sacrifices for their children.

Within this narrative, participants in our study tend to believe that being a good mother means putting their children first, doing everything possible to ensure their happiness and well-being and not tracking the time and money they devote.

As another shared:

“That’s what being a good mom is all about […] you can’t count that. You don’t count the time, being present, taking care of them, the activities, the clothes, everything. You don’t count the expenses, you’re the person they go to.”

This can lead mothers, for example, to put their children’s future ahead of their own, prioritizing education savings or splurging on non-essential items they believe will make their children happy over their own retirement.

This view of motherhood that normalizes financial sacrifice also appears in mothers’ reluctance to calculate the full cost of raising their children and the overall impact of these expenses on their own financial situation, as if determining the amount of money spent on a child were somehow incompatible with the maternal ideal of selfless devotion.

Gender inequality’s long-term financial fallout

This shift in women’s financial perspective highlights some factors behind the persistent gaps between women’s and men’s personal finances. In Canada, the gender pension gap is at about 17 per cent, meaning that “for every dollar of retirement income men receive, women get only 83 cents”.

The additional mental load carried by mothers doesn’t just cost them time and energy, it takes a real toll on their budgets too.

In fact, financial burdens can fall unevenly within couples and between co-parents. Many participants said that they focus on shouldering the financial responsibilities of motherhood independently, no matter the impact on their finances or the contribution from the other parent.

Over time, all of this can contribute to reduced savings and lowered retirement security for mothers, reinforcing the disparities in wealth accumulation and the gender pension between men and women.

Our findings highlight that the true cost of motherhood goes beyond what meets the eye and the need for a broader recognition of the financial labour that mothers bear. We, as a society, must better support them.

Oriane Couchoux received funding from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Centre for Research on Inclusion at Work (CRIW) at the Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, Canada.

Gabrielle Patry-Beaudoin received funding from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Centre for Research on Inclusion at Work (CRIW) at the Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, Canada.

– ref. Motherhood changes how women spend, save and think about money – https://theconversation.com/motherhood-changes-how-women-spend-save-and-think-about-money-268737

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Alison McAfee, Postdoctoral Fellow, Applied Ecology, University of British Columbia; North Carolina State University

When the results of the Canada’s national honey bee colony loss survey were published in July 2025, they came as no surprise. According to the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists, an estimated 36 per cent of Canada’s 830,000 honey bee colonies had perished over the winter.

These figures used to make headlines. But after almost two decades of the same story ― colonies dying in the winter, beekeepers struggling to rebuild, somewhat succeeding, rinse and repeat ― the sad statistics are no longer news, and we are still working out why the cycle persists.

Now, we might be having a light-bulb moment. My colleague Abigail Chapman and I recently found that queen honey bees are infected with viruses that compromise their fertility and may get them ousted from their colonies. And that’s meaningful, because “poor queens” is the top-ranked cause of colony losses reported by Canadian beekeepers.

The life of a queen

A typical honey bee colony has a single queen at the helm, and she is solely responsible for laying thousands of eggs per day ― more than her own body weight ― to grow and replenish the colony’s population for years.

A healthy, productive queen also secretes pheromones that, like a chemical bouquet, signal her quality to the workers (sterile females who make up most of the colony’s population).

The queen cannot afford to get sick. She already barely has time to sleep, and the colony depends on her to remain reproductive. But she may indeed become sick.

Queen “autopsies” point to viruses

Our surveys of queens from members of the British Columbia Bee Breeders’ Association showed that “failing” (poor quality, unproductive) queens had a higher viral burden than their healthy counterparts. That is, they were either infected with more viruses, had more intense infections, or both. The failing queens also had smaller ovaries, a sign they could be less fertile.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean that viruses were the culprit or that queens were sick, per se. They could have been failing for other reasons that also made them more susceptible to infection.

So, Chapman designed an experiment to take a closer look. She infected queens with two common honey bee viruses, then measured the queens’ egg-laying activity and the mass of their ovaries.

Not only did the infected queens lay fewer eggs per day, they were less likely to lay eggs at all when compared with controls, at least during the monitoring period, despite all queens laying normally before the experiment. When we saw that the infected queens also had shrunken ovaries, just like the queens supplied by B.C. beekeepers, we knew we were onto something.

In the apiary, too, infected queens had problems. The worse a queen’s infection was, the more likely her workers were to begin rearing a replacement ― a process known as “supersedure.” If the upcoming replacement queen reaches adulthood, she will normally duel any other queen to the death, mate and become the new conveyor of eggs.

The workers’ dilemma

Superseding colonies are over three times more likely to perish when compared with healthy colonies, in part because there is no guarantee that the new queen will successfully mate. But from the workers’ perspective, supersedure is a necessary risk. If the old queen is compromised, producing a new one is the colony’s best chance at survival.

Normally, the queen produces and secretes a retinue pheromone — a blend of at least nine different chemical components — that, among other functions, inhibits workers from replacing her if all is well. But if one or more of those cues is disrupted by a viral infection, that could act like a red flag, we reasoned, signalling to the workers that the queen can’t lay her weight.

Our new data shows that this is the very process underlying the workers’ drive to replace infected queens. The infections caused a deficiency in methyl oleate ― one flower in the queen’s bouquet. This change encourages the workers to begin raising a new queen.

From beekeeper to queenkeeper

This validates beekeepers’ reports of having “queen issues” when infection levels are high and supports murmurs of queens not lasting as long as they used to. There are many other reasons why a queen may sputter, including pesticide exposure, extreme temperatures, poor mating and more. But viruses are a universal problem, and we did not previously understand the extent to which they could compromise queens.

Now that we do, colonies can be managed differently to better support the queen. There are currently no treatment options for honey bee viruses and there is a real need for commercial products, but luckily, there is still a way to act. Viruses are spread and sometimes amplified by varroa, a parasitic mite that can thankfully be controlled.

Read more:
Deadlier than varroa, a new honey-bee parasite is spreading around the world

Varroa treatments ― which must be conducted two to three times per year to keep colonies alive ― already keep beekeepers up at night. Some may want to surrender at the thought of needing to be even more diligent.

But until an antiviral is developed and brought to market, stepping up varroa control is likely the best defence for keeping queens healthy and bringing down colony losses. Pollination of our fruits, nuts and seeds will depend on it.

Alison McAfee receives funding from Project Apis m. She is affiliated with the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists and the British Columbia Honey Producers’ Association.

– ref. Worker honey bees can sense infections in their queen, leading to revolt – https://theconversation.com/worker-honey-bees-can-sense-infections-in-their-queen-leading-to-revolt-269054