Category: English

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ilona Dougherty, Managing Director, Youth & Innovation Project, University of Waterloo

Every year on Remembrance Day, I think about my grandfathers — my American grandfather who flew his Stinson L-5 along the coast of Burma and my Hungarian grandfather who fought in the Second World War.

I also reflect upon my grandmothers, one of whom used her language skills to translate for army officers and the other who suffered the loss of her first child while her husband was overseas.

These stories are often shared in our family as remembrances of young people who served and sacrificed during difficult times.

Buried deep in the Liberal government’s recently released 2025 budget is a line that is worth paying attention to: “Modernizing the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) enhances opportunities for youth to serve and lead.” With that one sentence, the federal government connected the dots between Canadian sovereignty, youth employment and youth service.

But if Canada hopes to see its current generation of young people thrive, it must ensure that youth employment and youth service programs are expanded.

The only way this will happen, given the investments outlined in the federal government’s budget, is if organizations dedicated to youth employment issues and youth service work closely together to ensure the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) figures out how to recruit and meaningfully retain young Canadians.

Paltry investments

As outlined in the budget, there is a clear commitment from Mark Carney’s Liberals to rebuild and reinvest in the CAF to protect Canadians and lead internationally. This commitment includes an investment of more than $9 billion in 2025-2026.

An important part of this rebuilding will require recruiting and retaining new members, which is being facilitated by a significant pay increase for the lowest paid recruits.

But as young people in Canada face the worst job market in more than a decade, which is only projected to worsen with the widespread adoption of AI, it was troubling that funding related to tackling youth unemployment was limited in this year’s budget.

The investment in Canada Summer Job placements, while up from the investment made in the 2024, was only brought back to pre-pandemic funding levels, not actually increased.

The Youth Employment and Skills Strategy investment in the budget was up slightly from 2025-2026, but down significantly from 2024-2025 and far below investments made in 2019-2020.

The only significant increase came with the investment in the Student Work Placement Program, which increased by more than $100 million per year.

The most generous read of investments in youth employment-related programs in the 2025 budget would suggest the government is investing approximately $220 million more per year. But this pales in comparison to the $20.4 billion over five years that the government has committed to investing in recruiting and retaining “a strong fighting force” for the CAF.

When it comes to youth service, supporting young people who are struggling to enter the job market — and providing them with opportunities to serve their communities — can be achieved in part through the Youth Climate Corps and the Canada Service Corps. Combined, their budgets represent a moderate increase in spending of about $20 million per year.

But it’s unclear whether the Canada Service Corps will receive additional funding in the future, parallel to the Youth Climate Corps funding, or whether it will be phased out and replaced.

Despite it being touted as a budget containing generational investments, the government has made minimal investments to seriously tackle the youth employment crisis in the 2025 budget.

Recruitment challenges

It’s no secret that recruiting and retaining new members is a significant challenge for the CAF. A 2025 Auditor General of Canada’s report outlines how the CAF is not recruiting and training enough candidates to meet its operational needs.

To make matters worse, even when a recruit does join, a recently leaked internal report suggests that many leave in frustration shortly after joining due to their inability to get trained and to secure roles within the CAF that they’re interested in.

Adding to this is the CAF’s well-documented issues with radicalization and hate speech, racial discrimination and sexual harassment. As an external monitor outlined in a recent report, “a culture that is largely misogynistic has created an environment that allows and sometime encourages unprofessional conduct to persist.”

Read more:
Not just a few bad apples: The Canadian Armed Forces has a nagging far-right problem

Despite recent apologies and signs that things are changing for the better within the CAF, these issues make the institution unattractive for young Canadians even if they don’t feel as though they have any other employment options.

There is also the perception that joining the army means going into active combat. Around 65.2 per cent of CAF members ever deploy — and deploying doesn’t necessarily mean active combat. In fact, it can very often mean humanitarian missions either domestically or internationally.

Making the CAF attractive to youth

All of this presents a unique opportunity for Canadian policymakers.

There are many organizations in Canada working to tackle youth employment — and the CAF has just been given what can actually be called a generational investment. That investment could significantly enhance existing government initiatives aimed at addressing the youth employment crisis and preparing young people for the future of work.

For this to happen, youth employment and service organizations must leverage the government’s investment in the CAF to expand their impact. At the same time, the CAF will need to engage with civilian organizations that specialize in recruiting and supporting young people. CAF recruiters should adopt best practices in youth-focused recruitment, training and retention to ensure meaningful participation and long-term success.

Young people will only be attracted to and stay in the CAF if they feel valued, if they’re offered meaningful opportunities to contribute and if intergenerational collaboration is prioritized.

In a time of multiples crises, none of them can be viewed in isolation. Disparate groups need to work together to address their unique challenges.
Canadian young people have a lot to offer — they’re the most educated generation in Canadian history, they have the desire to make a difference, their brains are wired to be bold problem solvers and they have diverse and relevant lived experiences.

This is a generation Canada can’t afford to leave on the sidelines of its economy or in the fight for Canadian sovereignty.

Ilona Dougherty 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. How the Canadian Armed Forces could help solve the youth employment crisis – https://theconversation.com/how-the-canadian-armed-forces-could-help-solve-the-youth-employment-crisis-268433

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Emma Hsiaowen Chen, PhD Candidate in Health & Exercise Science, Concordia University

Exercise can help reduce the risk of falls — a major cause of injuries in older adults — but only four per cent of older Canadian women complete 30 minutes of daily physical activity. As a PhD candidate in health and exercise science at Concordia University, I am interested in developing fun and accessible balance-training programs using online dance classes.

Dance can act as a fun “exercise in disguise.” Studies have consistently shown that dance can inspire social connections, improve mood and aid cognition, while also leading to improvements in mobility, endurance and walking abilities.

It is also an ideal form of balance training because learning various dance steps requires high precision of movement, which can help increase our proprioception (our perception of our body movement and position in space). This can help improve or maintain our postural stability.

Age and postural stability

Postural stability refers to our ability to stay upright and control our body’s position in space. This ability relies on sensory and motor systems. Our vision helps see potential obstacles or tripping hazards, the vestibulocochlear system of the inner ear helps with our sense of orientation as well as hearing, and finally our somatosensory system, which comprises the body’s sense of touch, pain, temperature and position, works to feel the surfaces beneath our feet.

After these sensory signals reach the brain, they are sorted and then the appropriate motor response is selected for our musculoskeletal system to execute

With age, postural stability reduces as the sensory systems experience change. We measure this decline by having people stand as still as possible and observing how much they move or sway. If someone sways more, they are considered less stable and at greater risk of falls.

While research on in-person dance classes of various styles have consistently shown improvements to postural stability and fall risk, these classes are often inaccessible. Many older women face barriers to exercise such as lack of transportation, caregiver roles at home, inaccessible exercise facilities etc. Additionally, specialized dance teachers are often only found in larger cities that act as dance hubs. Online dance classes can offer solutions to reduce barriers and improve access for older adults.

Bringing the dance studio home

Working with Andreas Bergdahl, PhD, and Mary Roberts, PhD, our research published in International Journal of Exercise Science has found that online dance classes improve the postural stability, dynamic balance and calf strength of older women. In this work, we recruited women aged 65+ from Montréal to participate in 75-minute ballet-modern inspired classes twice per week, for 12 weeks over Zoom.

Each dance class started with a 15-minute warm-up followed by:

• Pliés (bending the knees)
• Tendus (standing on one leg and extending the other one out)
• Balancé sequence (a travelling step done to a waltz rhythm)
• Jose Limón/Martha Graham sequence (styles of modern-dance that emphasize fall recovery and rounded shapes of the spine)
• Cooling-down with seated stretches

These exercises were selected because they emphasize transferring weight, balancing on one leg, bringing the body off centre and contracting the leg as well as core muscles. A helper was present on Zoom for each dance class to help with technical support and monitor online participants for safety.

Before the first class, halfway through the study, and at the end, participants completed in-person assessments of their leg strength, dynamic balance and postural stability.

Within six weeks, participants showed reductions in how much they swayed side-to-side while standing still (what is called mediolateral sway) and increases in their dynamic balance. By the end of the program, they also had greater calf-muscle strength, assessed as the number of heel-raises participants completed in 30 seconds.

Improvements in these abilities can translate to greater ease in daily activities that require weight transfers, such as walking, stepping down from the sidewalk or even chores like sweeping the house.

Benefits of online access

Even after COVID-19 lockdowns have ended, online dance classes can serve an important role in reaching people who are traditionally left out.

For those living in remote locations, for caregivers who cannot spend too long away from their loved ones or even for older adults anxious to walk on icy streets in the winter, online programs can provide a level of accessibility and new opportunities to socialize and exercise. They also give opportunities for people to express themselves creatively from the comfort of their own homes.

Our current studies are exploring how different styles of online dance programs, combined with blood flow restriction training, can benefit older adults. This provides more options to suit people’s interests and varying mobility needs. Additionally, we are working to share our program with communities. To date, our research has reached older women across Canada, Mexico, Colombia and Spain, encouraging them to remain active and independent.

While many of us have returned to in-person programming, let’s not forget the benefits of online access. Bringing the dance studio home can still help people connect, socialize and improve their balance.

Emma Hsiaowen Chen receives funding from Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé – Formation de doctorat 2024-2025 (346910). Her MSc work presented here was funded by the Canadian Graduate Scholarships – Master’s Program 2022 and the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé – Formation de Maîtrise 2022-2023 (319116). She works as a freelance dance instructor specialized in teaching older adults.

– ref. Bringing the dance studio home can improve balance and reduce the risk of falls for older women – https://theconversation.com/bringing-the-dance-studio-home-can-improve-balance-and-reduce-the-risk-of-falls-for-older-women-268266

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jared Wesley, Professor, Political Science, University of Alberta

Across Canada, elected representatives are opting to toe the party line on major discussions about the future of the country — or even to sit out the debates entirely.

Take recent events in Alberta. Bill 2 (the Back to School Act) ended a provincewide teachers’ strike by imposing a contract and ordering more than 50,000 teachers back to work. Most government members of the Alberta legislature (MLAs) chose to remain silent throughout the entire dispute.

The incident drew national attention because the government also invoked the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ notwithstanding clause to remove the teachers’ Charter right to strike.

Read more:
The history of the notwithstanding clause

Limiting debate

But the other half of the story is the process: party discipline helped push the law through the legislature in record time. For Canadians elsewhere, Bill 2 is a window into how hyper-partisanship and polarization can weaken the checks and balances meant to restrain premiers and prime ministers from acting unilaterally.

Here’s what happened in practical terms: the government moved the bill from first reading to final passage in less than 12 hours, after which teachers were ordered back and a four-year agreement was set in law.

Approved by members of the government caucus, debate windows were cut to just one hour and concluded in the early hours of the morning.

The speed mattered as much as the substance: it limited the chance for MLAs to probe details, air local concerns or test alternatives in public. It also sidestepped an important constitutional responsibility: according to the notwithstanding clause, legislatures — not cabinets or premiers — are charged with removing Canadians’ rights.

According to critics of Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party (UCP), that duty is meant to be exercised after meaningful debate.

Why would a legislature — whose members are elected to debate, amend and oversee — vote to shorten its own deliberation on bills, particularly those that affect fundamental freedoms?

Our research in our book No “I” in Team: Party Loyalty in Canadian Politics points to a simple, powerful answer: hyper-partisanship has evolved from traditional “party discipline” (voting together) into “message discipline” (speaking together). Leaders and their entourages co-ordinate what caucus members say and do, reward conformity and punish dissent. In that environment, opposing fast-tracked legislation can feel like deserting “the team.”

Choosing silence

Message discipline reshapes everyday incentives inside caucus.

Rather than seeing alternative arguments as quality control, members learn to treat them as obstacles. Rather than pushing for extended committee study or open negotiation, they face heavy pressure to back procedures that guarantee quick passage and limit the ability of opposing parties to weigh in. This means members of the governing caucus sometimes choose to silence themselves to prevent their opponents from engaging.

Over time, MLAs become more willing to trade their own leverage — floor time, clause-by-clause scrutiny, amendments — for the promise of team unity.

Bill 2 shows how those incentives and tools play out in real life. The government framed speed as a virtue and unity as a necessity; caucus members delivered both. The result was swift law-making on a file with broad public impact and limited room for local voices or cross-party problem-solving.

None of this depends on one leader or one issue. Once normalized, the approach can be applied to labour disputes, health-care reforms, school governance or tax changes — any area where moving quickly is easier than debating in public.

But when disagreements are handled through discipline rather than deliberation, conflict doesn’t disappear. It often relocates, sometimes spilling outside the governing caucus. This is made more likely when constituents pressure their representatives to act as delegates rather than partisans.

Locker-room mentality

Earlier this year, UCP MLA Peter Guthrie resigned from cabinet and was expelled from caucus after sustained criticism of his party’s ethics record.

He has since emerged a steady critic of the government, assuming the role of Independent as Canada’s parliamentary traditions intended all representatives to play: holding the government to account through members’ statements and Question Period. That he felt unable to do so within cabinet or caucus is a symptom of the hyper-partisanship we cover in our book.

For those beyond Alberta, that’s why Bill 2 matters. The notwithstanding clause justifiably drew the most attention, but it isn’t the whole story. Canadians need to pay attention to how hyper-partisanship pushes parliamentarians into decisions that mute their own roles as delegates of their constituents, overseers of government and trustees of the public good.

When legislatures are organized as team locker rooms first and democratic institutions second, elected representatives are more likely to support rule changes and time limits that make government faster and more centralized, and less likely to insist on the public work that tests ideas before they become law.

In that sense, Bill 2 is a case study, not an outlier. The mechanics are portable.

Watch for the telltale signs in other parts of the country: tight debate clocks, late-night sittings, caucus silence in constituencies and message unity presented as proof of strength. Our research suggests those are the symptoms of message discipline at work — and the reason Canadians across the country should pay attention to what happened in Alberta.

Jared Wesley receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Alex Marland received funding from an SSHRC Insight Grant with Jared Wesley and Mireille Lalancette to study Canadian parliamentarians crossing the floor that supported this research.

Mireille Lalancette receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for this project.

– ref. Team work and power plays: What Alberta’s Bill 2 says about Canadian democracy – https://theconversation.com/team-work-and-power-plays-what-albertas-bill-2-says-about-canadian-democracy-269373

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ala Mokhtar, Assistant Professor in Accounting, McMaster University

Auditors play a crucial role in keeping the financial system honest. Their job is to protect investors by making sure financial reports are accurate and trustworthy, helping people have confidence in financial markets.

Auditors are trained to be level-headed, impartial watchdogs that remain skeptical when evaluating evidence so they can give an objective opinion on whether a company’s financial statements are fairly reported.

Without auditors, the public would struggle to trust what companies say about their finances. But this, of course, depends on auditors doing their jobs objectively and consistently.

Our new study, co-authored with Tim Bauer from the University of Waterloo and Sean Hillison from Virginia Tech, shows something unexpectedly human gets in the way of auditors doing their job well: incivility, or rudeness. When clients snap at, dismiss or belittle auditors, it doesn’t just sting — it can wear away at audit quality.

Maintaining audit quality

The quality of audits has become a growing concern among regulators. In recent years, both Canadian and American audit watchdogs have reported concerning rates of audit deficiencies.

These deficiencies include failing to properly test accounting estimates by firms, failing to test key controls that prevent errors or fraud and overlooking whether management’s significant assumptions were reasonable.

Regulators are urging auditors to “step up” by doing a better job of scrutinizing their financial statements.

Understanding and addressing how client incivility affects auditor performance could be a crucial step toward improving audit quality in financial reporting.

When rudeness gets in the way

To find out how often auditors face incivility, my co-researchers and I surveyed 70 auditors across Canada and the United States at all ranks, from entry-level auditors to auditors at the partner level.

We defined incivility as minor disrespectful actions that break workplace norms of mutual respect. These behaviours are often rude and discourteous, displaying a lack of regard for others.

We found that auditors don’t experience incivility from time-to-time — they experience it a lot. Ninety per cent of auditors said they had encountered negative client behaviour at some point in their careers.

Seventy-seven per cent said clients had rudely told them how to do their jobs or questioned their procedures. More than 60 per cent had their skills or abilities questioned and more than 50 per cent had been ignored or faced hostility when approaching a client. One-third reported being bullied — a more serious form of incivility — at some point in their career.

Rude clients, weaker audits

We wanted to know whether auditors’ experiences with incivility actually affected auditors’ judgment and skepticism. Did auditors brush off rude behaviour and continue to diligently do their work?

To test this, we ran an experiment with 114 experienced auditors. We asked them to read a scenario showing an interaction between an auditor and their client. In one version the client was openly rude, while in the other version, the client was not portrayed as rude.

The auditors were then asked how likely they would be to challenge an aggressive accounting choice — that is, a decision by the client to report a preferred inventory write-down amount supported by weak assumptions.

We found that auditors who read about a scenario with an uncivil client became less likely to challenge an obviously aggressive accounting choice by the client — the opposite of what auditing standards call for in a situation where skepticism matters.

Why did this happen? Our findings suggest that emotional distress from interacting with the rude client interfered with auditors’ judgment, leading to less effective scrutiny of the client’s decisions.

How active coping can help

Auditors play a vital role in protecting investors and the public by ensuring that companies’ financial statements can be trusted. Our findings suggest that something as commonplace as everyday discourtesy can have very real, negative effects on audit quality.

But there is some good news. Our research also found that the right coping strategies can help auditors recover their focus.

When auditors were encouraged to use an active coping approach — like looping in a senior colleague to intervene with the situation — their willingness to push back against the aggressive accounting choice largely returned to normal levels. Active coping prevented the distress of the rude exchange from interfering with auditors’ judgment.

By contrast, passive approaches, such as venting or trying to accept the situation, didn’t show the same clear benefit.

Together, these results suggest that client incivility triggers emotional distress that blunts auditors’ judgment, and that active coping helps auditors refocus on the facts and their duty to the public.

Protecting audit quality

For firms and regulators trying to maintain audit quality, negative behaviour from clients should be treated as a risk factor, not a normal, everyday inconvenience. If left unaddressed, persistent rudeness or pressure from clients can undermine auditors’ ability to do their jobs.

Fortunately, the solution is simple and low-cost. Audit firms can equip auditors with concrete coping playbooks and train them to use active coping when they encounter incivility. Rather than expecting auditors to grin and bear rude treatment, firms can equip them to address incivility actively by bringing in a senior member who can handle the rude client.

It’s a simple step that helps prevent audit quality from slowly deteriorating, and protects the integrity of financial reporting and the people responsible for upholding it.

Ala Mokhtar 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. Rudeness is hurting auditors’ ability to protect the public — here’s how – https://theconversation.com/rudeness-is-hurting-auditors-ability-to-protect-the-public-heres-how-267953

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Saidia Ali, Environmental Scientist, PhD Candidate, Toronto Metropolitan University

The world is undergoing rapid electronification and digital transformation, reshaping how we live. Many of us have numerous electronic devices around us at all times, from smartphones and watches to our home appliances and cars.

A sharp increase in e-waste has accompanied the surge in electronic equipment. In 2022, 62 million tons of e-waste was produced globally.

Canada’s e-waste tripled between 2000 and 2019 and is expected to reach 1.2 billion kilograms by 2030. These statistics demonstrate an urgent environmental crisis that demands new ways of thinking and educating future generations.

A key part of tackling the problem is educating people about it. As educators, we need to expand school education to include resource recovery, sustainability and pro-environmental behaviours to inform students on what to do with their old gadgets.

The language and techniques we use to communicate this issue in classrooms play a significant role in helping children understand and engage with safe e-waste management.

Schools and educators must equip youth of all ages with the values, attitudes, knowledge and skills necessary to manage e-waste responsibly.

Gaps and limitations

My research uses machine learning tools to develop effective circular economy policies focused on e-waste management in Canada, with insights reflecting Ontario’s evolving practices.

In Ontario, schools are failing to provide comprehensive and consistent e-waste education, leaving a dangerous gap in our students’ environmental literacy.

Environmental education in Ontario introduces students to the concept of environmental stewardship and the provincially mandated curriculum does include it in a cross-disciplinary manner. However, due to decreased priority and budget cuts, attention on e-waste and resource conservation is absent.

According to a 2024 report by EcoSchools Canada, a number of obstacles exist to successful school e-waste management such as COVID-19, provincial inconsistencies, curriculum disconnect, custodian participation, poor school engagement and a lack of key infrastructure and information.

The Ontario government and municipalities have made efforts in revising the school curriculum, with non-profits stepping in to help bridge the knowledge gap.

For example, in municipalities like Peel Region, teachers’ resources include a plethora of interactive, online activities and lesson plans that focus on the 3Rs and proper sorting, as well as additional workshops, events, games and other resources for students in grades K to 8.

Likewise, Durham Region offers a specific presentation, including one for grades 7 and 8 entitled “Electronic Waste: The Hidden Impact of Our Gadgets,” allowing students to discover the possible environmental, social and economic consequences of devices.

Several schools are also active participants of the EcoSchools program, a certification initiative originally developed by the Toronto District School Board to promote environmental education and action.

The program offers opportunities for student-led projects such as e-waste collection drives and awareness campaigns, providing meaningful experiential learning.

Although these are valuable and necessary, the focus and depth of these initiatives are often at the discretion of individual teachers and schools, leading to an uneven and often limited understanding of the e-waste problem. While commendable, these programs represent a patchwork rather than a cohesive, province-wide strategy.

Furthermore, a lot of education on waste tends to place much emphasis on recycling. While recycling is an important part of the solution, comprehensive e-waste education should also emphasize reducing consumption, repairing and reusing electronics and understanding the principles of a circular economy. Educational institutions and educators need to equip students to be able to critically question our throw-away culture.

The path forward

Educational institutions can play a substantial role in devising initiatives that will help future generations build foundational knowledge about sustainable e-waste management.

At the Montgomery School in Saskatoon, students have taken part in a project that allows them to disassemble old electronics to learn about e-waste, its materials and proper disposal. As part of an initiative, students look through the school’s garbage bins to see what could be reused.

The project links classroom learning with Saskatchewan’s grade 6/7 curriculum of understanding the social effects of sustainability issues, such as waste management, and encouraging students to think critically about technology use and environmental responsibility. The students have been successful in making keychains from old circuit boards that they sold at a school event to raise money for upcoming projects.

Provincial education ministries must take the lead by embedding clear learning expectations into their provincial curriculum in subjects like science, technology, geography, social studies and civics. This will ensure that all students, regardless of their school or location, receive an introductory understanding of this growing issue.

Cross-sectoral collaboration among provincial governments, school boards, municipalities and environmental organizations will be key in developing high-quality curriculum-linked educational materials.

Other initiatives can include organizing field trips to recycling facilities or setting up e-waste collection campaigns to allow students to see the impact of sustainable activities.

Schools can also invite guest speakers to give students an opportunity to learn from front-line environmental experts who have first-hand knowledge of sorting through e-waste.

Integrating e-waste literacy into the curriculum is a crucial step toward creating a more sustainable future. It will involve much more than just teaching students where the recycling bin is. It is about providing the know-how that will help them challenge our throw-away culture and empowering them to become responsible consumers.

Saidia Ali is affiliated with CanRepair Canada.

– ref. To tackle e-waste, teach kids to be responsible consumers – https://theconversation.com/to-tackle-e-waste-teach-kids-to-be-responsible-consumers-265712