Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Frederick Oliver Beeby Maglaque, Exhibition Researcher, Pacific Museum of Earth and Masters student in Art History, University of British Columbia

“This is the story of the dinosaurs as it has never been told before,” narrates Morgan Freeman in the opening of Neflix’s The Dinosaurs docuseries.

The four-part series combines advanced CGI with real nature footage to create cutting-edge photorealistic visuals and tell a compelling story. The Dinosaurs is undeniably a technical and scientific achievement.

Netflix’s marketing has emphasized the show’s accuracy and engagement of more than 50 scientific advisers. Meanwhile, experts describe some scenes as “speculative,” given our evolving knowledge of the Mesozoic Era.

What The Dinosaurs does tell us, with great accuracy, is a lot about ourselves.

Tracing the rise and extinction of dinosaurs from the Triassic period to the Late Cretaceous period, the show — much like the dinosaur media that came before it — reflects our own reckoning with possibilities of human extinction that is only more necessary as our planet changes rapidly due to climate change.

It also reinforces another familiar narrative: the story of life on Earth as a story of conquest.

Exotic beasts to be tamed, classified

Dinosaurs first entered the visual culture of western science in the 19th century. Famous depictions include two full-sized dinosaurs — an Iguanodon and Megalosaurus — that were unveiled at Crystal Palace Park in London in 1854.

The Crystal Palace itself was designed for the 1851 Great Exhibition — which displayed animals, minerals, cultural objects and more from across the British Empire. It was a steel and glass monument to industrial modernity and imperial power.

These “exotic” fake dinosaurs were placed on small, artificial islands, within lakes in the palace park, where visitors could view them from afar. They were positioned as beasts to be viewed with as much wonder as terror that the combined authority of science and empire could tame and classify. They are still there today.

Imperial fantasies of extraction

The film Jurassic Park, released in 1993, followed its 19th-century predecessors, depicting dinosaurs as creatures that dwell in distant exotic realms that humans, typically white explorers or scientists, must journey to.

The film is set on the imaginary Costa Rican island of Isla Muerta, where dinosaurs are born from amber extracted from the fictional Mano de Dios mine.

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Read more:
Thirty years after Jurassic Park hit movie screens, its impact on science and culture remains as strong as ever – podcast

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Like the Crystal Palace dinosaurs, they evoke an unknown exotic frontier — shaped by imperial fantasies of extraction. And yet, films like Jurassic Park also question this framing. Characters who seek to dominate nature — the businessman, the lawyer, the big game hunter — ultimately meet their downfall.

Dinosaurs versus Earth

So, what happens when these familiar tropes are presented through the hyperrealism of modern dinosaur documentaries, alongside real paleontological discoveries, as “accurate?”

“In a savage and ever-changing world, some will rise and some will fall. But through it all, the dinosaurs will expand their empire and advance relentlessly to seize Earth’s final frontiers,” narrates Morgan Freeman in Episode 3 of The Dinosaurs.

Throughout the series, dinosaurs are portrayed as seeking to colonize the planet. This is evident in the episode titles — Rise, Conquest, Empire, Fall — and in how the other organisms are depicted.

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What bite marks on a dinosaur fossil tell us about the T. rex’s eating habits

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The first episode concludes with a cowboy-style showdown between a dinosaur and a rauisuchian, a Triassic reptile described as a monstrous, lesser “other.” This scene marks the beginning of the dinosaurs’ so-called “reign.”

Again and again, The Dinosaurs tells a story of dinosaurs versus Earth, where natural events like volcanism are described as “Earth’s darkest forces.” The planet itself becomes something to be overcome in the dinosaurs’ pursuit of empire.

This Mesozoic, non-human history is also told as a story that is always moving toward a known ending. The first episode opens with a Tyrannosaurus rex (T.rex) in the aftermath of the Chicxulub impact, a 100- million megaton blast that struck the Gulf of Mexico region and devastated the planet.

The T.rex closes its eyes as ash falls across an apocalyptic landscape. Dinosaurs are portrayed as conquerors of Earth and as always already doomed to fail — ruled by this so-called “tyrant lizard king.”

A story of human mastery

The Dinosaurs engages in what we could call the “dino dialectic” — a trope where dinosaurs are presented as allegorical stand-ins for humans, reflecting an anthropocentric and often colonial vision of the human subject.

As media theorist W.M.T. Mitchell writes, “Dinos R Us.”

At the same time, their inevitable extinction is used to define them as primitive and inferior. Dinosaurs are us, but we remain superior, masters of our fates and of our planetary dominion.

If The Dinosaurs, the latest in an increasing number of contemporary dinosaur documentaries, reflects our own apocalyptic anxieties while reiterating this “dino dialectic,” we are continuing to tell the same story that led us here.

These documentaries are examples of what visual culture scholar Nicholas Mirzoeff calls “Anthropocene visuality” — a way of seeing that “keeps us believing that somehow the war against nature that western society has been waging for centuries is not only right; it is beautiful and it can be won.”

Frederick Oliver Beeby Maglaque receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Kirsten F. Hodge receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Association of Science Centres.

– ref. Netflix’s ‘The Dinosaurs’ rehashes a very old story — of empire and conquest – https://theconversation.com/netflixs-the-dinosaurs-rehashes-a-very-old-story-of-empire-and-conquest-279162

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By William Michael Carter, Adjunct professor, Applied Systems Anthropologist (Defence & Security), Toronto Metropolitan University

On April 9, 1917, my great-grandfather, A. Harold Carter, was a 16-year-old underage Canadian Expeditionary Force soldier from the 5th Canadian Mounted Rifles, 8th Brigade, 3rd Division.

At 5:30 am, he went over the trench at Vimy Ridge. He was a scrawny, 5’4″ kid from London, Ont., who defied his mother and signed up two years earlier at age 14. He survived.

Almost 109 years after the war that was to end all wars, Canada must once again consider training its citizens, as it did my great-grandfather, for a potential global conflict.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first mandate letter in May 2025, a month after his election, clearly prioritized Canada’s industrial, military and civilian global sovereignty as a key pillar of his new government.

His first budget, entitled Canada Strong, attempted to lay the fiscal foundation for Canada to act boldly and decisively, specifically on the much-neglected defence portfolio.

The June 2025 Building Canada Act has begun to cement that industry/civilian vision into reality, and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) Inflection Point 2025 seeks to enable the CAF to be “Ready, Resilient and Relevant” to fulfil this mandate.

Canadian needs

Not since the Second World War have all levels of Canadian society — government, industry, citizenry and military — been fully aligned to “ensure that Canada is once again the master of its own defence,” as Carney puts it.

But either by intention or incompetence, the ill-timed leak in November 2025 of the CAF’s Defence Mobilization Plan raised serious concerns due to its suggestion that more than 300,000 federal employees should be trained for emergency quasi-combat duties. The intent was valid, but the context wasn’t.

The CAF’s “Defence of Canada” vision prioritizes a total defence framework. Canada currently deploys an emergency management, whole-of-society governance strategy, which is a layer of total defence, to ensure that all levels of society recover quickly from a crisis.

It’s a tested and proven model used by South Korea’s Civil Defence Corps and Australia’s State Emergency Service, which are primarily focused on disaster relief.

The recently revised Humanitarian Workforce Program is Canada’s primary federal funding vehicle for building a professional, civilian, disaster-response capacity training, led by non-governmental partners.

In practice, a whole-of-society approach is designed to free up the military from non-combat duties during major crises. But a total defence doctrine supports both civilian auxiliary and military roles and responsibilities. Canada is missing that piece of the equation.

A Finnish solution?

Canada’s 400-year legacy of voyageurs, militia, pathfinders and rangers reflects a long tradition of civilian contribution to defence. Since the War of 1812, the country has not faced invasion, due in part to co-ordinated efforts among regular forces, allied Indigenous Nations and civilian auxiliaries.

That history raises a contemporary question: if civilian capability once played a decisive role in national defence, what form should it take today? As modern threats evolve beyond conventional warfare, Canada must reconsider how to structure, train and mobilize civilian expertise, not as an ad hoc reserve, but as a genuine component of national resilience.

Canada could draw from the very successful defence-adjacent, civilian-co-managed National Defence Training Association of Finland (MPK), a mixed-model approach that supports annual training for ex-military personnel, reservists and, specifically, non-military civilians.

The Finnish system is based on a total defence doctrine adopted and successfully deployed primarily by the Scandinavian and Baltic states as a direct result to their proximity to Russia, a much larger adversarial nation. The doctrine recognizes that survival and mobilization of their civilian population is necessary in the face of an existential threat or a major war.

National defence has consequently becomes not only a military function, but also a societal capability.

A Finnish-inspired Canadian Defence Training Organization would align with the intent of the CAF’s Defence Mobilization Plan, while expanding civilian participation beyond national and provincial public service employees to a broader, self-selecting and even transnational pool of defence-minded Canadians.

For Canadians who want to contribute

As part of a broader civilian defence system, volunteers could receive annual training in practical skills like first aid, logistics, communications and evacuation. Over time, the program could also expand to include drone use and countermeasures, as well as small arms training.

It would function as a distributed, community-based resilience network — a modern civilian defence initiative similar to the Canadian Rangers training programs, but adapted for civilian use in southern urban and rural settings.

It would not replace the CAF’s Reserve Force, but instead offer a complementary pathway for civilians who want to contribute to defence in a supporting role.

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Read more:
Amid U.S. threats, Canada’s national security plans must include training in non-violent resistance

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Using the Finnish model would boldly address Carney’s mandate letter and captures the spirit of the Defence Mobilization Plan within a more Canadian sensibility. It’s defence-oriented without being alarmist.

Many civilians want to contribute to national defence, but are put off by the demands of reserve service and the challenge of fitting it into established civilian lives. This approach would give willing, highly skilled volunteers a way to help defend Canada without taking on a major, immediate commitment.

By adopting the shared military–civilian governance model of Finland’s MPK and drawing on the Canadian Rangers’ strong sense of community and resilience, a Canadian defence training organization could serve as both a force multiplier in times of crisis and a community builder in times of peace.

William Michael Carter 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. Canada urgently needs a civilian defence strategy — before the next crisis forces one – https://theconversation.com/canada-urgently-needs-a-civilian-defence-strategy-before-the-next-crisis-forces-one-280194

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By George Kofi Danso, PhD, Human Geography, Queen’s University, Ontario

Canada positions itself as a nation in need of skilled immigrants to address labour shortages, support an aging population and drive economic growth. But the reality of Canada’s labour market tells a different story.

Upon arrival, the credentials of the talent attracted from abroad often face skepticism. The issue isn’t just about integration, it’s about the bigger problem of how Canada recognizes and values educational backgrounds, skills and professional experience.

At the centre of that failure is the idea of “Canadian experience.” This refers to the requirement that job applicants have prior work experience in the Canadian labour market to gain further employment.

Employers often defend this requirement as practical. They argue it ensures that workers understand local norms, workplace culture and regulatory expectations. In practice, this requirement acts as a screening tool.

This is both a social and an economic mistake. Canada’s immigration policy is based on the idea that newcomers are crucial to its future success. Yet it continues to squander the skills of the professionals it accepted to take in.

As a researcher specializing in immigration and international student retention in Canada, I believe the system isn’t failing at selecting talent, it’s failing at recognizing it.

Immigrants aren’t the problem, recognition is

A report from RBC found that immigrants often struggle to secure suitable employment in Canada because their training or field of study does not align with labour market needs. This explanation is incomplete, as data shows that a majority of immigrants with a post-secondary education are often more over-qualified than Canadian-born workers.

In September 2025, 34.7 per cent of recent immigrants reported being over-qualified compared with 18.5 per cent of Canadian-born workers. This suggests that many immigrants are failing because their skills are not being fully acknowledged or used.

Immigrants didn’t arrive without skills. They were carefully selected for the strong education, experience and qualifications that met Canada’s immigration standards. The problem starts after they arrive, when their qualifications face even deeper scrutiny.

Most employers ask for Canadian experience as a prerequisite, creating an impossible cycle: newcomers cannot gain Canadian experience without being hired, yet cannot get hired without Canadian experience.

At the core of the problem is a tendency to view unfamiliar foreign experience as a liability rather than as evidence of skill. Employers usually trust what they know. Regulatory bodies focus on credentials they easily understand. So foreign training is often seen as uncertain until it’s translated into Canadian terms.

The problem repeats across immigration streams

Two groups highlight this issue clearly: international students and internationally trained doctors. Although they differ in many ways, both show how Canada delays or denies recognition of people it has invited.

International students often come to Canada for the promise of education and work that can lead to a better future. However, they soon face a tough reality: costly housing, tight finances and immigration rules that limit their options.

To make ends meet, many take jobs in retail, food service, warehouses, delivery or care work. These roles are essential and demanding, yet they don’t provide the professional experience or career advancement that students expect.

International students are encouraged to work, contribute and build a life in Canada. Yet the jobs available to them, while technically providing Canadian work experience, are not in their fields of study. After graduation, employers often dismiss this experience as irrelevant and continue to demand professional Canadian experience in their specific industry, which students had no opportunity to gain.

Health experts often warn about a shortage of physicians. Family medicine faces pressure, emergency rooms are crowded and many communities lack access to care. However, many qualified foreign-trained doctors encounter a maze of licensing hurdles, repeated exams and limited chances to practice.

In 2021, Canada had roughly 39,000 internationally educated people with medical training, yet only 41.1 per cent of foreign-educated doctors were working in related occupations, compared with about nine in ten Canadian-educated medical graduates.

Many of these doctors come with strong clinical knowledge and experience from other health systems. Yet in Canada, their qualifications must go through extensive verification processes, credential checks and limited licensing pathways.

While these requirements are set up to ensure the Canadian health-care system can meet the highest standards of care, they also create barriers for foreign-qualified professionals.

What Canada keeps getting wrong

Canada seeks global talent but builds systems that undervalue it. This contradiction could explain why labour shortages in healthcare and certain skilled trades persist despite high-skilled immigration streams.

To gain real benefits from immigration, Canada must improve how it recognizes and integrates foreign expertise. And it should stop using “Canadian experience” as a method of exclusion.

Underusing skilled immigrants is both unfair to them and harms the economy. Canada can’t claim it needs talent from abroad while discounting it once it arrives.

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

– ref. ‘Canadian experience’ keeps skilled immigrants out of the labour market – https://theconversation.com/canadian-experience-keeps-skilled-immigrants-out-of-the-labour-market-277036

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Randall Hansen, Professor, Canada Research Chair in Global Migration & Director of the Global Migration Lab, University of Toronto

I was recently in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and approached a group of young men in front of the Indian embassy. I told them I was a University of Toronto researcher.

I asked: “Are you from the scam compounds?” Scam compounds are industrial-scale complexes where trafficked workers are confined and forced to carry out online fraud.

They were. One man in his early 30s named Akshit told me his story.

Akshit was not your typical human trafficking victim. His English is perfect, he is educated, and he has worked in banks and call centres. But he was trafficked. In 2024, a friend told him of a friend who knew about a job in Cambodia paying twice what he earned in India.

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Read more:
‘I thought about escaping every day’: how survivors get out of Southeast Asia’s cybercrime compounds – Scam Factories podcast, Ep 3

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After a quick interview, he paid US$500 to fly to Phnom Penh via Kuala Lumpur. The flight and his car ride to Sihanoukville, a coastal city in southwest Cambodia, were comfortable, and on arrival at an apartment block he was given a welcome bag and a nice room. It all seemed above board.

It was anything but. He was in a scam compound where hundreds of workers sat at computers and convinced Asians and westerners to invest in fake schemes or love interests. Workers were arranged in teams of eight, led by a team leader, with a manager overseeing several teams and a Chinese criminal syndicate above them. His recruiter had sold him for US$5,000.

Labour violations

Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked in Cambodia and Myanmar alone. Media coverage of scam compounds has often focused on the beatings, broken bones and workers screaming as they are tasered. These outrages are real, but they are only the most extreme form of abuse.

At the core of scam compounds is a system of paid but forced labour: 15-hour days, seven days a week, multiple chats open, texting victims in English and workers’ native languages.

Akshit worked in English and Hindi, targeting southern Indians. The chats started at 10:30 a.m. — latecomers were fined — and ended at 2 a.m.

They followed a fluid but predictable script: a “developer” texts multiple clients. When they engage, he passes them on to a “chatter.” The chatter texts with the victim for three to four days, determining whether they’re interested in love or financial gain. He then passes them on to the “killer,” who seals the deal, instructing the victim on how to transfer the funds.

Akshit moved between the three roles.

The original investment would be small — around $250 — and would build from there. Once the victim had transferred enough money, it would all go quiet. The amounts varied by victim, but large transfers — hundreds of thousands of dollars or more — were rare; it was usually a few thousand.

The role of the pandemic

Scam compounds took off in Cambodia during the COVID-19 pandemic, as closed casinos and apartment blocks in cities such as Sihanoukville and the border towns of Bavet (Vietnam), Koh Kong and O’Smach (Thailand) were repurposed to house scam operations. They then spread to Myanmar (clustering along the border with Thailand) and Laos (especially the “Golden Triangle,” where Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet).

Operations on this scale are recent, but the business model is far older: large gains based on low margins per transaction.

Billions are siphoned from victims — American losses to cryptocurrency scams alone reached US$5.6 billion in 2023 — but spread across hundreds of compounds and hundreds of thousands of workers, the returns per operation are far less impressive.

In Akshit’s team, everyone had a target of US$10,000 per month, for which they received $800; beyond that, there was a gradually increasing cut. But not everyone made the target.

Payroll sheets Akshit showed me recorded a few payouts of more than US$5,000, but many were in the low hundreds, meaning they brought in only a few thousand dollars monthly. Those who failed to make the target got less, or no, pay. Those who refused to work were abused, threatened and, in some cases, tortured.

One night, Akshit was awoken by screams several doors down. A Pakistani national had refused to comply and instead pleaded for help in texts to those he was supposed to scam. A team leader reported him, and his supervisors and security personnel used electroshock batons on him.

Illusion of shutdowns

A scam compound’s fixed costs are high once housing, food, security, transportation and team leaders’ and managers’ salaries are factored in. Forced labour makes the operation profitable. In its structural reliance on cheap labour, in fact, human trafficking in illegal scam compounds bears similarities to human trafficking in the legal fish processing or garments sectors.

The fact that so many victims come from wealthy western and East Asian countries explains the immense pressure on the Cambodian government. Hundreds of scam centres have closed since January 2026, and thousands of Chinese, South Asian, African and Indonesian workers were on the streets of Phnom Penh, struggling to get home.

But appearances deceive. Akshit’s compound was raided only after the owners had been tipped off; they moved workers to a hotel. Investigative journalist Danielle Keeton-Olsen told me in an interview that many of those released were low-level workers. Several other sources confirmed this.

What’s more, as Nathan Paul Southern from the Eyewitness Project explained to me:

“There is a huge difference between being raided and being shut down. The majority of the Prince Group (compound) closures were not raids; they just ceased operations. The cops said you need to go but keep us paid. And the doors closed.”

Much infrastructure remains, he noted, and some compounds are reportedly filling up again. The aggregate profits, generated on the back of cheap labour, are too large.

Lucrative enterprise

The total annual revenue from scams in Cambodia was US$12.9 billion in 2023, about 40 per cent of the country’s GDP. Officials throughout Cambodia — police, border guards and civil servants — receive bribes to look the other way.

Many powerful entities, including criminal organizations, businesses and politicians, have an interest in the system continuing. If scam compounds close in Cambodia, they will open elsewhere.

There is also worker agency. Some do the work voluntarily; Akshit estimates 40 per cent in his compound were willing, earning around US$5,000 per month. The figure may be exaggerated, but some clearly have an interest in the system continuing.

Globally, there are millions desperate enough to take the risk. In one form or another, scam compounds — and the trafficking that sustains them — are here to stay.

Professor Randall Hansen receives funding from his Canada Research Chair in Global Migration

– ref. Inside Southeast Asia’s scam compounds: A trafficked worker tells of fraud, coercion and torture – https://theconversation.com/inside-southeast-asias-scam-compounds-a-trafficked-worker-tells-of-fraud-coercion-and-torture-280311

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Timothy Naimi, Director, Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research; Professor, Division of Medical Sciences, University of Victoria

Lately, there has been a lot of news about declining alcohol sales in North America, and speculation as to why that might be.

As director of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria, I consider this an important development and a topic worth exploring given its implications for health and society more broadly.

Is the decline real?

Based on alcohol sales data (which is more reliable than self-reported survey data), the decline appears to be real. According to Statistics Canada, per capita alcohol sales (the average amount sold per person aged 15 years and older) declined for the fourth consecutive year, from 8.3 litres of ethanol (roughly 487 standard drinks per year) in 2020-21 to 6.8 litres (399 standard drinks) in 2024-25, a rather dramatic decline of 18 per cent.

Alcohol sales have also declined recently in the United States, so this is not a Canada-only phenomenon.

Possible contributing factors

There are many possible contributors to consider, some of which overlap with one another:

• Increasing health concerns? Increased concern about health effects of alcohol, including from socially “moderate” levels of use, may be contributing to reduced use and changing social norms.

  Scientifically, the notion of purported benefits from moderate drinking, particularly of wine, has been largely debunked. Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health found increased risk of an alcohol-caused death at more than two drinks per week.

  The recent U.S. Surgeon General’s report on alcohol and cancer highlighted the growing recognition that alcohol is causally related to seven types of human cancer including cancers of the breast, colon, liver and esophagus. Interest in the sober-curious movement and participation in abstinence periods such as Dry January may partly reflect health concerns.

• Inflation and affordability?
  Inflation has been relatively high in Canada over the past five years, and the affordability of staples like food has declined. Alcohol is a price-responsive good; most people purchase more of it when they have more disposable income, and less when they are trying to spend less.

• Post-COVID normalization?
  Canadian alcohol consumption increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the factors behind that increase are not fully understood, it is logical that consumption would decline with the waning of the pandemic. However, consumption has now fallen well below pre-COVID levels.

• Immigration?
  In recent years, Canada has experienced a large influx of immigrants, many of whom come from countries with lower alcohol use than Canada, like India. While this would contribute to the decline in per-capita use (the average consumption among all people, including non-drinkers), total alcohol sales have also declined, indicating lower consumption among those who are not recent immigrants.

• The rise of no- and low-alcohol products? There has been an explosion of no- and low-alcohol products, particularly for beer. But it’s unclear to what extent this category is replacing traditional alcohol sales versus adding to overall consumption. Stay tuned.

• Cannabis substitution for alcohol? Research evidence about whether cannabis use is associated with more or less alcohol use (that is, whether people are using cannabis in addition to alcohol or using cannabis instead of alcohol) is mixed. But cannabis use has been increasing in Canada for some time, and even the 2018 legalization of cannabis for recreational use occurred during a time when alcohol sales were stable or increasing, so this is unlikely to be an important contributor.

• Reduced use by youth? Although still common across North America, the prevalence of alcohol use among youth has declined over the past decade. Since drinking trajectories tend to persist with age, average consumption would decline over time as yesterday’s youth become a progressively larger share of the adult population.

• Boycott of U.S. alcohol products? This is not a major contributor. The boycott of U.S. alcohol products came several years after alcohol sales began to decline. Furthermore, there are many non-U.S. product alternatives across all alcoholic beverage types and price ranges.

• Increased use of GLP-1 agonist medications? The use of GLP-1 agonists such as Ozempic to treat obesity and diabetes has mushroomed. These medications are now used by approximately three million Canadians adults.

  In addition to reducing interest in eating, these medications also reduce interest in alcohol, and are being studied to treat alcohol use disorders. Although the population effect is not fully understood, their widespread use and impacts on consumption may be contributing to alcohol declines among middle-aged and older adults.

Possible impact of the decline

Over time, reductions in consumption should translate into gains for public health and savings for the health-care system and taxpayers, as alcohol-related costs exceed tax revenues. While reductions in alcohol sales adversely affect alcohol-related industries, reallocating dollars spent on alcohol benefits other sectors of the economy.

Ironically, adopting minimum pricing policies for alcohol could both improve public health and increase industry revenues by implementing what amounts to government-sponsored price collusion at the low end of the alcohol market, where profit margins are otherwise low.

Finally, although there has been a clear trend towards lower alcohol use in recent years, future sales may stabilize or reverse course. It remains to be seen whether the current trend is a long-term development or a fleeting one.

Timothy Naimi receives funding from:
BC government;
Health Canada;
SSHRC (Canadian federal government)

– ref. Why is alcohol use declining in Canada? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-alcohol-use-declining-in-canada-277962

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By David J Finch, Professor, Innovation and Marketing, Mount Royal University; University of Calgary

Canada has a paradox at the heart of its labour market. The country leads the G7 for the most educated workforce and is producing more graduates than ever before. Yet for millions of young Canadians, the path from school to stable work has never been harder.

Between 2022 and 2025, vacancies for jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree and fewer than three years of experience fell by more than half.

About 40 per cent of Canadian graduates are underemployed, and youth unemployment reached 15 per cent in September 2025, more than double the adult rate and the highest in 15 years outside the pandemic.

The familiar diagnosis of a skills gap is not wrong, but it focuses on the wrong problem. The problem isn’t just skills; it’s that the system that converts learning into recognized workplace performance is broken.

Our new report, Entry-Level Employment: The Canary in Canada’s Labour Market Coal Mine, argues that the collapse of entry-level opportunities should not be viewed narrowly as an isolated challenge unique to a generation of young people.

It’s an early warning of broader challenges facing Canada’s labour market. To build a more productive economy, we must start by rebuilding the system that converts learning into recognized performance.

Eroding conversion infrastructure

Entry-level jobs were never just jobs. They were part of a larger system that converted learning into labour-market value. This system delivered four functions: skills were developed and refined under supervision, professional identities were formed, networks were built and capability became visible to employers.

For much of the 20th century, this risk was shared among government, individuals and employers. Governments and individuals funded education, and employers converted this education into workplace value. Employers were prepared to invest in employee development because the return on this investment was measured over decades of employee contribution.

Over the past 30 years, this conversion system deteriorated. The “hire and develop” model of the 20th century has given way to short-term, contract and gig work, which now represents up to one-quarter of Canada’s workforce.

Early research also suggests that the rapid expansion of remote and hybrid work during the COVID-19 pandemic is further diluting this conversion function.

The result is a shift of this conversion role from employers to individuals. As evidence, OECD countries, including Canada, now devote just 0.1 per cent of GDP to workforce training, the lowest level recorded.

Concurrently, over this period, post-secondary attainment in Canada has skyrocketed. However, expanding this educational supply, without scaling the corresponding conversion system, has only accelerated the widening of the conversation gap.

Employers aren’t irrational when they require “entry level” candidates with several years of experience. They are adapting to an absence of mechanisms that once allowed them to observe and develop emerging talent directly.

In the vacuum left by a weakening conversion system, they are left to rely on weak proxies of performance, such as academic credentials, school reputation or references. Each of these proxies reinforces systemic advantage, which locks many qualified new workers out of the very experiences that would let them demonstrate performance.

This is the distinction that matters: a skills gap points to missing qualifications; a conversion gap reflects a loss of system-wide ability to turn those qualifications into proven performance.

The canary in the coal mine

Just as the canary warned miners of invisible danger, the accelerating breakdown of the conversion system signals a risk not just for young people, but for the broader labour market.

Working lives now stretch across four or five decades and multiple employers, sectors and technologies. The World Economic Forum estimates that 39 per cent of current skill sets will be outdated within five years.

Converting learning into recognized performance is no longer limited to entry-level employment but is now an ongoing requirement across every job transition, technological shift or re-entry into work.

Yet the infrastructure supporting this conversion was built for an era of stable firms and linear careers. It no longer fits today’s increasingly dynamic labour market.

What needs to change

To rebuild our conversion capacity, our report identifies four priorities:

1. Rebuild structured entry-level pathways.

Structured conversion pathways must be expanded. Apprenticeships, graduate training programs and residencies must move beyond the trades and health care into all occupations. This restores employers as active partners in the conversion function rather than passive consumers of skills.

2. Embed continuous, work-integrated learning.

Continuous work-integrated learning must be expanded across career stages, with flexible opportunities designed to develop skills, generate observable performance, form professional relationships and appropriately share risk. The conversion gap is not a problem confined to the start of a career; it recurs at every transition, displacement and re-entry.

3. Rebalance risk and responsibility.

The legacy conversion system worked because the risk was shared by employers, government and individuals. The collapse of this system forces people to look for alternative conversion pathways to demonstrate performance, including unpaid internships or pursuing additional education.

These alternatives are not based on merit; they’re often rooted in financial capacity, which is a form of systemic privilege. The new conversion system must be designed to unlock the skills of all Canadians from the outset.

4. Build an open-recognition system.

We must develop open-recognition infrastructure. Open recognition establishes a harmonized system for verifying skills that are recognized across the full labour force, regardless of where or how they were developed. Without this, expanding the first three reforms becomes impossible.

The question is not whether Canadians have the education and skills to succeed. They do. The breakdown is converting this education and skills into recognized workplace performance.

Rebuilding the conversion system is how Canada renews productivity, widens opportunity and builds a workforce capable of meeting the demands of the decades ahead.

David Finch receives funding from the Alberta Centre for Labour Market Research. He is also the Director of The Productivity Project, a collaboration of Mount Royal University, the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, the Alberta Centre for Labour Market Research, and the LearningCITY Collective.

– ref. Canada is producing more graduates than ever — so why is it harder to find a job? – https://theconversation.com/canada-is-producing-more-graduates-than-ever-so-why-is-it-harder-to-find-a-job-279178

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jody Mason, Associate Professor, Department of English, Carleton University

The gutting of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2025 has had catastrophic consequences,
including in South Sudan where amid ongoing war, an estimated 33 million people require humanitarian assistance.

The federal government in Canada has similarly slashed foreign aid in response to the economic fallout of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war.

International aid groups have met such policy decisions with regret.

This regret is understandable. At the same time, many Western powers avoid acknowledging that the broad liberal international consensus that emerged after the Second World War — and shaped modern development — was built on global inequality.

In Prime Minister Mark Carney’s 2026 speech to the World Economic Forum, he only tentatively alluded to disparities and inequalities when he acknowledged “the story of the international rules-based order was partially false … ”

In Books for Development: Canada In the Late Twentieth-Century World I argue that this “partially false” story helped to elaborate Canada’s late 20th-century image as both benevolent and innocent regarding internal colonialism.

Language of ‘development’

What social scientist Wolfgang Sachs has called the “age of development” emerged in the decade following the Second World War.

Scholars point to U.S. President Harry Truman’s 1949 inaugural address as a key moment in this post-Second World War history.

The speech referred to a U.S. obligation to make its scientific and industrial progress available for the “improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.”

The classification of the world’s population into “developed” and “underdeveloped” came to shape the post-war order and its international institutions, such as the United Nations.

Critiques of developmentalism began to emerge in the 1960s from what was then called the “Third World.” In the context of the Structural Adjustment Programs after the economic crises of the late 1970s, post-development theorists such as Sachs and Gilbert Rist amplified this kind of criticism.

They argued that developmentalism was premised on related and false claims — that global inequalities were without cause and “underdeveloped” nations could catch up to their “developed” counterparts.

‘Developmentalism’ and books

In Books for Development, I examine how the book became a dominant symbol of the age of development through the efforts of the new international institutions, and the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in particular.

This had implications both in Canadian foreign policy and in relationships with Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

In the context of post-Second World War development, books, though typically framed as “good,” nonetheless often played a harmful role.

In the post-war decades, UNESCO focused on literacy initiatives and improving global access to books, partly through its research on conditions in global publishing.

As Robert Escarpit reported in a 1982 study for UNESCO, “decolonization often stimulated book production less in the new nations than in the old colonizing countries.” The latter, he notes, now “had to meet the new demands from their former colonies for literacy campaigns or educational development.”

At their worst, book development programs undercut domestic publishing initiatives in newly independent nations in Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere.

Canada’s role

Canada played a significant role in post-war development linked to the book.

The deep involvement of educationalist and liberal internationalist J.R. Kidd at UNESCO is a key element of this history.

As historian Kevin O’Sullivan has shown, Canadians drew on a longstanding book-centric Protestant missionary and service tradition to become leaders in the late 20th-century non-governmental organization (NGO) movement.

In addition to Kidd’s roles at UNESCO, he was also one of the founders of Canada’s first NGO, the Overseas Book Centre. Founded in 1959, this book donation program sent Canadian books to Global South nations.

Book donation schemes like those undertaken by the Overseas Book Centre undermined local book publishing initiatives in recipient nations. The organization’s self-assessments later confirmed this problem, and led to a reorientation of its efforts (and a renaming, in 1982, as the Canadian Organization for Development in Education).

Serving Canada’s interests

Kidd’s book- and literacy-related work often used UNESCO’s new international stage to argue for what he called Canada’s “special mission” in international development.

Canada was presented as a model and potential friend for newly decolonizing nations because of its recent experience as a colony of Britain (a status that changed with Confederation).

While historians of Canada’s post-war myth-making have pointed to the disingenuousness of claims that Canada was a “friend of the Third World,” these claims also served to make internal colonialism illegible on the international stage.

Adult literacy

Beginning in the later 1960s, Canada’s international development efforts began to shape NGO and government relations with Indigenous Peoples.

Developmentalist-influenced initiatives linked to books, literacy and education were focused on Indigenous communities. They were part of a longer history of consolidating settler liberal rule via education, exemplified most notoriously in Canada’s Residential School system.

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Read more:
Why Canadians need two dramatic educational shifts to honour reconciliation

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For instance, Canada’s longest running adult literacy program, Frontier College, began addressing its efforts to Indigenous Peoples at the end of the 1960s, when it began to ship magazines to schools run by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. The goal was to aid the department’s policy of integrating Indigenous Peoples into what it called “the Canadian way of life.”

‘The Fourth World’

Indigenous leaders, activists and writers such as as George Manuel (Secwépemc) responded to such initiatives by adapting Third World anti-imperialist revisions of developmentalist thought to their own settler colonial situation.

Manuel’s 1974 book, The Fourth World: An Indian Reality, co-authored with Michael Posluns, was published during Manuel’s tenure (1970-1976) as leader of the National Indian Brotherhood. The book positions economic development at the core of any possible political sovereignty:

“Self-government … without an economic base simply creates the economic colonialism we are witnessing throughout much of Asia and Africa today.”

For Manuel, this “economic base” would come from the land. As he observed, usurping the basis of traditional Indigenous economies — land — was the primary obstacle to contemporary economic development.

Structural conditions of injustice

The Fourth World extends this thinking to the National Indian Brotherhood’s 1972 policy paper, Indian Control of Indian Education. Change at the level of education, Manuel argued, would not be sufficient (even if it meant Nations could control hiring, curriculum and so on). He saw education as fundamentally tied to the question of economic development, which he understood to be contingent on a land base.

Like the broader development framework, the approach applied to Indigenous Nations after 1965 failed to name the structural conditions of injustice. It perpetuated the status quo and, viewed more negatively, it cloaked the very political and economic conditions that created it.

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Read more:
Who benefits from ‘nation-building’ projects like Ksi Lisims?

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Canada’s relationships with other nations, including Indigenous Nations, cannot be premised on what Carney called a “partially false” story.

Jody Mason receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She is a member of the New Democratic Party of Canada.

– ref. How ‘books for development’ campaigns reveal an unjust global order – https://theconversation.com/how-books-for-development-campaigns-reveal-an-unjust-global-order-276594

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kawser Ahmed, Adjunct Professor, Natural Resource Institute (NRI), University of Manitoba

Every ceasefire is haunted by the same question: will it live up to the promise of peace? The United States and Iran could apparently only focus on their disagreements during peace talks in Islamabad, with negotiations led by American Vice President JD Vance failing to result in a deal.

Experts speculated that Iran’s 10-point peace proposals and the American 15-point plan were too far apart to lead to consensus.

This is perhaps unsurprising. Between 1945 and 2009, a survey of peace treaties suggests that fewer than half of all countries that experienced armed conflict managed to avoid falling back into violence.

Dim prospects for Middle East peace

In the Middle East, in particular, the picture is even more sobering. The 1978 Camp David Accords gave us a lasting Egypt-Israel peace but Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat paid with his life and Egypt was cast out of the Arab League by its Arab neighbours.

The Oslo Accords of 1993, signed with such hope on the White House lawn, unravelled into the bloodshed of the Second Intifada. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal of 2015 survived barely three years before the U.S. walked away under President Donald Trump.

The June 2025 ceasefire between Iran and Israel held for months, then shattered.

And now, once again, the world was asked asked to hope. On April 8, a two-week ceasefire was announced between the U.S. and Iran, brokered by Pakistan, after 40 days of U.S-Israeli strikes. The conflict has sent global oil markets into crisis due to the Strait of Hormuz closure, and left Lebanon under relentless Israeli bombardment.

Iran’s 10-point peace plan demanded the strait remain under its military co-ordination, full sanctions relief, compensation, American troop withdrawal and protection for its regional allies — terms the U.S. has called “maximalist.”

With no peace deal, the U.S. announced a naval blockade at the Strait of Hormuz, escalating tensions.

What the war has cost

Peace research has consistently found that ceasefires without trust-building, third-party enforcement and comprehensive scope are the least likely to survive.

This U.S.-Iran ceasefire lacks all of these elements.

The numbers associated with the war are staggering. The Pentagon has spent roughly US$28 billion in 39 days, with the Trump administration now seeking between $80–100 billion more from Congress to continue.

More than 1,500 Iranians have been killed and 18,500 wounded. Thirteen American soldiers are dead and more than 300 are wounded.

Crude oil prices have surged more than 55 per cent since the war began. Gas prices across the U.S. have jumped more than a dollar per gallon, and in fragile economies like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, the energy shock is threatening governments already on the edge.

To what benefit?

There’s been no regime change in Iran, no emancipation of the Iranian people from their oppressive rulers, no nuclear disarmament. Instead, the war has produced a cascade of intangible losses that may prove far more consequential.

The Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab nations, once hailed as a diplomatic masterstroke, are under severe strain as Gulf states absorb Iranian missile strikes on American military bases they host and begin asking whether a U.S. military presence is protection or liability.

NATO relationships are in tatters.

No clear objectives

Israel, which clearly doesn’t want the ceasefire to extend to Lebanon, launched Operation Eternal Darkness with 100 airstrikes in 10 minutes against the Lebanese on the very day the ceasefire was announced.

The U.S. is struggling to define victory in a war it started without clear objectives.

Perhaps the most telling sign of how badly the war has gone for the U.S. is the revolt from within Trump’s MAGA camp. Tucker Carlson, once Trump’s most powerful media ally, delivered a 43-minute monologue calling the president’s war rhetoric “morally corrupt” and “evil.”

He labelled Trump’s Easter morning Truth Social post, which mocked Islam while threatening to wipe out Iranian civilization, “vile on every level.” Joe Rogan called the war “insane, based on what he ran on.” The architects of MAGA’s media empire are in open revolt, and Trump’s approval rating is now positive in just 17 of 50 states.

New world order?

As a peace scholar, this is one of the most disheartening moments I have ever witnessed. The very architecture of peace is being dismantled — not by accident, but by design.

The U.S. has eliminated its entire US$1.23 billion contribution to United Nations peacekeeping in its 2026 budget, slashed 85 per cent of its diplomatic and international affairs spending, shuttered USAid after 64 years and withdrawn from 66 international bodies since January 2025.

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Read more:
Trump’s push to shut down USAID shows how international development is also about strategic interests

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The UN has been forced to cut 25 per cent of its peacekeeping forces, meaning a lesser presence in places like Lebanon, Congo and South Sudan precisely when the world needs them most.

The war has also exposed an inversion of the global security order. When it came time to broker peace, no western U.S. ally stepped forward.

Instead, Pakistan — a country embroiled in its own border tensions with India and Afghanistan — is lead mediator, alongside Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. China has helped from the sidelines.

This foursome of Muslim-majority nations are now positioning themselves as the primary diplomatic channel in a region where both Israel and Iran have become pariahs and American credibility as a security guarantor is in tatters.

For a country that built the post-1945 rules-based order, the U.S. now needs to be rescued from its own war by the very nations it once lectured on governance and peace.

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Venezuela attack, Greenland threats and Gaza assault mark the collapse of international legal order

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Parallels to Athens

If the U.S. can wage an unauthorized war against Iran without clear objectives, if Russia can redraw borders in Ukraine by force and if Israel can operate without restraint or accountability across Lebanon, Gaza and beyond, then what signal is being sent to every government with a grievance that has a strong military?

How does collective humanity build mechanisms that can actually prevent wars, not just end them after the damage is done?

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Read more:
Guns over people: Rising military spending is eroding quality of life around the world

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Thucydides had a warning 2,400 years ago: military power and technological advancement do not guarantee safety or perpetual peace.

Athens, the world’s dominant power in the 5th century BCE, did not fall to a stronger enemy. It fell because it launched a war of choice it didn’t have to fight. The Sicilian Expedition drained the Athens treasury, fractured its alliances and exposed the arrogance of imperial overreach. The parallels are hard to ignore.

To fund a war of choice, the U.S. is spending billions to destroy while cutting pennies from the institutions aimed at healing. It’s yet another indication that the world is losing its way in an era of constant conflict.

Kawser Ahmed 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. Failed peace deal: The Iran war has inflicted a cascade of losses that may never be recovered – https://theconversation.com/failed-peace-deal-the-iran-war-has-inflicted-a-cascade-of-losses-that-may-never-be-recovered-280313

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sepita Hatami, Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, Western University

Online sexism is often dismissed as random — just a few bad comments or offensive jokes. But what appears scattered and spontaneous is increasingly structured, repeated and amplified in ways that make it far more influential.

This shift can be understood through masculinism, an ideology that frames men as a disadvantaged group and defines feminism and gender equality as threats. While individual sexist comments may appear isolated, masculinism provides a shared narrative thread that connects them and reinforces them across online spaces.

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Driven by social media, masculinism has moved from the fringes to the mainstream

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Masculinist groups, such as incel (involuntary celibate) communities, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) and men’s rights activists like Andrew Tate openly reject gender equality and may even encourage violence against women, turning sexism into something more deliberate and far-reaching.

In January 2026, the French High Council for Gender Equality issued a warning that online masculinist groups are no longer niche or innocuous. These organized groups have grown in influence and can affect how women are treated in society.

To understand why this matters, it helps to understand how everyday sexist behaviours or discourse is entangled with and can evolve into co-ordinated online movements. Sexism is no longer limited to individual views or fringe pockets of the internet, it is now shared across many online platforms.

The pattern behind the noise

As a researcher in feminist theory and gender studies, specializing in the analysis of narrative and cultural representation, I study how gendered ideas are represented, produced and circulated across different media.

Most people see sexist comments online every day. These range from crude jokes to attacks on feminism or claims that men are the “real victims” in today’s society.

Because these comments often look casual and unplanned, many people see them as random, harmless or just personal opinions. However, research in social sciences and communications shows that they do not spread by accident. Instead, they follow loose patterns of co-ordination.

This type of co-ordination happens when people share the same language, ideas and feelings of resentment online over and over again.

As these messages appear repeatedly across digital platforms, what feels like a personal opinion becomes part of a more organized pattern, even if users are not aware of that bigger picture.

The role of repetition and emotion

Groups like men’s rights activists, anti-feminist or misogynist communities were once seen as small and insignificant with little influence. But over time, some have developed a growing presence on popular social media platforms, podcasts and video channels.

Their ideas now reach far beyond their original online space. Influencers like Justin Waller and Sneako (featured on Louis Theroux’s latest Netflix documentary, Inside the Manosphere) have played a significant role in popularizing masculinist ideas.

Their content often combines self-help messaging with narratives that portray women as manipulative or men as unfairly disadvantaged. Tate alone has amassed billions of views across platforms, reflecting the scale at which such ideas circulate.

Messages that trigger anger or a sense of unfairness are more likely to be shared. Research in psychological and cognitive sciences shows that emotional and moral language makes political messages more likely to be spread, even among people who disagree with them.

The main concern is not how many people openly support violence against women. The greater risk is what repeated exposure does over time. When certain groups, like women or feminists, are presented repeatedly as dangerous or immoral, people may become more accepting of harsh treatment toward them, even if there is no open call to violence.

Regular exposure to misogynistic content can also make users more likely to move toward extreme views, including far-right content. Radicalization does not happen overnight and is, in fact, the result of consistent exposure and gradual normalization over time.

When people see the same messages again and again, harmful language loses its shock value and starts to feel acceptable.

What’s alarming is that the consequences extend beyond digital spaces.

When harmful ideas aren’t questioned

Reports show that sexist language and attitudes are increasingly appearing in schools and family settings.

Teachers report that students repeat the misogynistic messages they’ve seen on social media or online video platforms and treat them as jokes or “common sense” rather than harmful ideas and behaviours.

Similar patterns can appear in workplaces, where women’s contributions may be dismissed through humour. When we become used to harmful content, we stop questioning it.

Understanding these patterns doesn’t mean that nobody is allowed to disagree with gender policies. In a democratic society, it’s healthy for people to have different views on how equality can be achieved. However, there’s a difference between fair disagreements and organized narratives that treat gender equality as a serious threat.

If we want to counter this phenomenon, we have to recognize the impact of how girls and women are portrayed online and how everyday sexist content can influence the way they are treated in real life.

Sepita Hatami 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. Everyday sexist online language is not random, and that’s the problem – https://theconversation.com/everyday-sexist-online-language-is-not-random-and-thats-the-problem-274608

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Allison Harell, Professor of Political Science, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

A year ago this month, Canadians delivered a result that seemed impossible just a few weeks earlier: another Liberal minority government, this time under newly chosen leader Mark Carney. Now, after three byelections, the Liberals have a majority for the first time since 2019.

It’s been an astonishing reversal of fortune for the Liberals. For more than two years, the Conservatives had held a comfortable advantage in the polls. Many analysts treated a Conservative victory as all but inevitable.

Yet on election night on April 28, 2025, the Liberals finished with 43.8 per cent of the vote, edging out the Conservatives at 41.3 per cent, while the NDP and Bloc Québécois dropped sharply from their 2021 levels.

Two major developments upended what had appeared to be a predictable political landscape — and, if the byelection results are any indication, their effects may be lasting.

The first was the return of Donald Trump to the United States presidency. This brought an immediate wave of tariffs and an adversarial posture toward Canada. The policy shock had economic consequences, but it also triggered a shift in how Canadians perceived the risks facing the country.

The second development came in early January 2025. Justin Trudeau resigned after intense internal and external pressure. His departure reset the Liberal brand almost overnight.

With Carney newly installed as leader, the Liberals entered the election presenting not continuity but transformation in the face of Trump’s threats about making Canada the 51st American state.

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Canada, the 51st state? Eliminating interprovincial trade barriers could ward off Donald Trump

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Trump and tariffs were primary issues

Taken together, these shocks reshaped voters’ priorities. Instead of evaluating parties along familiar ideological lines, many Canadians approached the election as a question of who could best protect the country during an unusually turbulent moment. It seems that a year later, Canadian voters are still regarding the Liberals in this light.

New data from the 2025 Canadian Election Study (CES) has helped illuminate this dynamic. When asked which party was best suited to manage Canada’s relationship with the United States, Canadians across nearly all partisan groups — including those who typically support other parties — chose the Liberals most often (57.8 per cent).

While Liberal and Conservative partisans selected their own respective parties more than 80 per cent of the time, what’s noteworthy is that strong majorities of NDP (71.6 per cent) and Bloc (62.8 per cent) supporters also selected the Liberals.

The significance of this pattern is hard to overstate. The relationship with the U.S. dominated voter concerns during the election. One in five Canadians mentioned the relationship with the U.S., Trump or tariffs as the most important issue in the 2025 Canadian federal election.

This was the second most common response behind general economic concerns, which were closely tied to the U.S. situation. About one in three Canadians said the economy was the most important issue.

Economic stewardship

Historically, Conservatives benefit when voters prioritize economic competence. But in 2025, the turbulence caused by U.S. tariffs did not translate into increased trust in Conservative stewardship.

Instead, a sizable majority of Canadians supported the use of retaliatory tariffs (68.7 per cent), and more Canadians identified the Liberals as the party best able to manage the economy (48 per cent versus 39 per cent for Conservatives).

This shift in perceived competence had profound cascading effects. Strategic voting among NDP supporters, in particular, proved decisive. While partisans typically remain loyal to their own party, 2025 saw an unprecedented number of traditionally NDP voters casting ballots for the Liberals.

While more than 80 per cent of NDP supporters voted for their own party in 2021, a majority of NDP partisans voted for the Liberals in 2025, a highly unusual pattern for partisans in most elections.

This trend extended to Bloc voters as well, though to a lesser extent, leading to a Liberal minority that was unimaginable six months earlier.

Carney and the Liberals still popular

As we approach the one-year anniversary of this election, the aftermath of those choices is still visible in public opinion.

Polling conducted in early 2026 shows the Liberals holding a six‑point lead in national vote intention, along with a 52 per cent government approval rating. Carney’s net favourability sits at +20.

These indicators, as well as the byelection results, suggest that voters have not experienced the “buyer’s remorse” that sometimes follows strategic elections. Instead, many appear reassured by the combination of stability and technocratic competence they sought in 2025.

Multiple floor-crossings by Conservative and NDP members — the most recent is longtime Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu, whose defection left the Liberals just one seat short of a majority before the byelections — suggest optimism about the Liberal government’s stability.

Whether this stability endures will depend heavily on developments outside Canada’s borders. But for now, Canadians seem broadly satisfied with the strategic choice they made in April 2025.

The Canadian Election Study was funded from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (grant #891-2019-2011).

Daniel Rubenson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Laura Stephenson has received funding from SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) and Max Bell Foundation for her research.

Lewis Krashinsky receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (#756-2024-0366).

– ref. Mark Carney secures majority after ‘unwinnable’ 2025 election victory, building new momentum – https://theconversation.com/mark-carney-secures-majority-after-unwinnable-2025-election-victory-building-new-momentum-279061