The Conversation – Canada – Page 17

March 30, 2026

Ontario is closing its supervised consumption sites, calling them a failure. So what counts as ‘success?’

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Daniel Eisenkraft Klein, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University

The Ontario government recently said it will cut provincial funding for seven supervised drug consumption sites in Toronto, Ottawa, Niagara, Peterborough and London, with 90 days given to wind down their operations.

In their place, the province is spending $378 million on 19 Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) hubs, which explicitly exclude supervised consumption and needle exchange services.

While Premier Doug Ford’s government’s framing of supervised consumption as a “failed experiment” is selective, it’s not baseless in the way that defenders of these sites sometimes imply.

By certain measures, the sites have not lived up to their potential: the program has not clearly reduced provincewide overdose deaths, and the communities that host them bear costs that defenders too often dismiss.

But “failure” requires a definition of success, and the government’s is not the only one that matters. HART hubs offer care for people on a recovery pathway, while supervised consumption sites exist for those who are not on that pathway yet or who have left it. Entirely replacing safe consumption sites with HART hubs doesn’t address the primary function these sites have served: keeping people who are not in treatment alive. By this measure, the sites are a clear success.

Success by whose measure?

Whether supervised consumption sites “succeed” depends entirely on what they’re expected to do. If we judge the sites against Health Canada’s stated goals — keeping people alive on site, connecting them to treatment, reducing infections and lessening strain on emergency services — the evidence is strong.

No one has ever died of an overdose inside a supervised consumption site in Canada. And sites across the country have reversed more than 50,000 overdoses since 2017.

In Ontario, where more than 2,200 people died from opioid toxicity in 2024 and fentanyl was involved in more than 83 per cent of those deaths, the sites function as a last line of defence for people at highest risk. Since 2021, about one in five opioid toxicity deaths in Ontario has occurred among people experiencing homelessness — the same population these sites primarily serve.

Beyond lives saved, safe consumption sites generate measurable returns the government’s own cost-benefit logic should recognize: Vancouver’s Insite refers thousands of clients to health and social care monthly and a Calgary cost analysis found each overdose managed at a supervised consumption site saved approximately $1,600 in avoided ambulance and emergency department costs. Those resource savings are especially important amid severe emergency room overcrowding in Ontario.

Where the sites fall short

But the Ontario government’s claim that these programs lack population-level impact is not just rhetoric: the two largest provincial-level studies — covering British Columbia and Ontario — found no statistically significant effect on opioid mortality, emergency department visits or hospitalizations.

A systematic review also found that the studies carried high risk of bias because they didn’t account for confounding factors like housing, treatment access and drug supply composition.

A neighbourhood-level study of Toronto found a two-thirds reduction in overdose mortality within 500 metres of sites, but that finding did not replicate at larger geographic scales.

One possible explanation for this lack of effect is coverage: Ontario’s supervised consumption sites provided roughly 150 spaces accommodating up to 9,000 episodes per day, while the province may have 300,000 to 400,000 at-risk opioid users. Expecting a handful of supervised consumption sites to reduce provincewide overdose mortality is akin to stationing a single fire truck in a forest and asking why the wildfire kept burning.

Community concerns, which the Ford government often cites in arguing that safe consumption sites have failed, are similarly grounded in real experiences.

A study published in JAMA Network Open examining Toronto’s safe consumption sites found no long-term rise in overall crime, as well as fewer assaults and robberies. But the same study documented initial increases in break-and-enters near a number of sites.

Nearby residents have also described visible disorder, open drug use and discarded equipment.

Dismissing these experiences as NIMBYism or overblown only undermines the case for safe consumption sites. Advocates need to take these concerns seriously if they want the sites to survive politically.

What closures get wrong

Despite this mixed evidence, there’s little to suggest that Ontario’s plan to shift patients to the HART hubs will lead to success.

The Ontario government has cited a Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence study that found no increase in mortality after the closure of one overdose prevention site in Red Deer, Alta.

But that study’s authors have acknowledged it was inconclusive because it covered only a six-month period. And a single study of a single site closure does not constitute an evidence base for dismantling an entire network of services across a province where opioid deaths remain catastrophically high.

Supervised consumption sites are not beyond criticism: they can be better designed, better integrated and more responsive to the communities that host them. But improving them requires better policy, not selective evidence and site closures.

The $378 million committed to HART hubs could expand addiction treatment without eliminating the services that keep people alive. Adding treatment capacity does not require removing the safety net beneath it.

Daniel Eisenkraft Klein 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. Ontario is closing its supervised consumption sites, calling them a failure. So what counts as ‘success?’ – https://theconversation.com/ontario-is-closing-its-supervised-consumption-sites-calling-them-a-failure-so-what-counts-as-success-279288

March 30, 2026

Ontario is closing its supervised consumption sites, calling them a failure. But were they successful? Yes and no

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Daniel Eisenkraft Klein, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University

In their place, the province is spending $378 million on 19 Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) hubs, which explicitly exclude supervised consumption and needle exchange services.

While Premier Doug Ford’s government’s framing of supervised consumption as a “failed experiment” is selective, it’s not baseless in the way that defenders of these sites sometimes imply.

Success by whose measure?

No one has ever died of an overdose inside a supervised consumption site in Canada. And sites across the country have reversed more than 50,000 overdoses since 2017.

Where the sites fall short

A systematic review also found that the studies carried high risk of bias because they didn’t account for confounding factors like housing, treatment access and drug supply composition.

A neighbourhood-level study of Toronto found a two-thirds reduction in overdose mortality within 500 metres of sites, but that finding did not replicate at larger geographic scales.

Community concerns, which the Ford government often cites in arguing that safe consumption sites have failed, are similarly grounded in real experiences.

Nearby residents have also described visible disorder, open drug use and discarded equipment.

What closures get wrong

Despite this mixed evidence, there’s little to suggest that Ontario’s plan to shift patients to the HART hubs will lead to success.

The Ontario government has cited a Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence study that found no increase in mortality after the closure of one overdose prevention site in Red Deer, Alta.

– ref. Ontario is closing its supervised consumption sites, calling them a failure. But were they successful? Yes and no – https://theconversation.com/ontario-is-closing-its-supervised-consumption-sites-calling-them-a-failure-but-were-they-successful-yes-and-no-279288

March 30, 2026

Canada becomes testing ground for FIFA’s proposed ‘daylight’ offside rule

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Taylor McKee, Assistant Professor, Sport Management, Brock University

After years of controversy over marginal offside decisions and the growing influence of video assistant referees, FIFA is now testing a potential alternative.

Starting in April 2026, the Canadian Premier League will serve as a testing ground for FIFA’s proposed “daylight offside” rule — a change championed by Arsène Wenger in his role as the organization’s chief of global development.

FIFA and the International Football Association Board typically test law changes in lower-profile competitions before considering wider adoption.

A rule under strain

The rules governing English soccer, known as the “Laws of the Game,” are set by the International Football Association Board and were first codified in 1863, including an early version of the offside rule. Since then, there has only been two major changes, in 1925 and 1990.

That relative stability changed in the 2010s with the introduction of the video assistant referee (VAR). For the first time, an additional referee, not located on the pitch, was endowed with the authority to review and overturn decisions on goals, penalties and red cards.

Offside has become one of VAR’s most scrutinized uses, with decisions often determined using calibrated lines and multiple camera angles to identify the exact position of players at the moment the ball is played.

The impact has been significant. In the Premier League alone, 34 goals were nullified for being offside last season.

Precision versus perception

The subjectivity of the offside rule has been a topic of debate among fans since its inception.

VAR was introduced to promote transparency from referees and counter claims of unfairness, but it has arguably produced even more controversies.

Resistance to VAR has been steadily increasing in academic and public circles, leading to calls for change. Some research suggests that the offside rule is not only difficult to enforce but “systematically vulnerable to perceptual error.”

Especially in the face of major tournaments and high-pressure matches, tensions towards VAR and the offside rule have been heightened to an even greater level. The consequences of this can be seen within fan engagement and across social media.

The ‘offside trap’

For decades, the “offside trap” was a defender’s best friend. By stepping forward in unison, defenders could catch strikers out by a matter of inches, effectively killing an attack before it even started.

This allowed teams to play a “high line,” pushing the action far away from their own goal. Wenger’s proposal essentially breaks that trap, as strikers can now be almost a full body length ahead of the defence and still be onside.

Football’s new offside law explained (Tifo Football by The Athletic).

If a defender tries to catch a striker offside and fails, they are left in a foot race they’ve already lost by two metres. As a result, we expect what some have described as the “death of the high line.”

In response, teams may shift toward a “low block,” sitting much deeper and closer to their own goalkeeper. By “parking the bus” and removing the open grass behind them, defenders can negate the striker’s new head start.

The game may become higher scoring, but it will also force a more cautious, safety-first style of defending.

More clarity, or more controversy?

If the daylight rule is seen to improve clarity, increase attacking play or reduce controversy, it could be introduced more broadly in the coming years. If not, it may merely remain an experimental footnote.

However, the daylight rule is unlikely to resolve existing concerns about VAR. If anything, it may extend ongoing debates about consistency and legitimacy in offside decisions.

Questions will remain about how “daylight” is judged in practice, particularly in fast-moving situations or when bodies overlap at angles.

Pundits, journalists and professional soccer players will continue to assess whether this rule simplifies “the beautiful game” or hinders it. Public reaction on social media is also likely to remain mixed, and any discussions will shape collective views on the rule’s effectiveness.

Ultimately, the effectiveness of this new rule may come down to the subjectivity of referees. Soccer and offside calls will always come down to the mere millimetre, no matter how substantially the gap is widened.

A moment of opportunity for Canada

Beyond the technical change, the trial could matter a lot for how the CPL is regarded more broadly. It gives the Canadian league a chance to be part of an international conversation in a way smaller leagues rarely get the opportunity to do.

That alone could raise the CPL’s visibility and make Canadian domestic soccer more relevant in discussions about where the global game is headed.

In that sense, the bigger implication is about whether the CPL can use this moment to strengthen its place in the wider football world. For a league that’s still building its international profile, that kind of attention could matter just as much as what happens on the pitch.

This article was co-authored by Wai Leung, Gaetane Slootweg Allepuz and Agrim Gautam, undergraduate students at Brock University and members of the Brock University Centre for Sport Capacity Soccer Working Group.

Taylor McKee receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Michael Van Bussel 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 becomes testing ground for FIFA’s proposed ‘daylight’ offside rule – https://theconversation.com/canada-becomes-testing-ground-for-fifas-proposed-daylight-offside-rule-278374

March 30, 2026

Water flow in prairie watersheds is increasingly unpredictable — but AI could help

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ali Ameli, Assistant Professor, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia

In a landscape that can flip quickly from soaking up water to sending it downstream, small differences in how wet the wetlands are can be the difference between a manageable spring and a damaging flood. (USFWS Mountain-Prairie), CC BY

In recent years, the Prairies have seen bigger swings in climate conditions — very wet years followed by very dry ones. That makes an already unpredictable landscape even harder to forecast, with real consequences for flood preparedness and water quality.

The challenge is the landscape itself. Much of the Canadian Prairies sit within the Prairie Pothole Region, a landscape dotted with millions of shallow wetlands and depressions. Water doesn’t simply run downhill into a stream, it is stored first. Then, once enough wetlands fill, water begins to spill from one to the next, and only after that does it connect into channels.

Why does this matter now? In a landscape that can flip quickly from soaking up water to connecting it downstream, small differences in how wet the wetlands are can be the difference between a manageable spring season and a damaging flood. The problem is that in many watersheds, we don’t have the local measurements needed to tell whether wetlands are still retaining water or are close to connecting and releasing it downstream.

Across the Canadian Prairies — from southern Alberta through Saskatchewan to Manitoba — streamflow monitoring is sparse, and many watersheds have no gauges. These devices measure water levels and flow rates in rivers and streams, and, less commonly, water levels in wetlands.

Communities in the Red River Basin, the Assiniboine watershed and rural municipalities throughout the Prairie provinces often have limited warning when water conditions shift. This affects flood preparedness, agricultural water management and our understanding of how water is stored and moves through Prairie landscapes, with implications for water quality.

What we see again and again is this: the same rainfall or snowmelt can produce very different streamflow, depending on how much water is already sitting in the network of wetlands.

But understanding the mechanism is not the same as being able to make reliable predictions in an unmeasured watershed. That’s the core problem my colleagues and I tackled in our new study: how to merge Prairie Pothole physics with modern artificial intelligence (AI) so we can estimate both streamflow and wetland water storage in places where measurements are not available.

Predicting streamflow

I’ve spent years working on fill–spill–connection behaviour and why it makes Prairie streamflow so hard to predict. I’ve also studied what happens when wetlands are drained or changed — how some wetlands do a much better job than others at reducing floods, and how losing wetlands can make it harder for the landscape to hold onto water during dry spells.

Many people think predicting streamflow is mostly about inputs: rainfall and, in the Prairie Pothole Region, snowmelt. If a storm is big enough — or if spring melt is large — rivers rise. In many landscapes, that intuition is reasonable. In Prairie Pothole landscapes, it often fails.

Here, a large fraction of rain and snowmelt goes into storage first. Early in spring, much of the meltwater fills wetlands rather than running off directly. Later, after enough filling, pathways “switch on” and water begins moving into channels. The same rain event can produce very different streamflow depending on how full the wetland network already is.

The hard part is determining how full that network is. It isn’t directly observable from standard weather data. Because the system behaves in a threshold-like way, where small changes in how much water is stored in wetlands can trigger large changes in runoff, the Prairie Pothole Region is among the hardest places to predict streamflow.

Previous approaches have each faced limitations. Modelling every wetland in detail requires maps and information that often don’t exist at the scale needed. Relying on AI alone can also struggle, because the key factor — how full the wetlands are — isn’t directly visible in the usual input data.

Combining physics with AI

In our new study, we built a model that embeds fill–spill–connection physics directly into an AI framework, rather than asking AI to learn this behaviour from data alone. Fill–spill–connection physics describes how water fills wetlands, spills once they are full and connects to downstream rivers and streams.

It depends on a few key parameters: how much water the pothole network can hold before spilling, and how quickly the connected area expands as the landscape wets up. We use AI to learn how these parameters vary across the region, shaped by soils, climate and topography. Instead of treating each watershed as a totally separate problem, the model learns regional patterns that can be applied to watersheds without streamflow records.

We tested the approach across 98 watersheds spanning the Prairie Pothole Region. In tests designed to mimic unmeasured watersheds, our model predicted streamflow more reliably than AI models that do not represent these physical processes.

Importantly, it also captured wetland storage dynamics: the year-to-year fluctuations in how much water the pothole network holds. When we compared that storage signal with satellite-based wetland inundation maps, the year-to-year ups and downs lined up well.

What this changes

bodies of water dot a landscape of brown farm fields — The same rainfall or snowmelt can produce very different streamflow, depending on how much water is already sitting in the wetland network.
(Flickr/USFWS Mountain-Prairie), CC BY

Being able to estimate both flow behaviour and wetland water storage in these watersheds opens practical possibilities.

First, it can support flood preparedness by helping identify when a watershed is getting close to the point where wetlands start to connect and release water downstream. In the Prairie Pothole Region, flood risk isn’t only about how much rain falls in a day. It’s also about whether wetlands are full enough that new water will be routed, not stored.

Second, it can help describe how watersheds differ across the Prairies: which areas tend to hold onto water longer, which connect more easily and where streamflow is likely to be more variable from year to year. That kind of regional picture is difficult to build when monitoring is sparse.

Third, it offers a bridge between process understanding and modern data-driven tools. This is not AI replacing hydrology, it is hydrology making AI more reliable in places where the mechanism matters.

For Prairie communities and land managers working in watersheds without gauges, better predictions of when water will be stored — and when it will connect and flow — would be a practical step forward.

Ali Ameli receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Water flow in prairie watersheds is increasingly unpredictable — but AI could help – https://theconversation.com/water-flow-in-prairie-watersheds-is-increasingly-unpredictable-but-ai-could-help-277593

March 30, 2026

Abuse in Canadian sport is systemic — a landmark report calls for sweeping reform

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kyle Rich, Associate Professor of Sport Management, Brock University

On March 24, the Future of Sport in Canada Commission released its final report and recommendations for change.

The commission was struck following a series of high-profile cases of abuse and maltreatment in sport. These involved Swimming Canada, Gymnastics Canada and most notably Hockey Canada.

Following initial hearings, advocates called for an independent public inquiry into a toxic culture in sport in Canada. However, the government elected to proceed with a federal commission, citing concerns about risks to victims and re-traumatization.

Although the commission was initiated ostensibly to investigate abuse, maltreatment and safety, its recommendations go much further.

They suggest sweeping governance reforms to the Canadian sport system. Calls for system-wide change have been made since the early stages of this process.

A fragmented system that enables harm

The commission has made 98 calls to action to address safe sport and system alignment. The calls are wide-ranging and suggest the need for system-wide structural and governance reforms.

The report is framed around several key issues.

The commission identified that abuse and maltreatment are widespread, systemic and ongoing in Canadian sport. They noted that power imbalances within the sport system have created a culture of silence that allows harmful behaviours to continue. They also noted that the sport system is fragmented and disorganized, and that chronic underfunding has made attempts at change ineffective.

Broadly, they suggested that these and other issues have made sport participation increasingly inaccessible and out of reach for many Canadians.

The commission also acknowledged that issues of access and safety in sport disproportionately affect equity-deserving groups.

As such, they acknowledged the need to support Indigenous-led sport programs and to improve representation of women, people with disabilities and people of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds within leadership and governance.

Plans to fix sport is clear — execution isn’t

While the commission made 98 calls to action, we review only a few themes here. Many of these recommendations were released and discussed in the context of the preliminary report; the final report solidifies some important details on the commission’s recommendations moving forward.

The commission called for four national strategies: one for sport infrastructure, one for equity, diversity and inclusion, one for disability sport and one for participation. Each strategy would require a concrete action plan with progress tracked and evaluated.

The commission also called for the development of a national tool for tracking sport and physical activity data, an approach that other countries have had in place for decades. They aptly note that effective monitoring, evaluation and policymaking must be supported by reliable data.

Abuse and maltreatment in sport demand a co-ordinated national response.

The commission was unequivocal about this need. It acknowledged the progress already made on safe sport but was clear that good intentions are no longer enough. What’s needed now is deliberate, co-ordinated action: a multilateral sport framework alongside bilateral funding agreements with provinces and territories.

At the centre of the safe sport recommendations is the need for a fully independent, streamlined complaint mechanism and consistent screening processes agreed upon across jurisdictions.

The commission was clear that structural change must be matched by cultural change. This must be backed by a public awareness campaign and a centralized safe sport education program.

The commission also recommended sweeping structural reforms. They called for the creation of a Crown corporation to improve arm’s-length oversight, system alignment and universal governance standards.

Sport organizations, it argued, must stop operating in silos. That means merging vertically and horizontally, adopting shared service models and subjecting themselves to efficiency reviews.

The commission was unambiguous on funding: investment has been wholly inadequate. It called for a multi-year funding strategy addressing safety, access and inclusion in sport.

Critically, budgets need to be adjusted for inflation without delay, and backed by transitional funding to ease the shift.

Why reform may stall — again

So what could this mean for sport in Canada?

Much of the lengthy report is background information that scholars have long been writing about. Advocates were raising concerns about harassment and abuse in sport long before the development of our first national sport policy in 2002.

More recently, issues of equity, access, lack of resources, poorly co-ordinated systems and implementation difficulties have become features of the sport system in Canada.

As such, the details in this report will be of no surprise to those involved in sport.

The real question that will determine the impact of this report comes down to accountability. The commission has made many potentially impactful recommendations, but it’s also recognized that these recommendations are almost exclusively directed at the federal government.

However, sport exists in a system where much of the change will need to take place at the provincial, territorial and community levels.

The report acknowledges the complexity of change within Canada’s federated multilevel governance system. Tellingly, it heard directly from insiders who doubted reform was possible if the same people remained at the table. The structural fix of a new Crown corporation is aimed at enforcing accountability and leadership change.

In a recent visit to Norway, Prime Minister Mark Carney indicated that changes are coming to the sport system. But many questions remain.

Will this government take bold and decisive action to address these recommendations? Will it commit the resources necessary to facilitate governance reform? Will it exercise political leverage to get provinces and territories on board? And importantly, will future governments continue this work in the long term?

Many Canadians will recall the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the 94 Calls to Action that were published in 2015. Recent tracking suggests that after 10 years, progress on 45 per cent of those calls is currently stalled or not started. This doesn’t bode well for a new set of calls to action in exceptionally turbulent times.

Ultimately, change will require more than policy change. It demands political will at every level of government and a public willing to push for it.

Kyle Rich receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Laura Misener receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

– ref. Abuse in Canadian sport is systemic — a landmark report calls for sweeping reform – https://theconversation.com/abuse-in-canadian-sport-is-systemic-a-landmark-report-calls-for-sweeping-reform-279071

March 30, 2026

Strike on Afghan hospital shows the laws of war may document atrocities — but don’t prevent them

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Shabnam Salehi, PhD Candidate, Law, Carleton University; L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

Pakistani jets recently bombed the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, a facility with 2,000 beds dedicated to helping patients recover from drug addiction.

Authorities in Afghanistan, along with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and various news agencies, reported that more than 400 people were killed and 265 were injured.

Pakistan has denied targeting the hospital, saying it aimed only at military installations and terrorist support infrastructure.

As a former commissioner at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and a legal scholar focused on accountability for civilian harm, I view this incident as a serious violation of international humanitarian law, with profound implications for one of the most vulnerable groups: those struggling with addiction.

The chain of human casualities

The incident at Omid Hospital is a critical moment in the ongoing conflict, which dates back to late February, when Pakistani forces conducted airstrikes in the eastern provinces of Nangarhar and Paktika.

According to UNAMA, the strikes in Nangarhar resulted in at least 13 civilian deaths and seven injuries, including women and children from the same family. In Paktika, a strike impacted a madrassa and damaged a mosque, a centre for religious education, in the Barmal district.

Pakistan then officially initiated Operation Ghazab lil-Haq on Feb. 26, leading to an escalation of violence targeting non-military sites. The first phase of the attacks lasted six days, during which UNAMA reported 42 civilian fatalities and 104 injuries.

By March 6, these figures had risen to 56 dead and 129 injured, with 55 per cent of the casualties being women and children. Approximately a week later, just three days before the Omid strike, the toll reached 75 dead and 193 injured. The UN humanitarian office warned of significant displacement and disruptions to aid efforts across the affected provinces.

Then, on March 16, the attack on Omid Hospital occurred. The severity of this incident highlighted the alarming reality of systematic violations of humanitarian law within the ongoing conflict.

Why does a drug treatment hospital matter?

Afghanistan is grappling with one of the most severe addiction crises in the world, exhibiting some of the highest drug use rates globally.

A 2025 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) described the situation as “a pressing but less understood dimension” of the drug economy.

Treatment facilities are critically limited, and international donors have largely withdrawn since the Taliban assumed power in 2021.

Attacking a facility like Omid Hospital not only endangers its patients but also undermines one of the few remaining care structures for a population that has suffered through more than five decades of conflict and war.

What the international law says

The rules safeguarding hospitals during wartime are longstanding. According to the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, medical facilities “shall be respected and protected in all circumstances” and cannot be targeted. A hospital can lose this protection only if it is being used for hostile activities. Even in such cases, the attacking force is required to issue a warning and provide time before proceeding.

There is no evidence Pakistan issued a warning to the Omid facility, nor has the country made such a claim. Pakistan asserts that the building contained ammunition, citing secondary explosions as a primary cause of the incident.

But even if that’s true, international law stipulates that any anticipated civilian harm must not be “excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” The destruction of suspected weapons cannot justify the deaths and injuries of hundreds of civilians.

A conflict the world isn’t watching

Despite a death toll surpassing many incidents that have captured headlines in other conflicts, this conflict is receiving scant attention from the West.

This is likely because the Taliban, which provides the casualty figures, is not viewed as a reliable source. Similar death toll claims by the Gaza Health Ministry faced scrutiny for years before the Israeli military finally validated them. UNAMA is now providing independent verification in Afghanistan.

The Omid strike is reminiscent of the 2015 United States airstrike on the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)/Doctors Without Borders trauma centre in Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, that resulted in the deaths of 42 people.

The U.S. military acknowledged its failure to verify the target, and no one faced prosecution. Following Kunduz, MSF president Joanne Liu stated: “Today we say enough. Even war has rules.”

A decade later, these rules are once again being challenged amid the devastation of another Afghan hospital and other civilian targets. Scholars, along with various international organizations, are raising alarms that international humanitarian law is increasingly being ignored due to the normalization of attacks on health-care facilities.

Will anyone enforce the rules?

The strike on the Omid hospital raises concerns not only about the ambiguity in applying international law, but about the enforcement of international humanitarian law and the mechanisms for its implementation.

Strikes on hospitals in Kunduz, Aleppo in Syria and Mariupol in Ukraine led to reports and condemnations, yet none resulted in prosecutions or future enforcement of humanitarian laws.

If the Omid strike follows the same trajectory, it will confirm my greatest concern in my research: that the laws of war, at best, are capable of documenting atrocities but not preventing them. The actions taken by the international community now will determine whether these rules are enforced.

Shabnam Salehi is affiliated with Women’s Rights First org. as co-founder and president, which works on women’s rights issues in Afghanistan.

– ref. Strike on Afghan hospital shows the laws of war may document atrocities — but don’t prevent them – https://theconversation.com/strike-on-afghan-hospital-shows-the-laws-of-war-may-document-atrocities-but-dont-prevent-them-278715

March 30, 2026

More evidence doesn’t mean more justice: The limits of visual technologies in human rights cases

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kamari Maxine Clarke, Full Professor, University of Toronto

Editor’s note: This story is part of a series of articles from Canada’s top social sciences and humanities academics in a partnership between the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and The Conversation Canada.

Body cameras, satellites and digital verification tools are generating more evidence of violence than ever before. But the institutions responsible for delivering justice still decide what counts as evidence — and what does not.

Some of the most consequential reporting on state-sanctioned violence concerns disputes over evidence: who controls the video, the metadata and the channels where events are logged in real time.

In Minnesota in January 2026, that meant court fights and public pressure over preserving — and potentially sharing — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) body camera footage after the killings of Alex Pretti and Renée Good, alongside wider disputes over federal transparency during immigration enforcement operations.

National outlets have tracked how community members are using encrypted messaging such as Signal to spot and report ICE activity, prompting an FBI investigation that civil liberties experts say tests the boundary between protected observation and alleged “interference.”

Meanwhile, in Canada, the RCMP is rolling out body cameras nationwide, raising questions about how the data collected by state security services might provide a future archive for complaint processes, prosecutions and civil litigation.

What we are witnessing is a “juriscopic regime” — a dense entanglement of scopic technologies (body cameras, satellites, open‑source verification), scientific protocols and legal evidentiary horizons that together govern what can be seen, verified and acted upon as “truth” — defining who counts as an expert and what forms of knowledge are ignored as anecdotal, non-scientific or non-legal.

How communities document violence

Citizens are taking these documentation tools into their own hands.

Families who have experienced violence and the forced disappearance or murder of loved ones are increasingly building grassroots “evidence infrastructures” with these technologies.

In Mexico, for example, colectivos — groups of families searching for their loved ones — have added geolocation mapping, drone surveys and other geospatial tools to identify possible clandestine grave sites and to document searches in real time, both to generate leads and to pressure reluctant institutions into action.

Some groups are experimenting with AI-mediated storytelling, creating “living” videos and other digital interventions to keep cases visible while simultaneously navigating new risks like digital extortion and retaliation that follow from making personal information public.

In Nigeria, families use social media and emerging missing persons portals to widen the radius of who might recognize a face, a name or a location, effectively crowd-sourcing identification and tips when official registries are fragmented or difficult to access.

Across these and many other contexts globally, communities are organizing mutual aid, warning others about threats, preserving data before it disappears and transforming private grief into collective, actionable knowledge.

But visibility is unevenly distributed.

This “evidence revolution” is often treated as if better visibility produces better justice but in practice, courts and legal institutions decide what becomes legible as truth. It is this gatekeeping that distorts what harms are recognized and acted upon, and that narrows the scope of what justice looks like.

The legal limits of digital evidence

Human rights and international justice professionals are increasingly relying on digital and visual evidence — satellite imagery, crowd-sourced video, geolocation and AI-assisted analysis — to document harm and hold perpetrators to account.

Turning to these technologies may even deepen the distance between those victimized and the evidence meant to help them.

Family members of the missing frequently have extensive knowledge, but their expertise may not be taken seriously.

Law reshapes what “evidence” means, and even the best technology must pass through evidentiary rules and institutional priorities, which narrow what can be acted on — often in opaque ways.

Our recently released research findings show that these systems make certain forms of harm more legible than others. While this is helpful for certain evidentiary processes, disappearances, abductions and many forms of state violence can be virtually impossible to “see” from above.

In Nigeria, for example, those optical biases can also reproduce older hierarchies: communities that align with modern land tenure and fixed settlement patterns may be more legible than nomadic or displaced populations, shaping which harms travel as authoritative evidence.

What we see is that optical and digital technologies don’t simply reveal truth; they are translated and authorized through legal institutions and expert hierarchies, sometimes sidelining grassroots knowledge.

At the International Criminal Court (ICC), for example, where mass atrocity and disappearance cases could potentially be heard, the evidentiary rules and institutional priorities of the court — the ways in which it determines admissibility, relevance and probative value — act as obstacles to admitting evidence. In the case of technologically derived evidence, the court relies on a few technical experts to render it legible to judges.

As a result, socially constructed technical judgments govern the production of knowledge. Forensic science makes explicit what the ICC’s evidence law often implies: that evidence is not a thing but an inference.

Expanding evidentiary frameworks for justice

When a mother in Mexico or a sister in Nigeria searches for a disappeared or killed loved one, she enters an evidence regime long before any court does. Her “evidence” archive begins as a series of data — messages, sightings, scraps, rumours, maps. Forensic science teaches us what must happen with this data in order for it to become viable evidence: Is there a chain of custody? Contamination control? Validated methods? Honest statements of uncertainty?

But the family’s need to know the truth of what happened exposes the limits of both forensic science and international courts.

A trace of evidence can be existentially decisive yet institutionally inadmissible; scientifically interpretable yet socially insufficient; legally persuasive yet too late to end the disappearance as a lived everyday condition.

In that gap, the struggle is not only over facts, but over whose knowledge becomes official, and whether truth is treated as a right owed to families rather than a byproduct of prosecution.

We need a more expansive regime of what counts as evidence in courts, moving toward an approach that regards documentation as political, treats law as a constraining optic as much as a solution, insists that accountability projects be regrounded in local knowledge and grassroots priorities and acknowledges that various forms of harm do not neatly convert into evidentiary categories.

We also need to widen the scope of who counts as an expert, include families’ vernacular forensic practice and the embodied work of searching, mapping and enduring.

Unless we change what justice looks like, we will continue to miss a lot.

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

– ref. More evidence doesn’t mean more justice: The limits of visual technologies in human rights cases – https://theconversation.com/more-evidence-doesnt-mean-more-justice-the-limits-of-visual-technologies-in-human-rights-cases-274929

March 29, 2026

The economics of war extend far beyond energy prices and stock markets

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Junaid B. Jahangir, Associate Professor, Economics, MacEwan University

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, student groups pushed for curriculum change in economics. They wanted to learn about real-world economics beyond the stylized models that embroil students in mathematics.

As an economics professor, my own students have asked me about issues like Gaza and Iran, when textbooks aren’t much help. Based on their input, I’ve revamped the way I teach economics by complementing standard textbook economics with alternate perspectives.

The courses I now teach include the Economics of Racism, the Economics of Inequality and the Economics of Gaza, which has been translated to Arabic by the Iraqi Economists Network.

These new courses reveal that the economics of war go beyond the impact on energy, stock markets and inflation.

Democracies instigate war

It’s usually believed that dictators start wars to legitimize their rule. However, 2024 research suggests that democratically elected leaders often instigate war due to the right-wing populism and nationalism that arise because of inequality and precarity in advanced economies.

This helps shed light on why democratically elected leaders like Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have initiated wars against theocracies like Iran.

Such democratically elected leaders use propaganda to demonize the enemy and paint conflict as an existential threat, even when it could be solved through diplomacy.

Big Oil

The military-industrial complex is notably absent from economics textbooks. It’s a system based on the military establishment and arms industry, which wields power and influence over the government.

But its very existence challenges the idea of consumer sovereignty — the military-industrial complex, after all, attempts to generate public support for war to maximize profits, captures the government (where private corporate interests influence government regulation to supersede public interest) and lobbies for large military budgets.

Companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman profit from conflict because they provide great investment opportunities during wars. Defence stocks soared in value, for example, during Israel’s assault on Gaza. Despite uncertainty, there have also been gains for defence contractors due to the ongoing war in Iran.

In terms of the Gaza situation, large oil companies don’t gain much by the production of oil; it’s the exercise of power and war that benefits them. Energy conflicts like the 1991 Gulf War or the ongoing war in Iran, which reflect control or disruption of resources, are followed by above-average returns of leading oil companies.

In other words, both the military industrial complex and Big Oil profit from war.

Unintended consequences

War also contributes to climate costs, post-war debt burden and refugee flows. It also increases the likelihood of terrorism.

This is reflective of the law of unintended consequences — in other words, bombing to curb terrorism instigates more terrorism. The economics of terrorism shows that the structural root causes of terrorism — like apartheid, occupation and the economic grievances of citizens — must be addressed to truly end terrorism.

The law of unintended consequences also holds in the case of sanctions. In the Russia-Ukraine war, economic sanctions have ended up helping Russia because Russian oligarchs who previously supported integration with the West were forced to invest their massive wealth at home.

Similarly, bombing and sanctions on Iran have only strengthened its resolve to push back. Instead of citizens turning on the Iranian regime, a surge in Iranian nationalism is reportedly taking hold.

The petro-dollar system

Students of economics learn that the American dollar serves as the world reserve currency. Its demand arises from the petro-dollar system, where U.S. dollars are required to buy oil. In return for this system, the U.S. supposedly provides the so-called GCC countries — Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain — with military protection.

These GCC countries then reinvest the petro-dollars in U.S. financial markets. This helps explain why the war on Iran goes beyond oil or uranium enrichment to the very viability of the petro-dollar system.

This petro-dollar system allows the U.S. to exercise economic power through access to cheap credit and the ability to sanction other countries. The rest of the world is dependent on this system because of its network effects. The analogy here is that of Facebook. Because of its size and scope, it would now be very difficult to replace it with another platform for social networking.

But the petro-dollar system is at risk if competing countries like China and Russia can shift other countries away from the U.S. dollar. Iran then becomes a focal point in this shifting multi-polar world order.

Demonizing dissenters

Conflict Economics defines genocide as acts committed or conditions generated with intent to destroy in whole or in part a racial or religious group.

It rejects the “mad Nazi thesis” that monsters cause evil, holding that bad acts are perpetrated by ordinary people because of obedience to authority. Malevolent attitudes and norms grow when leaders promote exclusionary ideas.

In the past, workers were labelled as “communists” for demanding labour rights. Today, Muslims are dehumanized as “terrorists” in democracies like the U.S. and India, even though imperial powers apply and withdraw that label based on their own interests at any given time.

War’s economic impact extend far beyond energy prices and stock markets. Studying the economics of war reveals that democracies can start wars and commit human rights abuses, corporations can profit, military force and sanctions can backfire and conflicts are tied to broader extractive systems — not just oil — as some privileged groups justify extreme violence without moral hesitation.

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

– ref. The economics of war extend far beyond energy prices and stock markets – https://theconversation.com/the-economics-of-war-extend-far-beyond-energy-prices-and-stock-markets-278718

March 29, 2026

Truth, or misinformation? A statistician explains the challenge of assessing evidence

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Mu Zhu, Professor & Associate Dean, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo

When United States Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unveiled new dietary guidelines earlier this year to “Make America Healthy Again,” they received a mixed response.

Some organizations, including the American Heart Association, welcomed the renewed emphasis on vegetables, fruits and whole grains. Others were concerned about the promotion of red meat and whole-fat dairy or accused Kennedy of spreading “blatant misinformation that ‘healthy fats’ include butter and beef tallow.”

The word “misinformation” has become very common in media and popular discourse, sometimes for good reasons, because the lies that the word encapsulates can undermine democracy, impair health and fuel violence.

As associate dean of AI strategy in the faculty of mathematics at the University of Waterloo, I know many are especially worried that AI could worsen the spread of misinformation.

However, the word “misinformation” is also loaded. There seems to be a growing tendency for people to apply the label to just about anything that they may disagree with, rather than genuine lies.

As a professor of statistics, I think the inherent difficulty of assessing evidence may be partly to blame.

Is the die loaded?

Statements like “there is no evidence that eating red meat is harmful” or “there is evidence that full-fat dairy is bad for your health” are not so easy to substantiate.

This is partially because it’s often hard — though not impossible with advanced statistical techniques — to isolate the effect of a particular habit from a myriad of other entangled factors, whether genetic or lifestyle, that also affect health. This is why many research studies merely point to an “association” or a “correlation” between food consumption and health effect.

But even in clear-cut cases where no such entanglement exists, assessing evidence is still surprisingly difficult. For instance, suppose a die was rolled seven times and it showed an odd outcome (numbers one, three or five) on six of these occasions. In principle, odd and even outcomes are supposed to be equally likely.

Is the apparently skewed outcome evidence that the die may be loaded? Does this point to the possibility that someone may be cheating?

Using an evidential scale known as the p-value, one might argue “no,” since there is still a sizeable probability for a normal die to show an odd outcome from more than five of those seven rolls, so rolling six odd numbers is not as unexpected as it appears to be.

Using a different evidential scale known as the e-value, however, one could argue “yes,” since a die would be much more likely to show an odd outcome from six out of seven rolls if it were loaded than if it were not. So rolling six odd numbers is more consistent with the suspicion that the die may be loaded.

Scales of scientific evidence

Despite growing criticism, the p-value is still currently the most commonly used scale for judging scientific evidence. In other words, most scientists today have been taught in school that they should answer our question with “no, the die is not loaded.”

However, the opposite argument is not without merit. In fact, if I had made a fair bet that the die was loaded, the bookie would have had to reward me with a profit after observing the outcome of six odd numbers. This is what the e-value ultimately entails: a betting score. And if one can make a profit with such a bet, then the suspicion cannot be totally unreasonable.

But surely two opposite arguments cannot both be correct at the same time? Or can they? Both arguments require an implicit threshold to draw their respective yes, or no, conclusions. For the first argument, the threshold is: how big a probability — two per cent, five per cent or 10 per cent — is a “sizeable probability?” For the second, the threshold is: how much more likely — five times, 10 times or 25 times — is “much more likely?”

The two arguments are not fundamentally at odds with each other but, using different thresholds, one ends up saying “black” and the other “white” when reality is just a certain shade of grey. Indeed, their respective decision thresholds can be calibrated by statisticians so that they always reach the same conclusion.

A pile of variously iced donuts. — How do you weight the evidence, when deciding whether to eat a donut?
(Unsplash/Rod Long)

Let’s use ‘misinformation’ for genuine lies

But the average human being isn’t very good at performing this type of calibration psychologically. We are prone to reacting very differently when the underlying scale changes.

Would you continue to consume a delicacy if you were told that those who eat it regularly are 25 times as likely to develop cancer later in life as those who don’t? What if you were told that doing so will increase your probability of cancer from 0.01 per cent to 0.25 per cent?

You may decide to change your diet because you are fearful of the elevated risk. You may choose to continue with your existing diet because even the elevated risk is still not all that high.

Neither choice is strictly right or wrong. But today, I’m afraid to say: “I see no need to change my diet given the risks.” If I did, those who are enthusiastic about changing theirs might come together and accuse me of spreading “misinformation.” Such madness has to stop, before it completely destroys our social discourse.

The word “misinformation” should be reserved for genuine lies only, not conclusions decided by subjective thresholds, even if they are standard choices. Declaring there is or isn’t evidence simply because the p-value is below or above the conventional threshold has already generated far too many irreproducible findings.

To call something “misinformation” based on that kind of shaky evidence, or the lack thereof, will only obstruct true scientific progress.

Mu Zhu receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Truth, or misinformation? A statistician explains the challenge of assessing evidence – https://theconversation.com/truth-or-misinformation-a-statistician-explains-the-challenge-of-assessing-evidence-278161

March 29, 2026

Can countries replace SWIFT? Evidence from Russia suggests not easily

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Mesbah Sharaf, Professor of Economics, University of Alberta

When Russian banks were cut off from the SWIFT messaging system in 2022, the move was seen as one of the strongest financial sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine.

The measure, taken by the European Union and its allies, targeted major Russian banks and aimed to disrupt the country’s ability to conduct international transactions.

SWIFT — the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication — allows more than 11,000 financial institutions in over 200 countries to send secure, standardized payment instructions to one another. Without it, cross-border transactions become slower, more difficult and more expensive.

But what happens if a country is pushed out of the world’s main financial messaging network? Can it simply build an alternative? Our recent research suggests the answer is no — or at least not nearly as easily as some claims suggest.

Russia’s workaround

Russia had been preparing for the risk of being cut off from global financial infrastructure for years. After earlier sanctions in 2014, it developed its own domestic system, known as the System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS), to reduce its reliance on foreign financial infrastructure and make itself less vulnerable to future sanctions.

While SPFS was built mainly for the Russian market, the Bank of Russia says foreign users can also connect either directly or through a service bureau. This suggests an effort to extend its use beyond Russia, even if its international reach has remained limited.

When Russian banks were cut off from SWIFT in 2022, SPFS was presented as part of that fallback strategy. Other workarounds included capital controls, rules requiring exporters to sell part of their foreign-currency earnings and greater reliance on domestic payments infrastructure such as Mir.

At first glance, the strategy appeared to work. Russian exports remained high in the months after the sanctions, leading some observers to argue that the shock had been contained and that financial workarounds were doing their job. The Financial Times, for example, noted the surprising resilience of the Russian economy.

But our findings point to a more complicated reality.

What the data shows

Using monthly data from March 2020 to February 2024, we examined what happened to two key indicators after Russia’s exclusion from SWIFT: merchandise exports and international reserves.

The results showed a clear split between trade and finance. Export revenues stayed high for a time, but much of that was tied to the global surge in oil prices rather than to the strength of SPFS itself. Once oil prices were taken into account, the apparent export resilience became much weaker.

In other words, Russia benefited from unusually favourable market conditions. High energy prices helped keep export earnings afloat at exactly the moment when the country was facing major financial disruption. That is not the same thing as showing that a domestic payment system had replaced the role SWIFT normally plays in international finance.

The deeper strain showed up in Russia’s international reserves. Reserves are one of the clearest signs of a country’s external financial strength. They support currency stability, underpin investor confidence and provide a buffer against economic shocks.

Russia’s reserves fell sharply and stayed under pressure after the SWIFT exclusion, suggesting the financial damage ran deeper than the export numbers alone might imply.

Alternatives to SWIFT have limits

This helps explain why alternatives like SPFS have limits.
A domestic system may help preserve some continuity and allow certain transactions to keep moving inside the country or with a limited group of foreign partners.

But it does not automatically recreate the wider ecosystem that makes SWIFT powerful: global reach, liquidity, institutional trust and the network effects that come from being used almost everywhere.

The more institutions that use a system, the more valuable it becomes. Replicating that scale requires broad international participation and confidence, which are difficult to build quickly.

The future of global payments

Around the world, governments are paying much closer attention to financial sovereignty, sanctions risk and dependence on payment systems they do not control.

Countries such as Russia and China have tried to build alternatives, and debates about payment fragmentation are becoming more common.

In simple terms, payment fragmentation means the global financial system breaking into separate networks that do not fully connect with each other, making cross-border transactions more complex, costly and less predictable.

Yet building a domestic alternative is not the same as reproducing a global network built on decades of legal standards, co-ordination and trust.

Sanctions are still effective

The broader lesson is that payment technologies derive their value not simply from their design, but from who uses them, how widely they are accepted and whether people trust them in practice.

That is why Russia’s experience should be interpreted carefully. It does not demonstrate that countries can easily escape the economic force of sanctions by building local substitutes.

Instead, it shows that while some adjustment is possible — especially when helped by high commodity prices — the advantages of a global network are much harder to replace.

So can countries build alternatives to SWIFT? Yes.

Can they quickly build alternatives with the same reach, trust and financial weight? Russia’s experience shows that while a country may be able to keep some payments moving for a time, that is very different from preserving full financial resilience.

– ref. Can countries replace SWIFT? Evidence from Russia suggests not easily – https://theconversation.com/can-countries-replace-swift-evidence-from-russia-suggests-not-easily-278944