The Conversation – Canada – Page 2

February 2, 2026

Canada should be wary of embracing ‘total national defence’ to ward off an American invasion

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By James Horncastle, Assistant Professor and Edward and Emily McWhinney Professor in International Relations, Simon Fraser University

As the Donald Trump administration in the United States continues to threaten Canadian sovereignty — including a recent suggestion that Alberta could secede from Canada and join the U.S. — Canadians, like many others in the world, finds themselves in a period of extreme uncertainty.

Trump’s continued violations of the rules-based international order means Canada can no longer rely on its partners to the same extent as it has in the past.

The world must, as Prime Minister Mark Carney recently noted, accept the current climate as it is, rather than looking to the past.

To do so, Canada must develop a defence policy that can meet the country’s needs. The Canadian government’s recent budget envisions a significant increase in defence spending over the next several years. The problem Canada faces, however, is one that all middle powers face: an inability to compete with great powers in a conventional war.

The Canadian government must therefore pursue non-conventional means to overcome conventional weakness. Simultaneously, the country must be cognizant of the implications of alternative defence policies. The former Yugoslavia provides a harrowing example.

How to ward off an invasion

The turmoil created by the mercurial American president has caused Canada to examine how it could resist a U.S. invasion in a series of war games. Inevitably, Canada was unable to defeat the U.S. in these exercises, and was forced to rely on unconventional warfare.

One way Canada is considering addressing this issue is by creating a civilian defence force and incorporating “total national defence” principles. This development is not completely new; Canada has been considering it for some time.

Total national defence in theory

Total national defence is not a new concept. After the Second World War, it became clear to many medium-sized countries that they could not compete with the great powers in a conventional war.

In the 1950s, Yugoslavia spent 22 per cent of its GDP on defence, yet still recognized it was unlikely to defeat a great power in a conventional war. Yugoslavia, and other countries, needed an alternative. Enter total national defence.

The concept of total national defence seeks to mobilize all aspects of society for the war effort. Given the uniqueness of each country, no country’s total national defence system looks the same as the other. What’s important for Canada’s examination, however, is the command-and-control elements of the system.

The biggest vulnerability is the enemy eliminating their command-and-control functions early in the conflict. The U.S., as seen in Iraq in 1991, excels at these types of operations. Russia, while not as effective, attempted to do the same against Ukraine in the early phases of its full-fledged invasion.

For a smaller country to survive such an attack, it needs to ensure that resistance can continue regardless if centralized command is compromised.

Under the theory of total national defence, countries decentralize command and control functions to prevent them being eliminated.

The extent to which countries do so varies. Individual units may operate at the local level without centralized guidance to maintain the struggle against an opponent. In short, even if an opponent succeeds in eliminating the central command of a state, its army and people can continue the struggle.

Canada’s chosen example: Finland

Canada, as it considers implementing such a policy, has looked to Finland for inspiration. Prior to joining NATO, Finland was a relatively small country that could not rely upon allies for defence.

What Canadian officials found in Finland impressed them. Finnish officials have long relied upon extensive joint-use facilities, such as bunkers. It also uses conscription to maintain a strong deterrent.

But Canada and Finland are fundamentally different countries. The persistent threat of Russian invasion has, over time, normalized policies like conscription among the Finnish. Furthermore, and most critically, Finland is, unlike Canada, a unitary state and not a federation.

Canada’s worst-case scenario: Yugoslavia

Much like the former Yugoslavia, Canada is a federation. It has stark regional differences, both in terms of culture and economics.

The divisions in Canada aren’t as entrenched as those in Yugoslavia in the 1980s. Nevertheless, as CSIS recently warned Parliament, the divides are real and outside forces could magnify and exploit them.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s recent encouragement of Albertan separatism, and Albertan separatist meetings with Trump officials, are examples of how foreign entities can magnify these divides.

Yugoslavia’s embrace of total national defence relied on the unity of the people to overcome the weaknesses of a decentralized command structure. Without it, not only would the effectiveness of such a defence have been compromised but, more worryingly, separatist forces could have used such decentralized forces for their own purposes.

In fact, separatists did so , using these decentralized defence forces for their own purposes against Yugoslavia. That helped fuel the former country’s conflicts and ultimate dissolution in the 1990s.

Learning from the past

But just because Yugoslavia’s embrace of total national defence and a civilian defence force helped facilitate the breakup of the country doesn’t mean that will happen to Canada. Too often, people assume that history is repetitive.

Instead, the past is an inventory of ideas. Yugoslavia’s embrace of total national defence failed, but Canada can learn lessons about what worked and what will not in a federation, and in doing so improve its own capabilities.

Canada is wise to pursue non-conventional defence strategies. The country, and its defence planners, however, must ensure they’re drawing from the right examples.

James Horncastle 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 should be wary of embracing ‘total national defence’ to ward off an American invasion – https://theconversation.com/canada-should-be-wary-of-embracing-total-national-defence-to-ward-off-an-american-invasion-274295

February 1, 2026

Pierre Poilievre aces leadership review: Why the Conservatives opted to stand by their man

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sam Routley, PhD Candidate, Political Science, Western University

With the support of almost 90 per cent of party delegates, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative party leadership review results are clear and decisive.

These results not only demonstrate that the party continues to believe that he is their best option to win the next federal election, but that a large majority of Conservatives remain broadly united behind his leadership and message.

Post-election reflection

Poilievre entered the review following a period of assessment and recovery. As is typical after an election loss, this phase involved internal debate, intense media scrutiny and renewed attention to the leader’s perceived weaknesses.

Critics pointed to a familiar set of concerns: Poilievre’s attack-dog political style, his strained relationship with much of the national media and his perceived alignment with American populism, particularly Donald Trump.

His approach, they argued, had been designed for Justin Trudeau and was less effective against the former prime minister’s replacement, Mark Carney. Polling reinforced the sense of unease. While the Conservative Party continues to be seen as a better economic manager, Poilievre also lags behind Carney in personal popularity.

Organizational concerns also compounded these doubts. Controversies over nomination processes and strained relationships with other Conservative politicians, particularly Ontario Premier Doug Ford, raised questions about party management and coalition-building.

Within conservative intellectual circles, there has also been extensive ideological debate about tone, strategy and the party’s electoral ceiling.

Poilievre, after all, had to win an Alberta by-election after he lost his Ottawa seat in the federal election and has faced high-profile floor crossings over the past several months.

Yet this moment of reflection proved more cathartic than transformative. Much of the criticism levelled against Poilievre by Conservatives proved fleeting, an emotional response to loss rather than a durable movement to replace him. Instead, it reflected a familiar post-election pattern: disappointment amplified by punditry and frustration rather than a genuine collapse of confidence within the party.

Election results

How did Poilievre survive? Likely because the election results themselves were ambiguous. Although the Conservatives failed to form government, they were otherwise successful by many other measures.

They increased their vote share, expanded their support to new voter constituencies — especially young adults and recent immigrants — and demonstrated strength on core issues such as affordability, housing and cost of living. From the conservative perspective, this suggests incompletion — an inability to seal the final deal — rather than total rejection.

With the largest share of the popular vote for any Conservative party in Canada since 1988, the only thing that stood between the party and governing was a few percentage points.

This creates a powerful argument for continuity. Replacing Poilievre would have required the party to gamble that a new leader could quickly unify the coalition, define themselves nationally and outperform an already familiar figure in Carney — all without the benefit of incumbency or clear front-runner status.

Compounding this, of course, was the absence of a clear successor. No alternative candidate commanded widespread loyalty or offered an obviously superior electoral profile. In such circumstances, continuity becomes the least risky option.

The broader political and electoral context also matters. While Carney may be more personally popular than Poilievre, he governs on top of a coalition that is internally complex, undefined and potentially short-lived.

Carney’s electoral success depended heavily on the collapse of the NDP vote and the broader political disruption caused by Trump’s threats to annex Canada. With a new NDP leader, the New Democrats could recover and cut into Liberal margins.

Meanwhile, the government’s more mixed response to issues such as pipeline development, housing and the cost-of-living crisis could push enough voters toward the Conservatives by the next federal election campaign.

Young voters like Poilievre

All this said, however, Poilievre’s support cannot be explained solely by institutional inertia or a lack of alternative leadership candidates. His leadership has and continues to generate genuine enthusiasm among some voters — especially those who are young, recently immigrated or working in trades. This support is fuelled by economic frustration, declining living standards and the sense of a lost promise.

At a moment when centre-right parties elsewhere are struggling with internal upheaval and fragmentation, Poilievre’s Conservative Party has remained cohesive and even expanded by organizing around what former communications director Ben Woodfinden calls the “locked-out:” voters who feel shut out of prosperity amid weak growth and chronic productivity problems.

In this context, Poilievre’s orthodox centre-right agenda — cutting regulatory burdens, boosting competition and removing interprovincial trade barriers — continues to attract broad, cross-class support that transcends cultural and regional divides.

The success of this can be seen from the fact that, throughout his keynote address at the Conservative Party convention, Poilievre’s core message and policy proposals haven’t changed substantively.

But there has been a shift in style. Poilievre has begun to pair his combative style with a more personal, reflective and occasionally vulnerable public persona, an adjustment aimed at consolidating support while expanding appeal among undecided voters.

Finally, although Poilievre’s coalition wasn’t large enough to win the 2025 election, Canadian electoral history suggests that his prospects aren’t bleak. There’s a long history of decisive results or shifts playing out across two electoral successes, as coalitions are consolidated and expanded. Both John Diefenbaker and Stephen Harper, for example, endured defeats before securing durable governing mandates.

By endorsing Poilievre so decisively, Conservatives signalled their belief that he remains on an upward trajectory. The leadership review was less about absolution than affirmation: a collective judgment that the party is closer to power with Poilievre than without him.

Sam Routley 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. Pierre Poilievre aces leadership review: Why the Conservatives opted to stand by their man – https://theconversation.com/pierre-poilievre-aces-leadership-review-why-the-conservatives-opted-to-stand-by-their-man-274159

February 1, 2026

16 Oscar nods for ‘Sinners’ signals a broader appetite for imaginative Black cinema

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Cornel Grey, Assistant Professor in Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, Western University

When Sinners recently received a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations, the response was overwhelmingly celebratory, but not uncomplicated.

The nominations capped a year in which the film had already defied expectations at the box office. An original horror film with no built-in franchise, Sinners broke multiple domestic and international records and earned more than US$300 million during its theatrical run.

Critics also responded strongly, praising Ryan Coogler’s direction and the film’s blend of spectacle and social commentary. Those reviews helped cement Sinners as both a commercial hit and a critical success.

Sinners doesn’t resolve longstanding debates about Black recognition or racial equity in Hollywood. However, its nominations arrive at a moment that suggests wider audience interest — and possible film industry openness — to Black films that are culturally specific, formally ambitious and uninterested in proving their importance through suffering alone.

Questions of popular success and excellence

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — the group of just over 10,000 film industry professionals who vote on Oscar nominations and winners — has long grappled with how to balance popular success and its self-image as an arbiter of artistic excellence.

In the wake of declining viewership, the academy proposed a new category in 2018 for “Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film.”

The plan was met with significant backlash from commentators who were offended by the implication that commercially successful films couldn’t also be great art. The idea was shelved amid concerns that it would undermine the Oscars’ standards instead of bridging the gap between popular taste and critical recognition.

Sinners is not a traditional prestige drama designed for the awards circuit. It is a piece of work that refuses easy classification, blending elements of horror, musical, Southern Gothic and Black folklore into a form that balances excess and control.

As director Ryan Coogler has said, the film resists categorical conventions, dubbing it “genre-fluid.”

‘Sinners’ official trailer.

Directorial innovation

Coogler’s directorial innovation is central to the cultural significance of the film’s nominations.

Historically, the Oscars have rewarded Black films that conform to a narrow range of familiar narratives. Stories centred on racial trauma, historical injustice, moral redemption or social pathology have been far more likely to receive acknowledgement than films that foreground pleasure and fantasy.

Best Picture winners like 12 Years a Slave and Green Book, along with heavily awarded films such as Precious and The Help, illustrate this pattern, as does Halle Berry’s Best Actress win for Monster’s Ball, a performance structured around sexualized suffering and endurance.

Acclaimed Black films that don’t focus on trauma or suffering have been long overlooked by the academy.

Movies like Do the Right Thing, Eve’s Bayou, Girls Trip and Sorry to Bother You received strong critical and cultural support, but were largely ignored during Oscar voting.

Rather than critiquing those films or performances, this pattern points to how Hollywood taste — reflecting racialized assumptions and values — shapes what kinds of Black stories are recognized as important and deserving of reward.

Black creative achievement and possibility

Sinners does something different. It bends and unsettles the frames that tell audiences how to read a film. Vampires, music, violence, sex and history are woven together in a way that invites audiences in, without stopping to explain or defend each choice.

The film draws on familiar genre esthetics that white audiences recognize (like horror, spectacle, supernatural myth) but it refuses to translate its cultural references or soften its Black specificity.

Viewers unfamiliar with Black Southern folklore, diasporic spiritual traditions or the film’s musical and historical cues may miss things. The film does not slow down to catch them up.

Award bodies’ reception

The film’s success also raises questions about how awards bodies respond when Black creative experimentation gains critical acclaim.

A recent example comes from the Recording Academy. After Beyoncé won Best Country Album in 2025, the Grammys split the category into “traditional” and “contemporary” — a change that expanded recognition while also reintroducing distinctions.

The move echoed earlier controversies around genre-labelling, including debates over the now-retired “urban” category. It also underscored how recognition can be followed by new forms of sorting rather than lasting structural change.

Wider shift in Black creative possibility

The risk is that Sinners is celebrated as a one-off, rather than understood as part of a wider shift in Black creative possibility.

Some conservative responses have framed Sinners less as an artistic achievement and more as an example of cultural overreach, reading its genre play and historical remixing as ideological provocation rather than creative labour.

Alongside this, the film’s record-breaking nominations are likely to be interpreted by some viewers or critics as further evidence of a so-called “woke era” in awards culture, a framing that tends to downplay the craft, ambition and substance of works featuring Black talent.

These reactions reveal ongoing anxieties over who gets to reshape tradition, and how recognition by industry powerbrokers is interpreted when it is attached to Black cultural production.

Reputational weight, star power

Sinners could take these creative risks in part because of the reputational weight behind it.

Coogler’s track record of commercially successful films, combined with the star power of Michael B. Jordan and their history of delivering profitable collaborations, created a level of confidence among funding studios that is rarely extended to Black filmmakers more broadly.

The uneven distribution of that creative latitude and resourcing remains visible across the industry, where many Black directors continue to face funding barriers for innovative or less conventional projects.

Challenging esthetic norms

The academy recently introduced representation and inclusion standards for Best Picture eligibility that require films to meet benchmarks for on-screen representation, creative leadership, industry access or audience outreach to be considered for nomination.

These measures are aimed at expanding opportunities for underrepresented groups, yet they focus on who appears in and works on films rather than on how films innovate or challenge esthetic norms.

As a result, longstanding assumptions about genre bias and what counts as quality cinema are largely unexamined, even as the rules change around how films qualify for consideration.

Works that trust audiences

The recognition of Sinners by the academy points to a widening space for Black films rooted in lived experience, place and history. Similar dynamics are visible elsewhere.

Recent global successes like K-Pop Demon Hunters show that viewers are drawn to genre-blended, culturally grounded stories that stimulate the imagination rather than explain themselves away. These works trust audiences to enter unfamiliar worlds without constant translation.

Sinners belongs to this moment. Its record-breaking nominations expand the range of Black cinema visible at the highest levels of recognition and quietly signal greater room for formal experimentation. The film treats Black creativity as something that can include visual excess, genre experimentation and narrative openness, and still be recognized as artistically rigorous work.

Cornel Grey 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. 16 Oscar nods for ‘Sinners’ signals a broader appetite for imaginative Black cinema – https://theconversation.com/16-oscar-nods-for-sinners-signals-a-broader-appetite-for-imaginative-black-cinema-274191

February 1, 2026

Black women’s health-care experiences remain marked by structural racism — here’s how institutions should move forward

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Elizabeth Kusi Appiah, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Nursing, University of Alberta

Racism has long disrupted relationships, deepened social divisions and hindered collective action on global challenges. While modern societies strive to be just and advocate against social injustices, many still turn away from engaging in conversations surrounding racism, health inequities and racial tensions.

Yet these issues significantly impact health — including the care Black people receive and their health outcomes. Research shows that racism has many long-term effects on health, and is linked to both poorer mental and physical health overall.

Black History Month is an opportunity to reflect critically on the impact of racism in health care and how to address it. As researchers focused on Black women’s acute and critical care experiences, our recent review draws lessons from studies on Black women’s health-care experiences in high-income countries to propose an approach for addressing racism.

The review included 10 studies conducted in the United States between 1987 and 2024. We found that Black women’s experiences in health care continue to be marked by reports of structural racism, microaggressions and persistent mistrust of the care system and care providers. Such experiences reduced the chances for shared decision-making, early detection of health issues, adherence to treatments, pain management and person-centred care.

We revealed that the enduring legacy of racism in medicine contributes to suboptimal communication and poor-quality care for Black women. Some of the women did not receive appropriate followup for diagnostic tests or see a specialist because their physician dismissed their concerns. Most of the women felt invisible because their providers disregarded their concerns. As a result, they felt discouraged from seeking care.

For instance, in one of the studies included in our review, a woman described her experiences of arriving at the emergency department for care. She said:

“As a Black woman I was told that it was a female problem, instead of my heart….The head doctor took a look at me and said, she doesn’t have a heart problem, this is absolutely no heart problem, it’s some kind of female problem. It was in my head.”

Another described feeling dismissed by doctors due to the way she described her pain, stating:

“I called it a wrecking ball pain. That’s what I was experiencing … Then my doctor, who likes to joke about everything, would say ‘Oh! Here’s the lady with the wrecking ball disease.’”

This left the patient feeling like a medical novelty — rather than being seen as a person worthy of respect and care.

Our discussions also identified how some Black adult patients responded to racial tensions and unjust conditions in their care.

When feeling disregarded by clinicians, some people purposefully limited what they shared. Others changed how they spoke to clinicians to fit white-dominated medical culture. Some even disengaged from the care decision-making process entirely — while others chose to advocate for themselves.

Further, if the physician appeared dismissive or disrespectful, some people ignored their medical advice as they felt the doctor didn’t have their best interests at heart. Others became hyper-vigilant against injustices and were likely to interpret subsequent care encounters based on past experiences.

Impact of racism on health care work

Health-care staff are compassionate people who want to provide the best care for patients. But they may not always be sure how to avoid getting it wrong.

Research indicates that nurses worry about getting it wrong and coming across as disrespectful when caring for people from different cultural backgrounds. Likewise, many nurses fear being labelled as racist, as they say it implies they’re a terrible person. Yet many are unwilling to accept personal responsibility for their actions — or inactions — if such a label is given to them.

There’s also a lack of clarity among nurses regarding what constitutes racist practices. This causes them anxiety. Some find it upsetting to think that their actions have been perceived as racist when that wasn’t their intention. Others are hesitant to express their genuine opinions on issues of this nature due to the fear of being called racist.

A separate study on nurse-patient relationships found that racism hinders nurses’ ability to meet a patient’s care needs and threatens patients’ and nurses’ dignity in the care system. Racism from patients also increases nurses’ stress and causes emotional trauma.

Racism in health-care settings continues to have a detrimental effect on the care patients are receiving. It’s clear institutions need to do more to ensure patients aren’t being harmed when receiving care.

Inclusive and nurturing communities

We believe that building inclusive and nurturing communities that counter racism and celebrate our interdependence is how we can move forward and address racism in health care.

Inclusive and nurturing communities equip people to have difficult conversations about race — whether that’s in health care, the classroom, universities, workplaces and neighbourhoods.

This type of community teaches people the importance of listening and engaging authentically and open-mindedly, and of learning about racism through the experiences of others. It doesn’t see people who engage in racist practices as inherently racist — but as people who need more support in recognizing and addressing racism.

In such spaces, every person bears a social responsibility to combat racism in their own ways — whether by fostering conversations about racism in their homes, workplaces or shared community spaces.

We’re hoping to conduct research investigating how such spaces can be built — and how this framework can be used in health-care settings to address the racism patients experience there.

We’re all part of the bigger picture. When we create safe and brave spaces for thinking, analyzing and talking about racial tensions, we’re inviting everyone to authentically participate in problem-solving.

Research shows trust is essential in building strong and productive human relations. So in order to build inclusive and nurturing communities, we need to invest time and effort into restoring the broken trust of racialized communities through accountability, transparency, consistency and genuine efforts to address systemic racism.

Elizabeth Kusi Appiah is affiliated with the GROWW national mentorship program.

Elisavet Papathanasoglou receives funding from Women & Children health Research Institute (WHCRI).

– ref. Black women’s health-care experiences remain marked by structural racism — here’s how institutions should move forward – https://theconversation.com/black-womens-health-care-experiences-remain-marked-by-structural-racism-heres-how-institutions-should-move-forward-250337

February 1, 2026

Epiaceratherium itjilik: The rhino that lived in the Arctic

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Danielle Fraser, Adjunct Research Professor, Department of Biology, Carleton University

Paleontologists at the Canadian Museum of Nature have recently been studying the skeletal remains of a rhinoceros. This might not sound remarkable at first, but what makes these remains fascinating is that they were found Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic.

Today, mammals inhabit nearly every corner of the Earth. In Asia, Europe and North America, mammals arrived via three routes, one over the Bering Strait and two over the North Atlantic.

The Bering Land Bridge is the best known, having enabled the arrival of humans in North America approximately 20,000 years ago and shaped the population genetics of animals such as bears, lions and horses.

Less well known are the two routes that traversed the North Atlantic, one from the Scandinavian Peninsula over Svalbard and Greenland, and another from Scotland over Iceland to Greenland and the Canadian Arctic.

However, it has typically been thought that land animals could not have crossed the North Atlantic by the Early Eocene, a period around 50 million years ago when the Earth’s climate was warmer.

However, the Arctic rhino’s remains provide tantalizing evidence that land mammals were able to traverse the North Atlantic using frozen land bridges much more recently than the Early Eocene.

A rhinoceros in the Arctic

Danielle Fraser explains her team’s research on the Arctic rhinoceros. (Canadian Museum of Nature)

The new species of rhinoceros was discovered from a nearly complete specimen collected from the Haughton Formation of Devon Island in Nunavut — lake sediments formed in an asteroid impact crater that likely date to the Early Miocene, around 23 million years ago.

The sediments of the Haughton Formation preserve plants, mammals and birds, among others. The majority of the rhinoceros was collected in the 1980s by paleontologist Mary Dawson and her team, with additional collections by paleontologists Natalia Rybczynski, Marisa Gilbert and their team in the 2010s.

The rhinoceros lacked a horn, which is common among extinct rhinos. It is remarkable, however, in possessing features of much more ancient forms, like teeth of forms many millions of years older. It also has a fifth toe on the forefoot, which is rare among rhinoceroses.

Anatomical comparison and evolutionary analysis suggest the specimen belongs to an existing genus, Epiaceratherium, found only in Europe and western Asia. In naming the new species, the team consulted with Jarloo Kiguktak, an elder from the nearest Indigenous community to the Haughton Crater, Aujuittuq (Grise Fiord). Together, they named it Epiaceratherium itjilik. Itjilik is an Inuktitut word meaning frost or frosty, an homage to the Arctic setting where the specimen was found.

Most surprisingly, the team’s evolutionary analysis placed E. itjilik closest to the European species of Epiaceratherium. This indicates that its ancestors likely crossed from Europe to North America via the North Atlantic at some point during the late Eocene period around 33-38 million years ago.

Bio-geographic analyses further revealed a surprisingly high number of rhinoceros crossings over the North Atlantic directly between Europe and North America, some in the last 20 million years. While a finding of such a recent crossing via the North Atlantic has often been considered unlikely, emerging geological evidence tells a different story.

How did rhinos get to the Arctic?

Today, land animals are impeded from crossing between Europe and North America by several deep, wide waterways. The Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland are separated by the Faroe-Bank Channel, Faroe Shetland Channel and the Denmark Strait. Between the Scandinavian Peninsula, Svalbard and Greenland are the Barents Sea and Fram Strait. It is believed that land animals could traverse at least one of these areas only up until the Early Eocene about 50 million years ago.

Recent studies, however, are starting to paint a more complex picture of North Atlantic geological change. Estimates for the timing of formation of the various channels that now break up North Atlantic land masses are highly variable.

Mathematical modelling suggests a highland connected Svalbard to northern Europe as recently as the 2.7 million years ago. An array of new data also suggest the Fram Strait was shallow and narrow until the Early Miocene, around 23 million years ago. The Faroe-Shetland channel may have opened between 50 and 34 million years ago, while the Iceland-Faroe Channel and Denmark Strait were submerged later, 34 to 10 million years ago.

This suggests that rhinoceroses could have walked on land for at least part of their journey across the North Atlantic. They could possibly have swum the relatively short distances between land masses but the team hypothesized that seasonal sea ice may also have facilitated their movement.

Seasonal ice

More than 47 million years ago, the Arctic Ocean and surrounding regions were ice-free all year. Ocean cores collected from the Arctic Ocean — samples of mud, sand and organic material drilled from the seafloor — contain evidence of ice-rafted debris during the Middle Eocene, approximately 47 to 38 million years ago. This indicates the presence of seasonal ice.

Another ocean core collected between Greenland and Svalbard also contains ice-rafted debris originating from across the Arctic dating from between 48 to 26 million years ago. What is emerging, therefore, is the possibility that land animals crossed the North Atlantic by a combination of routes formed over land and seasonal ice.

Vertebrate fossils from the islands that once comprised the North Atlantic land bridges are extremely rare. Given that much of the land bridges are now submerged, direct evidence for how animals spread across the North Atlantic may be lost.

Bio-geographic studies like the one conducted by the team at the Canadian Museum of Nature highlight how discoveries in the Arctic are reshaping what we know about mammal evolution. These insights further our understanding of how animals moved across our planet.

Danielle Fraser received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC
RGPIN-2018-05305). Natalia Rybczynski, who co-authored the study mentioned in this article, received funding from the W. Garfield Weston Foundation. Mary Dawson, a co-author on the study, received funding for field work from National Geographic.

– ref. Epiaceratherium itjilik: The rhino that lived in the Arctic – https://theconversation.com/epiaceratherium-itjilik-the-rhino-that-lived-in-the-arctic-269484

February 1, 2026

Frustration in hetero relationships has a long history — that’s why today’s crisis looks so familiar

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Meaghan Furlano, PhD Student, Sociology, Western University

“Many women tell me they want to have a man in their life, but they are no longer willing to be the only person giving in the relationship. They don’t want to be with a man who needs to be taken care of. In that case, it’s easier and more pleasant to be without a man.”

These words speak eerily to the current moment. Yet their date of publication? 1984.

You’ll find them in psychotherapist and acclaimed author Marjorie Hansen Shaevitz’s The Superwoman Syndrome, one of the earliest books to grapple with the superwoman myth — the idea that women can effortlessly balance work and family responsibilities in workplaces not designed to support them. And that any evidence of struggle is interpreted as a personal failing rather than a systemic one.

Despite its articulation of the burdens women face in the formal economy, its solutions to what is now called the the “second shift” involve telling women to make lists and prioritize their responsibilities. These, of course, are hardly the strategies that will move the needle in improving women’s daily lives.

Similar frustrations appear in another influential work from the same period. In a report written by feminist Shere Hite, published in 1987, most American women described feeling frustrated with their relationships.

Ninety-eight per cent reported wanting more verbal closeness with the men they loved: more sharing of thoughts, feelings and plans, and more reciprocal curiosity. Eighty-three per cent reported being the ones to initiate deep conversations with their partners, and 63 per cent reported being met with “great resistance” when trying to get their partner to talk about their feelings.

Though these findings were released decades ago, their relevance raises questions about how much has really changed for women.

The media-fuelled illusion of novelty

Both Hite’s report and Shaevitz’s book were published long before the term “heteropessimism” or the decentring men trend came into vogue. They came out long before any of us were considering where we fell on the “is having a boyfriend embarrassing?” debate. (My take? No relationship status should be slotted hierarchically above or below another).

Yet these publications capture the mood of contemporary heterosexual culture to a tee: women continue to be doing the most emotional, cognitive and unpaid housework and child-care labour, and women continue to be sick and tired of doing it.

News outlets today report on the “great divide” between men and women, particularly among younger generations. They discuss how women are turning to voluntary celibacy and/or rejecting heterosexual dating outright. They frame these trends and attitudes as out of the norm: for the first time, women are opening up about how they feel. But the truth is, these trends are normative and historically patterned.

It seems that women’s frustration — with the unpaid labour they are culturally expected to perform, with the men who won’t share in it, and with the social institutions that fail to support its redistribution — is the heartbeat of history. But it doesn’t need to be so.

Frustration keeps reproducing itself

Unlike what “tradwife” influencers will have you believe, working women are, on average, less depressed and have higher rates of self-esteem than stay-at-home mothers. Yet working mothers still face anxieties and role conflicts.

Where does this anxiety come from? Is it because women are “naturally” suited to the home and therefore ill-equipped for work in the formal economy, as tradwife influencers suggest? Or is it something else?

Looking at the problem from a sociological lens, it’s clear that anxiety results from the structures of paid work (which have not changed, despite women and the demographic composition of the workforce changing) and the distressing (and at times violent) contours of contemporary heterosexual culture, in which men continue to free-ride off women’s unpaid labour.

Anxieties also pervade as many governments fail to mandate paid parental and care leave, workplaces fail to offer family-friendly policies, and the ideology of individualism, in contrast to collectivism and communal care, remains dominant. Above all, anxiety is rife because cultural beliefs about gender, parenthood and work have remained stubbornly resistant to change.

Every few years, a flurry of news articles and social media posts lament women’s unpaid work and individual men are tasked with becoming equal helpers in the home. While individuals have their part to play in facilitating this cultural transformation, sociologists like myself are interested, too, in the role that social institutions, such as work, media and government, play in structuring individual lives.

Why hasn’t change happened yet?

We set ourselves up for failure when we hold individual men responsible but fail to provide them with cultural frameworks of masculinity that laud men’s contributions to housework and child care, and when we fail to vote for (or don’t have the option of voting for) governments that will introduce paid parental leave, regulate corporations to enhance worker power and fund community-building initiatives.

To be sure, frameworks and representations of caring masculinities do exist, but they’re not often shown in mainstream media. This is why the representation of communicative and consensual masculinities that reject male domination in television shows like Ted Lasso, Shrinking and Heated Rivalry matters. They demonstrate to men alternative modes of being, living and relating to others in our world today.

Representation matters, but so does concrete political transformations.

For too long, work and family have been treated as separate domains. Perhaps the solution lies in their convergence: a radical reimagining of how work and parenthood ought to look.

Potential strategies include disrupting gendered occupational segregation, raising the wages of feminized work, decreasing hours of paid work and building a normative definition of masculinity centred around care.

Otherwise, we’re bound to keep having the same conversations, year after year, decade after decade — like we have been.

Meaghan Furlano 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. Frustration in hetero relationships has a long history — that’s why today’s crisis looks so familiar – https://theconversation.com/frustration-in-hetero-relationships-has-a-long-history-thats-why-todays-crisis-looks-so-familiar-274486

February 1, 2026

‘Sinners’’ 16 Oscar nods signals a broader appetite for imaginative Black cinema

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Cornel Grey, Assistant Professor in Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, Western University

When Sinners recently received a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations, the response was overwhelmingly celebratory, but not uncomplicated.

Questions of popular success and excellence

In the wake of declining viewership, the academy proposed a new category in 2018 for “Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film.”

As director Ryan Coogler has said, the film resists categorical conventions, dubbing it “genre-fluid.”

‘Sinners’ official trailer.

Directorial innovation

Coogler’s directorial innovation is central to the cultural significance of the film’s nominations.

Acclaimed Black films that don’t focus on trauma or suffering have been long overlooked by the academy.

Movies like Do the Right Thing, Eve’s Bayou, Girls Trip and Sorry to Bother You received strong critical and cultural support, but were largely ignored during Oscar voting.

Black creative achievement and possibility

Viewers unfamiliar with Black Southern folklore, diasporic spiritual traditions or the film’s musical and historical cues may miss things. The film does not slow down to catch them up.

Award bodies’ reception

The film’s success also raises questions about how awards bodies respond when Black creative experimentation gains critical acclaim.

Wider shift in Black creative possibility

The risk is that Sinners is celebrated as a one-off, rather than understood as part of a wider shift in Black creative possibility.

These reactions reveal ongoing anxieties over who gets to reshape tradition, and how recognition by industry powerbrokers is interpreted when it is attached to Black cultural production.

Reputational weight, star power

Sinners could take these creative risks in part because of the reputational weight behind it.

Challenging esthetic norms

These measures are aimed at expanding opportunities for underrepresented groups, yet they focus on who appears in and works on films rather than on how films innovate or challenge esthetic norms.

As a result, longstanding assumptions about genre bias and what counts as quality cinema are largely unexamined, even as the rules change around how films qualify for consideration.

Works that trust audiences

The recognition of Sinners by the academy points to a widening space for Black films rooted in lived experience, place and history. Similar dynamics are visible elsewhere.

– ref. ‘Sinners’’ 16 Oscar nods signals a broader appetite for imaginative Black cinema – https://theconversation.com/sinners-16-oscar-nods-signals-a-broader-appetite-for-imaginative-black-cinema-274191

January 30, 2026

Introducing our new Science & Technology editor

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kim Honey, CEO|Editor-in-Chief, The Conversation

The Conversation Canada is thrilled to announce Heather Walmsley, one of the
founding editors who helped us launch in 2017, is returning to the fold. She was instrumental in establishing The Conversation Canada as an independent source of news and views from the academic and research community. Over the next three years, she edited science, education and health articles and helped grow our news coverage, audience and university membership.

Heather will be our Science & Technology editor, and these two beats are a key part of our mission to share trusted academic knowledge with the public. She comes to The Conversation Canada from the University of Victoria, where she worked for the Office of the Vice President Research and Innovation, raising the profile of health research across campus. She has worked in journalism, research and knowledge mobilization for a variety of media outlets, non-profits and research institutions in the United Kingdom and Canada.

Heather has MA degrees in anthropology and postcolonial literature from the universities of Edinburgh and Sussex, a PhD in science and technology studies from Lancaster University and held a SSHRC Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship in medical sociology at the University of British Columbia.

Her editing expertise, ideas and deep understanding of our mandate will be a boon to the newsroom. As The Conversation Canada matures from a scrappy startup to a trusted non-profit news organization, Heather will be a great asset on the eve of our 10th birthday. We can’t wait until she starts on Feb. 23.

Welcome Heather!

– ref. Introducing our new Science & Technology editor – https://theconversation.com/introducing-our-new-science-and-technology-editor-274769

January 29, 2026

Pierre Poilievre: The most successful unsuccessful leader in Canadian politics?

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Stewart Prest, Lecturer, Political Science, University of British Columbia

Nine months after falling definitively short in the 2025 federal election, Pierre Poilievre is facing a mandatory leadership review at this weekend’s Conservative Party convention.

By all accounts, he’s likely to cruise through the review, since he enjoys strong support among Conservative Party members.

That support extends to the broader voting coalition Poilievre has assembled, which continues to stand behind his leadership for the most part. Recent polling suggests that more than three quarters of Conservative voters view him as doing an “excellent” job.

The problem for Poilievre and the party, however, is that among those who did not vote Conservative, the view is starkly different. In that same recent Abacus poll, 62 per cent of non-Conservative voters reported he’s doing a “poor” or “very poor” job.

In a sense, Poilievre is the most successful unsuccessful leader in Canadian politics.

The Justin Trudeau problem

If you count by share of the vote, Poilievre led the party to its best showing in nearly 40 years. Brian Mulroney was the last leader of a Conservative party to crack 40 per cent of the vote share across the country. He also got the party to its best share of seats since Stephen Harper’s lone majority victory in 2011.

Poilievre managed to pull together, and even expand, the coalition of Conservative voters, appealing in particular to younger male voters, and was making inroads with labour voters — at least until Donald Trump showed up for his second term as American president.

Thanks largely due to Trump’s threats to make Canada a 51st state, Liberals performed even better in the election. Defying the odds, newly minted Prime Minister Mark Carney led the Liberals back from what seemed like certain defeat, assisted by the emergence of a far more more belligerent United States following Trump’s return.

The Liberals bested the Conservatives in vote share and seat share, cementing Carney’s leadership of the country.

An even bigger problem for Poilievre is that his own approach to politics as opposition leader almost certainly influenced the Liberal rebound after Justin Trudeau stepped down — and when an electoral landslide seemed all but assured for the Conservatives.

Because Canadians considered Trudeau a problem, Poilievre’s take-no-prisoners approach paid significant dividends. The Conservatives led the Liberals by an increasingly comfortable margin throughout 2024. Language about the country being broken didn’t seem out of place to those tired of the status quo.

The Donald Trump impact

As soon as Trump made himself the problem, however, most Canadians looked for a much more fulsome response than Poilievre was able to offer. Rather than a leader focused on criticizing Canada, the majority of Canadians above all wanted one who promised to stand up against the American threat.

Similarities between Poilievre and Trump — sometimes rhetorical, other times substantive, and sometimes both — deepened the suspicion.

This divisiveness has continued to plague the party in the months since the 2025 election. One Conservative MP has decided to resign and two others have actually crossed the floor to join the Liberals, bringing the governing party within a hair’s breadth of a majority.

Nova Scotia MP Chris d’Entremont cited Poilievre’s leadership style specifically in explaining his decision to become a Liberal, suggesting the Conservative leader was too negative at a time when the country needed solutions-oriented politics.

This remains the quandary for the Conservative leader and the party: everything Poilievre does to secure the support of the more populist wing of the conservative movement in Canada tends to alienate the rest of the country, while any move to the centre risks condemnation from those further to the right.

Poilievre has won over core Conservatives and alienated the rest of the country, including that crucial share of voters necessary to push the Conservatives over the top.

Repelling more than he attracts

There is, to be sure, a path to victory still available to the Conservatives. A resurgent NDP, or some other wobble in Liberal fortunes, could be enough to put the Conservatives over the top next federal election.

They cannot count on such luck, however. Faced with the generational event that is the second Trump presidency, many Canadians are viewing the current Canada-U.S. tensions as an “us/them” existential battle, with other issues pushed into the background.

This week’s premier’s meeting in New Brunswick, for example, focused heavily on national unity. So too did Carney’s meeting with premiers in Ottawa.

This seems likely to persist so long as the U.S. poses a threat to Canadian security and prosperity. And as long as Poilievre presents himself as being sympathetic to Trump’s populist project, Canadians not already in the Conservative column will look to keep him out of the Prime Minister’s Office.

The most likely result, then, of this weekend’s review is a strong endorsement of Poilievre’s leadership and a continuation of the status quo: a country that has come together on a question of existential importance, but an opposition leader who divides, repelling more than he attracts.

Stewart Prest 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. Pierre Poilievre: The most successful unsuccessful leader in Canadian politics? – https://theconversation.com/pierre-poilievre-the-most-successful-unsuccessful-leader-in-canadian-politics-274358

January 29, 2026

Why drug approval in Canada should not rely on foreign regulators

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Joel Lexchin, Associate professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto; York University, Canada; University of Sydney

Without much fanfare, Health Canada announced in the Canada Gazette Part 1 on Dec. 22, 2025 that it was beginning a 70-day consultation period on using the decisions of foreign drug regulators such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to approve new drugs in Canada.

If the proposal is approved, Health Canada will evaluate reports from the other regulators, and provided those reports are satisfactory and that the drugs met certain conditions (for example, the drug being considered by Health Canada has the same strength, dosage form, route of administration, medicinal ingredient and indications as the foreign drug), the new drug will be approved.

This announcement appears to be a continuation of the federal government’s Red Tape Review launched in July 2025. According to a report on this initiative, Health Canada’s rationale for this change is that “industry stakeholders have indicated that they face undue burden due to overlapping or unclear regulatory requirements, complex regulatory approvals, and onerous reporting and information demands” and have “raised concerns about the time it takes to get products to market.”

Health Canada states that “enhanced international regulatory alignment reduces burden for industry and can support increased health product submissions to Canada” and increase the number of new drugs available to Canadians.

These views reflected in the Red Tape Review align with those of the pharmaceutical industry. In its 2025 pre-budget submission to the federal government, Innovative Medicines Canada (IMC), the main pharma industry lobby group, said that “reliance on trusted foreign regulatory reviews where appropriate…will streamline drug approvals and enable Health Canada to be a global regulatory leader.”

Faster drug approvals would also mean a shorter timeline to revenue generation for drug companies.

Benefits need to be evaluated

On the surface, this sounds like a reasonable initiative; countries with strong regulatory systems can draw on each other’s strengths so that tasks are not unnecessarily duplicated. In Canada’s case, our resources and capacity are limited compared with those of other leading regulatory authorities like the FDA and the EMA.

But before Canada starts using decisions from other jurisdictions, there is a need to evaluate whether this new way of approving drugs is actually going to be beneficial.

Australia has been using such a system since 2018. One of the benefits touted by the Australian government was that new drugs would be submitted faster to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), the equivalent of Health Canada.

But comparing the gap in the timing of submissions to the FDA and the TGA since Australia began using foreign regulator decisions doesn’t provide any convincing evidence that this has actually happened.

My new study, currently under peer review, looks at the 29 drugs that have so far used the Australian system. Twenty-two of those drugs have been evaluated by one or more organizations that look at how much additional therapeutic value new drugs provide compared to existing therapies. Sixteen of the 22 offered only minor new gains and just two were a major benefit.

FDA standards and approval pathways

The U.S. approves more new drugs than Canada does. But a recent study that compared Canada and the U.S. found that many drugs available in the U.S., but not north of the border, already had existing alternatives that are therapeutically and chemically similar. The small number of drugs that were unique to the U.S. were not very clinically important.

Some industry observers think the standards that the FDA uses to approve new drugs have been declining over the past 15-20 years.

The FDA has increased its reliance on what are called expedited drug approval pathways in recent decades. These allow drugs onto the market with lower levels of evidence. Although they were initially designed for drugs that treat rare conditions or life-threatening illnesses that don’t have effective treatments, researchers have found that these expedited pathways are being increasingly used for drugs that may not be innovative.

If Canada were already using foreign decisions, aducanumab (brand name Aduhelm) might have been put on the market in Canada as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. In the U.S., the FDA approved aducanumab despite a lack of evidence that it would benefit Alzheimer’s patients, and despite and the negative vote of 10 of the 11 members of the FDA’s advisory committee — the 11th member abstained — and the subsequent resignation of three of the committee members. The manufacturer eventually pulled Aduhelm from the U.S. market because almost no doctors were prescribing it.

Different regulatory cultures, different decisions

We also need to think about the consequences of the homogenization of drug approval standards. Homogenization ignores the development of different regulatory cultures in different jurisdictions that arise from networks of individuals who produce regulatory policy, determine testing standards and ultimately decide on market access for new drugs.

When presented with essentially the same evidence, the FDA and the EMA often make different decisions about oncology drugs. A 2020 study found frequent discordance between the FDA and the EMA. Another study compared the approval of 42 cancer drugs between 1995 and 2008 by the FDA and the EMA, and showed that in almost 50 per cent of cases, there was a discrepancy between EMA and FDA decisions.

So far, there is no evidence to back up the claim that using decisions made by foreign drug regulators will lead to faster access to newer and better drugs. Before Canada proceeds down this pathway, Health Canada needs to show that it will improve public health.

Between 2022-2025, Joel Lexchin received payments for writing a brief for a legal firm on the role of promotion in generating prescriptions for opioids, for being on a panel about pharmacare and for co-writing an article for a peer-reviewed medical journal on semaglutide. He is a member of the Board of the Canadian Health Coalition. He receives royalties from University of Toronto Press and James Lorimer & Co. Ltd. for books he has written. He has received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in the past.

– ref. Why drug approval in Canada should not rely on foreign regulators – https://theconversation.com/why-drug-approval-in-canada-should-not-rely-on-foreign-regulators-273693