Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Emmanuelle Vaast, Professor of Information Systems, McGill University

Anthropic, a leading AI company, recently refused to sign a Pentagon contract that would allow the United States military “unrestricted access” to its technology for “all lawful purposes.” To sign, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei required two clear exceptions: no mass surveillance of Americans and no fully autonomous weapons without human oversight.

The very next day, the U.S. and Israel launched a large-scale offensive against Iran.

This leaves many wondering: how different would a war with fully autonomous weapons look? How important an ethical decision was it, when Amodei referred to fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance as AI “red lines” that his company would not cross? What do these red lines mean for other nations?

The decision cost Anthropic immensely. U.S. President Donald Trump ordered all American agencies to stop using Anthropic’s AI family of advanced large language models (LLMs) and conversational chatbots, Claude. Pete Hegseth, U.S. defence secretary, designated Anthropic as a “supply chain risk,” which could impact other contract possibilities for the company. And rival company OpenAI swiftly struck a deal with the Pentagon instead.

The risks of fully autonomous weapons

AI chatbots are typically not weapons on their own, but they can become part of weapons systems. They do not fire missiles or control drones, but they can be plugged into the larger military systems.

They can quickly summarize intelligence, generate target shortlists, rank high-priority threats and recommend strikes. A key risk is that of a process going from sensor data to AI interpretation, target selection and weapon activation with minimal to no human control or even awareness.

Fully autonomous weapons are military platforms that, once activated, independently conduct military operations without human intervention. They rely on sensors such as cameras, radars and AI algorithms to analyze the environment, search for, select and engage targets.

Advanced helicopters, for instance, already operate with no human intervention. With fully autonomous weapons, human control and oversight disappear and AI makes final attack and battlefield decisions.

This is concerning, given recent research in which advanced AI models opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases.

The risks of mass surveillance

Frontier AI models can promptly summarize huge data sets and auto-generate patterns to look for signals of suspicious people and activity through even weak associations. In his statement on Anthropic’s discussions with the Department of War, Amodei argued that “AI-driven mass surveillance presents serious, novel risks to our fundamental liberties.”

They can analyze records, communications and metadata to scan across populations. They can produce briefings and lists of people that flag automatically who gets questioned, denied entry into a country, refused a job, etc. These systems create risks to privacy because they can analyze data from multiple sources, such as social media accounts, and combine these with cameras and facial recognition to track people in real time.

AI models can also make mistakes. Even a small erroneous association can scale up dangerously if the system is run over millions of people.

AI models are also opaque: how they analyze data and reach their conclusions cannot be fully comprehended, which adds to the difficulty of challenging the output.

‘All lawful purposes’

The label “all lawful purposes” sounds like a safety limit. Yet, this language means that the government can use AI for all purposes that it deems legal, with few limits in the contract.

This matters because legality is a moving target, laws can change and are often ill-equipped to deal in real time with fast changing innovations, and interpretations can shift.

This is what made Anthropic, a company that was founded by former OpenAI employees with an explicit focus on AI safety and ethics, argue that AI-enabled mass surveillance was a novel risk and that lawful purposes could not provide stable guardrails.

Anthropic has famously developed an internal lab to understand how Claude works, interprets queries and makes autonomous decisions. Given the opacity of LLMs as well as the speed with which their capacities develop, such efforts matter.

Project Maven with higher stakes?

In some ways, this story is familiar. Technology companies have long been at the forefront of innovation, with great promises of progress but also risks of misuse and negative consequences. The closest historical comparison is Google’s Project Maven in 2018.

Google had a contract with the Pentagon for the company to help analyze drone surveillance footage. Four thousand Google employees protested the project, arguing that surveillance should not be part of the company’s mission. Google announced it would not renew Maven and later issued AI principles that included commitments around weapons and surveillance.

The situation became a landmark case in the power of employee activism and public pressure.

The Project Maven example, however, also reminds us that company ethics and AI safety are fluctuating matters. In early 2025, Google discreetly dropped its pledge not to use AI for weapons and surveillance in an attempt to gain new lucrative defence contracts.

Anthropic’s current situation is in some respects similar to Google’s Project Maven one: it shows a company and its leaders trying to place limits on military uses of AI. It illustrates tensions that emerge when espoused corporate values collide with governments and national security demands.

The Anthropic case is also distinct because generative AI in 2026 is much more powerful than it was just a few years ago. Project Maven was only about analyzing drone footage. Today’s models can be used for many tasks, so the spillover risk is larger.

LLMs like Claude can self-improve by learning from user corrections and refining actions through iterative feedback loops. What an unrestricted Claude and its client, the Pentagon, could have done is therefore worrisome.

Who sets the limits?

These events are neither about Anthropic being uniquely principled nor about the Pentagon being uniquely demanding. They are about a critical issue that will keep coming back as AI becomes more powerful: who sets the limits regarding AI use when national security is involved?

If “all lawful purposes” become the default, the guardrails will depend on politics and legal interpretation. For Canada and other nations, the safeguards matter. Ethics cannot be left to contract negotiations and corporate conscience.

These events illustrate the complexities of engaging in AI ethics in practice. AI ethics principles and declarations are important and abound. At the same time, in practice, AI ethics are set through contracts, procurement rules, various parties’ actual behaviour and oversight.

Canada’s defence and public sectors are building AI capacity and Canada operates closely with the U.S. defence and intelligence. This means that procurement language and standards can travel. If “all lawful purposes” becomes the standard language in the U.S. national security market, this could put pressure on Canada and other nations to adopt similar terms.

The reassuring news is that Canada has governance tools in place it can strengthen and extend. The Directive on Automated Decision-Making is designed to ensure that systems are transparent, accountable and fair. It requires impact assessment and public reporting.

The Algorithmic Impact Assessment is a mandatory risk-assessment tool tied to the directive.

But Canadians should be mindful of ongoing developments to check that procurement standards name prohibited uses, to call for audits and for independent oversight so that safeguards do not depend only on particular governments and companies at the top.

Emmanuelle Vaast 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. From Anthropic to Iran: Who sets the limits on AI’s use in war and surveillance? – https://theconversation.com/from-anthropic-to-iran-who-sets-the-limits-on-ais-use-in-war-and-surveillance-277334

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Martin Hébert, Full Professor, Département d’anthropologie, Université Laval

The Doomsday Clock — a symbolic device to signal an array of existential threats to the world since 1947 — was recently moved to 85 seconds before midnight, the closest it has ever been to midnight. And that was before all-out war broke out in Iran.

Created by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the Doomsday Clock first represented a slow descent into nuclear vulnerability, with midnight standing as the nuclear apocalypse. Nowadays, the clock includes other existential threats to humanity, including global warming, disruptive technologies or the erosion of the rules-based international order.

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Mobilizing fear

Since its very beginning, the clock’s purpose was a call to action meant to shake world leaders — and the broader public by extension — awake from their complacency and indifference.

The aim of the Doomsday Clock was never to instil paralyzing anxiety. Quite the contrary, it sought to mobilize fear in a constructive way. It signals, implicitly, the hope that existential threats can be eradicated and the possibility that peril can be overcome, even if the odds are slim.

But over the years,, the Doomsday Clock has crept ever closer to midnight — first by minutes, then by seconds — heightening the sense of urgency while stopping short of the clock’s symbolic apocalypse.

Being mere seconds from catastrophe dramatically underscores the urgency of action, even as the shrinking margin to midnight heightens public anxiety.

We contend that this is the point where the narrative of imminent catastrophe becomes counter-productive: constant apocalyptic scenarios may dull perceptions of risk or be exploited to justify politics driven by urgency and fear.

Doomsday Clock flaws

The clock has long been subject to critics. Some have questioned its precision and called it showmanship. Others have described it as shaped by ideology.

But the first question we should ask of the Doomsday Clock is whether it fulfils its stated purpose: prompting transformative action to confront what are widely recognized as existential risks. It’s been argued that putting humanity on a permanent, blanket high alert isn’t helpful when it comes to formulating policy or driving science.

The narratives of nuclear war and impending apocalypse that underpin the Doomsday Clock have historically been used to project authority and justify dangerous politics of secrecy — legacies that have often come at the expense of public health and well-being.

For instance, during the Cold War, the U.S. strategically stoked a sense of urgency within its population against the potential threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

During that time, education often blended with propaganda as schoolchildren were told to prepare themselves against potential nuclear attacks, learning from Bert the Turtle to “duck and cover.”

Worried citizens built bunkers in their homes as billions of dollars were pumped into the military industrial complex.

Those who criticized such preparedness measures faced accusation of anti-patriotism or of being communists underMcCarthyism and the Red Scare.

In the end, the sense of a looming apocalypse sacrificed the social and national security of Americans for a threat that never materialized. Ironically, in being fearful of being bombed, Americans exposed their own population to dangerous radioactive fallouts and material via nuclear tests and arsenal production.

How we define disaster

Obviously, complacency about the serious challenges the world is facing is not an option. But the idea that we are almost at the point of no return via the Doomsday Clock is no longer useful or helpful.

This is especially the case since the doom symbolized by the clock has become more abstract with time. Since it’s broadened beyond nuclear war, the clock struck midnight a long time ago for many people on the planet.

Recognizing the difference in experiences among privileged groups, for whom catastrophe remains a future prospect, and marginalized groups, who live in what has been described as a world of salvage, should prompt us to rethink how we measure and define impending disaster.

By calibrating the Doomsday Clock in ever-narrowing seconds, we construct an imaginative framework in which meaningful change is equated with turning the clock back. It may be more honest — and more useful — to acknowledge that we’re already living at the brink.

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How the Doomsday Clock could help trigger the armageddon it warns of

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As militarism and fascism surged in 1935, Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga could have said Europe stood seconds from catastrophe. Instead, he took a different view: “We all know that there is no way back, that we have to fight our way through.”

The uncertainty and anxiety produced by being “seconds to midnight” via the Doomsday Clock can upset the balance between fear and hope. It risks normalizing the violence long endured by racialized and marginalized communities, while creating fertile ground for either opportunistic politics or irrational faith that events will simply resolve themselves.

At this point, action is stalled by the stubborn conviction that this cannot really be happening to us. Perhaps this is when the clock should strike 12 — not as an endpoint, but as a signal that the focus must shift from prevention to another mode of response. In many areas of life, acknowledging that a crisis has arrived is the first step toward recovery.

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. Why the Doomsday Clock has outlived its usefulness – https://theconversation.com/why-the-doomsday-clock-has-outlived-its-usefulness-275409

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jamaica Cass, Director, Queen’s-Weeneebayko Health Education Partnership, Queen’s University, Ontario

When 200 people evacuated from Kashechewan First Nation arrived in Kingston, Ont. on a Sunday afternoon in January 2026 — many Elders, children and medically complex family members — the urgency was immediately clear. By the next afternoon, my colleagues from the Indigenous Interprofessional Primary Care Team and I had brought our mobile clinic to the evacuees’ hotel and were seeing patients who had been abruptly displaced by yet another failure of their community’s drinking water system.

At the same time, Kingston’s Indigenous friendship centre was organizing volunteers to lead cultural programming and create supports to help families maintain connection and dignity during displacement.

This matters because Kashechewan is not an exception. Research across Canada shows that unsafe drinking water continues to drive preventable illness, mental distress and evacuations in First Nations communities.

These events are often described as isolated emergencies or technical breakdowns. But decades of public health, engineering and Indigenous-led scholarship demonstrate that they are the predictable outcome of how water systems for First Nations have been governed, funded and maintained.

I am an Indigenous primary care physician who works with Indigenous communities, including those affected by long-standing water insecurity. What I see in Kingston closely reflects patterns documented in Canadian research.

A widespread problem in a water-rich country

Canada has one of the largest supplies of fresh water in the world, yet many First Nations communities have lived under “boil-water” or “do-not-consume” advisories for years — some for more than a decade. National analyses and community-based studies show that Indigenous households are far more likely than non-Indigenous households to lack reliable running water, particularly in remote or northern communities.

In many of these settings, water is delivered by truck and stored in household cisterns, drums or buckets. Studies led by Canadian researchers, including work in Manitoba First Nations, have shown that these systems are difficult to disinfect consistently and are far more vulnerable to bacterial contamination than piped, continuously supplied systems.

In plain terms, the way water is delivered and stored in many homes increases the risk that it becomes unsafe before it’s ever used.

What unsafe water looks like in the clinic

The health impacts of water insecurity are well documented. Reviews of Canadian studies consistently identify gastrointestinal illness — such as diarrhea and vomiting — as the most frequently reported outcome in communities with unsafe drinking water. Skin infections are also common when regular bathing and hand-washing are limited.

Research from First Nations communities in Manitoba has found that people living in homes without indoor plumbing are significantly more likely to report illness overall. That same body of work shows strong associations between indoor water access and mental health: households with reliable in-home water and sanitation report lower rates of depression and stress-related symptoms.

Mental health effects are increasingly recognized in the literature. Researchers describe “water anxiety” — the chronic stress of worrying about whether water is safe to drink, cook with or bathe in.

Qualitative and survey-based studies show this burden falls disproportionately on women, who are more likely to manage household water and caregiving responsibilities. Carrying water, hauling heavy bottles and cleaning storage containers have also been linked to back and shoulder injuries.

Among the evacuees I see in Kingston, these physical and mental health burdens are compounded by displacement itself: being far from home, separated from land and trying to manage chronic illness, educate their children and maintain professional responsibilities in crowded conditions in an unfamiliar environment.

Why these failures persist

If unsafe drinking water in First Nations communities has been so thoroughly studied, why does it continue?

One reason, consistently identified in Canadian policy and academic literature, is that water problems are framed primarily as technical failures rather than as governance failures. Responsibility for drinking water on reserves is fragmented across federal departments, leading to regulatory gaps, unclear accountability and slow responses.

Infrastructure design is another factor. Studies show that water systems in First Nations are often modelled on urban technologies that are poorly suited to remote or low-capacity settings. Even when new systems are built, chronic underfunding of operations, maintenance and operator training leaves communities vulnerable to repeated breakdowns.

Housing plays a critical role as well. Research clearly demonstrates that the absence of indoor plumbing — not just treatment plant performance — is strongly associated with illness. Yet housing and water infrastructure are frequently planned and funded separately, despite their intertwined health impacts.

Evacuation as a recurring health risk

When water systems fail, evacuation becomes the default response. For remote communities, this can involve flying hundreds of people to southern cities on short notice.

Canadian studies show that these disruptions affect schooling, employment, access to cultural practices, and family cohesion.

From a health perspective, evacuation trades one risk for another. While it may reduce immediate exposure to contaminated water, it introduces stress, disrupts continuity of care and worsens mental health outcomes, particularly for Elders, children and people with chronic disease.

What the evidence points to

Across disciplines, Canadian research converges on several findings. Long-term water safety improves when First Nations have meaningful authority over water governance and source-water protection.

Infrastructure is more reliable when systems are designed for local conditions and paired with stable funding for maintenance, training and housing upgrades, not just construction.

Importantly, Indigenous-led approaches that integrate community knowledge with engineering and public-health expertise have been shown to strengthen environmental protection and improve trust in water systems.

Back to that hotel clinic

The patients I see in Kingston are living with the downstream effects of problems that Canadian researchers and Indigenous leaders have been documenting for decades. Their illnesses were not random. They were shaped by unsafe distribution systems, chronic under-investment and governance structures that leave communities reacting to crises rather than preventing them.

Canada’s drinking water crisis reflects systemic design and governance failures, not a lack of fresh water. In a country with the capacity to ensure safe water for all, persistent water insecurity in Indigenous communities represents a preventable policy failure.

The evidence is clear: Chronic water insecurity is a manufactured driver of illness and displacement. Treating its consequences in a makeshift hotel clinic should not be routine. Ensuring safe, reliable, Indigenous-governed water should be.

Jamaica Cass works for Queen’s University. She receives funding from the National Circle on Indigenous Medical Education, the CPFC and the CMA. She is a board member of the Indigenous Physicians’ Association of Canada and the Medical Council of Canada.

– ref. What treating Kashechewan evacuees reveals about Canada’s drinking water crisis: Policy failure is an Indigenous health issue – https://theconversation.com/what-treating-kashechewan-evacuees-reveals-about-canadas-drinking-water-crisis-policy-failure-is-an-indigenous-health-issue-274402

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

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is having a moment.

While every leader in the world has to grapple with the abrupt and arbitrary decision-making of United States President Donald Trump, few have had to do so with such high stakes as America’s neighbour and ostensible ally to the north.

With more than two-thirds of Canadian exports bound for the US, bilateral trade is a matter of economic life and death for Canada. Since his return to office in January 2025, Trump has made repeated references to Canada becoming America’s “51st state” in an effort to put economic and political pressure on its northern neighbour.

Despite this, Carney has met the challenge with rare candour.

In his recent speech at this year’s World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Carney gave the world a word for the transformations now underway, describing a “rupture” in the international rules-based order.

The speech was remarkable in its honesty on other fronts, as well. Effectively, Carney acknowledged what everyone knows, but no one in a position of power has previously admitted: even before Trump’s return to the White House for a second term, the US-led liberal international order was deeply unfair in its distribution of prosperity and security.

Carney’s pedigree

Why was Carney able to say what others would not, or could not, on such a high-profile stage?

In many ways, his background and present role give him unique credibility in the eyes of the wealthy and powerful who gather each year at Davos.

Born and raised in northern and western Canada, Carney’s academic and professional career played out on a larger stage. Following a PhD in economics at the University of Oxford in 1995, he pursued a career in finance and banking that took him to the heights of both the private and public financial world.

After more than a decade working at the American multinational investment bank Goldman Sachs, Carney entered Canadian public service, eventually becoming governor of the Bank of Canada in 2008 under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He went on to become the first non-British head of the Bank of England, serving in that role from 2013-2020.

His governorships coincided with tumultuous times in both countries, spanning the sub-prime financial crisis, Brexit and the early days of the COVID pandemic. While not without criticism, Carney’s performance in both countries won significant acclaim, leading to other international leadership roles.

By early 2025, Carney threw his hat in the ring to replace Canada’s beleaguered Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was trailing badly in public opinion polls. Carney won that race convincingly, and shortly after led the revived Liberals to a narrow but definitive victory over the Conservatives in a federal election in April 2025.

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The party’s stunning come-from-behind victory was fuelled significantly by Trump’s 51st state talk and other forms of coercion.

Commanding respect

Carney has a remarkable CV by any measure. He has moved from the heights of academia to business, finance and finally, government. In politics, he’s been successful in both Liberal and Conservative political environments. That broad credibility ensured that when he spoke from the podium at Davos about a rupture in an already unequal global political system, his words would be taken seriously.

Carney’s role as prime minister of Canada has also played a role in making him the poster boy of a global anti-Trump movement. Since Trump’s return to office, Canada has been on the front lines of America’s movement away from long-held alliances towards a more mercurial, coercive and even predatory foreign policy.

Trump’s penchant for insulting Canadian leaders, threatening Canadian sovereignty and weakening the Canadian economy in the service of American interests makes Canada an important test case that other American partners can learn from.

Within Canada itself, Carney is popular, though his responses to Trump have not always been without criticism. Some have pointed to a recurring gap between rhetoric and action.

Carney’s swift move to endorse the recent US attacks on Iran fit this pattern, as well. Yet, such appeasement hasn’t been rewarded with reciprocity by the Trump administration.

Seeking partners

As Carney visits the Pacific Rim, including a stop Australia, there’s no question he’s put himself — and Canada — in the global spotlight for his handling of Trump.

His speech in Davos sketched out a vision of an alternate global order that Canada and other like-minded countries might collectively pursue as a defence against the chaotic and unstable world unleashed by Canada’s former friend and ally. However, that rhetoric is not yet reality.

Accordingly, on his visit to India, Japan and Australia, Carney is looking to find partners for that vision. He’s seeking opportunities to improve relations, expand trade and cooperate on issues of Pacific security.

The old world order is not coming back. What Carney achieves in his foray to the Pacific Rim may help determine what new order, if any, emerges in its place.

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. As Canada’s Mark Carney heads to Australia, how did he become the darling of the global anti-Trump movement? – https://theconversation.com/as-canadas-mark-carney-heads-to-australia-how-did-he-become-the-darling-of-the-global-anti-trump-movement-277039

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Paul R. Carr, Professeur/Professor (Université du Québec en Outaouais) & Titulaire/Chair, Chaire UNESCO en démocratie, citoyenneté mondiale et éducation transformatoire/ UNESCO Chair in Democracy, Global Citizenship and Transformative Education., Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO)

The FIFA Men’s World Cup will unfold across North America from June 11 to July 19, co-hosted by Canada, Mexico and the United States. This year’s event will be the largest ever, with some 48 countries represented.

The FIFA 2026 World Cup was awarded in 2018 and preparations have been ongoing ever since. However, the U.S. has significantly altered course since the election of Donald Trump in January 2025.

The international community is facing an onslaught of actions, threats and rhetoric from the U.S. government, which has led to chaos, confusion, instability and massive political, economic and sociocultural vulnerability.

As a result, calls have emerged to boycott the tournament, including from former FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

It’s clearly late in the game to consider adjusting, transferring, suspending or altering this thoroughly planned international event. The implications for changing the status of the FIFA 2026 tournament are numerous and far-reaching.

Why consider a boycott now?

A series of recent American actions raises serious questions about its suitability to host the FIFA World Cup at this time.

These include destabilizing allies, imposing tariffs without clear justification, launching a military attacking on Iran with Israel, attacking Venezuela and capturing its president, threatening to annex Greenland and Canada, eliminating USAID and putting millions of people at risk of disease, illness, famine and death and overseeing the violence inflicted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents that endangers citizens and residents.

In addition, the fair and equitable treatment of people seeking to visit the U.S. cannot be assured. People from many countries would effectively be barred from visiting the U.S. to attend the event because of current American policy.

There is a serious threat of people being detained, surveilled and persecuted. Racial profiling is a particular concern given how ICE has maneuvered in immigrant communities in the U.S.

Many are also concerned about violence within the U.S., which is disproportionately higher than in most western countries.

At the same time, the U.S. has withdrawn from numerous international organizations and agreements, the antithesis of co-operation on global issues, shutting down the potential for meaningful and necessary dialogue.

All these realities fly in the face of the spirit and solidarity of global sporting events like the World Cup that aim to cultivate peace and intercultural understanding.

FIFA’s record

Allegations of corruption and bribery within FIFA have persisted for years. They have been documented in a U.S. Department of Justice indictment and in FIFA’s own Garcia Report.

FIFA is sensitive to these complaints, and some reforms have been implemented to make the organization more transparent and credible, but many groups still argue the corruption is rampant.

Human rights have long been an issue at FIFA events. The 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar prompted concerns related to LGBTQ+ rights, with many players wearing the “One Love” armband in protest. It also raised concerns over the rights of workers and migrants, who were exploited and faced discrimination.

There are also environmental concerns related to the carbon footprint of such a large event. However, the counter-claim of the event fostering global solidarity is an equally strong justification for it.

FIFA is lathered in capitalist trappings, and there is a great deal of profit to be made for a small number of people. The 2026 World Cup is expected to bring in more than US$10 billion for the organization.

It is unclear how local taxpayers and citizens benefit economically from holding the World Cup, especially given that they underwrite many of the costs through their taxes.

Similarly, the marketing, television and dissemination rights present a lucrative landscape, yet that funding does little to fight poverty, hunger and unacceptable living conditions for many.

Do boycotts work?

There is some debate about the effectiveness of boycotting. The boycotts of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, following the invasion of Afghanistan, and of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, led by the Soviet bloc in retaliation, did not produce substantive political change.

Some questioned the enormity of eliminating the potential for intercultural and diplomatic interaction.

By contrast, the sporting boycott of apartheid-era South Africa from 1964 to 1992 did help contribute to significant change in the country.

The ongoing Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel — although not supported by the U.S. and many other countries — has had varying success, but the very fact that it exists and is supported by many is politically significant.

The costs of boycotting now

Altering or boycotting the tournament at this stage would inevitably punish national teams and athletes for political considerations beyond their reach. The FIFA event could generate goodwill, promote global understanding and bring people together, especially in relation to nations from the Global South that are often portrayed negatively.

Some argue a boycott would affect players and fans more than FIFA itself. The economic repercussions of a boycott would also be substantial. Yet the very notion of a boycott is that it does, and should, affect and influence attitudes, behaviours and actions.

Others have suggested alternative avenues for change, including through organized protests and social movement mobilization.

Other alternative proposals for enacting change include targeted boycotts against certain sponsors, institutions and sectors. Some activists may wish to target a policy, such as the assault on migrants in the U.S. or corruption within FIFA.

A force for the global public good?

Boycotts are complicated and have been more commonly related to the Olympic Games than the World Cup. However, citizens and activists alike seek opportunities to develop a more just and equitable world.

In 2021, there were also great concerns regarding human rights violations. Interestingly, while a Statista survey of 4,201 respondents across 120 countries found that most respondents believed their country should boycott the 2022 World cup in Qatar, very few soccer fans were willing to boycott it themselves.

But FIFA isn’t a political party; it’s a business and sports organization. Although considered favourable, it does not need the population to approve its decisions, and sponsors are at risk of being targeted and tarnished if public sentiment turns sharply against the event.

Will the FIFA World Cup provide the opportunity for the U.S. to address problems of racism, gender discrimination, the mantra to annex other countries, ICE overreach and denigration against migrants? Or will such issues be simply swept under the carpet?

The tournament could offer a platform to engage with the world through diplomacy grounded in sovereignty, human rights and mutual benefit. A tri-national hosting arrangement with Canada and Mexico may yet foster cross-border co-operation, even amid strained relations.

The current U.S. political climate does not provide an encouraging model to move the FIFA World Cup toward peace and solidarity currently, but the world is in desperate need for it to do so.

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. Can the 2026 FIFA World Cup still be a force for global unity? – https://theconversation.com/can-the-2026-fifa-world-cup-still-be-a-force-for-global-unity-276502

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Gordon Osinski, Professor in Earth and Planetary Science, Western University

As we wait for the historic Artemis II mission — with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen on board — NASA has announced major changes to the Artemis program.

The next mission, Artemis III, will now no longer land humans on the surface of the moon, but will instead feature a series of technology tests in Low Earth orbit. Artemis IV will then be the first human landing on the moon, sometime in 2028.

I am a professor, an explorer and a planetary geologist. I am a member of the Artemis III Science Team and have been supporting NASA in developing geology training for Artemis astronauts.

My research involves investigating Apollo samples and lunar meteorites to better understand the geology of the moon.

Why the changes?

While it’s not impacted by last week’s NASA announcement, recent delays to the Artemis II mission are a symptom of the challenges that have faced the entire Artemis program for years.

Following an initial setback due to a liquid hydrogen leak encountered during a wet dress rehearsal on Feb. 3, further issues for Artemis II arose during the second wet dress rehearsal from Feb. 19 to 20. As a result, the earliest launch date is now April 1.

This would make it over three years since the first Artemis mission. Such long gaps between missions limit the ability to refine systems quickly and mean that the same issues (for example, fuel leaks) keep recurring. With the loss of more than 4,000 employees — approximately 20 per cent of its workforce — in 2025, NASA is also dealing with significant workforce challenges, causing further strain to the Artemis program.

These challenges appear to have been recognized by NASA’s new administrator, Jared Isaacman, who wrote in a recent social media post that “the days of NASA launching Moon rockets every 3 years are over.”

A big part of the plan involves standardizing the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket “upper stage” — this is the part of the rocket that propels the spacecraft from Low Earth orbit toward the moon.

A reinvigorated Artemis program

There have been lots of news stories circulating since NASA’s announcement about the shake-up of the Artemis program, many of them referring to the “cancellation” of the Artemis III mission. This is not a fair or accurate representation of the new plans. Many people, including myself, think the new plans are not only more realistic, but also exciting in their own right.

It’s true that Artemis III will now not be the first human landing on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. Instead, the mission will launch the Orion crew capsule with astronauts on board into Low Earth orbit, where they will conduct in-space testing of critical technologies, including life support, propulsion and communications systems.

While in orbit, it’s also hoped that Orion will rendezvous and dock with one, or both, of the commercially developed lunar landers built by the companies SpaceX and Blue Origin. This makes sense as the original Artemis plan went from Artemis II straight to the surface without testing out these critical aspects of the mission.

The crew may also test the new spacesuits designed by Axiom Space, which is important because these suits haven’t yet been worn for an actual space mission.

This new plan, therefore, actually reduces the risks and increases the likelihood of a successful human mission to the surface of the moon in 2028 — Artemis IV instead of Artemis III.

The most exciting, and surprising, part of the recent announcement was that NASA will try for not just one, but two moon landings in 2028, and then a mission every year thereafter. Suddenly, this is becoming much more like the Apollo program, which launched 11 crewed missions in four years.

What about the Lunar Gateway?

There was a notable absence in last week’s announcement — a mention of the Lunar Gateway. This is the small space station that will orbit the moon as part of the Artemis program.

In the original plans, the second lunar landing, Artemis IV, was meant to go to the surface of the moon via the Lunar Gateway.

Lunar Gateway is very important to Canada because it will be home to Canadarm3. As the name might suggest, Canadarm3 is Canada’s next-generation robotic arm and is a $2-billion contribution to the Artemis program.

It builds on Canada’s robotics heritage from Canadarm and Canadarm2, but is far more advanced, featuring artificial intelligence — which is necessary due to the distance it will operate from Earth. As NASA works out the plans for the second and subsequent lunar surface missions, I hope for the sake of the Canadian space program that the Lunar Gateway with its Canadarm3 will still be in the mix.

Gordon Osinski founded the company Interplanetary Exploration Odyssey Inc. He receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Space Agency.

– ref. NASA announces a big shake-up of the Artemis Moon program – https://theconversation.com/nasa-announces-a-big-shake-up-of-the-artemis-moon-program-275025

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Rodrigo Narro Pérez, Assistant Professor, School of Earth, Environment and Society, Faculty of Science, McMaster University

Weeks later, a single word from the Super Bowl half-time show continues to reverberate across social media: “Canadá.”

As Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny named countries across the Americas at the end of the show, he included Canada as an unexpected reference. This timely invocation made visible what is so often overlooked.

More than one million Latin American people live in Canada, according to Statistics Canada, and for those communities, “Canadá” does not register as novelty. It names a known reality in a country where Spanish is now the most spoken non-official language.

Against this backdrop, Bad Bunny’s halftime performance has lingered as a deliberate cultural and historical intervention that centred Puerto Rico with intention while also gesturing toward a wider hemispheric story of the Americas and their entangled histories. What unfolded was not merely entertainment but an anticolonial re-mapping of the Americas.

From the transformation of the football field into sugarcane fields to Bad Bunny’s unapologetic insistence of performing only in Spanish, the performance centred Black, Latin American and Caribbean cultures in a space often framed as the apex of popular culture in the United States.

But this was not just Spanish in the abstract. It was the distinct Puerto Rican Creolized Spanish that is legible across much of the Latin American Caribbean and its diasporas.

And, given the criticism the performance has drawn both before and after the event, it’s worth underscoring that this took place within a space long shaped by uneven representation.

Latin America lives in Canada

As Latin American scholars working and living within diasporas in Canada, that moment reflected questions our students bring and the histories they carry with them.

At McMaster University, our work in Latin American and Latinx studies begins from the premise that Canada is part of the Americas. Through interdisciplinary teaching and research, we bring together students from across the university — some with personal ties to Latin America and the Caribbean, others encountering these histories for the first time — to think hemispherically, with particular attention to Blackness, Indigeneity, migration and the ongoing, persistent and evolving impacts of colonial rule.

And despite the rapid growth of Latin American and Latinx communities in cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Hamilton, scholarship examining their experiences remains limited, with tangible consequences. Latinx students in Toronto, for example, face some of the lowest high-school graduation rates among major demographic groups.

Our research underscores that these lives are not peripheral to the hemisphere, but central to it.

Celebration as a practice against erasure

When Bad Bunny said “Canadá,” he reminded Canadians that they exist within a story they so often imagine unfolding somewhere else.

For many Latin American, Latinx and Caribbean communities in Canada, that moment affirmed a lived experience. For others, it offered an invitation: to recognize that joy can function as resistance, that culture carries memory and that music can be a way of sharing history.

Scholars of popular culture have long noted that Bad Bunny’s work consistently centres Puerto Rico, not only as a place but as a political reality. This melding of lineage and geopolitics is significant, situating the half-time show as a continuation of a tradition in which culture becomes a vehicle for collective hope.

Music historian and multimedia artist Katelina Eccleston, also known as La Gata, argues that music and dance in Black Latin American and Afro-diasporic traditions are never merely esthetic. On an episode of Reggaetón con la Gata, she framed movement as a site of reclamation of the body, space and autonomy.

When dance is stripped of its histories and recast as apolitical entertainment, the social and material conditions that produced those rhythms are rendered invisible.

Consumption without reckoning

At the same time Canadians enthusiastically consume Latin American culture. Music fills playlists, restaurants flourish and millions travel annually to destinations like Mexico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

What is often missing, however, is a deeper engagement with the histories of colonialism, displacement, racialization and resistance that shaped these cultures and the lives of the people who carry them.

Bad Bunny’s naming of “Canadá” highlights that Canada is not adjacent to the Americas — it is part of it. It also serves as a reminder that Latin American and Latinx people are not newcomers to be acknowledged only through immigration statistics. They are already active participants in shaping the cultural, linguistic and political lives of this country.

As educators, we see this dissonance daily. Students are eager to learn about the region in ways that move beyond stereotypes and surface-level, performative multiculturalism. They want to see how histories of empire and extraction connect to contemporary migration, climate vulnerability and racial inequities, and they want language, culture and politics to be taught together, not siloed.

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Read more:
How Bad Bunny brought activism to the Super Bowl stage

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In a moment when Canada’s relationship with the U.S. is uncertain, it’s important to remember that Latin America is not only a place Canadians visit for some sunshine. It’s a region with which Canada shares economic ties, political responsibilities and a future.

The Super Bowl half-time show may seem to have been an unlikely site for this reckoning. But culture often arrives where policy lags behind.

In naming “Canadá,” Bad Bunny reminded Canadians that Latin American and Latinx lives are already here, already shaping the country, already demanding to be seen as people with history, presence and possibility.

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. What Bad Bunny meant when he said ‘Canadá’ — and why we’re still talking about it – https://theconversation.com/what-bad-bunny-meant-when-he-said-canada-and-why-were-still-talking-about-it-277148

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Michal Perlman, Professor of Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of Toronto

Children’s experiences during early years form the foundation for their development.

For many children in Canada and across the globe, these early experiences include substantial exposure to early learning and child care. And government investments in early learning and care in Canada and elsewhere has increased dramatically.

Research has shown that exposure to high-quality early learning and care is associated with positive outcomes for children — and these associations are strongest for children from families with fewer resources, including lower incomes.

But what exactly is high-quality early learning and child care? As I have examined in my research with a number of colleagues, quality is multi-dimensional, encompassing both structural features (like educator/child ratios and the group size) and also what children experience.

The latter includes the quality of interactions between children and their educators. Robust evidence demonstrates that the quality of educator-child interactions is a stronger predictor of developmental and learning outcomes compared to other aspects of quality.

Yet despite decades of investment and reform, national and international evidence consistently indicates that, in many cases, the quality of these interactions in early learning and care settings is average at best.

Monitoring, improving child-care quality

An important mechanism for improving quality, increasing accountability and providing evidence for planning in early learning and child care: quality ratings and improvement systems (QRISs or quality ratings for short).

These ratings and improvement systems are structured around ongoing — commonly annual — measurements of program quality, including systematic assessments of educator-child interactions.

QRISs generally involve evaluations by external assessors that are conducted in early childhood education and child-care settings. Results from these assessments:

• Inform the development of targeted quality improvement plans for the learning and care setting and for individual educators.

• Can be publicly available to help parents decide where to send their children (although posting scores is not required).

• Can inform how quality improvement and system expansion dollars are allocated.

Important features

For quality ratings and improvement systems to work, they need to have a few important features. For starters, they need to capture key aspects of quality. This means measuring what matters most, not merely what is most readily captured.

Most states in the United States operate quality ratings and improvement systems that involve visiting assessors who observe environments, including hard-to-capture qualities of educator/child interactions.

In Canada, the City of Toronto has operated such a system for years, as have several other Ontario municipalities. Prince Edward Island is in the process of implementing one.

In the face of substantial government spending on early learning and child care and the potential impact on children served by these programs, the cost of implementing quality ratings and improvement systems and their related assessments is small.

Given the high-stakes nature of assessments, they must be:

• Valid: This means they’ve been tested to ensure they capture what they are intended to.

• Reliable: Different assessors can consistently apply the standards they set across contexts and time periods.

Using valid and reliable measures is needed for the assessments to be fair. But developing such measures requires specific methodological and statistical expertise. Fortunately, several existing and efficient measures are available to capture quality.

City of Toronto’s quality assessment

The City of Toronto developed the assessment for quality improvement (AQI) with help from my team and me at the University of Toronto.

The city’s quality ratings and improvement system is built around the AQI which includes a suite of measures designed to assess global classroom quality (including educator-child interaction) in infant, toddler and pre-school centre classrooms, as well as in-home child-care and outdoor environments.

Results track inequity in access to early learning and child-care programs as well as the quality of these programs, enabling evidence-informed quality improvement. For example, early learning and care practitioners might receive coaching or assistance working on goals that emerge from the assessment.

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Read more:
Home child care in Canada should be affordable, high-quality — and licensed

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The City of Toronto also uses assessment for quality improvement scores to determine what organizations or services are eligible to provide care to children whose families receive a child-care subsidy. The scores are posted online so that parents and other stakeholders can use this information when choosing care for their children.

P.E.I. is conducting annual assessment of all early learning and child-care classrooms in the province, relying upon the same assessment for quality improvement tool.

Assessments of individual educators

Current quality ratings and improvement systems focus on observing aspects of caregiver-child interactions in classrooms, but don’t systematically consider individual educators’ work with children.

Research increasingly shows that educators in the same classroom interact with children differently. This raises concerns about inclusion, equity and whether all children in early learning and care settings experience high-quality interactions — and how these are guided and informed by relevant policy and professional education.

Findings about differences in how individual educators interact with children suggest policymakers should additionally use more specialized quality improvement measures that consider individual educators’ responsiveness. Use of such individualized assessment, when it comes with coaching and support, has been shown to improve the quality of educator interactions with children.

Ongoing quality assessments matter for knowing our public investments in early learning and child care are synonymous with stable high-quality experiences for children. They provide actionable, evidence-based information that can guide how resources are allocated.

Systems like these have been in place for decades in the U.S. There is growing momentum toward quality-assessment approaches in Canada that are both methodologically sound and capable of informing meaningful action. When these approaches are combined with tailored coaching and supports for improvement, they merit increasing attention and support.

Michal Perlman receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Lawson Foundation, McCain Foundation and others.

– ref. Good-quality child care? What parents should consider, and how it can be assessed – https://theconversation.com/good-quality-child-care-what-parents-should-consider-and-how-it-can-be-assessed-274370

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

Israel and the United States have launched combat operations against Iran via Operation Epic Fury. The air campaign appears aimed at three targets: Iran’s military bases and command structure, its air defences and strategic missile sites and its leadership.

Early strikes were successful in killing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei and several key members of the leadership.

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Read more:
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ruled Iran with defiance and brutality for 36 years. For many Iranians, he will not be revered

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The strikes themselves are likely to be successful from a strictly military standpoint. Israeli and American forces are quickly establishing air superiority over Iran and disabling Iran’s anti-air capabilities.

These attacks occur at a moment when Iran is weakened both domestically and internationally.

The Iranian regime is still recovering from the December and January protests that were the greatest challenge to the Iranian government since the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Internationally, key members of Iran’s “ring of fire,” like the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, are in a vulnerable position. Furthermore, the domestic unrest have emboldened people around the world to challenge the Iranian regime’s legitimacy.

Nevertheless, the U.S. and Israel are unlikely to be successful in their stated goal of regime change. Historically, air power alone is insufficient. Furthermore, even if they succeed in regime change, they may create an even more volatile geopolitical situation.

Escalating tensions

The tensions between the U.S.-Israel and Iran are nothing new. Their foundations go back to the birth of the Islamic Republic.

There’s been a significant escalation of tensions, however, over the past few years. The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack against Israeli citizens and Iran’s role in supporting Hamas and other paramilitary groups opposed to the Israeli state resulted in Israel launching extensive strikes against Iranian assets in the region.

These strikes culminated in last year’s Twelve Day War between Israel and Iran, with the U.S. playing an auxilliary role. American and Israeli strikes inflicted significant damage on Iranian infrastructure. But they didn’t achieve the American goal of eliminating Iran’s nuclear program, despite President Donald Trump’s claims to the contrary.

Iranian protests

Against this backdrop of rising tensions between Israel/the United States and Iran, the economic situation in Iran deteriorated, resulting in shopkeepers and merchants in Tehran going on strike. These protests served as a spark for what became the largest public demonstrations against the Iranian regime that it had encountered since the birth of the Islamic Republic.

This latest uprising by the Iranian people presented an opportunity for the U.S. and Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has never backed down from his goal of regime change in Iran. Trump actively encouraged the protesters to fight for regime change.

The protesters, however, needed material support that only the U.S. could provide. But with American military assets in the Caribbean challenging Venezuela, there were insufficient forces available.

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Read more:
‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ hasn’t faded in Iran — it’s being actively eliminated

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The result was that the U.S. was not able to intervene, and the Iranian regime succeeded in quashing the protests. Total deaths from the government’s crackdown are estimated to be in the thousands.

The U.S., having missed its ideal opportunity for regime change due to its fixation on Venezuela earlier in the year, nevertheless went through with pursuing its goal on Feb. 28.

An uncertain end

The problem now faced by Israel and the U.S. s the stated goal of regime change and the long-term stability of Iran. Not only is regime change uncertain due to the limitations of a strictly air campaign, but it could also create a scenario where more radicalized forces come to power.

This comes from the fact that, while the Iranian regime is often equated with prominent figures like the Ayatollah, it operates as more than a system centred on a single individual.

Unlike other authoritarian countries where key individuals or families have power, Iran is a complex state with a complex governance structure. At its heart is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Far from merely a military unit or secret police, the IRGC is a vast institution integrated within the security, economy and governance of Iran.

This is where the difference between “regime change” and “regime building” comes to light. Removing key leaders may destabilize Iran and change who wields power, but that usually means power is then consolidated by people already in place. That’s not the citizens Iran, who Trump urged to rise up, but the vast infrastructure of the IRGC.

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Read more:
Trump and Netanyahu want regime change, but Iran’s regime was built for survival. A long war is now likely

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Conflict could spread

This outcome is more likely given the instability of Iran over the past few weeks. If the regime were stable, Iranian political and military leaders wouldn’t view the current attacks as posing a threat to their control. But under the current volatile domestic circumstances, these leaders are likely to respond more forcefully and broadly because they believe their own future — and lives — are at stake.

The IRGC isn’t likely to be a more conciliatory or ideologically permissive interlocutor. In fact, the opposite is probably true.

Faced with the threat of further American and Israeli attacks and nascent discontent at home, the IRGC may move quickly to further lock down its own power and respond aggressively. This power struggle could not only result in significant Iranian deaths, but cause the war to spread throughout Middle East.

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. U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran may succeed on a military basis, but at what cost? – https://theconversation.com/u-s-israeli-strikes-against-iran-may-succeed-on-a-military-basis-but-at-what-cost-277182

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Lauren Guillette, Associate Professor & Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Ecology, Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, University of Alberta

We like to think that animals, including humans, follow the crowd. Think of a flock of pigeons taking off from the city square together or the recent frenzy over labubus. If most of the group does something, surely the individual will copy.

This process has given rise to human culture, from our diets and the tools we use to eat to language and art.

But what if it’s more complicated? What if the deciding factor isn’t just what the majority is doing, but how strongly you already feel about it?

That’s the question our team, the Animal Cognition Research Group in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alberta, set out to test in zebra finches. Zebra finches are small, highly social songbirds that breed in colonies in the Australian outback. In our laboratory, they build dome-shaped nests year-round using coloured string.

Sometimes obsessive colours preferences

Individual males, the nest builders in the species, show stable colour preferences. Some strongly prefer blue. Others lean yellow. Some are almost obsessive about it.

However, if a male who prefers one colour enters a population where most nests are built from another colour, will he conform? And more specifically, does the strength of his original preference matter?

To answer that, we ran a three-phase experiment. First, we measured each male’s colour preference by presenting him with blue and yellow strings and recording how long he interacted with each. This allowed us to calculate which colour he preferred and how strongly. A bird spending 95 per cent of his time with a blue string is very different from one splitting his time 60/40.

Next, we placed that male and his female partner into a population where four other pairs were incubating eggs in completed nests. These nests varied systematically. In some groups, all four nests matched the male’s preferred colour. In others, most, or all, contradicted it. The observer male could watch these nests and their occupants for several days. Finally, we returned him to his own cage, provided both colours of string and allowed him to build.

Here’s what we found

Males with weak initial preferences were more likely to conform. If most nests they observed were built from their non-preferred colour, they were more likely to switch and use that colour themselves. Males with strong initial preferences largely ignored the majority. They saw the same information. They had the same opportunity to copy, but they didn’t.

Interestingly, many birds did notice the social information. When the majority of the population used a focal male’s non-preferred colour, these males were more likely to first touch that colour when they began building. They paid attention. But noticing is not the same as changing.

In building his nest, what mattered most was the interaction between the social environment and the strength of the male’s original bias. This distinction, between acquiring social information and actually using it, is critical. Animals may observe what others are doing without necessarily acting on it. That gap may help explain why evidence for conformity in animals has been mixed.

In human psychology, we see something similar. People with strong pre-existing beliefs are less susceptible to social influence. Present the same evidence to two individuals with different prior convictions and you may get very different outcomes. The stronger the initial attitude, the more resistant it tends to be.

We found the same pattern in birds. The stronger the bias, the less likely the individual was to conform. Zebra finches are not forming political opinions about string colour. But the underlying mechanism is strikingly similar: strong preferences can act as filters, buffering individuals against social influence. That has important implications for how culture forms and persists.

Individual choices build culture

Conformity is one of the processes that stabilizes cultural traditions. If newcomers reliably adopt the majority behaviour, group patterns become entrenched. But if some individuals resist, because their personal biases are strong, traditions may spread more slowly or fail to take hold.

This suggests that individual variation is not just background noise. It may actively structure how information moves through a population.

Most animal conformity studies have focused on foraging. We examined nest construction, an ecologically important, fitness-relevant behaviour. Nest design influences reproductive success, so the balance between personal preference and social information likely carries real consequences.

Even in this high-stakes context, birds did not blindly follow the crowd. Some conformed. Some didn’t. And the difference depended, in part, on how strongly they felt to begin with.

One of the most powerful aspects of this project was seeing how a seemingly simple question — whether the birds would copy others — unfolded into something much more nuanced. We had to distinguish between seeing, learning and doing. And we had to account for bias strength, not just bias direction.

Culture emerges at the group level, but it is built from individual decisions. Each bird chooses which string to pick up and whether to add it to the nest. Sometimes, even when the entire room is blue, a yellow-loving bird sticks with yellow.

That tension, between the pull of the group and the pull of the self, turns out to be central to understanding how traditions form, persist and sometimes fail. And it may help us think about conformity in our own species, too.

Lauren Guillette receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC RGPIN-2019-04733) and the Canada Research Chairs Program (CRCTIER2 00418).

Julia Self received funding from NSERC CSG-M 2023-2024.

Julia Lauren Self has received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Strong opinions matter: Why some birds refuse to follow the flock – https://theconversation.com/strong-opinions-matter-why-some-birds-refuse-to-follow-the-flock-275905