Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Saira Bano, Assistant Professor in Political Science, Thompson Rivers University

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to India marks the most consequential step in years to rebuild Canada–India relations after the diplomatic rupture in 2023 over allegations linking Indian agents to the killing of a Canadian Sikh activist.

The visit signals a deliberate shift from crisis management to economic statecraft.

In Mumbai, Carney announced that Canada aims to conclude a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with India by the end of this year, with the goal of doubling two-way trade by 2030. The message was pragmatic: the two countries may not always agree, but engagement must continue.

From rupture to reset

Canada-India relations deteriorated sharply in September 2023, leading to diplomatic expulsions, reduced staffing and suspended trade negotiations. For much of the past two years, the relationship was defined by security tensions and mutual distrust.

The first signs of stabilization came at the 2025 G7 Summit in Kananaskis, Alta., when Carney’s invitation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi signalled a diplomatic breakthrough. High commissioners were reinstated and ministerial channels reopened. Carney’s India visit suggests the reset is moving from symbolism to implementation.

The logic is clear. Canada’s heavy trade dependence on the United States has become riskier amid tariff threats and political volatility. Diversification is no longer aspirational; it’s strategic.

India, as one of the world’s fastest growing major economies and an increasingly central figure in global supply chains, offers scale and long-term opportunity.

Energy as the anchor

Energy emerged as the central pillar of Carney’s two-day visit. Canada and India have relaunched the Ministerial Energy Dialogue and are advancing discussions on uranium supply, conventional energy trade and clean energy co-operation.

India’s energy demand continues to rise as economic growth accelerates. It remains heavily import-dependent on crude oil and natural gas while also seeking to expand low-carbon baseload power. Canada, meanwhile, is looking to reduce its overwhelming reliance on the U.S. market.

With expanded export capacity through the Trans Mountain pipeline and growing LNG infrastructure, Canada is better positioned to reach Indo-Pacific markets than at any point in recent decades.

While Canada will not displace other suppliers, it can become part of India’s diversification portfolio. Long-term uranium agreements, in particular, would embed trust through decades of commercial interdependence. Nuclear co-operation offers durability that few other sectors can match.

Critical minerals, structural alignment

Beyond fuels, critical minerals represent a deeper strategic opportunity. Canada’s Critical Minerals Strategy aligns closely with India’s National Critical Minerals Mission in terms of lithium, nickel, cobalt, rare earth elements and downstream supply chains.

For Canada, the goal is not simply exporting raw resources, but building integrated value chains through processing partnerships, recycling and technology collaboration. For India, secure access to minerals is essential for electric vehicles, semiconductors, defence industrial supply chains and clean energy technologies, particularly as it seeks to reduce dependence on China-dominated processing networks.

Progress in critical minerals would move the relationship beyond symbolic diplomacy toward structural alignment.

Although CEPA negotiations have stalled in the past, both countries now face stronger incentives to revive them amid global trade turbulence and diversification pressures.

Progress on energy and minerals can help build domestic support for stability while wider trade talks continue.

Innovation, security

Carney’s visit also emphasized people-to-people and innovation ties. Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand launched a new Canada–India Talent and Innovation Strategy, including 13 new university partnerships spanning artificial intelligence, hydrogen research, digital agriculture and health sciences.

Education has long anchored Canada–India relations. Embedding research collaboration and talent mobility strengthens long term institutional linkages that outlast political cycles. Artificial intelligence co-operation, in particular, aligns Canada’s strengths in responsible AI governance with India’s scale in digital infrastructure and AI deployment.

Despite economic progress, however, security concerns between India and Canada remain unresolved. The diplomatic fallout of 2023 continues to affect trust.

During the visit, Anand faced repeated questions about foreign interference and transnational repression. She emphasized that public safety concerns must be addressed through direct engagement rather than disengagement.

Recent reports of ongoing threats and warnings to Sikh activists in Canada show that underlying tensions persist, even as both governments seek to prevent them from defining the entire relationship.

Ottawa’s tone appears more measured, but the conflicting narratives between the two countries remains evident.

The road ahead

Carney’s challenge is now therefore twofold: advance economic co-operation while preventing unresolved security disputes from derailing the broader reset of the Canada-India relationship.

Improved ties with India also align with Carney’s broader foreign policy vision, articulated in Davos, that middle powers must co-operate more closely in response to fractures in the global order.

India’s inclusion in a broader Indo-Pacific tour alongside Australia and Japan underscores that this engagement is part of a wider strategic recalibration.

Stabilizing relations with India is therefore not simply a bilateral exercise. It’s about positioning Canada more credibly in the Indo-Pacific region and strengthening co-ordination among democratic middle powers navigating geopolitical uncertainty.

The significance of Carney’s visit lies less in rhetoric and more in trajectory. By setting a target for a trade agreement, advancing energy and uranium co-operation, deepening critical minerals alignment and expanding academic partnerships, Ottawa is attempting to anchor the relationship in long-term interdependence.

The reset is not complete. Security tensions still cast a shadow. But the visit suggests that both governments are willing to compartmentalize disputes and focus on areas of shared economic and strategic interest.

Saira Bano 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. Mark Carney’s visit to India hits the reset button on the Canada–India relationship – https://theconversation.com/mark-carneys-visit-to-india-hits-the-reset-button-on-the-canada-india-relationship-277015

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Victoria MacBeath, PhD Candidate, Art History, Concordia University

The Ontario government recently announced massive cuts to Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) funding, decreasing the maximum funding from 85 per cent to 25 per cent.

Student response to this has been largely negative. Speaking to the media, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said that he received “thousands of calls” from students expressing concerns. Ford’s response: telling them to invest in education that leads to in-demand jobs.

At a February news conference responding to OSAP cuts, Ford relayed that he told frustrated students: “You’re picking basket-weaving courses, and there’s not too many baskets being sold out there.” He said, instead, students should invest in their future through their program decisions — insinuating that craft curriculums hold no value in the job market. Ford mentioned trades, STEM and health-care fields as ones that would provide post-graduation employment.

As a researcher that engages with scholars specialized in the history of craft practices in Canada, alongside teaching art history courses that highlight the social, political and economic importance of fibre arts, Ford’s response is troubling and unsurprising.

Basket-weavers push back

Ford’s rhetoric demonstrates a misunderstanding of Canada’s cultural sector, basket weaving and the purpose of higher education.

In response to Ford’s comments, basket-weavers and craft organizations across the country noted the lucrative nature of their practice alongside the widely applicable skills learned through craft education.

Basket-maker Spencer Lunham Jr., of the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation, for example, told CBC that he sells a couple hundred baskets per year for around $150 to $3,000 each.

The prosperity of Canada’s cultural sector is backed by data from the Canadian chamber of Commerce, whose business data lab reported in October 2025 that the arts and culture sector’s GDP has grown nearly eight per cent, outpacing an overall economic growth of four per cent. In addition, the sector supports “13 jobs for every million in output, which is more than oil and gas, manufacturing or agriculture.”

Ontario is one of the provinces to see the highest economic impact from the sector, according to the report.

Winner of Sobey Art Award

Ford’s emphasis on the uselessness of craft practices is also challenged by recent winners of the Sobey Art Award, one of the most prestigious art awards in the country.

Many of the recent winners incorporate craft or craft-like practices into their work. This includes the 2017 winner of the award, Ursula Johnson,
an artist from the Eskasoni First Nation, in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, who has an innovative basket-making practice. It seems that, at the very least, gallerists are buying baskets.

Johnson’s practice in particular highlights that — despite craft’s common framing as traditional, overly indulgent and frozen in time — basket-weaving is an innovative, adaptive and in-demand field.

As curator Heather Anderson argues in her 2021 writing on Johnson’s work: the artist utilizes weaving practices to highlight Canada’s ongoing role in colonization, and to question the contemporary museum’s implication in it.

Craft and technological innovation

Craft practices have always been at the centre of technological innovation.

Some scholars contend that the inventor of the computer, Charles Babbage, was likely inspired by the Jacquard loom: a weaving machine whose invention had a profound impact on the industrial revolution in Europe.

Other writers, like journalist Brian Merchant, have recently argued that those opposed to artificial intelligence can take inspiration from the first rebellions against big tech: the 19th century Luddites who opposed the mass industrialization of weaving practices.

From AI to the clothes we wear, weaving has shaped the contemporary global economy.

While weaving can be lucrative, members of the Toronto Guild of Spinners and Weavers noted that basket-weaving courses do not emphasize their monetary value, but rather their educational value.

Purpose of learning

This is where Ford’s real misunderstanding of education is revealed: the purpose of learning is not simply to remember and regurgitate facts, it is to problem solve, to expand our horizons and to think critically. These skills can be developed in basket-weaving courses just as well as math courses.

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Read more:
Ada Lovelace’s skills with language, music and needlepoint contributed to her pioneering work in computing

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Johnson, for example, says that her grandmother taught her that the maker does not manipulate the wood they use to weave, but instead the wood guides the maker. Basket weaving teaches us to listen, to collaborate and build from a strong foundation and work our way up.

College admissions expert and counsellor Scott White, writing for Forbes Magazine, wrote in 2025 that “we need a system that prioritizes critical thinking, emotional intelligence and practical skills over rote memorization.”

He and many others who are invested in supporting young people and helping our systems change to support our society through turbulent times note that current education systems still reflects outdated ideas about the future of workers: of those in factories, rather than creative thinkers.

Pipeline to a job?

The Ford government’s approach to higher education seems to be the same — funding a system that put us on a pipeline to a job and where programs that demand critical and creative thinking are undervalued, and also, underfunded: Recent reports note that funding for Ontario’s post-secondary sector is low compared to support in other provinces.

Author Ursula K. Le Guin argued in 1986 that rather than a weapon for killing, the first human tool was likely a container: a basket or a woven net. She writes that the basket — and craft practices — are not supplemental to human survival: rather, they enable it.

Craft practices allow us to carry our culture, our belongings and our sustenance. If we focus only on the money-making schemes in society, then we lose a part of ourselves.

This is the real power of craft education: when we engage hands-on craft, we learn about our past and build problem-solving skills.

Victoria MacBeath receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for craft history research.

– ref. Actually, Doug Ford, basket-weaving is innovative and in-demand – https://theconversation.com/actually-doug-ford-basket-weaving-is-innovative-and-in-demand-276496

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

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Stephen L Archer, Director of Translational Institute of Medicine (TIME), Queen’s University, Ontario

Last October, my daughter Elizabeth and I stood at Londorossi gate (elevation 2,250 metres), the western entrance to Mount Kilimanjaro National Park in Tanzania, ready to begin the nine-day Lemosho route up Mount Kilimanjaro. Climbing “Kili” would fulfil a dream I’ve had since working as a medical student in Kenya. Elizabeth’s dream was to ensure her dad came back in one piece.

Unlike Mount Everest, Kilimanjaro is a hike, not a technical climb requiring ropes or crampons. However, as a cardiologist and researcher in oxygen sensing, I knew that our key challenge would be the lack of oxygen — a condition called hypoxia.

Altitude and oxygen

Hypoxia occurs at altitude. At sea level, gravity creates barometric pressure, which compresses nitrogen and oxygen, accounting for Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere. However, gravity diminishes with distance from the planet’s centre. At altitude, the low barometric pressure causes gases to expand, meaning there are fewer molecules of oxygen per volume of air.

Mount Kilimanjaro, one of the world’s seven summits, is Africa’s highest point at 5,895 metres and the world’s tallest free-standing mountain. At its summit, barometric pressure falls 50 per cent compared to sea level (around 50 kiloPascals compared to 101 kiloPascals), so although oxygen still makes up 21 per cent of air, there are only half as many oxygen molecules in each breath.

Venture above 2,400 metres and you may develop acute mountain sickness (AMS) as a result of hypoxia. At altitudes of around 4,000 to 6,000 metres, the chances of developing AMS are 50/50.

Fortunately the risk of the more life-threatening hypoxia-related conditions — like high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) or high-altitude cerebral edema (HACE) — is lower.

Acute mountain sickness is defined by a constellation of symptoms, including headache, nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite and dizziness.

HAPE and HACE are different than acute mountain sickness. HAPE is driven by excessive hypoxic constriction of the lung’s arteries (called pulmonary arteries). The pressure in these arteries rises, flooding the lung’s airways with bloody fluid, causing severe shortness of breath, bloody sputum and low blood oxygen.

Even more severe is HACE (hypoxic brain swelling), which shows up as severe headache, disorientation and imbalance. While one may endure acute mountain sickness with minor medical assistance, both HAPE and HACE require immediate medical intervention and rapid descent. However, distinguishing acute mountain sickness from early HAPE or HACE and choosing to descend is not always easy, particularly as climbers are often motivated to summit. Careful monitoring by impartial, safety-focused guides with twice daily oximetry is important. Oximetry measures oxygen in blood using a probe placed on the finger.

By the time we reached Barafu base camp (4,673 metres), our oxygen saturations had dropped from over 95 per cent at sea level to 87 per cent and 83 per cent. Those with oxygen saturations below 80 per cent at base camp are advised not to proceed to the summit.

Once the decision to descend due to low oxygen saturation is made, the choices are to walk down (if able), to be wheeled down on a stretcher or to take a helicopter, which is expensive and not without its own risks.

Aspiring climbers should be aware of three factors relating to hypoxia that can reduce their risk of altitude sicknesses and make climbing safer:

1. How the body detects hypoxia

Your body has oxygen sensors to detect hypoxia. These sensors are mitochondria, tiny intracellular powerhouses that trigger adaptive responses to boost oxygen uptake and delivery to vital organs.

In the carotid body — a tiny sensor in the carotid artery — and in the lung’s pulmonary arteries, mitochondria produce signalling molecules (called oxygen radicals) that trigger responses. These responses include neurotransmitter release, contraction of lung blood vessels and changes in gene expression.

The carotid body samples blood headed to the brain and, if it is acidic or hypoxic, signals the brain to increase the depth and rate of breathing. This is a helpful response because it increases ventilation, bringing more oxygen into your body.

A similar sensor in the lung’s pulmonary arteries constricts those arteries in response to hypoxic air (hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction, or HPV). HPV is helpful when lung hypoxia involves only a segment of lung, as in pneumonia. But at altitude, where the entire lung is filled with hypoxic air, HPV raises the pressure in the pulmonary arteries, which promotes fluid leakage from blood vessels into the airways, causing HAPE.

2. Acclimatization is key to surviving hypoxia

Slow ascent gives oxygen sensors time to condition climbers to function in the rarified air at altitudes like Kilimanjaro. The first adaptation, carotid body activation, happens quickly: breathing increases within minutes of hypoxic exposure.

Hours later, gene and protein expression changes. This is due to activation of transcription factors that control genes’ on and off switches. One such transcription factor that is activated by hypoxia, named HIF-1, regulates the hormone erythropoietin. More erythropoietin means more production of hemoglobin and red blood cells which increases the blood’s oxygen-carrying capacity.

Third, with a slow climb and sustained hypoxia, HPV gradually lessens, preventing pulmonary hypertension and HAPE. Our guides were very familiar with the necessity of acclimatization, and cheered us on with the refrain “Pole pole,” Swahili for “slowly slowly.”

Going slowly reduces the risk of developing acute mountain sickness. Like the parable of the tortoise and the hare, it more often strikes fit young people, whose bravado and strength allow rapid ascent, rather than slow-moving seniors. In addition to going “pole pole,” one can improve the chances of summiting by choosing a longer route (on Kilimanjaro, ideally a six- or seven-day ascent, like the Lemosho route) and following a “climb high, sleep low” philosophy: Hike to a higher altitude each day and then descend to your campsite.

Dr. Peter Hackett, an experienced mountaineer, documented the importance of acclimatization in a 1976 study.

Of 278 unacclimatized hikers ascending to 4,243 metres en route to Everest base camp, he found that 53 per cent developed acute mountain sickness; fewer experienced HAPE (2.5 per cent) or HACE (1.8 per cent). Acute mountain sickness was commonest among younger climbers and those who began their hike at 2,800 metres (after flying in), rather than those who hiked to the starting point at that altitude. Among those who did not acclimatize, acute mountain sickness incidence was reduced by taking acetazolamide, a drug that enhances breathing and suppresses HPV.

A more recent study further illustrates the dangers of rapid ascent, finding that 2.5 per cent of hikers trekking to 5,500 metres over four to six days developed HAPE, compared to 15.5 per cent of those airlifted directly to 5,500 metres.

3. Medications can help

Certain medicines do prevent and/or treat high altitude illnesses, increasing the chances of a safe climb by enhancing breathing and suppressing HPV (acetazolamide, brand name Diamox), suppressing HPV (sildenafil, brand name Viagra; and calcium channel blockers like nifedipine) and preventing inflammation (ibuprofen, brand name Motrin; and dexamethasone).

Our own Kilimanjaro medicine kit included three prescription medications (acetazolamide, sildenafil and dexamethasone) and one over-the-counter medicine (ibuprofen).

I’d like to stress that this article is not intended as medical advice. See your physician for fitness confirmation and prescriptions (and try any medicine pre-climb to check for allergies or side-effects) prior to climbing. Most of the medications recommended by the Wilderness Medicine Society’s 2024 Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Acute Altitude Illness require a prescription.

Lest you think that using medications is a cheat, trust me: The climb will be challenging despite pharmacological assistance. Elizabeth and I safely summited. Emerging happy but tired through the Mweka gate (1,680 metres), we felt gratitude to our guides, respect for the mountain and pride in realizing our dreams together.

This article was co-authored by Elizabeth Archer MFA, of Chicago, Illinois. She is a Canadian-Ukrainian playwright.

Stephen L Archer receives funding from CIHR

– ref. The hidden enemy on Mount Kilimanjaro: Safely dealing with low oxygen at high altitude – https://theconversation.com/the-hidden-enemy-on-mount-kilimanjaro-safely-dealing-with-low-oxygen-at-high-altitude-271716

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Christy Zhou Koval, Professor, Smith School of Business, Queen’s University, Ontario

Self-control has long been regarded as one of the strongest predictors of success. Most of us can picture that colleague who never misses a deadline, volunteers for extra projects and keeps everything running smoothly.

Research shows individuals who can resist short-term temptations in pursuit of long-term goals tend to fare better across nearly every aspect of life.

As a researcher who has spent years studying workplace dynamics, I set out to examine what happens to these highly disciplined individuals. What I found was surprising: the very trait that makes them valuable — their high levels of self-control — can also come with hidden costs.

Self-control as a social signal

My colleagues and I conducted six studies examining how people treat others based on their perceived self-control. We defined perceived self-control as a person’s beliefs about someone else’s level of self-control, such as resisting temptations, staying focused and persisting in the pursuit of goals.

Across our studies, self-control functioned as a powerful social signal.

In one study, participants read about a student who either resisted the temptation to purchase music online (demonstrating self-control) or gave in to it, then imagined working with this student on a group project. Participants expected substantially higher performance from the student who had demonstrated self-control, even though resisting an impulse to buy music had nothing to do with academic ability.

We replicated this pattern in a workplace context. Participants read about an employee who either stuck to a savings goal or struggled with it. Even though saving money has nothing to do with job performance, participants expected the self-controlled employee to have an accuracy rate roughly 15 per cent higher than the employee who showed less self-control.

In another experiment, we asked people to delegate proofreading work among student volunteers. Participants consistently assigned about 30 per cent more essays to volunteers they believed had high self-control, compared to those with moderate or low self-control, even when all volunteers were described as academically qualified.

The hidden costs of high self-control

A particularly revealing set of findings suggests that observers typically underestimate the cost of self-control.

In one study, we asked participants to complete a demanding typing task requiring a high degree of self-control. Observers who were told that someone had high self-control estimated the task required less effort. But those actually doing the work found it equally draining regardless of their self-control levels. This perceptual gap is problematic because it demonstrates that exerting self-control is physically costly.

Recent research shows people will pay money to avoid having to exercise self-control. In experiments where dieters could pay to remove tempting food from their presence, most did; and they paid more when stressed or when temptation was stronger.

High self-control individuals are doing more cognitively demanding work than their peers. They are exercising self-control more frequently. And because they do it well, observers don’t see the effort required. Research suggests that people with high self-control are perceived as more robot-like, as if their discipline means they don’t struggle like everyone else.

In one of our studies using 360-degree feedback data, we analyzed archival survey data collected from MBA students and their coworkers and supervisors.

Employees who were higher in self-control reported making more personal sacrifices and feeling more burdened by coworkers’ reliance. Their colleagues, however, did not recognize this burden. While they acknowledged the sacrifices these individuals made, they did not perceive the strain they were under.

The spillover into home life

The more capable you seem, the more you’re asked to carry. For high self-control individuals, that reputation can become a fast track to burnout in the office and at home.

In an experiment with romantic couples, participants with high self-control reported feeling more burdened by their partners’ reliance on them. This sense of burden reduced their overall relationship satisfaction.

When people high in self-control are overwhelmed at home because partners assume they can handle everything, that exhaustion can carry over into work. Similarly, when high self-control individuals are overburdened at work, it can diminish their energy and presence in their personal relationships.

This creates a vicious cycle in which highly self-controlled individuals are asked to do more at both work and at home, and the cumulative demands can result in burnout.

Burnout is a widespread issue in the workplace. A Deloitte survey found that 77 per cent of professionals have experienced burnout at their current job.

Breaking the cycle

Our findings revealed a problematic cycle: the more self-control individuals were perceived to have, the more others expected of them and the more responsibility they were assigned.

For people with high self-control, our findings underscore the importance of setting boundaries in the workplace. Saying yes to everything is unsustainable. Because disciplined employees often make demanding tasks appear effortless, colleagues and loved ones may underestimate how much they are asking of them.

For managers, our findings suggest the importance of distributing responsibilities fairly and checking in with employees about workload. Managers should ask explicitly about their employees’ capacity rather than inferring it from past performance.

Self-control remains one of the most valuable traits a person can have. But when we assume it comes effortlessly to those who demonstrate it, we risk burning out the people we depend on most. Acknowledging the hidden burden is necessary if we want capable people to thrive.

Christy Zhou Koval 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. Self-control is a strength, but being too good at discipline can backfire – https://theconversation.com/self-control-is-a-strength-but-being-too-good-at-discipline-can-backfire-275634

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Luiz Leomil, PhD candidate, Political Science, Carleton University

The United States government recently announced it will allow companies to resell Venezuelan oil to Cuba amid a severe fuel shortage on the island. Earlier this year, the U.S. cut off oil shipments to Cuba from its main supplier, Venezuela, after American forces abducted that country’s president.

Cuba’s ambassador to Canada, Rodrigo Malmierca Diaz, recently told Canadian MPs on the House foreign affairs committee that the U.S. was “suffocating an entire people.” He was referring to the decades-long American embargo against Cuba, which has become even more severe in recent weeks.

In his remarks, Diaz also urged Canada to follow through on a promised aid package to Cuba. Canadian officials have committed to sending an additional $8 million, which will be channelled through international aid organizations operating in Cuba.

This represents a modest and indirect commitment, especially in comparison with the initiatives undertaken by other countries. Mexico has sent more than 2,000 tons of direct humanitarian aid while continuing diplomatic talks on resuming oil supplies, and other countries in the Global South are reportedly preparing similar, more tangible responses.

In January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a widely praised address in Davos, Switzerland, that many saw as an apt diagnosis of the failings of the U.S.-led “rules-based international order.” In it, he urged middle powers such as Canada to act with greater honesty and consistency, applying the same standards to allies and rivals so that states can co-exist in an international order that actually functions as advertised.

The Davos speech set high expectations. These are now, however, fading as Carney’s government wavers in sending robust aid to the people of Cuba and in denouncing the most recent unlawful coercive measures imposed by the U.S.

Explaining restraint

Canada has crafted a longstanding image as one of the largest humanitarian contributors in the world. It also has historical and economic ties with Cuba. Canada was one of the few American allies to maintain diplomatic relations with Cuba following the 1959 revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed regime.

Cuba is Canada’s top market in the Caribbean, and Canada is the Cuba’s largest source of tourists as well as its second-largest source of direct investment. Canada is also among the overwhelming majority of United Nations member states that regularly vote in support of resolutions condemning the U.S. blockade.

However, three factors help explain the gap between the Canadian government’s rhetoric and its actions.

First, geopolitical constraints are significant. Like other middle powers, Canada’s freedom to act in open defiance of the U.S. is tightly limited. Canada’s fundamental economic and security interests are reliant on the U.S., and this is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Canada is open to a high risk of American retaliation if it chooses to aid Cuba. Such risk is even more heightened under the Trump government, which has demonstrated a willingness to use coercive measures against Canada.

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Read more:
3 ways Canada can navigate an increasingly erratic and belligerent United States

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Second, domestic politics shape foreign-policy choices. Contrary to simplified assumptions in classical international relations theory, state behaviour is not determined only by systemic incentives but also by domestic constituencies and how important particular issues are to segments of the population.

In Canada today, there is no broad public movement demanding robust government aid to Cuba. By contrast, there are vocal constituencies mobilized in support of Ukraine that keep assistance to that country politically salient and prioritized.

Third, officials in Global Affairs Canada have long favoured taking what they regard as a pragmatic approach toward Cuba. That posture helps explain Canada’s reluctance to provide direct, high-profile assistance during acute shortages or crises.

Canada did not intervene during Cuba’s 2024 blackout crisis, for example. On the other hand, the same approach has also led Canada to be less critical of political issues in Cuba, unlike its firmer stance toward the Venezuelan or Nicaraguan governments.

This approach has generally allowed Canada to preserve a baseline level of diplomatic engagement and safeguard economic and strategic interests. In recent years, this posture has become partly institutionalized within Global Affairs Canada and is regarded as the most workable and sustainable policy line.

Aid by proxy, unfulfilled commitments

In recent years, Canada has preferred to send assistance to Cuba through international aid organizations, but these efforts are unlikely to be sustainable given the scale of the humanitarian needs the country may face.

It remains unclear whether Canada will adopt a more robust strategy, departing from this established approach, to support Cubans. While facing their own constraints, it’s more likely that leadership in countries from the Global South, including Mexico, China and Brazil, will take action.

The outcome is twofold. Not only is the Canadian government failing to live up to a humanitarian image it has promoted on the world stage, but the international community also applauded a Davos speech that was both conflicting and somewhat disingenuous.

At times in his speech, Carney was realistic and incisive, exposing the weaknesses in the United States-led rules-based order. At key moments, however, Carney suggested that Canada still supported those rules and was willing to defend them through a more honest and equitable approach. Here, the tension between diagnosis and prescription was never resolved.

When it comes to the U.S. blockade of Cuba, Canada’s options are widely perceived as limited, and the country is seen as being forced to “go along to get along,” as Carney said in Davos. However, the blockade also presents Canada with an opportunity to showcase how middle powers can chart their own course.

Carney also said middle powers have the “the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.” If Canada continues to equivocate on Cuba, Carney’s speech will come to reflect a familiar pattern in Canadian foreign policy: rhetorical candour about global inequities combined with reluctance to challenge them.

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

– ref. How Canada-Cuba relations must navigate the dangers of the U.S. embargo – https://theconversation.com/how-canada-cuba-relations-must-navigate-the-dangers-of-the-u-s-embargo-276875

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Hugh Gusterson, Professor of Anthropology & Public Policy, University of British Columbia

Following horrifying revelations about Jeffrey Epstein’s systematic sexual assaults and trafficking of underage girls, the United States Department of Justice has been forced to publicly release millions of the late sex offender’s emails and texts.

I am an anthropologist of elites who conducted field work among the secretive community of nuclear weapons scientists. The Epstein files opens a window into the even more closely guarded world of capitalism’s 0.1 per cent.

Anthropologists study people through what renowned American anthropologist Clifford Geertz called “deep hanging out” — mingling informally and taking notes on what we see. We call this “participant observation.”

People like Bill Gates and Elon Musk do not welcome anthropologists bearing notebooks. But the Epstein files, where the global elite are talking to each other in private — or so they thought — open a peephole into their world.

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Read more:
Andrew’s arrest: will anything like this now happen in the US? Why hasn’t it so far?

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And what do we find there?

On a mundane level, we can see how they spend sums of money most of us can only dream about.

For example, we learn that in 2011, billionaire Mortimer Zuckerman, owner of the New York Post and U.S. News and World Report, spent US$219,000 on his collection of horses, $50,000 on skiing and $86,000 to insure his private art collection.

But the Epstein files are most interesting for what they reveal about a web of gifts, favours and financial transactions that knit together what would otherwise be a disparate sprawl of bankers, developers, tech bros, media personalities and high-profile academics.

A web of gifts and favours

A century ago, French anthropologist Marcel Mauss argued in The Gift that, across cultures, gifts are a way to create relationships of solidarity and obligation.

“No gift is given but in the expectation of a return,” he wrote.

This is evident in Epstein’s relationship with Leon Black, at the time the billionaire CEO of Apollo Global Management and chairman of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Epstein claimed his advice on Black’s finances saved the billionaire as much as $2 billion. In exchange, Black steered at least $158 million to Epstein and gave $10 million to one of Epstein’s charities, Gratitude America.

Black then made Epstein a trustee of the Debra and Leon Black Foundation, and Epstein invested in a startup where two of Black’s sons were on the board.

Epstein also helped Black manage his $2.8 billion art collection. He advised on selling individual works at a profit, getting paid by museums for loaning artworks and using art as collateral for bank loans.

Incidentally, one of the lessons I take from this is that billionaires do not look at art the way I do. I may buy (modestly priced) artworks because I like to look at them. Billionaires like Black and Zuckerman see them as investments.

Favours could also be exchanged, zig-zag style, among several people to create network solidarity. Epstein asked Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, to make sure Woody Allen’s daughter was admitted, while also gifting Allen $10,000 worth of shirts and luxury underwear.

Brad Karp, head of the Paul Weiss law firm, asked Epstein if he could intercede with Allen to get a job on his movie set for his son. In turn, Epstein asked Karp for help with a woman’s visa, and Karp steered $158 million from his client, the aforementioned Leon Black, to Epstein.

Collecting academics

When there is an asymmetry among the resources of two people, gifts lead to subordination, not reciprocity. Mauss referred to this as the “poison in the gift.”

We see this in Epstein’s transactions with academics whose research he bankrolled. He collected academics the way his billionaire friends collected artwork — Botstein, president of Bard; Larry Summers, president of Harvard; Lawrence Krauss, celebrity physicist; Dan Ariely, organizational psychologist; and the evolutionary psychologists and biologists Steven Pinker, Robert Trivers, Stephen Kosslyn, Martin Nowak, Joscha Bach and Nathan Wolfe to name a few.

Epstein was drawn to these academics because of his interest in eugenics, which he needed them to legitimize. He thought Black people were intellectually inferior and wondered if they could be improved through genetic modification. In a typo-ridden message, he texted German cognitive scientist Bach:

“Maybe climate change is a good way of dealing with overpopulation.. The earths forest fire… too many people, so many mass executions of the elderly and infirm make sense… if the brain discards unused neurons, why shold society keep their equivalent.”

And he talked about creating new superhumans by seeding batches of women with his own sperm.

After spending days reading Epstein’s messages to his associates, it reveals something essential about the contemptuous way they view the rest of the world.

One of them, lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler, texted Epstein that she would “get gas at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, will observe all of the people there who are at least 100 pounds overweight … and will then decide that I am not eating another bite of food for the rest of my life out of fear that I will end up like one of these people.”

Hopefully, most of the world is not like them.

Hugh Gusterson 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. What the Jeffrey Epstein files reveal about how elites trade toxic gifts and favours – https://theconversation.com/what-the-jeffrey-epstein-files-reveal-about-how-elites-trade-toxic-gifts-and-favours-275727

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Nadia Clarke Cordick, PhD Student, Educational Studies, Lakehead University

When I began teaching, I was the only Black educator on staff at my Ontario school.

In addition to my official responsibilities, I was often called on to translate cultural dynamics, support students experiencing racism and provide emotional labour for colleagues — for instance by serving as a shoulder to cry on.

As research related to Ontario and elsewhere in Canada shows, both these situations — of finding myself the sole Black educator on a staff, and being expected to provide emotional labour — are common for Black teachers.

No one named the cultural translation and emotional labour tasks, they were simply expected. While professional development days offered “wellness” sessions on mindfulness and stress reduction, they never addressed the racialized stress I was experiencing or named a systemic problem to be solved.

While often well-intentioned, as researchers across sectors have examined, “wellness” focused on individual responsibility can often be interpreted as asking individuals to cope better, rather than asking institutions, cultures or social structures to change.

Now, in my doctoral studies, I am developing a research plan to conduct a qualitative study with Black women educators in Ontario, where I explore how they experience burnout and care in predominantly white school systems — and how they re-imagine those systems as places of dignity, rest and belonging.

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Read more:
Being the ‘only one’ at work and the decades long fight against anti-Black racism

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Wellness focused on the individual

Teacher wellness strategies comprise things like short-term initiatives and professional development focused on stress management. These may be offered by school boards, teacher unions or third-party organizations.

Approaches to teacher wellness often ignore deeper contexts, including around racialized and gendered inequities: for example, that Black women educators face disproportionate stress due to systemic racism, isolation and exploitative emotional labour.

Research shows that generic self-care programming fails to acknowledge how race and gender shape the experience of burnout in education. Without addressing institutional conditions, these “solutions” become bandages on a structural wound.

The weight Black women carry in schools

Black women are often positioned as caretakers, expected to support students, serve on equity committees and manage diversity work, all while navigating workplace bias and surveillance. These added burdens are rarely acknowledged or compensated.

A 2023 doctoral dissertation called this out directly: “wellness” for Black women educators often becomes a form of resistance, not just recovery, in the face of institutional neglect. Emotional exhaustion is not a personal failure, but a predictable outcome of systems that extract care without offering care in return.

Many Black women educators also report experiencing “racial battle fatigue,” a term describing the cumulative toll of daily microaggressions, stereotype threats and constant self-monitoring in predominantly white environments.

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Read more:
Addressing anti-Black racism is key to improving well-being of Black Canadians

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In exploratory conversations conducted as part of developing my research,
I am hearing that Black women educators are experiencing harm in the very systems that claim to support their well-being — that we are being asked to survive conditions that need to change. One educator in Durham Region shared the following:

“In 2011 and again in 2019, I had white colleagues reach out and touch my hair, one of them during an introduction by my administrator. I had to tell them it made me uncomfortable, and that conversation was hard. But it’s the kind of emotional labour we carry, quietly.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, emotional labour became even more visible. The same educator recalled that after George Floyd’s murder:

“Our admin opened a staff meeting by asking how we were feeling. There was no prep. No follow-up. It felt like emotional voyeurism. What were they offering in return for that vulnerability?”

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Read more:
How to deal with the pain of racism — and become a better advocate: Don’t Call Me Resilient EP 2

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Afrofuturism offers a liberatory framework

To truly support Black women educators, we need frameworks that centre justice, imagination and collective care, not just resilience.

One such approach is Afrofuturism: a Black radical tradition that blends memory, imagination and the envisioning of liberated futures and new worlds beyond racial violence.

In educational contexts, Afrofuturism has been used to disrupt deficit narratives and imagine liberatory possibilities for Black learners and educators alike.

Informed by Afrofuturist and Black feminist thought, my emerging research identifies four recurring principles that reframe well-being as political, collective and embodied:

• Speculative imagination: Dreaming of educational spaces that don’t yet exist.

• Embodiment: Honouring the body as a site of knowledge and resistance.

• Fugitivity: Refusing harmful systems and finding joy outside their boundaries.

• World-making: Creating new models of care, rest and belonging.

‘Affinity spaces’

These Afrofuturist and Black feminist principles partly emerged in practice during my earlier research in social justice studies, when I collaborated with Hill Run Club, a Toronto-based Black women’s running and wellness collective.

Working alongside 12 Black women over the course of a year, I engaged as both a researcher and a run coach through movement, reflective journaling and vision boarding. This community-rooted project was co-created with participants and explored how Black women experience wellness, safety, body politics and belonging in predominantly white fitness spaces.

This work countered dominant wellness narratives by engaging in speculative reimagining and centring community-rooted care as acts of resistance.
It also laid the methodological and theoretical foundation for my current research.

In a narrative interview, Aaries Clarke Cordick, a teacher candidate in Ontario, shared what Afrofuturist wellness means to her:

“Affinity spaces make a difference. Being around colleagues with similar philosophies of inclusion, or even just seeing teachers who reflect the diversity of our students matters. We need PD [professional development] that speaks directly to racial battle fatigue and burnout, especially for those working with marginalized students but in staff cultures that aren’t Black.”

How we can actually do better

So what would it mean to take Black women educators’ well-being seriously?

My work will continue to engage three approaches that shift the focus from individualized “self-care” toward structural, community-rooted change:

Institutionalize sister circles: These peer-led spaces are already being used informally for mutual support, mentorship and storytelling. Schools should recognize and resource them as formal professional learning structures.

Build radical rest into policy: Instead of encouraging teachers to “unplug” after work, school boards can conduct equity audits and provide protected wellness time during the school day.

Co-create wellness initiatives: Black women educators must be at the centre of designing wellness policies that reflect their lived realities, not treated as afterthoughts in generic programming.

These changes require commitment, but they are not impossible. They ask school systems to shift from extractive relationships to reciprocal ones, where care is not just encouraged but embedded.

Afrofuturism invites us to envision education as a site of liberation, not just endurance. In doing so, it reminds us that the well-being of Black women educators is not a luxury. It is a political imperative, and a blueprint for better schools for everyone.

Nadia Clarke Cordick 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. We need to talk about how Black women educators experience burnout and care – https://theconversation.com/we-need-to-talk-about-how-black-women-educators-experience-burnout-and-care-274400

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ian Lee, Professor, Sprott School of Business, Carleton University

As we approach the halfway point of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second — and constitutionally last — term in office, Canadian polls reveal an increasingly dark and pessimistic view of Canada’s relationship and future with the United States.

As a recent public opinion poll found, Canadians are 3.5 times more likely to see the U.S. as a threat to Canadian security than China.

While these attitudes are understandable in light of recent U.S. policy, they may overstate the extent to which American democratic institutions and constitutional checks on presidential authority have actually collapsed.

Claims of democratic decline

A number of Canadian pundits and analysts have claimed the U.S. has become — or is on the cusp of becoming — a de facto dictatorship where the rule of law and checks and balances no longer operate effectively or at all.

But to equate controversial or legally contested executive actions with the collapse of 250 years of constitutional democracy risks conflating the overreach of a singular president with the end of 250 years of constitutional democracy.

Core American institutions remain operational. Committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate continue to meet, debate and pass bills and budgets weekly, and federal and superior courts continue to issue rulings daily.

Most importantly, the midterm elections will be held this November in all 435 congressional districts. One-third of the 100 U.S. Senators are up for re-election and 36 states will have elections for governor in addition to a plethora of state legislature elections.

Real Clear Politics publishes the average of major polls, which reveals Republicans are five per cent behind generic congressional contests with Democratic opponents.

The Supreme Court and tariff authority

One of the most consequential institutional checks on presidential power occurred recently when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s use of the emergency powers legislation to enact tariffs was illegal.

The ruling invalidated a large swath of tariffs imposed since early 2025, halting tariff collections under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and opening the door to potential refunds for affected businesses.

The court’s decision was symbolically very important. It reasserted the primacy of rule of law in finding Trump acted illegally and reaffirmed that U.S. Congress possesses the constitutional authority to impose taxes, which includes tariffs.

However, it’s important to note that Canada and other trading countries are not free of further tariffs, as Trump can apply new tariffs using other laws. As a case in point, following the Supreme Court’s decision, Trump enacted a 10 per cent worldwide tariff using Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act.

Limits on executive power

This brings us to a second fundamental check and balance on the U.S. president: that Trump only has approximately 2.5 years left in office as he is term-limited by the U.S. Constitution, despite repeatedly suggesting he might run for a third term in 2028.

In addition, the mid-term elections will be held in November. The Republicans hold a narrow majority in both the House of Representatives (218-214) and the Senate (53-47) while Trump’s poll numbers are down considerably.

Since at least the Second World War, the party that occupies the presidency typically loses control of the House in the off-year elections to the other political party.

It is increasingly likely that the Republicans will lose control of the House in November. This will ensure that Trump, with only two years left in office, will be doubly constrained by budgetary battles and probable impeachment proceedings by the Democrats.

If this scenario occurs, any legislative imposition of tariffs to overcome the Supreme Court decision is highly improbable.

Trade agreements and Canadian interests

The recent Supreme Court decision and the restrictions on Trump’s discretion imposed by Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement demonstrates the urgent necessity to renew it, as it’s up for review this year.

The review process has been underway since September of last year, but Trump stalled trade negotiations with Canada in October over an Ontario government ad.

Trade agreements do not compel trade, as trade is a voluntary act between consenting corporations. Rather, such agreements provide the framework, or rules, that state what behaviour is legal and what is not.

Trade agreements create order and stability in place of chaos, anarchy and massive uncertainty. For export-dependent economies like Canada’s, predictability is itself an economic asset.

At the very top of the Canadian government to-do list should be the successful negotiation of a new trade agreement with the U.S. — the largest economy in the world and Canada’s largest trading partner — to reduce the radical, unprecedented uncertainty facing business that is causing an exodus of capital investment.

An enduring relationship

While there is an urgent need to diversify Canada’s trade, it is unrealistic to suggest Canada can divert most of its $800 billion in bilateral trade with America to other regions.

The common refrain that we cannot trust Trump to obey a new treaty is to claim that no agreement — law of the jungle and anarchy — is superior to rules and stability, however inadequate those rules and penalties may be.

Canada needs to constrain Trump for the last 2.5 years until the next president is in place who will likely be less confrontational and less hostile to Canada, no matter whether they’re Democratic or Republican.

As Henry John Temple, a former prime minister of the United Kingdom, once famously said, a nation has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests. It is the role of national leadership to identify common interests that will become the foundation or zone of agreement.

Canada shares an 8,800-kilometre border with the U.S., and a shared history of political, social, cultural and family relationships and exchanges. These deep enduring ties cannot be erased by one singular four-year rogue president.

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

– ref. The U.S. Supreme Court’s tariff ruling shows American checks and balances are still at work – https://theconversation.com/the-u-s-supreme-courts-tariff-ruling-shows-american-checks-and-balances-are-still-at-work-276602

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Rosheeka Parahoo, PhD, Musicology, Western University

Each year, as Canadians sit down to watch the Juno Awards — this year airing live on CBC and CBC Gem on
March 29 — it’s worth thinking about how award shows are never just simple celebrations.

National arts award ceremonies like the Junos are part of a cultural system that help define who belongs, who succeeds and what counts as “Canadian” in the first place.

My doctoral research investigated equity, diversity and inclusion across the Canadian music industry at three levels: individual, institutional and regulatory. What emerged was a clear picture of how industry practices and cultural policy shape the very idea of Canadian identity.

The history of the Junos cannot be separated from the history of attempts at exploring and solidifying Canadian identity, and this is one reason they deserve more critical attention today.

From ‘music in Canada’ to ‘Canadian music’

When Canadian music industry pioneer Walt Grealis launched the RPM Gold Leaf Awards ceremony on Feb. 23, 1970, his aim was to celebrate the industry.

These awards began in 1964, based on a poll of readers conducted by RPM (Record, Promotion, Music) magazine, focused on tracking the Canadian music industry.

The timing of the first RPM Gold Leaf awards ceremony in 1970 was significant, because it took place just one week after Pierre Juneau, the first chairman of the Canadian Radio and Television Commission, proposed the country’s first Canadian content regulations.

The RPM Gold Leaf awards were renamed the Juno Awards in 1971. According to the Juno website, the renaming was in tribute to Juneau and the name was shortened to “Juno” for practical purposes.

But other versions of this history exist. According to a 2018 CBC radio segment, “How the Junos got its name,” Juno became the name because it was shorter and still referred to the CanCon creator “but also had the allure of the Roman goddess Juno.”

From the start, the Junos were marked by power struggles that reflected a market wrestling with the balance between nationalism and corporatization. Most early winners were determined by RPM reader polls, meaning popularity among readers of the magazine, rather than commercial power (that is, sales), shaped outcomes and winners.

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Junos 2023 reminds us how Canadian content regulations and funding supports music across the country

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The Canadian Recording Industry Association (now Music Canada) saw an opportunity for “an award that was voted on by the music industry as a whole,” and wanted a televised ceremony that could sell major-label acts.

The association’s warning in 1974 that it was going to launch a rival “Maple Music Awards” incentivized Grealis to accept a broadcast model and hand over administration to what soon became the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

By 1975, the Junos were fully televised and invited everyone to witness a particular vision of Canada on a national stage.

Coincided with rise of CanCon

The rise of the Junos coincided with the moment when Canadian content regulations pushed broadcasters and music companies to articulate a distinctly Canadian cultural product.

Music consumers were not merely buying records. They were, as Ryan Edwardson argued in his book Canuck Rock: A History of Popular Music, , “citizens consuming a national identity” — something understood by industry strategists.

Edwardson cites popular musicologist Philip Auslander, who observed that the music industry works to “endow its products with the necessary signs of authenticity.” In Canada, that meant national affiliation. The televised Juno Awards became an ideal vehicle for that authentic national affiliation.

Televising the Junos shifted the spotlight from “music in Canada” to “Canadian music,” transforming a mere market category into something closer to a national identity project.

How Canadian identity is negotiated

As Canadian ethnomusicologist Beverley Diamond reminds us, awards shows can function as events where representation, critique and pushback unfold in real time.

They tell us not only who is being celebrated, but who is demanding to be seen. If the early years of the Juno Awards helped construct a national narrative around “Canadian music,” then the ceremony has just as often functioned as a space where that narrative has been challenged.

Across decades, performers have used the ceremony to highlight inequities, challenge the marginalization of Indigenous, Black and racialized artists and critique the commercial pressures that shape Canada’s musical ecosystem.

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In doing so, they remind us that identity, especially Canadian identity, is never settled. As Diamond explores, these identity questions have also been played out in juxtaposition with the Grammy Awards in the United States. For example, in 2004, the Grammys staged OutKast’s performance in front of a green teepee and a chorus of stereotyped depictions of Indigenous women.

That same year, notes Diamond, the Junos responded with their own form of cultural rebuttal: Nelly Furtado, a now 10-time Juno Award winner and future Canadian Hall of Fame inductee, performed with the Cree group Whitefish Jrs. while performers crossed the stage with placards reading “Spirit.”

The message was its own form of resistance in an attempt to perhaps demonstrate what respectful representation could look like, and assert a different cultural ethic — perhaps a uniquely Canadian one.

Moments like these reveal that the Juno stage is both a platform for national celebration and a political terrain where artists contest the meaning of Canadian music and identity itself.

This negotiation is especially salient today. Canadian cultural sovereignty feels increasingly precarious in a globalized market where U.S. platforms dominate distribution, streaming metrics shape artistic value and “success” is often coded through American visibility.

The ceremony’s history reminds us that Canadian music has always been shaped by policy, from CanCon rules to broadcast mandates. It reminds us that corporate and nationalist interests have been tightly intertwined and that they have produced both opportunity and constraint.

Finally, it shows us that artists, especially Indigenous, Black, racialized and politically vocal artists, have had to continually fight for representation in this Canadian celebration, and they have used the Juno stage to contest the narratives imposed upon them.

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Elisapie’s Juno-winning album: Promoting Inuktitut through music

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Why the Junos matter now more than ever

As Canada tries to wrestle domestic interests away from U.S. cultural dominance, the Junos offer insight into just how deeply our arts and cultural systems are shaped by cross-border forces and our own internal contradictions.

They remind us that cultural institutions have the power to reinforce national pride, and also invite critical reflection, dissent and re-imagination.

If we want to understand the future of Canadian music, and therefore the future of Canadian identity, we need to stop treating the Junos as merely an award ceremony or a party.

The Junos show us what Canada thinks it is now, and perhaps more importantly, they show us what we might become.

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

– ref. How the Junos have helped define the Canadian music industry – https://theconversation.com/how-the-junos-have-helped-define-the-canadian-music-industry-276845