Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Celine Latulipe, Professor, Computer Science, University of Manitoba

Filing taxes every year is an important and necessary task in Canada. But for many, tax preparation and filing can be overwhelming. One reason is that tax forms can sometimes be hard to interpret, especially because most people only deal with them once a year.

Another factor is the shift to digital: tax forms are often delivered electronically; tax software has become the preferred method for tax preparation and filing; and the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) prefers to send all tax information electronically through the CRA MyAccount.

With this digital system, it’s typically necessary to access tax forms and previous Notices of Assessment by logging in to your CRA MyAccount. This can be a barrier for those with less experience using computers and online accounts, such as some older adults.

Many people act as informal tax helpers by filing taxes for older parents, relatives or friends. In fact, half of Canadians filing taxes have someone else do their taxes for them. Of those, one in five reports getting help from a friend or family member acting as an informal tax helper.

This means about 10 per cent of tax filers in Canada rely on family or friends to file their taxes. The CRA has a Represent a Client program that allows informal tax helpers to log in to the CRA MyAccount of the person they are helping to access relevant tax forms. However, a study that I recently conducted with colleauges shows that this mechanism is under-utilized.

How informal tax helpers access CRA accounts

Getting help with taxes can take many forms: hiring an accountant, visiting a tax preparation company, getting help from a volunteer through the Canadian Volunteer Income Tax Program (CVITP) or delegating to an informal tax helper.

Tax accountants, tax preparers and CVITP volunteers have business IDs or Group IDs for accessing CRA MyAccounts of the clients they assist. Similarly, informal tax helpers can sign up with CRA’s Represent a Client program to get RepIDs, which are ID numbers provided by the CRA to people whose identity is verified by having their own CRA MyAccount.

As an example, having a RepID allows me to access my daughter’s CRA MyAccount to get her Notices of Assessments, download tax forms and use NetFile to file her taxes. I could ask my daughter to log in and download those items for me, but it is faster for me to do it, as I know what forms I’m looking for and where to find them.

Having a RepID does not give access to everyone’s tax records. A link needs to be established between the helper’s RepID and the CRA MyAccount of the person they are assisting. This can be done by uploading a signed form from the taxpayer or by sending an authorization request through the CRA system, which the taxpayer must approve.

The risks of sharing login credentials

In our study, we investigated CRA delegation mechanisms. We conducted a semi-structured interview study with 19 participants, including older adults, formal tax volunteers and informal tax helpers, to understand the challenges and experiences of tax delegation.

We found that only one informal tax helper used a RepID. Most either did everything using paper forms provided by the person they are helping, or they accessed that person’s CRA MyAccount using that individual’s credentials to log in.

In some cases, informal tax helpers may actually be setting up the CRA MyAccounts for the people they are helping, which means they know the login credentials. This violates the terms of service of the CRA MyAccount — you are not supposed to share your password with anyone.

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While informal tax helpers are providing a valuable and helpful service to their friends and families, using a person’s credentials to access their CRA MyAccounts is problematic.

When an informal tax helper knows someone else’s CRA login credentials, they could log in as that user, change the mailing address and banking deposit details, and then make bogus tax and benefit claims. In this case, the CRA has no way to tell that it is someone else logging in and taking actions on behalf of the taxpayer associated with the account.

However, if an informal tax helper uses a RepID to access someone’s CRA MyAccount, the CRA knows exactly who is doing what. They don’t allow informal tax helpers to change the mailing address or bank deposit information, which goes a long way to preventing tax fraud.

Make tax help safer with a CRA RepID

If someone is helping you file your taxes, ask them to get a CRA RepID. It’s a quick process for them, and then they can access tax forms in your CRA MyAccount safely. This way, the CRA will know when it is them signing in to your account versus you, and your helper will only be able to access the appropriate functions.

Most informal tax helpers are honest, helpful people and they shouldn’t have to impersonate you to get your taxes done. Using the CRA’s Represent a Client system provides legitimacy to informal tax helpers and safety for those getting assistance.

With the tax deadline of April 30, 2026 approaching, if you plan to have someone assist you with tax filing, it’s a good time to check with them to make sure they use a RepID to access your CRA MyAccount. Doing this early can help avoid last-minute stress, ensure your tax return is filed accurately and give you confidence that your information is secure.

Celine Latulipe receives funding from NSERC.

– ref. Filing taxes for someone else? Here’s how to do it safely – https://theconversation.com/filing-taxes-for-someone-else-heres-how-to-do-it-safely-271924

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kiffer George Card, Assistant Professor in Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University

Throughout Earth’s history, life in temperate and polar zones has had to contend with the cold and darkness of winter. Across species, seasonal adaptation is the norm. Some animals hibernate, others migrate, and many reduce activity, conserve energy, and narrow their social and ecological range until conditions improve. These strategies evolved over millennia as reliable responses to predictable environmental stress.

Humans are no exception. Seasonal cycles have a deep impact on our psychology and well-being — after all, for most of our evolutionary and recorded history, winter has shaped how we live, work and relate to one another. For our ancestors, food was scarcer, travel more difficult and daily activity contracted due to shorter days. Social life often shifted indoors and inward, and organized around smaller groups, shared labour and mutual dependence.

While modern societies have reduced many of winter’s material hardships, the season continues to exert a powerful influence on human behaviour and well-being.

As a social ecologist interested in human wellness, my research focuses on how our natural and social environments shape our well-being and what we can do to improve our relationships with these environments to maximize our well-being.

In this work, I study the drivers of emotional responses, such as loneliness and eco-anxiety. This work has taught me how inseparably connected we are to each other and to our environments, and one of my key areas of interest is how our social and natural worlds are intertwined.

Understanding how well-being is affected by weather

One area of research that has fascinated me is how humans respond to the weather and day-night cycles of the places they live. For example, research has shown that colder temperatures, greater precipitaiton and shorter periods of sunshine are associated with outcomes such as greater tiredness, stress, loneliness, and poorer life satisfaction and self-rated health.

As such, it makes sense that we are more likely to have depressive symptoms or feel tired and lonely in the winter compared to the spring and summer. Perhaps most concerning, studies of suicide attempts, loneliness and their seasonality indicate that winter weather can contribute to each, suggesting that seasonal shifts in social connection may intensify vulnerability during these periods.

Taken together, I believe this body of work suggests that the most consequential pathway linking winter conditions to well-being may not be weather exposure itself, but its effects on social connection. After all, human beings are fundamentally social animals — we greatly rely on each other for our happiness, health and survival.

Fortunately, the effect of weather on our mood is small and people can overcome it through intentional efforts. Indeed, human beings are incredibly adaptive to their environments, meaning even in poor weather contexts we can find ways to meet our social needs.

Illustrating this, research comparing levels of social isolation across neighbourhoods during cold weather highlights differences in how some communities respond to cold weather, with those choosing more indoor time throughout the day experiencing greater social isolation.

Research also suggests that our personality traits shape how resilient we are to weather changes. Studies such as these underscore that our responses to cold weather can shape its effects on us. Environment is not destiny, if we know how to address it.

So what can we do during the cold dark winter months to stay connected, and therefore happy and healthy? The research consistently shows that staying socially engaged, even in small ways, protects mental health and promotes well-being.

Ways to get connected in the cold

While winter may reduce incidental social contact, connection can be maintained through deliberate routines and low-threshold forms of engagement, including:

• committing to a weekly or biweekly group activity, such as a book club, exercise class, faith-based group or hobby circle

• organizing small, recurring gatherings, such as rotating dinners, shared meals or weekend brunches

• scheduling regular phone or video check-ins with family or friends and treating them as fixed commitments

• integrating social contact into daily activities, such as walking, running errands, exercising or having coffee together

• using daylight strategically by planning brief outdoor meetups or spending time in naturally lit public spaces

• participating in year-round volunteer roles that provide regular contact and a sense of purpose

• enrolling in short-term courses or workshops that create repeated contact over several weeks

• connecting through shared projects, such as creative work, community caregiving or co-hosted events

• initiating contact with others who may also be withdrawing socially during winter

It’s not always easy, but it is worth it

Of course, such activities take time and energy and are not always the easiest to do. Snow-caked roads and reduced sunlight hours can pose real mobility challenges. So while we might want to connect, we are not always able to when we face such environmental barriers.

In fact, one of my favourite findings in the literature is that while people naturally feel inclined to seek out social affiliation in response to cold weather (something I believe to be a survival strategy we’ve inherited from our less technologically equipped ancestors), physical warmth acts psychologically as a satisfactory replacement — even if it lacks the long-term benefits of social connection.

In other words, the modern amenities of space heaters and cozy blankets make it easier for us to isolate — and many of us are happy to enjoy the warmth from these instead of the warmth offered by social connection.

However, knowing the central importance of social connection to well-being, it’s important to not fall trap to these creature comforts. There is not anything wrong with being alone from time to time, but winter is too long a season to spend alone safely.

Intentional effort

In short, we need to recognize that winter weather has a predictable effect on our well-being, and this effect calls for deliberate social adaptation. Human well-being has always depended on the ability to respond collectively to seasonal constraint, and the contemporary winter environment is no different, even if its risks are less visible.

The evidence reviewed above suggests that while the cold, darkness and reduced mobility can heighten vulnerability, their effects are shaped by how individuals and communities organize daily life, social routines and sources of connection. Comfort, convenience and withdrawal may offer short-term relief, but they do not substitute for the protective role of sustained social engagement.

Winter demands intention rather than retreat. By recognizing social connection as a seasonal health behaviour rather than a discretionary luxury, individuals and communities can better align modern living with enduring human needs, reducing risk and supporting well-being across the long months of cold and dark.

Kiffer George Card is president of the Mental Health and Climate Change Alliance and Social Health Canada and has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Health Research British Columbia, Canadian Red Cross, Public Health Agency of Canada, Government of British Columbia, and Canadian Institutes of Health Research for his work related to the social and natural environmental factors shaping wellbeing.

– ref. Winter changes more than the weather — it changes how we connect. Here’s how to stay socially engaged – https://theconversation.com/winter-changes-more-than-the-weather-it-changes-how-we-connect-heres-how-to-stay-socially-engaged-273684

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

It’s been 54 years since the last Apollo mission, and since then, humans have not ventured beyond low-Earth orbit. But that’s all about to change with next week’s launch of the Artemis II mission from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This is the first crewed flight of NASA’s Artemis program and the first time since 1972 that humans have ventured to the moon. Onboard is Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who will be the first non-American to fly to the moon and will make Canada only the second country in the world to send an astronaut into deep space.

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Canada’s space technology and innovations are a crucial contribution to the Artemis missions

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I am a professor, an explorer and a planetary geologist. For the past 15 years, I have been helping to train Hansen and other astronauts in geology and planetary science. I am also a member of the Artemis III Science Team and the principal investigator for Canada’s first ever rover mission to the moon.

What will the mission achieve?

NASA’s Artemis program, launched in 2017, has the ambitious goal to return humans to the moon and to establish a lunar base in preparation for sending humans to Mars. The first mission, Artemis I, launched in late 2022. Following some delays, Artemis II is scheduled for launch as early as a week from now.

Onboard will be Hansen, along with his three American crew-mates.

This is an incredibly exciting mission. Artemis II is the first time humans have launched on NASA’s huge SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, and the first time humans have flown in the Orion spacecraft.

SLS is the most powerful rocket NASA has ever built, with the capability to send more than 27 metric tonnes of payload — equipment, instruments, scientific experiments and cargo — to the moon. The Orion spacecraft sits at the very top and is the crew’s ride to the moon. The Artemis II crew named their Orion capsule Integrity, a word they say embodies trust, respect, candour and humility.

What will Artemis II crew do in space?

Following launch, the crew will carry out tests of Integrity’s essential life-support systems: the water dispenser, firefighting equipment, and, of course, the toilet. Did you know there was no toilet on the Apollo missions? Instead, the crews used “relief tubes.”

If everything looks good, the Artemis II will ignite what’s known as the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage — part of the SLS rocket still connected to Integrity — to elevate the spacecraft’s orbit. If things are still looking good, the Orion spacecraft and its four human travellers will spend 24 hours in a high-Earth orbit up to 70,000 kilometres away from the planet.

For comparison, the International Space Station orbits the Earth at a mere 400 kilometres.

Following a series of tests and checks, the crew will conduct one of the most critical stages of the mission: the Trans-Lunar Injection, or TLI. This is the crucial moment that changes a spacecraft from orbiting the Earth — where the option to quickly return home remains — to sending it on its way to the moon and into deep space.

Once the Integrity is on its way to the moon after TLI, there is no turning back — at least, not without going to the moon first. That’s because Artemis II — like the early Apollo missions — enters what’s called a “free-return trajectory” after the TLI. What this means is that even if Integrity’s engines fail completely, the moon’s gravity will naturally loop the spacecraft around it and aim it towards Earth.

After the three-day journey to the moon, the crew will carry out perhaps the most exciting stage of the mission: lunar fly-by. Integrity will loop around the far side of the moon, passing anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 kilometres above its surface — much farther than any Apollo mission.

To quote Star Trek, at that most distant point, the Artemis II crew will have boldly gone where no (hu)man has gone before. This will be, quite literally, the farthest from Earth that any human being has ever travelled.

International effort to explore the moon

That a Canadian astronaut is part of the crew of Artemis II is a testament to the collaborative international nature of the Artemis program.

While NASA created the program and is the driving force, there are now 60 countries that have signed the Artemis Accords.

The foundation for the Artemis Accords is the recognition that international co-operation in space is intended not only to bolster space exploration but to enhance peaceful relationships among nations. This is particularly necessary now — perhaps more than any other time since the Cold War.

I truly hope that as Integrity returns from the moon’s far side, people around the world will pause — at least for a few moments — and be united in thinking of a better future. As American astronaut Bill Anders, who flew the first crewed Apollo mission to the moon, once said:

“We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.”

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. Artemis II: The first human mission to the moon in 54 years launches soon — with a Canadian on board – https://theconversation.com/artemis-ii-the-first-human-mission-to-the-moon-in-54-years-launches-soon-with-a-canadian-on-board-273881

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jordan Foster, Assistant Professor, Sociology, MacEwan University

Just weeks after the premiere of popular gay hockey romance series Heated Rivalry, star Hudson Williams’ extensive skincare routine has gone viral. In a now-viral video for The Cut, the 24-year-old walks viewers through his “five-step Korean beauty routine.”

His multi-step regimen includes a close shave, a cleanse, pore-minimizing treatments, a “super-glowing” toner and serums targeted toward “rejuvenating” the young star’s face and body.

The nearly 20-minute routine, replete with self-deprecating humour and an ironic bent against vanity, has amassed some 500,000 views (and counting), almost 2,000 comments and 36,000 likes on YouTube alone.

Williams’ routine, and its public broadcast online, is emblematic of a wider shift in our highly visual and virtual culture among men. From style guides and intensive workout routines to recommendations for skin and hair, men are investing in their appearance.

But, in a curious contortion, they’ve called their work on the face and body anything (and everything) but beauty.

Understanding beauty’s cultural force

As a researcher studying the cultural force of beauty and its various presentations online, I take questions related to appearance and attractiveness seriously.

I look to taken-for-granted trends online — images and advertisements as well as viral video clips — and their reception among audiences to understand how young people engage with and respond to beauty, and the various privileges and penalties it commands.

Beauty’s cultural force has long weighed upon women, who have been invited to modify their appearances in step with challenging, often contradictory, beauty norms. But in a recent and curious shift, beauty norms and appearance pressures have intensified among men.

The rise of men’s beauty habits

Men’s bodies are increasingly visible in product advertisements and mainstream campaigns, with a surfeit of cosmetics targeted toward men.

Mundane investments in skincare and grooming are not uncommon, with young men especially doubling down on their efforts to refine the face and body through multi-step routines not unlike Williams’.

Driven at least in part by social media influencers and the rise of platformed figures who dialogue around the importance of looking good, “freshening up” and keeping sharp, men are investing in their appearance as women long have.

Alongside these investments, boys and men are enjoined to bulk up to achieve a muscled and well-defined look. Widely followed influencers and celebrities alike echo the call, endorsing a range of compound exercises to improve one’s physique and “science based” changes to boost growth.

The drive toward muscularity is demanding, with many recommendations touting the importance of rigorous diets and intensive exercise regimes.

In the name of beauty

While some recommendations are innocuous enough, men have entertained more extreme, sometimes dangerous practices to modify and refine the appearance of their face and body.

Sometimes called “looksmaxxing,” a term capturing efforts that enhance men’s appearance, practices like “mewing” and the far more dangerous exercise of “bone-smashing” are often endorsed to promote facial harmony and a stronger jawline.

The preponderance and popularity of these appearance-focused practices online have produced what medical researcher Daniel Konig and his colleagues describe as an “almost pathological obsession” with attractiveness, with significant consequences for boys and men.

Public reporting on men’s relationship to their appearance indicates that a growing number of men are suffering from body insecurity and lower esteem, manifesting in the rise of muscle dysmorphia, a body-image disorder focused on a perceived lack of physical size or strength.

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In a similar vein, the United Kingdom’s Sexualization of Young People report indicates that online, boys are increasingly under pressure to “display their bodies in a hyper-masculine way showing off muscles and posturing as powerful and dominant.”

Why men resist calling it beauty

In my ongoing research with young people enrolled at the University of Toronto and MacEwan University, I am documenting a similar set of pressures.

The young people I’ve spoken with insist that while appearance weighs heavily on everyone, men are increasingly subject to the demands of a culture preoccupied with looking good.

For the boys and men I speak with, social media platforms, and the celebrities and influencers who populate them, are a particularly thorny topic. They invite an intense sense of comparison between men and their physiques and, for many, a feeling of not quite being good enough.

Still, few describe these pressures in terms related to beauty per se. As a historically feminized domain, beauty has been derided as frivolous and unimportant. But as many men are coming to find, the truth is far more complex. Beauty returns rewards to those who are thought to possess it or, perhaps, to those who are willing to pay for it.

Selling beauty to the masses

Men represent a growing and lucrative ground on which to sell products and services designed to optimize their appearance.

This previously untapped market segment is ripe for commercial exploitation, with an increasing number of men making spending on beauty products and services.

In 2024, market researcher Mintel reported that more than half of men use facial skincare products, with members of Gen Z accounting for the greatest share of growth in skincare products — especially “high-end” and “clean” products.

It’s estimated that the global market for men’s beauty products, including skincare and grooming, will exceed US$5 billion by 2027, adding to the industry’s already striking US$450 billion evaluation.

Men’s interest in more costly and intensive beauty treatments is also on the rise. The American Academy of Plastic Surgeons reports that a growing number of men are pursuing body augmentation and cosmetic surgery, as well as non-invasive procedures like dermal filler injections and facial neurotoxins like Botox.

Under both knife and needle, beauty’s cultural force is sure to be felt.

Jordan Foster receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Men are embracing beauty culture — many of them just refuse to call it that – https://theconversation.com/men-are-embracing-beauty-culture-many-of-them-just-refuse-to-call-it-that-274181

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Christophe Premat, Professor, Canadian and Cultural Studies, Stockholm University

For many years, co-operation between Canada and Sweden was often viewed through a narrow lens — defence procurement. Discussions about fighter aircraft, technical specifications and military benefits tended to dominate attention.

Yet focusing only on defence equipment obscures a deeper shift now under way. What began as a technical defence relationship has gradually evolved into broader strategic convergence rooted in shared geopolitical interests, mutual economic benefits and a common understanding of the North.

As a researcher in Canadian studies, I am particularly interested in Swedish–Canadian relations as both countries seek to to strengthen the resilience of their political and economic systems.

This evolution in the relationship hasn’t happened overnight. It’s developed incrementally through political dialogue, institutional trust and shared security concerns.

It also comes after Canada signed a contract in January 2023 to acquire 88 Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II fighters from the United States and has committed funds for 16 of them.

The Canadian government is reconsidering the remaining portion of the planned purchase amid ongoing tensions with the U.S., but American officials have warned that cancelling the deal could require changes in bilateral air defence co-operation and lead the U.S. to assume a greater operational role.

But at the same time, Ottawa is examining a Swedish offer of 72 Saab Gripen jets and six GlobalEye aircraft.

Political alignment

Recent developments suggest that Canada–Sweden co-operation is no longer best understood as a transactional arrangement. Instead, it reflects a sustained effort by two northern democracies to strengthen long-term co-ordination in an increasingly unstable global environment.

The foundations of Canada–Sweden defence co-operation lie in longstanding exchanges on military aviation, joint exercises and technological collaboration. Although fighter aircraft discussions, including on the Gripens, are a visible part of this relationship, collaboration has increasingly extended beyond procurement.

Joint training in Arctic and cold-weather operations and interoperability in air operations and command-and-control systems now play a growing role in the Euro-Atlantic and northern European security landscape.

Sweden’s accession to NATO in 2024 has reinforced these dynamics, creating new opportunities for co-ordination between Canada and Sweden within the organization’s planning, exercises and capability development.

Canada’s lack of a Swedish aircraft purchase hasn’t curtailed defence co-operation, but redirected it toward political alignment on shared threats, Arctic and Baltic security and the institutional frameworks required among allies in northern environments.

High-level engagement

In 2023, Canada and Sweden marked 80 years of diplomatic relations. This anniversary highlighted the depth and continuity of the bilateral relationship and served as a reminder that present day co-operation builds on decades of political trust.

High-level political contacts in recent years have further elevated the relationship.

Interactions among ministers responsible for foreign affairs, defence, industry and energy have framed co-operation around defence-related industries, technological sovereignty, innovation ecosystems and Arctic governance. This points to a maturing partnership in which security, industry and research policy are increasingly connected.

What stands out is that discussions have focused less on single contracts and more on long-term reliability, institutional compatibility and shared priorities.

These include security in the High North, collective defence within NATO and closer industrial and technological ties among advanced democracies with similar economic systems.

State visit

This broader relationship took on new political weight during the Swedish state visit to Canada in November 2025.

King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia led the visit and were accompanied by senior Swedish cabinet ministers, including Ebba Busch, deputy prime minister and industry minister, and Defence Minister Pål Jonson.

The three-day visit combined ceremonial diplomacy with strategic and economic dialogue. Several Swedish companies participated in business and innovation events.

During the visit, Canada and Sweden formalized a strategic partnership framework covering security and defence co-operation, Arctic affairs, trade, innovation and the green and digital transitions.

The visit, which included meetings in Ottawa and engagements with research and technology experts, underscored that bilateral relations were no longer limited to defence but were expanding into long-term political co-ordination.

The Rodinia metaphor

Busch has on several occasions used an unusual metaphor to describe relations between Canada and the Nordic region: Rodinia, the ancient super-continent that once linked what are now parts of North America and northern Europe.

Although geological in origin, the reference serves a political purpose. It frames present co-operation as a reconnection rather than something new. It situates Canada–Nordic relations within a longer narrative shaped by comparable northern environments, natural resources and innovation systems influenced by climate and geography.

Such historical imagery helps place industrial and strategic co-operation within a broader sense of continuity. In this perspective, partnership does not depend on a single defence decision but on structural similarities and long-term shared interests across the North Atlantic and Arctic regions.

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Changing economic and security landscape

Canadian leaders are increasingly emphasizing co-operation with like-minded middle and advanced economies, as Prime Minister Mark Carney did in his recent widely acclaimed speech in Davos.

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These economies include Nordic countries in areas like clean energy, critical minerals, digital innovation and security. The argument is that countries with compatible institutions, technological capacity and a commitment to rules-based international co-operation can enhance their influence by acting together.

Seen in this light, Canada and the Nordic states are not peripheral powers but form part of a northern cluster with expertise that is highly relevant to global challenges.

Energy transition in cold climates, Arctic infrastructure, resilience in sparsely populated regions and defence in harsh environments are areas where their experience carries weight.

Northern resilience in an unstable world

Taken together, these developments point to a redefinition of Canada–Sweden relations. Defence co-operation is still important, but it’s being increasingly embedded in a wider framework that includes industrial collaboration, Arctic research, academic exchange and political co-ordination.

This reflects a broader shift in how strategic partnerships are built. Trust, institutional compatibility and shared outlooks now matter as much as contractual outcomes.

What started as talks about fighter jets has become a broader discussion about northern resilience and how democracies on the edges of great power competition can improve their security and prosperity by working together instead of relying on others.

Canada and Sweden are not simply discussing equipment. They are shaping a model of partnership based on long-term alignment, one that could prove more enduring than any single procurement decision.

Christophe Premat is director of the Centre for Canadian Studies and a professor of Francophone cultural studies at Stockholm University. He acknowledges having taken part in events organized by the Embassy of Canada in Sweden at which representatives of the Swedish Armed Forces were present. He received funding from the Nordic and Baltic Cooperation through the Nordplus educational grant for the years 2020–2022. With the support of this grant, he created an introductory online course in Canadian Studies (https://doi.org/10.17045/sthlmuni.15329100.v1) which is given each summer. He has recently participated in interviews commenting on the political situation in Canada.

– ref. How Canada and Sweden are redefining northern security and co-operation – https://theconversation.com/how-canada-and-sweden-are-redefining-northern-security-and-co-operation-274296

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Niloofar Hooman, PhD candidate, Communication Studies and Media Arts, McMaster University

What began on Dec. 28 in Iran as a revolt against economic hardship and the collapse of the national currency quickly spread across dozens of other Iranian cities and provinces. People from diverse socioeconomic, religious and ethnic backgrounds joined what has become the largest anti-regime protest since the 1979 revolution.

Chants of “death to the dictator” and “death to Khamenei” echoed far beyond Tehran’s Grand Bazaar. As a response, the government shut off all internet services, leaving roughly 92 million Iranians in a digital blackout since Jan. 8.

The protests are not an isolated eruption but the latest chapter in a continuous cycle of uprisings from the 1999 student movement, the Green movement of 2009, the protests of 2017 and the bloody November of 2019, the “uprising of the thirsty” in 2021 and the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of 2022. Each was driven by different grievances but united by a deepening crisis of legitimacy and governance.

For authoritarian regimes, internet blackouts are a powerful political tool of repression that conceal state violence.

Violence justified for ‘security’

As the protests spread, the regime responded by unleashing lethal violence on the streets. Security forces fired live ammunition and pellet guns at demonstrators, deployed tear gas, carried out mass arrests and raided medical facilities where injured protesters were being treated, including hospitals in Illam and Tehran.

Arrests have surpassed 40,000, while estimates of the death toll vary widely, with reports suggesting that tens of thousands have been killed during the most intense days of repression. In cities such as Rasht, witnesses documented massacres as protesters attempted to flee security forces.

At the same time, state media outlets and senior political and judicial officials labelled protesters “terrorist agents” serving the United States and Israel, rhetoric that helped legitimize extreme violence in the name of national security.

The internet blackout as political strategy

Plunging millions of people into digital darkness was not a security precaution but a deliberate strategy used to disrupt collective action, prevent the documentation of state violence and control what both domestic and international audiences could see.

Mobile data, broadband connections and even phone lines were cut across the country, leaving families unable to contact loved ones, protesters cut off from one another and the outside world largely blind to events inside Iran. This was neither an unprecedented move nor a temporary security response. Iranian authorities have repeatedly restricted or disabled internet and telephone access during periods of sociopolitical unrest.

Under blackout conditions, the internet is not simply a space for expression, it is vital infrastructure that allows for information to flow.

By fragmenting connectivity, the state does not need to erase every image or silence every voice. It only needs to prevent a shared public record from forming. Violence becomes harder to document, deaths harder to count and accountability easier to evade.

Diaspora activism under blackout conditions

Outside Iran, this enforced silence prompted a wave of digital mobilization.

Iranians in the diaspora and their allies turned to platforms such as X and Instagram, circulating the hashtag #DigitalBlackoutIran to draw global attention to the shutdown and the escalating repression inside Iran. The hashtag became a way to make absence visible, revealing that the lack of images, videos and updates was itself the product of deliberate regime suppression and crackdown.

As the blackout continues, what’s at stake is not simply connectivity but the ability to bear witness. The struggle over internet access in Iran is therefore a deeply political one: it’s a struggle over who’s allowed to narrate, who’s allowed to be seen and whose suffering is allowed to register as real.

This use of #DigitalBlackoutIran didn’t emerge in vaccuum. It drew on previous movements and uprisings in Iran, where independent journalists are tightly restricted and repressed, public dissent is criminalized and uprisings are often followed by violent crackdowns and information blackouts.

When people cannot safely gather, publish or speak openly, and when documentation is actively disrupted, hashtags become a way of speaking out and of preserving what might otherwise disappear.

They allow dispersed users to find one another and construct a shared narrative of what’s happening. In this sense, hashtags function as a tool for mobilization and advocacy and as living archives of protest, keeping a record of repression and resistance alive when the state seeks to fragment, deny or erase it.

Yet the very visibility that gives hashtag activism its power also makes it vulnerable under authoritarian rule.

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Read more:
What Iran’s latest protests tell us about power, memory and resistance

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In Iran, the regime does not rely solely on blocking platforms or cutting access. It also actively manipulates online conversations from within. Alongside internet shutdowns, blocking social media platforms and filtering news websites, the state deploys co-ordinated networks of pro-regime accounts, often referred to as a “cyber army,” to disrupt protest hashtags.

These accounts flood hashtags with abusive and degrading language, disinformation and conspiracy narratives. The aim is to make participation emotionally, psychologically and socially costly.

This strategy reflects a broader shift in how autocratic regimes manage dissent online. Rather than silencing opposition, they increasingly seek to dominate digital spaces by overwhelming them, blurring truth with falsehood, intimidation with debate and visibility with noise.

The communications blackout and the disruption of online space point to the same reality in Iran: both operate as deliberate strategies of repression embedded in the regime’s broader architecture of control and discipline.

Under these conditions, the role of Iranians in the diaspora, along with sustained international media coverage, becomes critical not only in countering the silencing of dissent within Iran, but also in resisting the systematic erasure, distortion and fragmentation of the country’s ongoing history of defiance.

Niloofar Hooman 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. Why Iran keeps turning off the internet during mass protests – https://theconversation.com/why-iran-keeps-turning-off-the-internet-during-mass-protests-273793

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Darienne Lancaster, PhD Candidate – Marine Ecology and Acoustics, University of Victoria

Have you ever wished you could swim like a fish? How about speak like one?

In a paper recently published in the Journal of Fish Biology, our team from the University of Victoria deciphered some of the strange and unique sounds made by different fish species along the coast of British Columbia.

Researchers have known for centuries that some fish make sounds, and the ancient Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle even mentioned fish sounds in his writings. However, our understanding of which sounds are made by which fish species is extremely limited because it is difficult to pinpoint where a sound comes from underwater.

To accurately identify which sound is made by which fish, our team deployed an underwater acoustic localization array at sites in Barkley Sound, B.C. The localization array was designed by our project collaborator, Xavier Mouy, and it allowed us to precisely triangulate sounds to specific co-ordinates.

Using this triangulation and paired underwater video recordings, we were able to tie fish sounds to the correct species. We identified more than 1,000 fish sounds during our study, and successfully tied those sounds to eight different rocky reef fish species: copper, quillback, black, canary and vermillion rockfish, as well as lingcod, pile perch and kelp greenling.

We were particularly excited to identify sounds for canary and vermillion rockfish since these species had never been documented making sounds.

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Read more:
Grunts, boops, chatters and squeals — fish are noisy creatures

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Differentiating fish sounds

We also wanted to investigate if different species sounds were unique enough to be differentiated from each other. We created a machine learning model using 47 different sound characteristics, like frequency (how high- or low-pitched the sound is) and duration (how long the sound is), to understand the unique differences in species calls.

For example, black rockfish make a long, growling sound similar to a frog croak, and quillback rockfish make a series of short knocks and grunts. The fish sound model was able to predict which sounds belonged to which species with up to 88 per cent accuracy. This was surprising and exciting to our team since many rocky reef fish species are very closely related.

Some fish species are known to make unique sounds during specific activities like courtship or guarding territory. Our research found that many species are also making sounds while fleeing from other fish.

For example, the copper and quillback rockfish both make significantly more grunting type sounds while being pursued by larger fish. We also documented sounds made during feeding activities and during aggressive activities like chasing.

Using sounds in future research

We also used stereo cameras in our research which allowed us to measure the length of the fish. We found that smaller fish make higher frequency (pitched) sounds than larger fish, which means scientists may eventually be able to estimate how big a fish is just by listening to its sounds. This discovery could be used in conservation in the future because estimating fish size is an important tool for effectively managing fish populations.

Our team plans to apply this research to improve marine conservation efforts. Now that we understand fish species sounds can be differentiated, there are many exciting possibilities for developing these acoustic tools into monitoring methods.

We can create species-specific fish sound detectors that will tell us where fish live without disturbing them. This has important implications for future conservation efforts, and the techniques we used can be adapted by scientists all over the world to decipher other fish calls.

Going forward, our team plans to develop a method of counting fish using acoustic recordings by examining the number of calls each species makes.

We also plan to compare the fish sounds we collected in Barkley Sound to fish calls made in other areas of British Columbia to see if fish have unique accents or dialects.

Using underwater sound recordings to study fish is highly beneficial. It is minimally invasive and acoustic recorders can collect information for months or years in hard to access or low visibility locations underwater. With more development, underwater acoustic monitoring could become an important new tool for conservationists and fisheries managers.

Darienne Lancaster has received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Fisheries and Oceans Canada Competitive Science Research Fund (CSRF). She is affiliated with Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

– ref. Scientists have identified unique sounds for 8 fish species – https://theconversation.com/scientists-have-identified-unique-sounds-for-8-fish-species-272880

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Harshit Gujral, Ph.D. Student, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto

Parts of India, including the capital Delhi, were once again covered in thick smog recently as toxic pollution from industry and crop-burning engulfed the region. Even though India’s National Clean Air Programme has advanced clean air action, air pollution remains a reoccurring problem.

Reliably protecting public health will require tighter co-ordination across orders of governments and departments. Air pollution is shaped by different economic sectors, weather, geography and siloed institutions. Single-sector fixes alone, like pausing construction or banning older vehicles, are unlikely to deliver system-wide change.

That’s why our team conducted a study to map air quality governance in India as an interconnected system, linking the parts that determine what gets measured, what gets enforced, what gets funded and what persists beyond city boundaries.

In addition to the authors of this article, our research team included Christoph Becker and Teresa Kramarz from the University of Toronto, Om Damani and Anshul Agarwal at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and Ronak Sutaria from the environmental consultant Respirer Living Sciences.

Our goal was to identify leverage points in current governance where shifts could deliver the greatest pollution-related health benefits.

If we want clean air to be a public service, we need pathways for communities to participate meaningfully. Our research argues for steady funding and training to build community monitoring literacy so accountability and action persist beyond political cycles.

Developing hyper-local monitoring

One hopeful example comes from the city of Bengaluru in the south of the country.

In this case, community groups installed monitors near schools and hospitals, using the data to spotlight the problem and seek court-mandated enforcement — underscoring the need for clear pathways to use community-generated data in enforcement.

The efforts by the communities aren’t meant to be a substitute for government enforcement. The point is to empower communities and give them a real choice in a system where they have very little voice.

The government monitors air pollution to track pollution levels over time and across locations, and to evaluate whether policies and enforcement are improving air quality.

Although India does need to scale monitoring capacities and make them equitable, we already have enough data streams from satellite observations, reference-grade monitors and low-cost sensors.

The real governance gap is in how these data streams can be used for action: standards for calibration in local conditions, quality assurance and control, and protocols for integrating evidence into enforcement and planning.

We recommend certification and quality assurance and control protocols for hyper-local monitoring so agencies can rely on the data for decisions and enforcement.

Cities elsewhere in the world have treated hyper-local monitoring as more than an awareness tool. In London, the Breathe London programme deployed hundreds of sensors alongside existing reference-grade monitors under a defined quality-assurance framework.

This data played a critical role in identifying street-level pollution hotspots, evaluating traffic interventions and assessing the impacts of policies such as the city’s Ultra Low Emission Zone. Indian governments can learn from this example.

When data is standardized for defined-decision contexts, it enables decision-making.

Governing the airshed

Air pollution does not respect regional or city boundaries. Yet, the National Clean Air Programme often assigns actions to cities, even when cities cannot control a large share of the pollution they face. For example, even when Delhi tightens local restrictions of cars or construction, at least a dozen coal-fired power plants near the city continue to operate without key pollution filters.

This is why we need governance at the airshed scale. An airshed is a region where local weather and geography, such as mountains, influence how air and pollutants move.

Governments must look at how air pollution spreads in an area, then develop rules for co-ordinating across jurisdictions. That means setting out clear roles for different departments, establishing shared data standards and creating dispute-resolution mechanisms so co-ordinated efforts can address the issue effectively.

Right now, the Clean Air Programme is centred on cutting the level of particulate matter in the air by roughly 20-30 per cent. A more actionable approach is figuring out which sectors are driving the airshed pollution — namely transport, construction, industry, power, waste and household fuels — and what sector-specific targets and timelines would actually lead to healthier air.

India’s Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), for example, was created specifically to put airshed-level management into practice across state and jurisdictional boundaries under the National Clean Air Programme.

The hardest part is assigning enforceable responsibilities across ministries (like power, transport, agriculture, industry, urban development) at the national, state and local levels, as well as across states.

For instance, agencies like CAQM (and NCAP more broadly) can take airshed-wide pollution inventories (estimates of how much pollution comes from different sources and sectors across an airshed) and translate them into short-term, sector-by-sector targets for each ministry, with deadlines and clear accountability.

Rewrite the objective to protect health

In our paper, we recommend expanding regulatory goals to include public health protection, in addition to meeting particulate matter targets. Putting health at the centre can shape governmental priorities, pushing agencies to focus first on the sources people are most exposed to.

As Ronak Sutaria, the founder and CEO of Respirer Living Sciences and a co-author of our study, told us:

“Air pollution isn’t an environmental statistic; it’s a public-health emergency that shows up in asthma, heart disease and hospital admissions. When we map air quality at the neighbourhood level and link it to health outcomes, clean air can move from a promise to a right — because communities can see what they’re breathing and what it means for their health, and that changes what polluters can get away with.”

A health-first objective also pushes governance toward equity, because exposure burdens are unevenly distributed across different segments of the population.

This an opportunity to align clean-air action with climate goals, while the up-front costs for mitigation are almost always offset by avoided health costs and higher productivity.

Airsheds differ, and so must actions to clean up the air. The value of systems thinking is that it offers a common way to understand what is limiting progress locally and design governance that fits local realities.

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. Air pollution crosses borders, and so must the policies aimed at tackling it – https://theconversation.com/air-pollution-crosses-borders-and-so-must-the-policies-aimed-at-tackling-it-273094

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Noah Eliot Vanderhoeven, PhD Candidate, Political Science, Western University

This winter’s Olympic games will not be a normal international sporting event. A cloud of geopolitical tension looms over the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, as well as the upcoming FIFA Men’s World Cup.

The tension escalated after Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum, where he spelled out his vision for a new world order for middle powers. It stood out starkly against United States President Donald Trump’s own speech at Davos, where he continued expressing his interest in acquiring Greenland from Denmark.

As a result, the 2026 Winter Olympics will likely disrupt the International Olympic Committee’s stated goal of sport bringing the world together under one banner in unique ways. Rather than muting political conflict, the Games may amplify it.

The politics behind Olympic host nations

The unifying mission of the Olympics already sits uneasily alongside previous debates over the morality of hosting the Games in repressive states. For decades, critics have argued that such regimes use the Games to improve their global image and advance their political and economic goals.

International sports events provide widespread media coverage and brand exposure. That spotlight is particularly attractive for authoritarian and repressive regimes seeking legitimacy on the world stage.

Access to a western audience provides these states with the opportunity to “sportswash” their legitimate authority through a carefully curated image.

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Read more:
How repressive regimes are using international sporting events for nation-building

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Repressive regimes have increasingly pursued this strategy. Research shows that the share of international sporting events hosted by autocracies fell from 36 per cent in 1945-88 to 15 per cent in 1989-2012, but has rebounded to 37 per cent since 2012.

Sportswashing and the Olympic bargain

Sportswashing involves the use of sport to redirect public attention away from unethical conduct. In the case of international sporting events, the aim is typically to improve the reputation of the host nation by using the immense popularity of sport to “wash” away scrutiny linked to human rights abuses or democratic backsliding.

Sportswashing can also work to establish broader global acceptance of repressive regimes, particularly when western institutions accept their wealth and acquiesce to their goals.

International sporting organizations also stand to gain from this arrangement as well. Authoritarian hosts are more likely to acquiesce to demands to build costly, single-use sport facilities, as they do not face the kind of democratic backlash that could arise after using public funds for an event that carries little public benefit.

In some cases, these regimes have even been willing to bribe officials to gain the votes necessary to win bids to host these sporting events.

From sportswashing to nationalism

There is often a symbiotic relationship between repressive regimes and international sporting organizations. However, the Milan–Cortina Games are unlikely to serve up the sportswashing narratives we have seen recently. Instead, the political stories of the 2026 Winter Olympics are likely to be more explicitly nationalist.

Sport is a powerful vehicle for national rhetoric. It can reinforce a person’s social identity or how they see themselves in relation to others by encouraging people to see themselves as a member of a team or country, and celebrating victory as a collective success or interpreting defeat as a symbolic loss.

Sport also possesses powerful symbolism that can be exploited to great affect in forming a coherent national identity. In this way, sporting events can reinforce national identity as an objective symbol that connects to primitive forms of national ideology.

Political tensions heading into Milan Cortina

In the lead-up to the 2026 Winter Olympics, a series of geopolitical flashpoints has intensified political tensions surrounding the Games. These include the U.S. invasion of Venezuela, Trump’s desire to annex both Greenland and Canada and his ongoing trade disputes with traditional allies.

Whether it’s tension between the European Union and the U.S. or between Canada and the U.S., there are many story lines that can serve as galvanizing moments for nationalist rhetoric.

The 4 Nations Face-Off, won by Canada a year ago, demonstrated how quickly Canada and the U.S. can mobilize Canadian nationalism amid tense trade negotiations. Any Olympic ice hockey matchup between the two countries will feed into the national imagination of both countries and their political leaders.

Denmark and the U.S. are also in the same group in the men’s ice hockey tournament, meaning they are guaranteed to play each other in the round-robin phase.

The men’s ice hockey tournament at the 1980 winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, served as a pivotal moment in the Cold War. When the underdog U.S. beat the favoured Soviet Union Red Army team, it was deemed the “Miracle on Ice.”

Given Trump’s threats against Greenland, a Danish territory, the Olympics matchup between the two teams could serve as Denmark’s own “miracle on ice” moment.

A medal table ripe for political spin

Beyond ice hockey, this is shaping up to be a Winter Olympics the U.S. is likely to perform quite well in. Traditional winter powerhouses Norway and Russia are both facing scandals or exclusion.

Norway, the all-time leader in medals in Winter Olympics history, is facing a massive cheating scandal in ski jumping but is generally a powerhouse in the nordic sports and skiing events. Russian athletes remain barred from competing under their national flag due to the war in Ukraine and are only permitted to participate as vetted Individual Neutral Athletes.

Trump is likely to make a big deal about any strong American performance, framing any success in contrast to both the EU and Canada.

During his second term in office, Trump has welcomed numerous athletes to the White House and publicly linked sporting success to national strength. He celebrated American participation at the Ryder Cup golf tournament and the 4 Nations Face-off, even when those contests ended in U.S. defeats.

A successful Winter Olympics could therefore provide political capital at a sensitive moment. Amid his attack on Venezuela and stated goal of acquiring Greenland, major soccer countries and EU powerbrokers — including France and Germany — have started to tentatively reconsider their participation in the 2026 Men’s World Cup, hosted in large part by the U.S.

But first, the 2026 Winter Olympics will serve up a menu of matchups that stand to serve the nationalist goals of Trump, Carney and leaders across the European Union.

Noah Eliot Vanderhoeven 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. Geopolitics will cast a long shadow over the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympic Games – https://theconversation.com/geopolitics-will-cast-a-long-shadow-over-the-2026-milan-cortina-winter-olympic-games-273764

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By The Conversation Canada, The Conversation

Guilt is often treated as a feeling to turn away from, something that is detrimental to our pursuit of happiness. But Chris Moore, psychologist and professor in Dalhousie University’s department of psychology and neuroscience, argues that guilt can be a powerful force for accountability, repair and healing. In his new book, The Power of Guilt: Why We Feel It and Its Surprising Ability to Heal, Moore challenges popular assumptions about guilt and explains why this uncomfortable, even painful, feeling may be one of our most socially useful emotions.

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The Conversation Canada: From an evolutionary perspective, why does guilt exist at all? What function does it serve?

Chris Moore: Guilt is a complex set of emotions. One of those emotions is fear for the health of a relationship. Second is empathy. If you do something to hurt somebody else, you feel sadness for them. Then third is remorse — the wish that we hadn’t done it. Those three emotions combined into a cocktail is guilt.

Human beings are arguably the most social of all species, and social networks depend upon healthy relationships between individuals. You have to have mechanisms for keeping social networks healthy because, inevitably, there’s going to be conflict. Guilt is one of those mechanisms. It serves to motivate the individual to repair relationships that are important to them. Psychopathic individuals don’t feel guilt, for example, and the corollary of that is that they tend to have dysfunctional relationships.

TCC: You distinguish between shame and guilt. What is the difference, and why is the distinction important?

CM: Guilt is feeling bad about something that you did (an action), whereas shame is feeling bad about yourself (being a bad person). Shame is more person-focused; guilt is more action-focused. And if you think about what those emotions are for and how they motivate our behaviour, they can have different effects.

If you feel guilt because you performed a bad action, then you can work to heal that by reaching out and apologizing, for example. Shame makes people shy away from relationships because they feel like they’re a bad person. Shame is much more destructive, particularly for relationships.

TCC: You argue that guilt is not a harmful emotion. How so? Why, then, has guilt developed such a bad reputation?

CM: The ultimate point of guilt is to motivate us to try to heal our relationships. That’s why guilt is good for us if we act on it honestly and with genuine motives, although it feels bad. But I do want to emphasize that there are two sides. The antidote to guilt is forgiveness from the other person.

There are a number of reasons for its bad reputation. One is that it feels bad, and so we don’t want to experience it. We may try to ignore it, or we may try to push it away or not act on it. Additionally, it’s often associated with objectively bad things — things that have been deemed to be bad actions by society, whether that’s through religion or through the law. The notion of guilt under the law, for example, is that you’ve done a bad thing and that you need to be punished for it. That is a negative connotation.

TCC: What should we do with guilt when we feel it in the moment? Lean into it? Question it?

CM: Certainly lean into it. I do want to emphasize, however, that guilt is a gut reaction, so we also need to interrogate its accuracy. Do we really have responsibility in the situation for the harm that has come to the relationship that we care about? That’s especially important in situations where other people may be inclined to take advantage of our guilt through guilt-tripping, or what is called guilt induction.

Have you done all that you should do in the context from which the guilt arose? If you have, then you need to be able to let go of the guilt. That is an important part of it because people who are very guilt-prone — people-pleasers or people who score very high on agreeableness — tend to feel guilt a lot. It may not always be justified, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t feel it.

TCC: How do power dynamics in families shape how guilt is experienced?

CM: The origin of guilt, according to Freudian psychoanalytic thought, is that the child first feels guilt in relation to their parents — something that they did which led to anger from their parents. Guilt can arise when there’s an asymmetry in power, but if you’re feeling guilt all the time in the context of a particular relationship, then it may not be you.

That can happen in child-parent relationships, particularly when parents have a very strong sense of filial obligation, which means that the children should be doing what the parents say they should be doing. And if they use guilt to achieve those ends, that can quickly lead to resentment as the child ages into adolescence and adulthood. That is quite a toxic situation for child-parent relationships, and it can lead to estrangement. Estrangement is obviously very unfortunate, but the question becomes: is it for the best?

TCC: How does guilt intersect with collective responsibility such as historical guilt tied to colonialism?

The term “collective guilt” was popularized after the Holocaust in the context of German guilt. Collective guilt has two aspects. “Objective collective guilt” can be thought of as a legal form of guilt. For example, after the Second World War, Germany accepted its collective guilt for the Holocaust and paid reparations to the state of Israel for what was done to the Jewish population. But then there is also the “subjective collective guilt,” which is the guilt that individual people may feel because of their identification with the group that did the damage.

Interestingly, subjective collective guilt can occur in people who have no individual responsibility for those acts. There was a great increase in German guilt in the 1970s in the generation born after the Second World War, for example. There is no clear antidote for subjective collective guilt. There’s nothing you can do, ultimately, that will lead to forgiveness because there’s nobody who can actually act on behalf of the group that was oppressed to offer that forgiveness. There are a number of writers, for example, who have written on white guilt, in relation to racial issues, being dysfunctional.

There’s no point in continuing to harbour collective guilt if you’ve done all that can be done. Now, determining whether you’ve done all that can be done … that is complicated.

This interview has been condensed for length and edited for clarity.

The Conversation Canada 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. Book Talk: Q&A with a psychologist who argues ‘guilt is a helpful emotion, not a harmful one’ – https://theconversation.com/book-talk-qanda-with-a-psychologist-who-argues-guilt-is-a-helpful-emotion-not-a-harmful-one-274001