Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Daniel Sims, Associate Professor of First Nations Studies; Adjunct Professor of Education, University of Northern British Columbia

The small community of Arviat, Nvt., has reportedly been selected to host the main campus of Inuit Nunangat University, the first Inuit-led university in Canada. The institution is expected to open in 2030.

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), which represents Canada’s 70,000 Inuit, passed a resolution to develop the university in 2017, “marking a significant step toward self-determination in higher education.”

The vision and plans for the university reflect a common saying among the Indigenous Peoples of the Prairies: “Education is the new buffalo.” It alludes to the importance of buffalo to Indigenous Peoples prior to the animal’s near-extinction in the late 19th century, and the importance placed on education today.

This emphasis on education is partly a response to colonial policies that systematically denied Indigenous Peoples access to quality education for generations.

The consequences of that history are still seen today. While there is a gap in employment rates between Indigenous and non-Indigenous adults overall, the gap essentially disappears for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

In this context, the establishment of a university is more than the creation of educational institution. It’s a way to combat the injustices of the past and develop the Indigenous economy, which also helps fund Indigenous self-determination.

Not the first Indigenous university

Inuit Nunangat University will not be the first Indigenous-led university in Canada. That distinction is most often attributed to the First Nations University of Canada in Saskatchewan, which started as the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College in 1976.

The university itself does not appear to claim the distinction on its website, perhaps because of the long history of Indigenous-led post-secondary institutions that predate or parallel it across Canada, from the Wilp Wilxo’oskwhl Nisga’a Institute in Gitwinksihlkw, B.C., which is federated with the University of Northern British Columbia, to Kiuna College in Odanak, Que.

The existence of these institutions reinforces the value Indigenous Peoples see in education — a statement that may surprise those who associate Indigenous education primarily with the residential school system.

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National Day for Truth and Reconciliation: Universities need to revisit their founding stories

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Yet, as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report mdae clear, the schools were incredibly poor at actually educating Indigenous children; those who succeeded academically did so despite the system rather than because of it. The schools were designed primarily around assimilation and labour, not academic learning.

That failure, and the determination to correct it, is one of the reasons why members of Saddle Lake Cree Nation occupied the Blue Quills Indian Residential School in Alberta in 1970 and demanded the right to run it themselves

After a 17-day sit-in, then-minister of Indian Affairs Jean Chrétien transferred operations to the Blue Quills Native Education Council. The council eventually transformed it into the Indigenous-run and operated University nuhelot’įne thaiyot’į nistameyimâkanah Blue Quills.

Education as a form of investment

Many First Nations, Métis nations and Inuit communities fund post-secondary education for their members, often through partnerships with Indigenous Services Canada. There is a broad recognition that investing in education benefits the nation and community, and the number of Indigenous Peoples obtaining a bachelor’s degree or higher has been increasing.

That is one reason for the numerous Indigenous led post-secondary institutions across Canada. Another is that, while Indigenous Peoples are theoretically free to attend any post-secondary institution in the world, many institutions are not located near their communities.

This matters more than it might initially appear. According to the 2021 Census, there is a clear correlation between remoteness and lower levels of post-secondary education. The share of Indigenous adults with a post-secondary qualification was significantly higher in areas closer to economic centres.

Building schools to be closer to home, rather than expecting Indigenous students to travel or move away from home, is the logic behind Inuit Nunangat University.

Designing from the inside out

There are also benefits to having institutions under Indigenous control. Indigenous-led post-secondary institutions can develop curriculum and programs that are directly tailored to the needs and desires of their communities.

They also treat Indigenous knowledge systems as foundational rather than supplementary. For generations, Indigenous ways of knowing were delegitimized. Western disciplines defined what counted as knowledge, and Indigenous Peoples who entered those institutions were expected to set aside their own epistemologies.

Most Canadian universities are attempting to address this through changes grouped under the term “Indigenization,” but questions remain about whether such changes actually address underlying colonial structures or simply work around them.

Indigenous post-secondary institutions are, in principle, better positioned to make more fundamental changes. Nowhere is this better seen than in the six proposed faculties of Inuit Nunangat University, which reflects an Inuit take on programs and courses that differs from the standard structure of Canadian universities. This includes Inuktut language immersion.

Other Indigenous institutions have already led the way on language-based degrees. The Nicola Valley Institute of Technology and the aforementioned Wilp Wilxo’oskwhl Nisga’a Institute have created language-based degrees for Nłe?kepmx and Nisga’a in partnership with the University of British Columbia and University of Northern British Columbia respectively.

A barrier dismantled

Between 1876, when the Indian Act was first passed into law, until its 1920 amendment, status Indians lost their Indian status if they earned a degree and/or worked in certain professions.

For decades after, the most significant barrier to education was the failure of the Indian Residential School system to actually educate Indigenous children. Both forms of exclusion have now been formally dismantled, though their effects persist in the gaps that remain.

More and more Indigenous Peoples are pursuing post-secondary education, and institutions designed specifically to support that pursuit are a central part of how those gaps close. The Inuit Nunangat University, opening in Arviat in 2030, will be part of that process.

Daniel Sims is a member of the Tsay Keh Dene First Nations. Currently he holds an Insight Grant as well as an Explore Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to research failed economic developments and concepts of wilderness in Tsek’ehne traditional territory (the Finlay-Parsnip watershed).

– ref. Canada’s first Inuit-led university is coming to Nunavut — here’s why it matters – https://theconversation.com/canadas-first-inuit-led-university-is-coming-to-nunavut-heres-why-it-matters-281616

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Stuart Phillips, Professor, Kinesiology, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Skeletal Muscle Health, McMaster University

Health Canada recently warned Canadians not to buy or inject unauthorized peptide drugs sold online, naming products that include BPC-157, CJC-1295, ipamorelin, TB-500 and retatrutide.

The advisory notes these products are being marketed online and on social media for anti-aging, weight loss, injury recovery, sleep, mental focus and general “wellness,” and that Health Canada has already seized several of them.

Peptides, short chains of amino acids (the building blocks of protein), are no longer marketed only to bodybuilders and elite athletes.

A scroll on Instagram and TikTok quickly reveals a broader wellness market in which influencers, including medical doctors, naturopaths and personal trainers, pitch compounds such as BPC-157 and TB-500. The hook? These self-injected compounds are recovery shortcuts, reduce wrinkles, “melt” belly fat and are “anti-aging” with strong and incredible effects.

The problem? Few, if any, of these substances have been tested in human trials.

As a case example, body protective compound 157 (BPC-157) is scientifically interesting. Reviews published in 2025 describe a body of research dominated by animal and cell studies, with signals suggesting effects on angiogenesis (the growth of blood vessels), growth-factor signalling (mainly growth hormone) and musculoskeletal healing.

In one systematic review, 544 papers were screened, 36 met the inclusion criteria, and 35 of those were in rodents or cells; only one involved humans in a musculoskeletal context.

Plausible hypotheses

That is the tension at the heart of the current peptide boom: plausible biology can generate excitement long before it generates reliable clinical evidence. Caution is warranted because animal findings do not reliably map onto what happens in people. Molecular pathway diagrams and rodent healing results are useful for generating scientific hypotheses, but they aren’t evidence that a product improves outcomes in human patients.

Most potential products tested in rodents do not make it to market. The “translational squeeze” — the number of products that begin rodent trials compared to the number that successfully progress from rodent trials to human trials, and from human trials to regulatory approval — is estimated to be greater than 20 to one.

Published human evidence for BPC-157 remains trivial. A retrospective knee-pain report included 16 patients; an interstitial cystitis pilot trial enrolled 12 women; and a recent intravenous safety pilot involved just two healthy adults.

These studies are too small and poorly controlled to establish whether the peptide outperforms natural recovery, the placebo effect or conventional rehabilitation. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled hamstring-strain trial has now been registered, which is exactly the kind of study still missing from the evidence and efficacy base.

Placebo effect and regression to mean

The social power of peptide testimonials is easy to understand. Pain, soreness and recovery are subjective and highly variable outcomes.

The U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health notes that randomized, placebo-controlled trials are the gold standard because they help determine whether apparent improvement is due to the treatment or to chance. Harvard Health puts the related point bluntly: placebo effects can ease symptoms like pain, fatigue and nausea, but they do not shrink tumours or lower cholesterol.

Symptoms that are severe when people first seek help often improve by the time they are next measured, simply because of natural fluctuation, a phenomenon known as regression to the mean. So when someone injects BPC-157 and feels better two weeks later, several explanations compete: time, rehabilitation, expectation (the person has just spent money on a peptide and perhaps publicly committed to trying it), and regression to the mean. A testimonial saying “it worked,” can generate a hypothesis; it cannot settle causation.

For these reasons, regulatory warnings deserve more attention than influencer enthusiasm. Health Canada states that unauthorized injectable peptides are illegal in Canada, have not been assessed for safety, efficacy or quality, and may contain too much, too little or none of the claimed ingredient.

Notably, labels such as “For Research Use Only, Not for Human Consumption” do not make these products legal for human use.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) classified BPC-157 as Category 2 for compounding due to adverse immune system reactions, peptide-related impurities and insufficient safety information to determine whether it would cause harm when administered to humans.

Purity certificates and conspiracy theories

A common rejoinder from people buying peptides online is that third-party certificates of analysis show the powder they receive is pure and free of contaminants. That reassurance does not survive scrutiny.

The “third-party” labs that produce these reports are often the vendors themselves and offer assurances of 98 per cent purity, which might seem impressive but would not meet any reasonable drug standards. And what exactly is the other two per cent? The consumer is asked to take the claims of purity as proof, while the peptide-related impurities that concern regulators remain invisible to the end user.

There is a deeper irony embedded in this practice: if buyers believed these products were safe, properly characterized and manufactured to the standards expected of pharmaceutical-grade products, they would not need to commission independent purity tests. The reliance on outside certificates of analysis is itself an admission that the normal guardrails of identity, potency, sterility and quality control are absent.

The conspiracy theory is that useful peptides are ignored by pharma companies because peptide drugs cannot be patented and become real medicines. The facts do not support that.

Semaglutide (used in GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy) is a peptide drug, and tesamorelin is an FDA-approved synthetic growth hormone-releasing factor analogue. Peptide therapeutics are not an exotic category that mainstream drug development cannot handle.

What makes BPC-157 different is not that peptide medicine is impossible. But it’s been more than three decades since researchers began studying BPC-157, and public evidence remains dominated by animal- and cell-based papers and small human pilot studies. Journalistic investigation has also noted that much of the BPC-157 literature traces back to a single Croatian research group, another reason to be careful about mistaking repetition for independent confirmation.

Safety concerns

Jurisdictional and approval rules vary across regulators, but a global scan reveals that only a scant few peptides in BPC-157’s broader therapeutic class have achieved any clinically approved use.

A recent FDA 503A update in the U.S. should not be mistaken for a change in that picture. The FDA’s current safety page continues to cite concerns about immunogenicity, peptide impurities and limited safety data, and the agency has stated that a substance may still pose significant safety risks.

BPC-157 or other peptides may yet prove useful for a specific condition, at a specific dose and route of administration. The right response is not to dismiss that possibility, but to insist on the blinded, placebo-controlled human trials that could actually settle the question.

Until then, buying vials of dry powder, reconstituting it in sterile water, and injecting the cocktail with online-purchased needles will not provide proof of anything. It is high-risk, uncontrolled human self-experimentation.

Stuart Phillips owns shares in Exerkine. He receives funding from Nestle, Optimum Nutrition, Danone, and Nutricia. He is affiliated with WndrHlth, Liquid IV, and Myomar.

– ref. The peptide problem: Hype is outrunning the evidence – https://theconversation.com/the-peptide-problem-hype-is-outrunning-the-evidence-280715

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Nurul Hassan Mohammad, PhD Candidate, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Generative AI has become a part of everyday student life in Canada. While institutions focus on misconduct and detection, a deeper shift is happening, one that concerns identity.

A recent KPMG Canada report finds that 73 per cent of students use generative AI for schoolwork, and nearly half say it is their “first instinct.” Also significant is the finding that many students also report feeling uneasy, worried that their use may be seen as cheating.

The study is based on a survey of 684 university, college, vocational and high school students within a larger sample of 3,804 Canadians (aged 18+), on how people are adopting generative AI.

In my doctoral research on STEM education in Ontario colleges, I’m exploring how AI is transforming not only how students write but also how they perceive voice, legitimacy and what it means to be themselves.

Academic policies can define what constitutes cheating, but they do not address a more subtle concern: if AI helped write my assignment, will I still be seen as capable, and will my work represent me?

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What are the key purposes of human writing? How we name AI-generated text confuses things

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Identity takes shape through writing

Writing is more than a technical skill. It is one of the primary ways students structure and elaborate ideas, demonstrate competence and position themselves as emerging professionals.

This is particularly significant in STEM, where programs are often closely linked to specific career paths. Students are expected to begin positioning themselves as future professionals through how they communicate and present knowledge.

At the same time, STEM fields are often seen as primarily technical or data-driven, with writing treated as secondary. Yet research shows that communication is central to scientific practice, shaping how knowledge is constructed, interpreted and shared.

AI is part of envisioning career paths

Even beyond this, when science students write assignments, they also undertake what social and cultural theorists describe as “identity work.”

Through writing, students build narratives that let them explore how they might belong in particular worlds or professional fields. In my research, I examine how STEM programs operate as cultural worlds with implicit rules about what counts as smart, credible and legitimate participation.

Students interpret rules and adjust how they portray themselves in their work. This identity work is shaped by prior experiences, confidence with disciplinary language and alignment between personal interests and the STEM career paths they see as being available to them. AI is now part of that process.

‘Kinda generic’

In my research, I have observed college STEM classes, taken field notes and spoken with a cohort of students multiple times over a two year period about their work.

I often hear a version of the same concern: the AI-generated draft is technically strong, but “it does not sound like me.” This concern reflects the insight that “voice” or “sound” in writing is a signal of legitimacy.

In my collaborative work on cultivating student agency, I use the idea of “becoming alive within science education” to describe moments when students can bring more of themselves — their perspectives, ways of thinking and experiences — into how they learn and express ideas.

Yet institutions often favour more standardized forms of writing. AI can intensify this by making a fluent, generic style instantly available. For some students, this lowers barriers and supports access. For others, it feels like self-erasure.

One student put it this way:

“It’s better writing, yeah, it sounds good and helps get a better grade. But it’s kinda generic. Like anyone could’ve written it, not just me.”

This recurring pattern in the data points to a broader tension: phrasing, structure and tone in writing carry traces of identity, traces AI can smooth or erase.

How we think about ourselves

Many of us have likely noticed that AI tools can improve the quality and efficiency of writing and may also lead to more uniform outputs, reducing variation in how ideas are expressed. These concerns are echoed in education guidance.

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Slanguage: Why AI’s stylistic negation — ‘it’s not X, it’s Y’ — is both annoying and doesn’t work

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UNESCO warns that AI systems can shape how knowledge is produced and expressed, raising questions about human agency and originality. Canadian policy discussions similarly highlight both the opportunities and risks of AI for student learning and authorship.

Taken together, these insights suggest how beyond only assisting human writing, AI shapes how voice is expressed and how we think about ourselves.

Policy catching up

Canadian post-secondary institutions are still determining their approach to AI.

Many policies aim to balance flexibility with oversight, allowing limited AI use while emphasizing disclosure and addressing risks such as fabricated citations, bias and privacy issues.

Yet institutions also acknowledge challenges in enforcement.

As policies evolve, uncertainty remains. Students must navigate what is permitted, what constitutes their work and whether it truly reflects who they are.

STEM and belonging

In Canada, participation in STEM fields remains uneven across gender and other social dimensions such as race, Indigenous identity, socioeconomic status and immigrant background.

Many students already question whether they belong, making recognition deeply consequential.

If AI-generated writing becomes the implicit standard for “good work,” students may begin to locate competence in the tool rather than in themselves.

Students who rely on AI may question the authenticity of their success, while those who avoid it may feel at a disadvantage.

What can educators do?

Rethinking learning design is important. Students should not have to guess what is acceptable. Assessments should focus on process that makes students’ thinking visible, not just product.

Significantly, writing in one’s own voice must be treated as a skill worth developing.

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In practice, this can be as simple as asking students to explain how they used AI in an assignment, or compare an AI-generated paragraph with their own and discuss what changed in tone, clarity and reasoning.

Instructors might also ask students to revise AI-polished text so it reflects their own thinking, or to identify where their interpretation and uncertainty matter. These and other small shifts help foreground not only what students produce but also how they think and position themselves in their work.

AI is here to stay. The question is whether STEM classrooms will help students use these tools without losing their voice, their agency and their sense of belonging.

Nurul Hassan Mohammad 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. College students are noticing their AI-smoothed writing sounds strong — and not like them – https://theconversation.com/college-students-are-noticing-their-ai-smoothed-writing-sounds-strong-and-not-like-them-279436

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Guillermo Candiz, Assistant Professor, Human Plurality, Université de l’Ontario français

Since January 2025, the Donald Trump administration in the United States has signed bilateral agreements with 27 governments to deport migrants to countries where they have no ties.

This process is known as third-country deportation, and it’s created a system that operates as migration deterrence. These agreements also transfer responsibility for managing migrant lives to the Global South.

In February 2025, the Trump administration sent two chartered planes carrying 200 people from countries like Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and China to San José, Costa Rica.

During our ongoing research that involved fieldwork in Costa Rica in 2025, we interviewed two families who were on board one of the planes. They had been shackled during the flight.

Alerted that the first deportation from the U.S. was to take place, Costa Rican journalists and human rights activists awaited the arrival at the airport. The Costa Rican agents closed the window blinds of the planes before removing the shackles.

Migrants given no information

As the migrants we interviewed told us — and as documented by Human Rights Watch — none of the people sent to Costa Rica spoke Spanish. They weren’t informed where the flights were headed or where they’d be taken upon arrival. No translators were present when the first plane landed, and only a few were available upon the arrival of the second flight.

U.S. authorities expelled the migrants without giving them the opportunity to apply for asylum. Although some third-country deportations had occurred prior to February 2025, they had typically been carried out on a much smaller scale.

The deportation of non‑citizens to Costa Rica set the stage for 27 bilateral agreements later signed by the Trump administration with governments across Latin America, Africa and Central Asia. What initially appeared to be an exceptional measure had, within a year, become a preferred approach to migration management.

‘Border spectacle’

In 2025, the U.S. deported approximately 675,000 people. Among them, around 15,000, or two per cent of the total, were sent to third countries.

Given the relatively low numbers involved, the objective is not the removal of large populations of unwanted migrants. Instead, these deportations function as what American migration scholar Nicholas De Genova terms “the border spectacle of migrant victimization.”

Such spectacles are designed to generate fear. They encourage some asylum-seekers already in the country to leave and aim to deter others from attempting to cross into the U.S. altogether.

The principle rationale for this border regime was made explicit by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in July 2025: “The further away, the better, so they can’t come back across the border.”

This statement wasn’t just rhetoric — it reflected U.S. policy.

Creating uncertainty about where migrants might be sent — whether Eswatini, South Sudan, Rwanda, Costa Rica or Cameroon — was central to the strategy. It served both to deter would-be migrants in their home countries and to pressure those already in the U.S. to pursue what the administration called “self-deportations.”

Why do Global South states sign on?

To push countries in the Global South to accept deportation agreements for non-nationals, the U.S. relies on four forms of pressure: direct payments, visa restrictions, tariff threats and conditions on foreign aid.

Ghana, for example, secured the lifting of consular restrictions in August 2025 after agreeing to co-operate on deportations.

When Costa Rica signed its third-country deportation agreement in March 2026, President Rodrigo Chaves stated that he was “helping the economically powerful brother of the North” in order to avoid American tariffs on Costa Rican free-trade zones.

Eswatini agreed to receive deportees in exchange for financial transfers and improvements in its bilateral relationship with the U.S. Rwanda, for its part, capitalized symbolically on the model by incorporating it into its regional diplomatic strategy.

Taking on costs

Yet these negotiations are deeply one-sided. While the countries in questions may achieve short‑term gains, they also take on additional, uncompensated costs.

As we learned through our interviews of migrants in Costa Rica, for example, 85 migrants of the approximated 200 received in February 2025 remained in the Central American country. That’s because they could not return to their countries of origin for fear of persecution, imprisonment or forced military recruitment.

Some later resumed their journey to the U.S. and successfully claimed asylum there. Others required access to medical care, work permits and other forms of assistance.

Beyond granting temporary residency permits with limited rights, Costa Rica lacks the resources to ensure the safety and security of these migrants and to adequately address their needs.

The Trump administration’s reduction in international humanitarian aid has further undermined Costa Rica’s refugee protection regime.

For migrants, this state of prolonged waiting marked by legal uncertainty has resulted in psychological distress. Several interviewees reported panic attacks, depression and insomnia.

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How international aid cuts are eroding refugee protections in the Global South

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Beyond the United States

This emerging border regime is not uniquely American. In March 2026, the European Parliament endorsed the so-called return hubs mechanism, which opens the door to offshoring asylum processing.

Italy, for example, has had migrant detention hubs in Albania for more than a year.

Canada has reconfirmed its own Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S.

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Canada also passed Bill C-2 and Bill C-12 in 2025, legislation that substantially restricts access to asylum. What’s more, it reduced its refugee resettlement targets by 30 per cent for the 2026–28 period.

This doesn’t constitute a replication of the U.S. model, but it does reflect a convergence. Different mechanisms are increasingly aligned in the same direction: the progressive erosion of the right to asylum.

Mobilization

It’s therefore important to ask whether some refugee claimants deported to the U.S. may subsequently face third‑country deportations to other states.

In March 2026, more than 30 human rights organizations issued a joint statement calling for an end to chain deportations to Costa Rica. It explicitly accused the Costa Rican state as being complicit in — and directly responsible for — American violations of its asylum law and its international obligations under the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, protests recently erupted against the anticipated deportation of 1,100 Afghans from the U.S. to the country.

UN human rights experts have also expressed alarm about the risk of torture, enforced disappearance or arbitrary deprivation of life in some third countries.

Across the globe, migration scholars, human rights organizations and allies must do more than voice concern — they need to co-ordinate, organize and actively resist this emerging border regime before it becomes entrenched.

Guillermo Candiz receives funding from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)

Tanya Basok receives funding from Social Science and Humanities Research Council

– ref. ‘The farther away, the better’ is the problematic logic behind U.S. third-country deportations – https://theconversation.com/the-farther-away-the-better-is-the-problematic-logic-behind-u-s-third-country-deportations-281687

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Nathan Murray, Assistant Professor, Department of English and History, Algoma University

Imagine two identical spoons. One is hand-wrought from silver by a skilled metalworker. The other, a base-metal facsimile, was mass-produced by a machine. Which would you value more? Most of us would say the handmade spoon.

In 1899, more than a century ago, American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen used this very example to explain how we assign value, or his theory of conspicuous consumption, in which he contended that bourgeois consumption was driven primarily by a desire to display wealth to others. Even if these spoons were indistinguishable, explained Veblen, the hand-made spoon, once identified, would be more highly valued.

This is in part because “the hand-wrought spoon gratifies our taste, our sense of the beautiful, while that made by machinery out of base metal has no useful office beyond a brute efficiency.” But for Veblen there is another factor more important than any aesthetic judgment: costliness.

The hand-wrought spoon is preferred above all, Veblen suggested, because it is a means of demonstrating wealth. However, as we enter a world in which almost anything, including art, writing and music, can be machine-wrought, it seems that Veblen may have misjudged his spoons.

We don’t value human creations solely for their beauty or their price tag. We also value them because they embody deliberate labour and expertise.

AI-generated writing is judged differently

Our own research has shown that even highly trained writing educators cannot reliably distinguish between AI-generated and human-written essays. In fact, one study has shown that general audiences may actually prefer blander AI-generated poetry over more difficult, human-written poetry.

But while public taste may favour the simple and formulaic, the disclosure of artificial authorship is enough to make most people recoil.

In a recent study involving a series of experiments, participants were asked to compare pieces of AI-generated creative writing, including poetry and fiction. In each case, they were told that some passages were human-written and some were AI-generated. Across 16 experiments, respondents consistently devalued the writing labelled as AI-generated.

The authors of the study call this the “AI disclosure penalty.” It is possible to conclude from the study that audiences unfairly judge AI-generated content, but we disagree. This bias towards human creation is inherent to our relationship with art. When people believe something was made by a machine, they like it less.

Some argue that AI can democratize creativity by lowering barriers to production and enabling more people to participate in cultural expression. But the evidence suggests that when authorship becomes effortless, perceived value declines.

The importance of effort and experience

Art costs something. Both John Milton and James Joyce believed that their writing had cost them their eyesight. John Keats believed that the emotional exertion of writing poetry would worsen his tuberculosis and cost him his life. They kept writing anyway. We resent the machine because its creations cost it nothing.

When an algorithm generates a story about heartbreak or an essay on human struggle, it is trading in stolen emotions. AI has never felt pain, suffered a loss or wrestled with the frustration of a blank page, so its output, no matter how technically smooth, feels fundamentally deceptive.

People hate the idea of being moved by a parlour trick. In addition, many of us have a deep, instinctive revulsion to the industrialization of our inner lives. As Joanna Maciejewska observed, “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.”

We happily accept machines stamping out our car parts and toasters because efficiency is the goal, but applying that same cold logic to human expression strips away the vulnerability, risk and stakes that make art mean anything in the first place.

This becomes more consequential as AI-generated content floods the digital media landscape.

Why human work is becoming more valuable

Our media ecosystem has evolved so that paying directly for much of the content we consume is optional. In an era of streaming music, television and film, we rarely own the product we consume, and creators receive pennies on the dollar compared to previous economic models.

To make matters worse, media companies are increasingly pushing AI-generated content in the form of tens of thousands of social media posts, books, podcasts and videos every day and encouraging artists and content creators to supercharge the quantity of their output by relying on AI.

Much of this output is highly formulaic — produced at scale and designed for rapid, low-engagement consumption. It is an endless, flavourless paste of clichés and nonsense, meant to be mindlessly consumed by doomscrolling thumbs and immediately forgotten. Despite working in an era in which payment is optional amid a deluge of slop, many artists, journalists and writers are making a living because enough of their audience chooses to support the work of real human creators.

The “AI disclosure penalty” reminds us that the consumption of art is not tied to purely aesthetic considerations but involves a need to connect with and appreciate the effort and labour of others.

Consumers have long been willing to pay more for goods labelled “handmade,” “handcrafted,” “artisanal” or “bespoke” on the understanding that those goods were made using traditional techniques that took more effort and human skill.

As generative AI turns writing, art and digital media into frictionless, infinitely replicable outputs, human cognitive effort is undergoing a profound shift. It is becoming an artisanal good that consumers must choose to support and value.

The Industrial Revolution transformed hand-made furniture and hand-woven textiles into premium markers of craftsmanship and authenticity. The AI revolution is doing something similar for intellectual and creative labour — audiences are beginning to place a premium not necessarily on the competent execution of a poem or an essay, which a machine can generate in seconds, but on the invisible friction, the lived experience and the deliberate toil of the human mind behind it.

In a landscape increasingly saturated with instant content, the verified effort of a human creator is shifting from a baseline expectation to a highly coveted, bespoke quality. Ultimately, what we value about art is not whether it’s perfect, but its ability to connect us with another human being.

Nathan Murray has received funding for his research from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Elisa Tersigni has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

– ref. In the age of AI, human creative output is becoming a luxury – https://theconversation.com/in-the-age-of-ai-human-creative-output-is-becoming-a-luxury-276514

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Amir Bahman Radnejad, Chair and Associate Professor of Innovation and Marketing, Mount Royal University

Rostam does not sleep through the night anymore. At 2 a.m., when his phone buzzes, he’s awake before the sound finishes. It might be his parents calling from Tehran, on a connection that is unreliable, sporadic and sometimes cut off mid-sentence. He has learned not to miss those calls, because the next one may not come for days.

Rostam is a pseudonym for a participant in our ongoing research study on diaspora workers, but his experience is one that many workers across Canada will recognize.

Rostam checks the news constantly, piecing together what is happening. Since the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran in late February, the conflict has escalated rapidly. By 4 a.m., he has been awake for two hours. This is hypervigilance: the body monitoring a threat it cannot act on and refusing to stand down.

When the call does come through, the relief is physical. They are alive. They speak carefully, partly to protect him and partly because the call may be monitored. He hears his father’s voice and thinks this could be the last time.

In the morning, he will go to work. He will sit in meetings, contribute to agendas and make sure his face doesn’t betray what he’s feeling — a competency that has always served him well.

He doesn’t speak about any of this at work. To talk about it risks being regarded as a representative of a country he has complicated feelings about or as importing politics into a space that doesn’t want them. So he says nothing. That silence is the problem.

The invisible cost at work

Decades of research have established that code-switching — the constant calibration of self-presentation across cultural contexts — carries a real psychological toll on workers. It can contribute to stress, anxiety, burnout and costly errors in judgment at work.

These impacts often remain invisible to employers until the damage has already been done to both the individual and the organization.

Diaspora employees who are struggling don’t signal it in ways that trigger organizational concern. They manage, but at considerable personal cost. These costs accumulate in ways that surface slowly and are almost always misattributed. Declining engagement is read as a shift in attitude, and withdrawal is interpreted as a personality change.

In some cases, employees do not withdraw at all. Instead, they bury themselves in work and appear by every visible metric to be thriving. Managers have no reason to look closer until the break happens.

This isn’t a problem that diversity, equity and inclusion programs can solve as they exist, because it’s not about inclusion or diversity. It’s a perceptual problem: leaders don’t see what diaspora employees are managing and therefore cannot respond to it.

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Read more:
Diaspora communities carry the burden of watching war from afar

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A condition without a name

This challenge extends well beyond Canada’s Iranian community, which numbered approximately 200,000 people in the 2021 census. Many other diaspora communities, including Ukrainians, Palestinians, Sudanese, Afghans and Syrians, are navigating similar terrain.

A 2025 study found higher rates of severe depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder among diaspora Tigrayans in Australia than among people inside the war zone itself.

People inside a conflict zone often suppress their own fear to protect family members living through it with them. Members of the diaspora, by contrast, often cannot meaningfully assist those in immediate danger, which creates a profound sense of helplessness. At the same time, those around them may not recognize the fear and distress they’re concealing.

Aitak Sorahi, an Iranian Canadian, tried to explain what she was living through to a reporter at The Canadian Press in April as U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to destroy Iran unless it agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. She could not find the words. “I don’t even know how to describe my feeling,” she said, “because I don’t have a name for it.”

We propose one: diaspora distress, a framework emerging from our ongoing research and organizational practice.

Diaspora distress

Diaspora distress is the psychological burden carried by people living in one country while their homeland — and the family, friends and memories embedded there — are under active geopolitical threat. Often, this burden is compounded by the policies or rhetoric of their host country’s own government.

The feeling sits closest to grief, but the comparison only goes so far. Grief has a fixed point — a death, a diagnosis, a loss that has occurred and can be named. It comes with a recognized social script: people sit together and are able to share memories of the deceased. Diaspora distress offers no comparable ritual because the loss one is anticipating may or may not arrive.

In addition, diaspora communities are not monolithic. Outsiders often assume a shared solidarity, but geopolitical crises tend to deepen existing internal divisions about what intervention means, who is to blame and what liberation looks like. The people who should be each other’s community of grief often find themselves on opposite sides of an argument.

The result is that diaspora employees are frequently alone with this in every environment they occupy: at work, at home and within communities that might otherwise support them. That isolation is the specific nature of diaspora distress.

What organizations should do

Developing the capacity to recognize diaspora distress does not require expertise in geopolitics or new policy infrastructure. It requires language: the organizational decision to name what some employees are carrying as a recognized condition.

Institutional acknowledgement works differently than other supports because it removes the requirement that employees claim what they’re carrying. It gives them a name for what they have been living with.

In practice, this can take three forms: a leadership message acknowledging that some colleagues are carrying weight from events in their home regions; a line added to standard manager check-in prompts asking whether anything outside work is affecting employees; or an addition to existing employee assistance programs and benefits communications that names diaspora distress explicitly.

Rostam will open his phone again tonight at 2 a.m. In the morning, he will code-switch from the person who spent the night reading the news into the person his organization knows. What remains is whether his organization will adopt the language to see it, and whether his leaders will decide that seeing it is part of their job.

Amir Bahman Radnejad is affiliated with Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

Brenda Nguyen is affiliated with the Strategic Capability Network.

– ref. Diaspora distress: When geopolitical conflict follows immigrant workers into the office – https://theconversation.com/diaspora-distress-when-geopolitical-conflict-follows-immigrant-workers-into-the-office-281411

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Whitney Isenhower, Journalism Fellow, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto

Austin Bowden-Kerby, a pioneer in coral reef conservation, spends many of his days gardening corals for reefs around Fiji and the Pacific. He grows corals in ocean nurseries. Once they’re healthy enough, he moves them to outer ocean areas with the hope they will replicate and grow.

“We’re looking at what Mother Nature would do on her own if she had 1,000 years to adapt,” said Bowden-Kerby, who founded the UNESCO-endorsed Reefs of Hope strategy. “We would have these kinds of things happening.”

Bowden-Kerby is one of several scientists trying to conserve, replicate and reproduce heat-resistant corals before climate change wipes them out.

The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said the world is experiencing a fourth global coral bleaching event. They’ve found that bleaching-level heat stress affected almost 85 per cent of the world’s coral reef area between 2023 and 2025.

Bleaching causes corals to lose their food source and, with it, their colour. Most corals survive in temperatures between 20 and 29 C. But as ocean temperatures rise, it’s difficult for many to thrive.

But naturally occurring, heat-resistant corals can survive in waters up to 36 C and potentially higher. They are usually found in warmer waters, like parts of the Pacific Ocean and the Persian Gulf. These corals are increasingly important as sea temperatures rise. So scientists are turning to them to help save declining reefs.

Heat-resistant corals

Corals reefs are extremely diverse places, with around 6,000 coral species worldwide. Reefs are home to more than 4,000 species and 25 per cent of global marine life. When healthy, corals nurture fish that feed communities, protect shores from floods and storms
and boost economies through tourism.

However, heatwaves have led to widespread coral bleaching and loss. When waters become too warm, corals expel the algae in their tissues that give them their colour. That causes corals to turn completely white.

Coral reefs and their ecosystems are also threatened by pollution, ocean acidification, coastal development and overfishing.

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Will 2026 be the year when coral reefs pass their tipping point?

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Christopher Cornwall, a lecturer in marine biology at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, co-authored a recent review that found some reefs can survive if corals become more heat-tolerant.

He told me there are multiple things to consider when conserving and replicating corals: restoring heat-resistant corals where it’s feasible, doing so at a large enough scale and maintaining coral diversity. Restored corals also must be able to survive, he added.

“We can’t just do coral restoration without thermally tolerant corals, because they’re just going to die the next time it gets too hot,” Cornwall said.

Assisted evolution

“A lot of the research now is about, can you scale up restoration and how do you do it more effectively?” said Peter Mumby, a professor of coral reef ecology at the University of Queensland in Australia. “One of the key concerns is to make sure those corals are as tolerant of high temperature as possible.”

Breeding heat-tolerant corals is a form of assisted evolution. Humans intervene to speed up natural processes to help corals more quickly respond to and recover from their stressors, like heatwaves from climate change.

One recent study examining the possible success of assisted evolution interventions like breeding and selecting traits found these interventions can help corals become more tolerant to heatwaves, but they need “extremely strong selection.”

Liam Lachs co-authored that study. Lachs is a former postdoctoral research associate in the CORALASSIST lab, a team of scientists led by James Guest at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom. Lachs specializes in coral reef ecosystems and researches coral in Palau, a Pacific island country where corals are surviving in warmer waters.

He told me variability within and among reefs and coral species must be considered when creating more heat-resistant coral, which makes replication complex. “Even within a single reef, there’s a range of tolerance levels,” he said.

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Read more:
How accelerating evolution could help corals survive future heatwaves – new study

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Algae and bacteria

Researchers at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) have found that some algae (Durusdinium), which symbiotically live in corals and provide them with food in exchange for housing and protection, can boost corals’ heat tolerance.

Madeleine van Oppen is a senior principal research scientist at AIMS. She co-authored a recent review about potentially introducing beneficial bacteria into corals to improve their heat tolerance.

Scientists are also exploring whether heat-tolerant corals should be planted across oceans — from the Indo-Pacific region to the Caribbean — and not just in nearby waters.

Van Oppen said new ventures ultimately need more research, and the real test of success is if something done in a lab works in the wild. “Field testing, I’d say, is the next big thing,” she said. “Finding out whether these interventions can enhance tolerance at ecologically relevant scales. Is it stable over time?”

AIMS researchers also found that heat tolerance could be passed down by interbreeding wild colonies of the same coral species. Heat-resistant coral species include some pocillopora and acropora.

If left unchecked, the sustained global temperature is on target to rise more than 1.5 C. Some evidence has shown that 70 to 90 per cent of tropical coral reefs could go extinct even if global warming is limited to 1.5 C.

Prior to the fourth event, the Earth already experienced three mass coral bleaching events over the last few decades. An El Niño is expected this year, bringing with it hotter sea surface temperatures, much like in 2024.

For all the efforts by scientists to save coral reefs and ensure heat resilience, nothing will keep corals healthy more than lowering the global temperature. “The lower we can get our greenhouse gas emissions, the more chance there will be that reefs will exist in the future,” said Cornwall.

Whitney Isenhower has an account with Democrats Abroad but is not an active member.

– ref. Heat-resistant corals could help reefs adapt to climate change – https://theconversation.com/heat-resistant-corals-could-help-reefs-adapt-to-climate-change-279508

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Shay M. Freger, PhD Candidate and Clinical Researcher, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, McMaster University

Canada’s National Research Council boldly advertises itself as “advancing mission-driven science and innovation” — to strengthen national security, economic resilience and global competitiveness.

This ambition is difficult to reconcile with a national research system that has, for years, placed too little value on the basic, exploratory, investigator-led science that makes those outcomes possible.

In 2017, Canada’s Fundamental Science Review found that federal funding had shifted too far toward priority-driven and partnership-oriented research. In 2023, the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System made a similar point: mission-driven research depends on the strength of the broader research ecosystem, including curiosity-driven work.

Recent federal investments in research infrastructure, including more than $552 million through the Canada Foundation for Innovation, are important. They help universities, hospitals and research institutions acquire laboratories, equipment and facilities to conduct world-class research.

However, a healthy research ecosystem also needs stable and sustained operating support for investigator-led work. This includes the early, uncertain studies that identify tomorrow’s neglected problems before they become today’s policy priorities.

A nation’s ‘scientific capital’

Health research shows why this distinction matters. We celebrate new treatment advances such as CAR T-cell therapy, which genetically engineers a patient’s immune cells to attack cancer. We welcome CRISPR-based therapies such as Casgevy, a gene-edited cell therapy for sickle cell disease and transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia.

But these advances did not appear fully formed. They were built through years of work in molecular biology, immunology, genetics, chemistry, engineering and clinical science, much of it conducted before anyone could promise a product, a company or a clinical payoff.

That foundation is fragile when it is treated as optional. As American science adviser Vannevar Bush said back in 1945, basic research is the source of a nation’s “scientific capital.” The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) continues to make this case clearly today: public support is essential for research and innovation.

A healthy Canadian research ecosystem cannot survive on the final stages of innovation alone. Of course, it needs applied research, commercialization and measurable impact. But it also requires the earlier, “high-risk” discovery work that expands the horizon of what is possible.

Special calls are not enough

Endometriosis makes the problem concrete: it affects many people in Canada, is associated with pain, infertility and reduced quality of life. Canadian research has reported an average diagnostic delay of 5.4 years.

In fields like this, upstream science is not a luxury. Before better diagnostics and treatments can exist, researchers have to ask basic questions about inflammation, pain, immune function, hormones, nerves, genetics, imaging and disease progression.

As researchers working in reproductive health, we have seen how targeted federal grant calls can elevate under-researched conditions. The National Women’s Health Research Initiative, for example, was designed to address high-priority areas of women’s health and improve care for women, girls and gender-diverse people.

This kind of targeted funding matters. It can create momentum and build networks. But it cannot carry a research system on its own. Targeted calls are often time-limited, theme-specific and shaped by priorities that are already visible enough to attract policy attention.

The case of mRNA vaccines

During the COVID-19 pandemic, mRNA vaccines looked to many people like a scientific miracle delivered at unprecedented speed. But that apparent speed was misleading. The vaccines did not emerge from nowhere.

The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine recognized Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for discoveries that enabled effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. Their work helped solve a central problem: how to make mRNA useful as a medical tool without having the body immediately recognize and destroy it as a threat.

Even that breakthrough rested on a much wider scientific history, involving around 50 years of public and private research. Scientists had to understand how mRNA carries genetic instructions, how cells translate those instructions into proteins, how immune systems detect foreign RNA and how fragile mRNA could be delivered safely into cells. None of that work was a vaccine when it began. Yet without it, the vaccine could not have arrived when it was needed.

This is why short-term thinking in science policy is so risky. If research is valued only when it can explain its payoff in advance, systems will gradually favour projects that are safer, narrower and more immediately tangible. That may produce useful results in the short term, but it weakens the broader discovery pipeline over time.

Reliance on other nations

There is a strong economic case for paying attention. A 2024 study of 15 OECD countries found that public investment in research and development had positive and persistent effects on GDP and also stimulated business research and development investment.

Public support for long-term research is not separate from economic strategy. It is part of how countries build it. But the deeper issue is not only economic. It’s whether Canada wants to remain a producer of knowledge or become increasingly dependent on knowledge produced elsewhere.

A country that under-invests in basic research does not stop benefiting from science. It becomes more reliant on other systems to take the early risks, generate the foundational knowledge and shape the next generation of medical, technological and industrial advances. Canada’s Fundamental Science Review warned that continued imbalance in funding would leave the country increasingly dependent on discoveries and ideas generated abroad.

This impacts our health, climate science, energy and emerging technologies. It’s important in terms of how well Canada can respond to future crises. And it matters whether neglected areas of health and science ever receive the depth of inquiry required to produce real change.

Canada must protect upstream research

Canada should not have to choose between useful and ambitious science. These are not opposing goals. They are different points along the same continuum. Today’s basic research becomes tomorrow’s applied science. Today’s obscure mechanism becomes tomorrow’s therapy.

Today’s difficult question may become tomorrow’s platform technology. But only if someone is allowed to ask it.

Canada needs targeted programs. It needs research infrastructure. It needs commercialization possibilities that help discoveries reach patients, communities and markets. It needs sustained investment in investigator-led research.

That means protecting operating grants from erosion, funding trainees and early-career researchers, supporting high-risk work in neglected fields and evaluating scientific value by more than immediate commercial readiness.

This is not indulgence. It is foresight.

Shay M. Freger receives funding from the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) and Health Canada. He writes and conducts research on endometriosis, health equity, and health systems reform. The views expressed are his own.

Mathew Leonardi works for McMaster University (Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology), Hamilton Health Sciences, and SUGO – Specialized Ultrasound in Gynecology and Obstetrics. He receives funding from CanSAGE, CIHR, Hamilton Health Sciences, Health Canada, SOPHIE, MITACS, and Medical Research Future Fund.

– ref. To lead in global innovation, Canada must prioritize basic science – https://theconversation.com/to-lead-in-global-innovation-canada-must-prioritize-basic-science-279713

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Braden Manns, Professor of Medicine and Health Economics, University of Calgary

Canada’s health systems began shifting from paper charts to electronic health records decades ago. These records hold patients’ critical health information, including medications, diagnoses, clinical notes, test results, specialist consults and plans for care.

Our research, published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, raises major concerns about the state of these electronic health records nationwide.

In most provinces and territories, information is currently siloed in separate software programs in different offices, designed by multiple vendors with differing standards. This fragments patients’ health records across services and leaves clinicians without the information they need to provide safe care.

This is harming patients, costing taxpayers $9.4 billion annually and hindering health-system improvement.

Canada’s missed opportunity

Ideally, patients’ health information should follow them over time and across locations. Some might assume that’s how it works now. After all, hotel chains remember whether we prefer foam or feather pillows, no matter what country we are in. Uber ratings follow us everywhere.

Unfortunately, in health care, things aren’t so seamless. In the rush to abandon paper charts and transition to electronic records, Canada missed a major opportunity for standardization.

Without an overarching plan, clinics, hospitals and jurisdictions chose from dozens of incompatible platforms sold by vendors competing for market share, without considering the need for personal health information to follow the patient.

A provincial and territorial legislative focus on the privacy of patient records has also fostered an environment that splinters patient information between health services.

The Connected Care Scorecard

Collecting, tracking and exchanging patients’ health information is key to safe, co-ordinated care. In some jurisdictions, like Taiwan, electronic health records from different vendors dock securely together. If a family doctor changes a medication, then pharmacy, hospital and specialist records are automatically updated. A treatment plan from a specialist lands directly in a family doctor’s electronic record, without need for faxing, scanning or uploading.

In Canada, hospitals, specialists and primary-care services still rely heavily on fax machines and mail, rather than automated, instant, accurate data exchange.

As part of our research, we created a Connected Care Scorecard that reveals where each province and territory stands in connecting its health records.

In British Columbia, for example, dozens of incompatible electronic health record systems are used in community clinics alone. Hospitals, even within the same health authority, run on different platforms. A patient who visits an emergency room in downtown Vancouver will have to tell their story again if they later seek care in Burnaby. Clinicians may end up retesting for illnesses already ruled out.

Prince Edward Island does much better — with one electronic health record uniting all hospitals and a single platform for primary-care clinics. The hospital record feeds information into primary care so details are available for follow-up.

Interoperability matters

Connected, integrated electronic health records allow all clinicians to work together on a common plan. Sharing patient information is critical for team-based care. It improves outcomes like medication safety and enables patients’ access to records, making them part of the care team.

Most jurisdictions do have patient portals where some people can see portions of their health information, like lab results or prescriptions. However, a 2025 study found that only 13.2 per cent of adult Canadians have electronic access to such records.

Despite tremendous hype and opportunity to improve care through artificial intelligence, most health systems can’t use it at scale. That’s largely because the opportunities it offers — assisting with diagnoses and prompting clinicians to order the tests and treatments patients need — are wholly dependent on ready access to comprehensive, accurate patient health data.

Interoperable electronic health records would also help health systems access population-based information to inform planning. Data could help predict disease outbreaks and spot bottlenecks in hospital flow. It could improve cancer care and ensure patients with the greatest needs are prioritized.

Our research shows that although most jurisdictions use some hospital data for planning, information in electronic health records, especially from primary care, rarely gets used to improve health systems. This has long-term implications: you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

All of this adds up to massive costs for taxpayers, patients and clinicians.

Common health data standards

The federal government recently reintroduced the proposed Connected Care for Canadians Act, which would require vendors to adopt common standards for exchanging information across systems. It’s a solid first step, but more is needed.

Most importantly, governments must establish clear accountability — nationally, provincially and territorially — for health data oversight. This must balance minimizing privacy breaches with limiting all other forms of harm arising from disconnected records, including damage to patients, clinicians and health systems.

Jurisdictions must also establish common health data standards, tools and incentives to improve data coordination.

Our challenge is not adopting electronic health records, but connecting them. Without that, our investment simply won’t pay off. Care will continue to suffer.

Dr. Ewan Affleck, physician, senior medical advisor in health informatics at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta and chair of Networked Health, co-authored this article.

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. Canada’s fragmented electronic health records harm patients and cost taxpayers billions: New research – https://theconversation.com/canadas-fragmented-electronic-health-records-harm-patients-and-cost-taxpayers-billions-new-research-280798

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Chenkai Chi, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Educational Studies, University of Windsor

What kind of education best helps students learn math?

In the province of Ontario, the most recent provincial standardized results (2024–25) show modest improvement in elementary mathematics achievement, but overall performance remains uneven, particularly in the junior grades.

Provincially, 64 per cent of Grade 3 students met the provincial standard, up from 61 per cent the previous year. In contrast, only 51 per cent of Grade 6 students met the standard, indicating that about half of students are not yet achieving expected levels by the end of the junior division.

Student attitudes toward mathematics also decline with age: while 67 per cent of Grade 3 students reported liking mathematics, this dropped to 48 per cent in Grade 6.

These results suggest gradual recovery following COVID-19 pandemic disruptions, but they also point to the necessity for more work to be done for both teachers and students to develop a deeper understanding of the 2020 math curriculum. This curriculum incorporated new priorities like social–emotional learning, coding, mathematical modelling and financial literacy.

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Read more:
6 changes in Ontario’s not-so-basic new elementary math curriculum

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My research has examined Ontario math education taught by generalist elementary school teachers in dialogue with Chinese mathematics instruction taught by specialist math teachers. Grounded in this work, I believe we should firstly be proud of Ontario math education instead of criticizing it.

This research was part of a partnership grant project from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, with education researchers Shijing Xu and Michael Connelly.

Dialogue between teachers

In our research with a “Sister School Network” project, generalist elementary teachers from a Windsor, Ont. public school and mathematics specialist teachers from a Chongqing, China primary school participated in monthly online knowledge-sharing meetings.

At the meetings, teachers shared and compared curriculum. They offered demonstrations on topics such as fractions, multiplication and estimation, and discussed student learning and parent engagement.

From 2016 to 2019, Xu and I co-ordinated these monthly exchanges and organized visits of Canadian teachers to Chongqing as well as Chinese teachers’ visits to Windsor.

Other sister schools that are part of Xu and Connelly’s project include Shanghai-Toronto, Shanghai-ChangChun and Windsor-Beijing.

Special education, professional autonomy

Chinese mathematics specialist teachers deeply appreciated the strengths of Ontario’s generalist model — particularly the comprehensive learning support provided to students with diverse needs and the high level of professional autonomy granted to teachers.

One Chinese participant with more than 20 years of mathematics teaching experience reflected:

“I wish we could have a special education support system like in Canada.”

Such perspectives highlight a key strength of Ontario’s elementary generalist system — one that educators in the province can take pride in. In an interview I did with mathematics education researcher Christine Suurtamm, whose research has engaged international perspectives on mathematics education and Canadian teachers’ practice, Suurtamm noted:

“I think the idea that we have great faith in teachers’ professional judgment to work with a curriculum, and to determine the best way to sequence and select the kinds of activities that address the curriculum expectations and meet their students’ needs, is a real benefit to our students in Ontario. I think that is something we should be proud of.”

Value of working with a specialist

In my study, a Grade 5 Canadian teacher also appreciated the opportunity to co-plan and co-teach with a Chinese mathematics specialist teacher. In interviews, the teacher emphasized a deep appreciation for this collaborative approach and expressed the hope that Canadian schools could provide more structured opportunities for such professional collaboration.

In my interview with Suurtamm, she also noted it would be worthwhile if Ontario teachers had more time to develop their math lessons in collaboration with other teachers.

In 2023, Ontario announced funds to double the number of school mathematics coaches. Research about how and where the coaching model has been implemented, how teachers are relying on it and its real effects in the classroom would help gain insight into the efficacy of this approach.

Challenges with Ontario math education

My research also suggested ways Ontario mathematics education might learn from Chinese mathematics learning.

Two key challenges emerge in Ontario mathematics teaching. First, teacher collaboration is limited. Unlike Chinese mathematics specialists who routinely engage in co-planning, lesson observation and collective reflection, Canadian generalist teachers have few structured opportunities for sustained collaboration, despite a clear desire for it.

Second, the consolidation of mathematical learning seen in Ontario is relatively weak. One Chinese math specialist teacher described teaching mathematics as a dynamic balance between Fang (放) — encouraging open exploration and the use of multiple strategies — and Shou (收) — a structured consolidation phase. In this phase, key ideas are clarified, connections are synthesized and methods are formalized.

Ontario educators and policymakers may consider these insights in ways that are responsive to local situations.

Curriculum and approaches evolve

Overall, my collaborative research views improving mathematics teaching and curricula as an ongoing and progressive process.

As Suurtamm notes, curriculum changes should be approached as an evolution rather than a revolution. Changes build thoughtfully on existing foundations rather than seeking to replace them wholesale.

Before pursuing new directions, it is important to reflect on and recognize the strengths that already characterize Ontario’s mathematics education system.

Chenkai Chi receives funding from SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, Ontario Graduate Scholarship and Mitacs Globalink Fellowship.

– ref. Chinese and Canadian approaches to math teaching have a lot to learn from each other – https://theconversation.com/chinese-and-canadian-approaches-to-math-teaching-have-a-lot-to-learn-from-each-other-274072