Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Daniel Hardy, Professor, Department of Ob/Gyn and Physiology and Pharmacology, Western University

Schizophrenia is a serious mental health disorder that is characterized by psychosis, making it difficult for a person to tell what is real. It impacts about one per cent of the Canadian population and is linked to major health challenges, including a shorter life span.

Many factors can increase the risk of developing schizophrenia, such as prenatal environmental conditions (for example, malnutrition or drug exposure), family history, childhood trauma and growing up in an urban environment.

However, there are still no reliable biomarkers that can predict early risk. This is important because early diagnosis leads to better treatment and outcomes for patients. Researchers are now looking at the placenta as a possible source of early indicators of schizophrenia risk.

The placenta-brain axis

The placenta can “record” what happens during pregnancy and can reflect both healthy and unhealthy conditions for the baby. This idea is known as the placenta-brain axis, which suggests that when the placenta is negatively affected, brain development may also be harmed in both the short and long term.

Large clinical studies have shown that in pregnancies resulting in low birth weight babies, certain genetic markers in the placenta are changed. These markers are strongly linked to a higher risk of schizophrenia and other negative behavioural outcomes (for example, autism, impaired cognition) in children.

There is also strong evidence connecting cannabis use during pregnancy to harmful effects on a child’s brain development, including a higher risk of schizophrenia. This is especially concerning in Canada, where cannabis was legalized in 2018. Since then, cannabis use during pregnancy has increased, with the highest reported rate of 24 per cent among pregnant teens (ages 13 to 19 years).

Although prenatal cannabis use is known to be associated with low birth weight, it is not well understood whether cannabis exposure affects the same placental biomarkers linked to schizophrenia. My laboratory, which has experience studying the effects of drug exposure during pregnancy, explored this question in a study published in Biology of Reproduction in January.

THC exposure

As a professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at Western University, I worked with my research team and collaborators, including master of science student Andrea Kocsis, Enzo Perez Valenzuela, Ph.D., David Natale, Ph.D., and Steven Laviolette, Ph.D. to investigate whether THC (the main psychoactive component of cannabis) changes these known placental schizophrenia markers.

First, we used a preclinical rodent model in which pregnant animals were given edible THC mixed with Nutella. We found that both male and female offspring exposed to THC showed reduced prepulse inhibition early in life. Prepulse inhibition is a psychological test commonly used when diagnosing schizophrenia in humans. Specifically, the prepulse inhibition test measures sensorimotor gating — the brain’s ability to filter out irrelevant stimuli — by observing how a weak, preceding stimulus (prepulse) reduces the startle response to a subsequent loud noise (pulse).

More importantly, we discovered that the placentae of these THC-exposed offspring showed increases in several human placental markers linked to schizophrenia risk.

We then tested whether this also occurs in a human cell culture model. We found that isolated human placental cells treated short-term (24 hours) with THC showed similar increases in these schizophrenia-related genes in these cells.

Identifying risks

This study has important clinical implications. Although stopping cannabis use during pregnancy is always recommended, it can be difficult for many people due to social or habitual dependence. As a result, some children are exposed to cannabis before birth without having any choice.

By identifying cannabis-specific placental markers linked to schizophrenia, there is potential to reduce negative behavioural outcomes early in life through psychological or dietary interventions. Since schizophrenia is usually diagnosed between ages 16 and 30, being able to identify risk at birth would be extremely valuable. Moreover, testing the placenta after delivery could become a practical way to assess schizophrenia risk.

Further research is needed to understand whether other components of cannabis, such as cannabidiol (CBD), also affect neurodevelopment or alter these placental markers. It is also imperative to explore whether these markers can help predict other outcomes, including adverse psychological conditions, autism or cognitive impairments.

Additionally, because the pre-conception health and lifestyle of fathers as well as mothers can affect the placenta, it is also possible that consumption of cannabinoids by either parent before pregnancy could affect placental health and increase schizophrenia risk, but this requires further study.

In the meantime, our findings provide important functional evidence for clinicians and regulatory agencies, such as Health Canada, as they continue to make decisions and policies regarding the safety of cannabis use during pregnancy.

Daniel Hardy receives funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR).

– ref. Can the placenta predict schizophrenia risk? Lessons from prenatal cannabis exposure – https://theconversation.com/can-the-placenta-predict-schizophrenia-risk-lessons-from-prenatal-cannabis-exposure-274381

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Philippe Blondel, Senior Lecturer, Department of Physics, University of Bath

Climate change is having a profound impact on the Arctic. We know that the region is warming significantly faster than the global average, resulting in the melting of sea ice and disrupted habitats.

But climate change is also affecting the Arctic in ways few people may consider. It is making the Arctic Ocean a noisier place. For the region’s wildlife, this increasingly noisy environment is having profound impacts on their lives.

Anyone who lives in an urban environment knows how tiring it can be. Living next to busy roads is exhausting, with constant noise, day in, day out. The same is true in the Arctic Ocean, where melting sea ice is making way for increasing human activity. This is even more important in water, where animals use sounds to communicate, to navigate and to find prey, or avoid becoming prey.

Recent research on fish sounds explains how sound can be used for marine conservation. We should avoid introducing loud sounds in the oceans because it changes the soundscapes the animals have evolved to live in, and because it affects them directly. And just like air pollution, sound pollution knows no borders.

Ocean observatories can record these sounds and tell us how loud they are, how long they last and how they affect their surroundings. This is important because the world is changing rapidly, especially in the Arctic, and human impacts are increasing.

Newly published research, conducted by colleagues and me, used 10 years of underwater observations from 2015 to 2024 to quantify the impacts of ships and other sources of loud sounds in Iqaluktuuttiaq (Cambridge Bay), Nvt., on the local environment and to examine the best ways to measure their effects on local soundscapes. We found some surprising facts, making us look (or rather, listen) to the Arctic in different ways.

Sound is essential underwater

Studies show that ambient sound levels in the Arctic seas are currently very low, and that marine life will therefore be more sensitive to any increase. Ships are the second loudest source of underwater sounds after seismic prospecting and pile-driving. As the Arctic opens up to human activities, ships are bound to be a big part of it.

But it is not only ships. We found that loud sounds include many other sources: snowmobiles, machinery, aircraft. These sounds vary with the season. In winter, when there is full ice cover and no ships, snowmobiles can affect sound below the ice.

In summer, when there is little to no ice cover, many of the loud sounds come from smaller vessels that are not legally required to carry GPS transponders. They are not picked up by satellites, but they are sizeable contributors to sounds underwater. Other sounds come from machinery, and even from aircraft flying nearby. Like shipping, these sounds should also be part of monitoring and regulating underwater noise in the region.

Because many smaller ships do not use satellite transponders, modelling sound impacts from satellite tracking is an insufficient way to gauge how much noise human activity is generating. That means assessments of underwater noise must be based on actual measurements in the field.

Long-term measurements

Deploying instruments at sea, especially in the Arctic, is challenging and expensive, and therefore generally possible only for short periods. Ocean Networks Canada has been measuring sound in the oceans around Canada for 20 years.

They have installed ocean observatories around the country, in particular in Iqaluktuuttiaq. In partnership with local communities, they aim to provide the scientific measurements necessary for evidence-based actions and initiatives.

Their Ocean Data Portal is a dream come true for scientists: 64,000 sound measurements per second, for years on end, complemented in season with local ice profiling. We also used local weather data from Nav Canada, satellite charts of regional ice cover from the Canadian Ice Service and ship tracks from the Arctic Ship Traffic Database operated by the Arctic Council.

As there is so much data, and because we wanted to contrast two very different seasons, we focused our studies on the months of May, when there is full ice cover and no shipping, and August, when there is little to no ice and more shipping activity.

We did this for 10 years in a row and analyzed the sounds loud enough (more than 10 decibels louder than the weekly background) for long enough (over one minute), identifying where they came from and what frequencies they extended into. There were many surprising sounds.

For example, we could hear footsteps on the ice and snow, the unsuccessful revving up of an engine, followed by something that sounded like kicking, and walking back on snow and ice. These sounds were not loud enough to be an issue. More often, we could hear noise from machines, either on boats or on shore. This sometimes lasted for a long time.

What surprised us was hearing aircraft every now and then. The sounds of the propellers, presumably passing close to our hydrophone. There were many other sounds, including those of marine wildlife, but we focused on sounds loud enough to possibly impact these animals because they were too loud or lasted long enough to be a nuisance.

Our research shows that impactful sounds in this part of the Arctic vary between summer and winter. In summer, where the water is mostly open, this noise can extend to higher frequencies over one kilohertz. Conversely, in winter, when there is no shipping and ice cover isolates the waters below from a lot of sounds, these loud sounds show a span of frequencies lower than one kilohertz. These variations with ice cover and in the frequencies to monitor should be included in the future Arctic baselines.

Improving data collection

Regulations often focus on frequency bands associated with large ships in deep waters (third-octave bands centred on 63 hertz and 125 hertz, to be precise). The European Marine Strategy Framework Directive is often cited as a model, used in Canada and elsewhere. Using the right frequencies is important when considering baselines.

Canada and other Arctic countries are ideally placed to collect the evidence that can define an Arctic marine strategy framework directive. This becomes more urgent as the climate changes, the Arctic opens to human activities and pressures on Arctic resources grow.

Together, we can make a more sustainable ocean. There is much to do, and I am looking forward to working more with Canadian scientists and Arctic communities.

Philippe Blondel receives funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the UKRI Horizon Europe Guarantee. Access to the Arctic Ship Traffic Database used in the underlying study was funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, as part of the United Kingdom- Arctic Council Working Groups – Research and Engagement Scheme 2024/25, working with the Arctic Council Working Groups, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the NERC Arctic Office. Philippe is sometimes consulted by Ocean Networks Canada on technical matters related to passive acoustic monitoring.

– ref. Human activity is making the Arctic’s waters louder – https://theconversation.com/human-activity-is-making-the-arctics-waters-louder-275197

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Charles Conteh, Professor of Public Policy and Administration, Department of Political Science, Brock University

The United States Supreme Court recently struck down President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs imposed under the country’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The court stated that the law, intended for national emergencies, does not grant the government the authority to impose tariffs.

In early 2025, Trump invoked the act to impose tariffs on Canada, along with Mexico and China, claiming the countries failed to stop illicit drug trafficking into the United States.

The ruling is the latest episode in a political dust-up between Canada and its neighbour to the south which recently involved the Gordie Howe International Bridge linking Ontario and Michigan.

More than steel or stone, the bridge is a symbol of a shared destiny that both respects and transcends differences. Despite their historical, institutional and political differences, Canada and the United States have bonded economically as neighbours, generating shared prosperity over the past two centuries.

In 2023, I wrote a book chapter Canada and the United States: A Symbiotic Relationship or Complex Entanglement? In that chapter, I posed a question: What if the United States becomes more aggressive and even less open to working co-operatively with Canada? To answer that question, Canada can draw lessons from its centuries-long coexistence with an often erratic neighbour to successfully navigate the economic volatility of the present era.

While the recent Supreme Court ruling presents a setback for Trump, it is unlikely to stop him from using U.S. economic and military might as leverage against Canada and other countries. As Canada navigates this belligerent U.S. government, a lingering question is whether this history of interwoven reciprocity is deteriorating into a complex entanglement of vulnerability.

Two neighbours, different worlds

In the book chapter, I describe the Canada-U.S. relationship as a complex picture of deep interdependence, marked by significant power imbalances, and the creative ways Canada has learned to adapt and prosper.

The economic and political interests of the two countries have diverged and converged in undulating waves over the past 200 years. The two economies are inextricably intertwined across a range of sectors, from natural resources and agriculture to advanced manufacturing. Around 70 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S., and the share of Canada’s merchandise imports from south of the border was around 59 per cent in 2025.

But for Canada, the relationship is more than just economic interdependence. The U.S. has a population of about 342 million and a gross domestic product about 10 times larger than Canada’s. That sets the stage for an asymmetrical relationship whose threads are woven into the fabric of trade and geopolitics.

For Canada, this can sometimes feel like vulnerability. And that vulnerability is increasingly being exploited by the U.S., creating a general feeling of existential crisis and entrapment.

Nevertheless, Canada can draw from its centuries-long experience to navigate the current headwinds. While the smaller of the two neighbours, it is not entirely dependent on the U.S. for influencing global events or harnessing international opportunities.

Canada has been, and still is, an influential power on the international stage. As a G7 nation, Canada is one of the key pillars in the scaffolding of the global economy. This global standing and international influence give it some room to manoeuvre.

Navigating an existential crossroads

First, in the international arena, Canada must diversify economically and geopolitically to build strategic resilience. Prime Minister Mark Carney is already moving on this front by agreeing to ease mutual tariffs with China. With negotiations to renew the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) slated for this year, a diversified trading economy will give Canada much greater leverage to navigate the vulnerabilities of asymmetry.

Second, Canada should draw from its record of championing a rules-based order. In recent years, the country has had to skilfully navigate the crossroads of projecting and defending its global and liberal-democratic values during periods of U.S. flirtations with populism, isolationism and anti-international rhetoric. As a middle power, it derives its strength from the rule of law and by presenting a united front with like-minded nations. A wider set of partners means more buffers against trade policy whiplashes and geopolitical shocks from the U.S.

Third, domestically, loosening inter-provincial trade flows, updating anachronistic regulatory frameworks and pursuing digital data sovereignty strategies should be high priorities to fire the full engine of the economy.

Similarly, as I’ve previously argued, Canada should use its comparative advantages in natural resources to create a strong, well-connected critical minerals supply chain. This would give it significant strategic leverage in the global economy as the world shifts to electrification and renewable energy.

Over the past two centuries, Canada has mastered the complex dance of asymmetry. However, the current crisis takes on an existential proportion that will require new agility, courage and decisiveness. It is an inflection point that will mark a consequential shift for the next generation.

Canada’s nimbleness and agility in navigating this political moment could be an model for other countries that must manoeuvre a world where the old rules no longer apply. It can serve as an example for small and middle powers who must navigate a world where great powers are increasingly belligerent.

Charles Conteh receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. 3 ways Canada can navigate an increasingly erratic and belligerent United States – https://theconversation.com/3-ways-canada-can-navigate-an-increasingly-erratic-and-belligerent-united-states-276035

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Joceline Andersen, Assistant Teaching Professor in Communication and English, Thompson Rivers University

In the lead-up to Oscar season, Josh Safdie, the director of Marty Supreme, has been elaborating on the many cameos in his film that build on real-world associations to create a rich cast of characters.

While usually cameo publicity is all about the director’s vision, Marty Supreme’s director of casting, Jennifer Venditti, has also made appearances in press for the film, amid increased recognition for the art of casting.

Marty Supreme is up for nine Oscars, including for casting, the first year this category will be awarded, and Venditti is nominated.

In Marty Supreme, Timothée Chalamet stars as an ambitious table tennis champion running away from his life as a shoe salesman in a largely Jewish slice of 1950s New York. Alongside this star are many other recognizable faces playing cameos.

Finding a famous face in an unexpected place is strangely thrilling. As some of my research has examined, this recognition is the allure behind cameos — small roles where famous and celebrated people play versions of themselves on screen. Cameos are full of contradictions: audiences are taken aback by famous people appearing in front of the camera. They proudly pick out celebrity faces in a crowd.

---

Read more:
A brief history of celebrity cameos, from ‘Sunset Boulevard’ to ‘Eurovision Song Contest’

---

Robert Pattinson, Pico Iyer

At a January screening, Safdie clued in London audiences to a Robert Pattinson voice cameo. In the film, Pattinson voices an announcer at the British Open for table tennis.

Pico Iyer, the travel writer Safdie knew from his 2019 TED Talk about ping pong, wrote in the New York Times in January about his own small role. This cameo began with a formulaic query email and Zoom call with Safdie and Venditti.

While classic cameos like Jerry Lewis’s appearance in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) were filmed as cutaways that made for a flexible shooting schedule and assembly-line production, Iyer’s role involved shooting on two continents.

Safdie includes Iyer as a fastidious table tennis official, even though Iyer’s talk argues that ping pong transcends competition as the ultimate model for good diplomacy. Iyer’s TED Talk also sketches out the source material for an unusual minor character arc in Marty Supreme. Between the cameo, the New York Times article and the TED Talk, Safdie creates a maze for the viewer to follow outside of the viewing experience.

Stunt casting

Safdie is no stranger to stunt casting. He and his brother’s 2019 drama Uncut Gems starred Adam Sandler as a jeweller, and featured cameos from non-actors such as musical star the Weeknd and former NBA player Kevin Garnett.

The Hollywood Reporter recently detailed allegations about inappropriate behaviour by a non-actor on the Safdie brothers’ 2017 film Good Time that neither brother has commented publicly on. These allegations in the lead-up to the Oscars may have dampened excitement for casting that blurs acting and reality.

In Marty Supreme, many cameos highlight local colour. John Catsimatidis, New York grocery tycoon and former mayoral candidate, plays a well-to-do speculator bankrolling a line of table tennis balls, the Marty Supreme, that gives the film its title.

Kevin O’Leary

Kevin O’Leary, the wealthy Canadian reality-TV investor angel of Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank fame, appears in a supporting role as the sadistic wealthy husband of a faded movie star played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Surrounded by an entourage of sycophants, he bribes Marty to throw a match to the reigning champion as part of a promotional event for his company.

As O’Leary expressed in Vanity Fair, Safdie was looking for an “asshole,” and he knows how to play that.

Drawing on his savage TV persona, and inviting comparison with
U.S. President Donald Trump’s own reality-TV stardom, O’Leary’s performance relies on the audience to do the heavy lifting of association. Canadian viewers may recall that O’Leary’s 2025 “asshole” moves include supporting Trump’s bid to make Canada the 51st state.

As a supporting actor who plays a pivotal plot role in Marty’s return to grace, O’Leary is hardly a cameoist. And yet, in his first acting role, O’Leary’s persona never fully disappears into the character of the cutthroat mid-century businessman.

Marty Supreme could be an episode of Dragon’s Den, with O’Leary sizing up another hopeful contestant for humiliation or a dream come true. The audience sketches out much of O’Leary’s performance from our own memories of similar viewing experiences, just like we do for other celebrities and movie stars.

Casting against type

After Kevin O’Leary’s appearance, the audience’s second cry of recognition at my local screen was for Marty’s mom: Fran Drescher, best known as the brash, colourful New Yorker from the 1990s sitcom The Nanny. During the filming of Marty Supreme, Drescher was the president of SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents screen actors in the U.S.

Spinning a familiar story of cameo happenstance and friendly connection that is as old as Bob Hope and Bing Crosby’s star-studded 1950s Road movies, Drescher told People that the union brought Safdie and Drescher together when he called her for regular updates during the 2023 actors’ strike.

Safdie’s cameos were to feature people with what Drescher called the right “background”: New Yorkers, many of them Jewish, with local accents. According to Drescher, Safdie intrigued her with a promise to showcase her depth demonstrated during calls explaining labour negotiations. Like Iyer, Drescher was cast in this cameo against the type of her superficial sitcom character.

Labour, cultural contexts also shape cameos

Many cameos of the 1920s and 1930s relied on labour conditions where stars and former stars signed to restrictive contracts could be pulled out of the studio canteen to appear as little more than extras.

This wasn’t because extras were in short supply: according to Kate Fortmueller, who has researched film and TV labour histories, almost three per cent of Los Angeles residents in the 1920s were registered as extras. The unionization of movie actors emerged from a desire to give order to the wannabe actors flooding Hollywood.

Comparable concerns were behind the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike — a key issue was compensation for actors as streaming media changed where audiences watch screens and convenient AI technology threatens real performers.

Marty Supreme commits to depicting the real New York through cameos that recreate the accents, dialects and unfiltered faces of famous New York actors, and these resonances beyond the screen are part of the film’s allure.

Joceline Andersen 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. Cameos in ‘Marty Supreme’ ask audiences to dig deeper – https://theconversation.com/cameos-in-marty-supreme-ask-audiences-to-dig-deeper-273762

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Alexandra R Harrington, Visiting Scholar, McGill University Faculty of Law, Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, McGill University

The United States federal government recently revoked a landmark scientific ruling by the Environmental Protection Agency that stated greenhouse gases are a threat to public health. U.S. President Donald Trump said the ruling was a “disasterous” policy that “severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers.”

The revocation is the latest move by a U.S. administration that has framed action to tackle climate change as hampering the U.S. economy. In this context, trade has become a buzzword over the past year. With the focus on tariffs, it is easy to overlook the impacts of U.S. trade policies on the environment and the organizations tasked with bridging the two.

My areas of research focus on international law, specifically environmental law and the intersections between trade and international organizations.

In January, Trump indicated that the U.S. will withdraw from the NAFTA/CUSMA-linked Commission on Environmental Cooperation and the process for dealing with claims that Canada, Mexico or the United States are shirking their environmental commitments — the submission on enforcement matters (SEM) process.

The U.S. withdrawal highlights the importance of these issues at the regional level. It also provides an opportunity for other countries in the Americas to take action on climate change without the United States.

---

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

---

What are SEMs?

In 1994, Canada, Mexico and the U.S. adopted the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) along with two side agreements. One of these was the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), establishing the Commission on Environmental Cooperation and the SEM process.

When NAFTA was renegotiated in 2018, the SEM process was incorporated into the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), and the NAAEC was replaced by the Agreement on Environmental Cooperation.

The Commission on Environmental Cooperation is charged with overseeing this agreement, while SEM is the process for dealing with claims that Canada, Mexico or the U.S. are not living up to their environmental commitments.

That process can lead to the creation of a “factual record”; an investigative report detailing the commission’s findings. Although not a legal decision, the factual record is a powerful evidentiary and fact-finding tool to generate reforms.

Reporting on derelict environmental commitments through the SEM process remains a vital tool. It has provided important factual records on leakage from Alberta tailings ponds and failures to protect species such as the loggerhead turtle, North Atlantic right whale and vaquita porpoise, among other issues.

The SEM model was replicated in U.S. trade agreements with Central American states, Colombia, Panama and Peru. In each of these agreements, however, the U.S. was exempted from SEM jurisdiction because it was already under the jurisdiction of CUSMA.

Given the U.S. decision not to provide the core funding needed for these entities to function, it would be possible for the Central American states, as well as Colombia, Panama and Peru, to enter into a separate agreement regarding SEMs. The same would be true for Canada and Mexico under CUSMA.

A new generation of environmental accountability

The U.S. was a driving influence in the creation of the SEM process. And the U.S. retreat could be accepted as a way to end systems that have brought significant issues in national enforcement of environment law to light.

Examples include the failure to properly monitor implementation of environmental laws and standards, ranging from those intended to protect communities living near pollution discharge points to those intended to protect species on the edge of extinction.

Other countries in the Americas now have an opportunity to create a larger environmental oversight mechanism. This would demonstrate their ability to step into the governance gap left by the U.S. and generate stronger regional alliances. This would not only benefit the Americas. It would also provide a model for other international organizations as they face the loss of a powerful member state.

This alternative would entail creating a new SEM process, along with an equivalent to the Commission on Environmental Cooperation to oversee it, linking all members of the impacted agreements and any other interested countries in the Americas. The most comprehensive way to do this would be to negotiate a new multilateral agreement similar to current regional agreements but without the emphasis being on trade.

Similar to the current SEM process, individuals and groups could make submissions claiming that a member state is failing to fulfill its environmental obligations. Once a submission is received, the SEM unit would determine whether it meets basic requirements. If so, the submission would move on and, ultimately, a factual record could be developed.

This alternative framework would demonstrate the collective commitment of countries across the Americas to environmental protection. It would reflect the reality that the Americas face significant shared environmental threats that are also increasingly threats to national security and economic interests.

Such an agreement could mainstream the SEM process, building on provisions established in NAFTA, NAAEC and CUSMA. Existing regional offices could be maintained to ensure strong connections on the ground, and the procedures used could largely be unchanged.

At a time when many countries seem to be focusing on narrow self-interest and military spending rather than the environment, this is a challenging proposition.

However, integrating the SEM process into a new, broader, collective effort would allow American countries to assert hemispheric leadership without having to reinvent the wheel. It would also allow citizens the continued ability to bring claims and to have some accountability.

As the U.S. government withdraws from its international obligations, reconceiving international organizations that are under existential threat is now a necessity. Reconfiguring SEMs throughout the Americas would serve as a model for other organizations and as a way of shifting international organizations to be less dependent on any one state.

Alexandra R Harrington 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. Countries in the Americas can act to protect the environment without the United States – https://theconversation.com/countries-in-the-americas-can-act-to-protect-the-environment-without-the-united-states-275994

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Muhammad Ilyas Nadeem, PhD Candidate in Obesity & Diabetes | Public Scholar (2024-2025), Concordia University

Canada is recognized globally for its world-leading obesity care guidelines — yet Canadians continue to struggle to access the very treatment plans we’ve developed. Meanwhile, the same model of care is now the one the World Health Organization (WHO) is urging other countries to adopt.

The WHO recently released its first ever guideline on anti-obesity medications, reinforcing a chronic disease model of care that Canadian experts have championed for years.

WHO’s stance mirrors the Canadian framework laid out in 2020 clinical guidelines: obesity is a chronic, relapsing disease that requires comprehensive, lifelong care — the kind that includes timely diagnosis, trained providers, co-ordination among the various health professionals involved, mental-health support, and — when appropriate — pharmacotherapy and bariatric surgery.

Despite Canada’s leadership in shaping this global shift, progress at home remains slow and uneven. More than one in four adults now live with obesity and wait times for specialist care have soared to a record high of 30 weeks in Canada. What’s more, in high-income countries, obesity and related chronic diseases tend to disproportionately affect people facing social and economic disadvantage.

When will Canadians see this research put into practice?

Either directly or indirectly, all Canadians are affected by obesity. Obesity remains largely framed as a willpower problem solvable through lifestyle change alone, despite decades of evidence showing it is a complex chronic disease shaped both by biology and environment. It is linked to more than 200 health problems worldwide and contributes to more than 3.7 million deaths annually.

Most health-care systems, including Canada’s, still rely on fragmented, weight-centric guidelines rather than holistic, chronic disease approaches. Even clinicians and clinics that want to follow these evidence-based models often find themselves constrained by limited resources, training, inconsistent insurance coverage and a system that still doesn’t put comprehensive obesity care at the forefront.

Canada has invested millions of dollars in obesity research, leading to the development of forward-thinking, science-backed approaches to obesity care, but system-wide implementation remains painfully slow.

The Canadian paradox: world-class guidance, patchy access

Here’s the bright side: Canada has quietly become an unexpected leader in global obesity care guidelines. Over the past five years, Canadian clinicians, researchers and people with lived experience have helped rewrite the international rulebook for treating obesity.

The 2020 adult guideline was a turning point that reframed obesity. It moved beyond using BMI as the main compass, and reorganized care around what matters to patients: quality of life, function and reduction of related complications, not just kilograms lost. That patient-centred, stigma-free model, along with Canada’s guideline process itself, has since been adapted in Ireland using the ADAPTE framework and in Chile through an international pilot. Several other nations are also integrating elements of the Canadian approach into their own guidelines.

In 2025, two major updates pushed the model further. A pediatric guideline in Canadian Medical Association Journal emphasized multicomponent, family-centred support that addresses mental health, quality of life and cardiometabolic risk, while considering medications or surgery for selected adolescents through shared decision-making.

An adult pharmacotherapy update called for long-term, individualized use of modern anti-obesity medicines — including semaglutide and tirzepatide — and urged clinicians to focus on abdominal obesity and complications rather than BMI alone.

Access to care

Yet a paradox remains: while the world begins to follow Canada’s lead on paper, most Canadians living with obesity still cannot access the level of care these very guidelines envision. Public coverage for anti-obesity medications remains limited and inconsistent across provinces, and private coverage reaches only a minority.

Training gaps compound these access issues. Medical education in Canada has historically overlooked obesity care, leaving many clinicians unprepared to treat patients in line with the guidelines.

Bariatric surgery capacity has been sharply constrained, with reported wait times varying from 1.5 years to nearly nine years, and historic analyses documenting stark interprovincial inequalities. These bottlenecks make it almost impossible to deliver the very guidelines we’ve poured time and funds into.

So far, policy signals are mixed. In March 2025, Alberta became the first — and still only — province to formally recognize obesity as a chronic disease, a move that can unlock more comprehensive coverage and care options. The federal government is reviewing applications for generic GLP-1 drugs which could improve access down the road. But no pan-Canadian policy framework exists, leaving most patients navigating a patchwork system.

In Québec, more bariatric surgeries have been performed relative to need than most provinces but waits remain substantial and public drug coverage for anti-obesity medicines is limited.

Improving the system

Ultimately, before we can improve the lives of our people, we need to improve the system that is supposed to care for them.

The first crucial step would be for more provinces to follow suit with Alberta to recognize obesity as a chronic disease nationwide. Recognition is the gateway to coverage and comprehensive care.

A co-ordinated federal-provincial-territorial framework implementing our guidelines on behavioural/psychological support, pharmacotherapy and surgery should be applied for obesity care in Canada. Make quality of life, mental health, functional capacity and obesity-related complication reduction core performance indicators.

Finally, similar to diabetes care, public and private plans should cover anti-obesity medications where clinically indicated. The absence of coverage continues to hinder access as international guidance embraces modern, chronic-care models for obesity management.

Canada’s impact on modern obesity care is commendable, with countries like Ireland and Chile adapting our model. WHO now supports this same chronic-care approach with its stance on GLP-1 medicines. But if Canada’s own guidelines are not practically applied within our health-care systems, many lives will continue to be at stake, and obesity numbers will continue to climb, as they have for the last several decades.

Muhammad Ilyas Nadeem receives funding from Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ)-Santé.

Jessica Murphy has received funding from Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ)-Santé.

Sylvia Santosa receives funding from CIHR, NSERC, MITACS, CFDR.

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

– ref. Canada is a global leader in obesity care guidelines, so why are Canadians still waiting months for treatment at home? – https://theconversation.com/canada-is-a-global-leader-in-obesity-care-guidelines-so-why-are-canadians-still-waiting-months-for-treatment-at-home-273361

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

The next major international sporting event, the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup hosted jointly by the United States, Canada and Mexico, is already garnering international scrutiny. There have been numerous calls to boycott it.

Calls for a boycott were amplified recently following U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to annex Greenland from Denmark, prompting soccer officials in Germany and France to broach the possibility of both countries boycotting the tournament.

Both countries’ soccer federations have pushed back against calls to boycott the World Cup for now, although recent events in Minneapolis have heightened concerns about the U.S.’ role in hosting the tournament and what that will mean for visitors.

Former FIFA President Sepp Blatter — who was suspended by FIFA in 2015 and replaced by current FIFA president Gianni Infantino amid a corruption scandal he was later acquitted of — recently voiced concerns over the marginalization of political opponents and violent crackdowns on immigration in the U.S.

The World Cup has historically been an event that brings together fans from across the world. Many fans rely on tourist visas, and ICE is expected to be responsible for security at the World Cup. ICE’s director has refused to commit to pausing the agency’s operations during the tournament.

Human rights groups have raised concerns over whether World Cup visitors will be detained and handed to ICE if they engage in actions deemed critical of the U.S. government.

Boycotts at international sporting events

In the history of international sporting events, boycotts have been far less common than bans.

Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary and the Ottoman Empire were not invited to attend the 1920 Olympic games after losing the First World War.

South Africa was invited to the 1964 Tokyo Games but saw their invitation rescinded due to apartheid, and only rejoined Olympic competition in 1992. Rhodesia saw its invitation to the 1972 Games rescinded due to its government enacting a white supremacist regime.

Notably, both instances of rescinded invitations to the Olympic Games came after other African nations threatened to boycott the Games if South Africa and Rhodesia were invited to participate.

There were also partial boycotts at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Several nations announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics to protest China’s mistreatment of the Uyghur Muslims, prohibiting many government officials from attending in an official capacity, while still permitting athletes to compete. Russia has been banned from most major international sports competitions since it invaded Ukraine in 2022.

However, the most famous boycott of an international sporting event occurred in 1980 ahead of the Summer Olympics in Moscow following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. More than 60 countries boycotted those Games, led by the U.S. In turn, 19 countries boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, led by the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries.

Yet there has never been a World Cup boycott by qualified teams on political grounds. In 1934, Uruguay famously chose not to travel to the second-ever World Cup in Italy because several European teams, including Italy, declined to travel to Uruguay for the inaugural tournament in 1930.

Prior to the 1966 World Cup, all African teams withdrew from qualifying in protest because FIFA had only allocated all of the teams from Africa, Asia and Oceania one combined place at the tournament. There were calls for Norway to boycott the 2022 Men’s World Cup in Qatar, but they did not qualify for the tournament.

How likely is a boycott?

As of yet, no leaders of major soccer federations have endorsed calls for their country to boycott the tournament, despite pressure from some executives and politicians. It would likely take decisive action from a federation head, akin to the action President Jimmy Carter took prior to the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, to arrive at a country boycotting.

Furthermore, given the relationship Trump has built up with FIFA president Gianni Infantino, the effect of a boycott, or any credible threats of one, on the United States’ immigration policy or hosting responsibilities would likely be rather limited, making a boycott an unpopular decision that may not achieve the desired goal of any boycotting nation.

Infantino attended Trump’s inauguration and controversially awarded Trump FIFA’s inaugural Peace Prize. More recently, he signed an agreement with Trumps’ Board of Peace on behalf of FIFA.

Infantino was also a staunch defender of Qatar’s building practices in the face of heavy human rights criticism and was willing to change FIFA’s policies at the last minute to acquiesce to Qatar’s demands for limited alcohol sales during the 2022 Men’s World Cup.

Trump could still escalate geopolitical tensions enough to spark further boycott discussions. But for now, a boycott remains unlikely, and even credible threats would likely do little to shift Infantino and Trump from the status quo.

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. Calls for a boycott of the 2026 FIFA World Cup are growing, but how realistic is one? – https://theconversation.com/calls-for-a-boycott-of-the-2026-fifa-world-cup-are-growing-but-how-realistic-is-one-275785

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Nadiya N. Ali, Assistant Professor, Sociology, Trent University

By any measure, 2025 is the year artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly shifted the way we work, interact with each other and engage with the world at large. It has also made undeniable the enduring reality of racism and the limits of fact-checking in an age of disinformation.

Thanks to algorithmic systems, narratives that tap into deep-seated fears and anxieties travel farther and faster than ever before. They circle the globe before fact-checkers can even flag a problematic post.

In the second half of the year, another technological disruption emerged with OpenAI’s Sora, a lifelike video-generation software. Nothing, seemingly, was immune, including politics.

Sora hit the political landscape with particular vigour during the longest federal government shutdown in United States history. The 43-day impasse generated significant pressure and public controversy, particularly around uncertainty and delays that could affect the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Digital blackface and the policing of Black poverty

At the height of the anxiety over the effects of the shutdown on SNAP benefits, which serves roughly 42 million Americans, a slew of short videos of Black women accosting social service employees or unleashing their frustration on livestream audiences caught the attention of the online sphere.

The SNAP suspension was ultimately blocked by the courts. It was also quickly revealed that the circulating clips were AI-generated.

What is most striking about these videos is how deliberately the caricature of the “Black welfare queen” was staged. In one video, the speaker declares, “I need SNAP to buy an iPhone.” In another, “I only eat steak, I need my funds.” And in a clip with children in the background, the woman insists, “I need to do my nails.”

Each expression of illicit use of funds is a shorthand for the alleged irresponsibility and moral failing that has long been intertwined with the racist trope of the “Black welfare queen.” One X user aptly dubbed these videos nothing short of “digital blackface.”

In the words of Black feminist writers Moya Bailey and Trudy, these videos traffic in “misogynoir” — a term developed to capture the “ways anti-Blackness and misogyny combine to malign Black women.” Bailey and Trudy note that representations of Black women as undeserving, burdensome to the public purse and inherently fraudulent are entrenched rather than exceptional.

Even clips “clearly labeled with a Sora watermark nabbed nearly 500,000 views on TikTok alone,” journalist Joe Wilkins observed. Wilkins goes on to explain that even when viewers were told the clips were AI-generated, some insisted, [“But that is what is happening.” Some argued that even if the videos were technically “fake,” they still “highlight genuine SNAP…issues.”

These comments expose the limits of fact-checking as an antidote to disinformation, especially when dealing with charged tropes. Once a harmful framing is revived and thrust into the collective ether, Ctrl+Alt+Delete becomes ineffective.

What requires attention, then, is not only how we grapple with the new terrain of AI-driven disinformation, but that we critically ask why certain representations hold mass resonance.

Why do particular images and narratives travel so well?

From settled fraud case to viral spectacle

Another case of digital blackface that captured public attention centred on the Minnesota Somali “Black fraud alert” saga. While still rooted in the same anti-Blackness that animated the “Black welfare queen” caricatures, this incident included Islamophobia and rising anti-immigrant sentiments.

The case traced back to a 2022 COVID-era malpractice scheme, which already led to arrests and convictions had. The scheme was led by Aimee Marie Bock, a white woman, and involved a network of Minnesotans, many of whom happened to be of Somali descent.

In December of 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump resurrected the settled case, weaponizing it and tethering it to his longstanding disdain for “third-world countries” and people from “shithole countries.” This rhetoric also folded into his hostility toward political opponents Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

What followed was not a serious discussion of fraud or of policy safeguards. Instead, the episode reinvigorated debates about white nationalism, racialized citizenship and racial eugenics.

Trump’s call to deport Somalis through ICE, declaring “I don’t want them in our country,” made this logic explicit. That most Minnesota Somalis hold U.S. citizenship, consistent with the 84 per cent citizenship rate, did little to disrupt the racist story being circulated.

Soon after the president’s comments, AI amplified the content. An AI-generated video circulated widely, animating the “Somali pirate” trope. It depicted Black men, presumed to be Somali, as migrants plotting to steal from taxpayers. In it we hear: “We don’t need to be pirates anymore. I found a better way. Government-funded daycare. We must go to Minnesota.”

This reference to child care echoed back to a viral video produced by a right-wing commentator claiming to expose another chapter in the “Somali fraud scandal,” this time targeting Somali-run child-care centres. The video prompted a statewide investigation, which ultimately found that all but one of the named centres were operating normally, with no clear evidence of fraud.

The “Black welfare queen” trope and the “Somali pirate” frame may seem to name different crises and different subjects, yet both draw from the same anti-Black racial grammar. In each case, Blackness is rendered fraudulent, criminal and morally deficient, cast as both a personal failing and national burden.

Why these ideas travel even when they’re false

These instances of digital blackface succeeded because misogynoir and anti-Blackness remain readily available discursive resources. AI merely accelerates their movement. The refusal of audiences to course-correct when fact-checked underscores how intuitive and pre-assembled racist and xenophobic scripts already are.

In both the SNAP-themed misogynoiric videos and the AI-generated “Somali pirate” content, nuance and factual accuracy were beside the point. What is at work instead is a broader political project tied to racial capitalism’s eugenicist logics.

As Black radical scholar Cedric Robinson argues, racism is not incidental to capitalism but foundational to the inequalities it requires. Poverty is misdirected as evidence of personal and community failings rather than the result of massive structural inequity. And when attached to the racialized poor, especially when Black, Muslim and immigrant, this logic crystallizes into “common sense.”

What is at stake with AI-enabled digital blackface is not only the amplification of racism, but the architecture of political life. In this climate, sober analysis and nuance recede, displaced by the numbing anxiety that structures contemporary public discourse.

Nadiya N. Ali has received funding from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. How AI resurrects racist stereotypes and disinformation — and why fact-checking isn’t enough – https://theconversation.com/how-ai-resurrects-racist-stereotypes-and-disinformation-and-why-fact-checking-isnt-enough-270000

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Reza Hasmath, Professor in Political Science, University of Alberta

Canada has spent decades confronting the gender pay gap, enacting legislation and building public awareness around the fact that women earn about 84 cents for every dollar men make. That gap persists because of systemic barriers, and is wider for women who face multiple forms of discrimination.

Yet an equally significant wage penalty for ethnic and racial minorities rarely commands the same attention, and has not prompted a comparable policy response.

Racialized men earn just 78 cents for every dollar non-racialized men earn. Racialized women face a double penalty, earning only 59 cents. Post-COVID pandemic data shows this wage gap remains largely unchanged.

Both injustices are real and well-documented. So why has gender-based pay equity produced dedicated legislative tools, while ethnic and racial wage penalties continue to be addressed unevenly?

As an expert in public policy and ethnic studies, I see the answer lying not in the severity of the problem, but in the mechanisms that bring gender and ethno-racial wage discrepancies to light.

A century of feminist momentum

Progress on gender pay equity has been largely driven by sustained, organized activism. By the time wage discrimination entered mainstream political debate in the 1960s and 1970s, women’s groups had built national coalitions, testified before commissions and established gender inequality as an object of state intervention.

This momentum translated into policy. The 1977 Canadian Human Rights Act defined wage discrimination solely through a gender lens, making it discriminatory “for an employer to establish or maintain differences in wages between male and female employees.”

Ethnicity and race were absent from this definition — a gap that labour organizations and anti-racism advocates have long pushed to change.

The 1995 Employment Equity Act requires federally regulated employers to track representation and remove barriers for four designated groups: women, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities and members of visible minorities. But it stopped short of requiring employers to correct wage disparities for ethno-racialized workers.

Gender pay equity later received its own legislative tool: the 2018 Pay Equity Act, which obliges federally regulated employers to proactively assess and remedy gender-based wage gaps for work of equal value.

While this framework has strengthened accountability, significant gaps remain, especially for women who experience intersecting forms of discrimination.

The legislative landscape is beginning to shift, but at a snail’s pace. The Employment Equity Act Review Task Force has recommended expanding designated groups to include Black workers and 2SLGBTQ+ workers. If implemented, these changes would mark the first major update to Canada’s equity regime in decades.

A delayed start for ethno-racial equity advocacy

While feminist organizations were building national advocacy networks in the mid-20th century, ethno-racialized communities faced a different political landscape.

Until the mid-1960s, Canada’s immigration system restricted non-European immigration, forcing many ethno-racialized communities to fight first for the right to be in Canada.

Because of these structural barriers, research on ethno-racial earnings disparities emerged far later. Economists began documenting the “colour of money” in Canadian labour markets only in the 1990s — decades after gender wage gaps had become a staple of academic research, public policy and media coverage.

Subsequent studies have shown persistent earnings penalties for ethno-racialized workers, with Black, West Asian and South Asian workers facing some of the steepest disadvantages.

In recent years, the federal government has introduced new institutional mechanisms, including Canada’s Anti‑Racism Strategy. Such initiatives have expanded data collection and supported community-based research, but they remain policy frameworks rather than enforceable tools because they lack binding obligations and compliance mechanisms.

The ‘visible minority’ problem

One of the challenges in achieving pay equity is the lack of categorical clarity in the term “visible minority,” a label frequently used by the Canadian government.

“Visible minority” functions as a bureaucratic catch-all. The last census recorded more than 450 distinct ethnic and cultural origins. Within this umbrella, labour market outcomes vary dramatically.

For example, university-educated Japanese Canadians often earn more than white Canadians, while those of Latin American ancestry earn 32 per cent less. Statistics Canada data shows that, even after controlling for education, Black male graduates earn 11 to 13 per cent less than non-racialized peers, while West Asian and Arab female graduates earn 15 to 16 per cent less.

Such variation makes collective advocacy more difficult. When some subgroups are advantaged, political attention can wane because the problem appears inconsistent.

Advocacy is most effective when it spotlights the worst-affected groups: Black Canadians, West Asian Canadians and Latin American Canadians. Organizations such as the Black Legal Action Centre and the Canadian Arab Institute demonstrate that targeted, community-specific advocacy is both possible and necessary.

Precarity as a silencer

Another reason the ethno-racial wage penalty is also muted by labour market precarity. Many ethno-racialized workers are overrepresented in temporary, low-wage or insecure forms of employment, including temporary foreign worker programs, non-unionized contract work and short-term service roles.

Research has repeatedly shown that newcomers and ethno-racialized workers face higher rates of job insecurity and lower access to employment protections.

For workers on conditional permits or pathways to permanent residency, speaking out about wage discrimination can risk contract termination or loss of status.

Under Canadian law, employers are required to measure ethno-racial representation but are not obligated to ensure ethno-racial pay equity. In effect, ethno-racialized workers are counted, but their wages remain unprotected.

Laws reflect which inequalities we care about

The ethnic and racial wage disparity in Canada is not inevitable; it is political. If sustained activism and legislation can tackle the gender pay gap from a policy perspective, the same tools can address ethno-racial wage penalties.

Community organizations have long pushed for this. Unions such as the Canadian Union of Public Employees explicitly frame discriminatory wage structures as a form of racism that must be confronted through collective bargaining and organizing.

The Canadian Labour Congress has called for stronger enforcement mechanisms, better data and explicit recognition of ethno-racial pay inequity in federal law.

These three shifts would make a meaningful difference:

1. Move beyond “visible minority” categories and require wage reporting for specific groups most affected by disparities.

2. Extend pay equity obligations to include ethnic and racial wage gaps, with the same proactive assessment and compliance mechanisms used for gender.

3. Link wage equity to broader conversations about immigration, economic justice and Canada’s stated commitment to multiculturalism.

If fair and equitable pay is truly a Canadian value, attention to wage inequality cannot stop at gender. Both the gender gap and the ethnic and racial wage gap are products of systemic barriers.

Addressing these gaps requires extending equity measures to all sectors where ethnic or racial background continues to influence opportunity and compensation.

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

– ref. Canada’s ethnic and racial wage gap rivals it’s gender gap — but gets a fraction of the policy attention – https://theconversation.com/canadas-ethnic-and-racial-wage-gap-rivals-its-gender-gap-but-gets-a-fraction-of-the-policy-attention-275296

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Matthew I. Thompson, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Media, Art, and Performance, University of Regina

The fate of 30 captive beluga whales and four dolphins hangs in the balance as Marineland in Niagara Falls awaits final approval for an export permit from the Canadian government. Marineland has threatened to euthanize the whales, as they can no longer afford to feed and house them since shuttering the park.

Marineland closed to the public in 2024 after years of declining ticket sales. An initial attempt to sell the whales to an amusement park in China was blocked by Canada’s Fisheries Minister, Joanne Thompson, in order to protect the whales from performing in captivity.

A more humane solution for many is The Whale Sanctuary Project, a 100-acre enclosed parcel of coastal waters in Nova Scotia. The sanctuary is not yet complete, however, and Marineland is pressing the federal government to allow them to export their whales to amusement parks in the United States.

---

Read more:
Marineland’s decline raises questions about the future of zoo tourism

---

My research examines how environmental politics get transformed into Hollywood movies. Captive whales and dolphins inspired the Save the Whales movement of the 1970s and 80s, which found itself expressed in films like The Day of the Dolphin and Orca. While these films were very sympathetic towards whales, their star cetaceans were captive orcas and dolphins.

The crisis at Marineland is emblematic of human-cetacean relations in the last hundred years. Whether capturing them on film, containing them in amusement parks or subjecting them to scientific experiments, our curiosity about whales and dolphins has compelled us to fetch them out of the ocean. The irony is that, once we have gotten a good look, we recognize their right to be free in an environment they are no longer equipped for.

Free Willy

The best example of this irony comes from the 1993 film Free Willy. In it, a young boy befriends, and then leads to freedom, a captive orca named Willy. A surprise hit at the box office, once the film was released many audience members wanted to know whether the whale who played Willy had also been set free.

Keiko, as that whale was known, was held in captivity in an under-resourced aquarium in Mexico City at the time. Like the belugas and dolphins at Marineland, Keiko was suffering some of the mental and physical afflictions associated with living in a poorly maintained tank. Since 2019, 19 belugas, one dolphin and one orca have died at Marineland.

Pressure from fans of the film led to the creation of the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation, and a plan to release Keiko back into the wild was developed.

Unfortunately for Keiko, and captive whales everywhere, once a cetacean has spent a significant amount of time in captivity, they are rarely able to survive reintroduction to the wild.

Millions of dollars were spent flying Keiko, first to Oregon, where he was taught to catch and eat live fish again, and then to Iceland where he was slowly introduced to a wild pod of orcas.

Keiko died of pneumonia in a Norwegian fjord only 18 months after his full release.

Keiko’s story highlights the problem faced by the belugas and dolphins at Marineland. Films and amusement parks expose millions of people to the intelligence, charisma and ineffability of cetaceans. This exposure transformed toothed-whales in the popular imagination from “wolves of the sea” to a “mind in the waters.” What were once thought of as dangerous gluttons who decimated commercial fish stocks became intelligent and benevolent friends.

Once this transformation has taken place in the popular imagination, the captive whales that inspired it are no longer congruent with the dominant opinion that intelligent and social creatures should not be taken from their families and held in small tanks.

What do the whales want?

The belugas and dolphins at Marineland are, from one perspective, victims of a law designed to protect them. Bill S-203, nicknamed the “Free Willy bill,” banned keeping captive whales and dolphins in Canada after passing into law in 2019. The whales at Marineland were grandfathered in, but further breeding was prohibited.

The ban on breeding means Marineland has to keep the male and female belugas separate from each other. According to one former trainer at the park, once the males were secluded from their female companions, they began aggressively raking each other with their teeth, leaving scars visible on their skin.

---

Read more:
The fate of Marineland’s belugas expose the ethical cracks in Canadian animal law

---

In 2021, Ontario’s Animal Welfare Service concluded an investigation into the park, declaring that all the marine mammals there were in distress due to poor water quality. Marineland has made efforts to improve the life-support systems since 2021, and the whale deaths at the park have not been linked to water quality. That being said, even when cetaceans are well cared for in captivity, they live shorter lives than their wild counterparts.

An ideal plan for the whales at Marineland would be made in consultation with them. Unfortunately, despite many imaginative attempts (some of which I detail in my forthcoming book), an interspecies communication breakthrough with cetaceans has yet to occur.

In the 1986 film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home the crew of the Starship Enterprise is tasked with travelling back in time to collect a pair of captive humpback whales, as cetaceans are extinct in their present. Before beaming the animals up, however, Spock takes a swim with them to ask their permission. When Captain Kirk asks why he jumped into the whale tank, Spock replies:

“Admiral, If we were to assume that these whales are ours to do with as we please, we would be as guilty as those who caused their extinction.”

Matthew I. Thompson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. What can whale films tell us about Marineland’s threatened belugas and dolphins? – https://theconversation.com/what-can-whale-films-tell-us-about-marinelands-threatened-belugas-and-dolphins-274944