Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Liam Cole Young, Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies and Co-Director of the School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University

The Seattle Seahawks may have easily dispatched the New England Patriots on Super Bowl Sunday, but a more consequential battle unfolded off the field.

Sports betting companies vied with each other for fan attention, engagement and market share by flooding the broadcast with ads and promotions.

These will continue to crowd our social feeds and commercial breaks throughout the Winter Olympics. Want to wager on a curling match between Italy and Switzerland? Think someone will score in the first 10 minutes of a hockey game? In most parts of Canada, you can tap a wager into your phone from your couch in seconds.

Gamblers have already set their sights on the Olympics, but for many fans, the sudden proliferation of betting has felt disorienting. How did something once considered taboo become commonplace so quickly?

As a researcher working on a long-term project on sports gambling, I see these shifts as part of a broader transformation. Much like the forces shaping professional sport franchise sales and ownership battles, the proliferation of sports betting reflects deeper changes in the business, culture and technology of contemporary sport.

Sports betting in Canada

The sports betting floodgates opened in Canada with Parliament’s passing of Bill C-218 in 2021. This legislation allowed provinces to introduce wagering on single events, including in-game live bets. Previously, only multi-game wagers, tightly controlled by public gaming and lottery corporations through Sports Select, were legal.

Parliament was reacting to pressure from industry and consumers that had ratcheted up after the United States Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018, which opened the door to legalized gambling outside of Nevada.

Today, the landscape varies across Canada. Ontario has a regulated iGaming market that allows private operators like FanDuel and DraftKings. Alberta is set to adopt a similar approach in 2026.

Other provinces maintain tighter controls, offering online gambling through provincially run platforms such as PlayNow in British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Québec operates its own platform through Loto-Québec’s EspaceJeux.

The COVID-19 moment

The timing of legalization also coincided with another seismic disruption: the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, COVID-19 shut down stadiums and arenas.

Professional sports leagues suddenly found themselves without ticket revenue, concessions or live event income. Games played in empty arenas upended our assumptions about the resilience of professional sport business models. As financial losses mounted, leagues and teams needed cash.

Sports betting companies, buoyed by private investment, were waiting with open arms and open wallets. Companies like FanDuel and DraftKings were eager to push further into mainstream sports markets and willing to spend heavily to do it.

Partnerships were signed in rapid succession that once would have been ethically unthinkable due to potential conflicts of interest. Leagues aligned themselves with betting platforms, franchises inked sponsorship deals and star athletes fronted ad campaigns.

This reflected a longer economic trajectory. Franchise valuations have soared over the last 25 years. The US$10 billion sale of the Los Angeles Lakers in fall 2025 is the latest signal that global finance, private equity and non-traditional ownership groups have transformed sports into highly financialized assets.

The new stakeholders expect steady and substantial returns. With broadcast landscapes and consumer media habits changing, owners are increasingly hedging their bets. Partnerships with gambling companies are central to that diversification strategy.

Changing fandom, changing technology

Technology has fundamentally transformed how we observe, measure, track and analyze sport. Much has been written on the analytics revolution in sports management, sometimes called the “Moneyball” effect, which has seen teams increasingly apply quantitative methods borrowed from finance in their approach to franchise operations and roster construction.

Fantasy sports and video game “franchise mode” — gameplay formats that allow users to manage teams over multiple seasons — invite people to think in terms of analytics, probability and predictive modelling.

These platforms train users to break traditional “units” such as games and teams into ever smaller, quantifiable components that can be studied, compared and reconfigured. In fantasy sports, for instance, the performance of an individual athlete may matter more than the outcome of a game.

These behaviours align neatly with sports betting, and gambling apps are designed to capture and monetize them. They transform matches into a series of discrete events and outcomes that can be wagered upon, mirroring the logic of “derivatives” in the financial sector. Users are prompted to interact, analyze, predict and react to events in real time.

As TV increasingly becomes a “second screen,” betting apps keep people tethered to broadcasts through their phones, benefiting leagues, broadcasters and gambling companies alike.

Promises and perils of datafication

Modern sports generate enormous volumes of data. Tracking technologies measure ball trajectories, player movement, speed, force and spatial positioning with extraordinary granularity. Originally developed for performance analysis and officiating, this data now fuels an ever-expanding menu of betting options.

Betting platforms analyze data provided to them through league partnerships or via third-party data brokers in real time. These data operations are proprietary and not accessible to bettors.

Fans can now wager on everything from the outcome of the next pitch to the number of yards gained on a single drive or even the length of a national anthem. This real-time micro-wagering keeps fans engaged, but it also heightens the ethical stakes. As data flows expand, so do opportunities for misuse.

In recent years, several athletes and coaches have been disciplined for violating gambling rules — betting on games, sharing inside information or associating with third-party bettors.

These cases highlight larger systemic issues: that the rules governing these partnerships were assembled reactively, often hastily, and without a clear sense of how such relationships would affect competitive integrity.

The landscape is defined by uncertainty: unclear rules, inconsistent enforcement and ongoing debates about whether all of this is healthy — not just for the culture of sport, but society as a whole.

What kind of sports culture lies ahead?

The proliferation of sports betting ads signals a deeper realignment in how sports are financed, experienced and governed.

The forces driving this shift — changes in policy, economics and fan practices; technological innovation; data and financialization; emerging ethical considerations — are the same forces reshaping professional sport more broadly.

Leagues and teams are now more directly tied to gambling revenues than ever before, raising questions about their responsibility to protect players, preserve competitive integrity and support fans vulnerable to harm.

Governments and regulators, meanwhile, face mounting pressure to balance economic opportunity with meaningful consumer protections, including limits on advertising and stronger responsible gambling frameworks.

Sports betting isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Understanding how we got here, who the players are and what’s at stake are necessary steps toward ensuring a future of sport that’s about more than the next wager.

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

– ref. How sports betting is changing the way people watch sports – https://theconversation.com/how-sports-betting-is-changing-the-way-people-watch-sports-275303

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Luisa Sotomayor, Associate professor, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto

Crises seem to be everywhere. We live through a moment of generalized crisis — called poly– or perma-crisis by some. In this context, the nation-state often appears as the default institution and ideological framework for addressing challenges. But the nation-state is not always the best placed entity to respond to crises.

Recent events suggest that local, urban and municipal intervention can be effective in the face of crisis. In the United States, various crises have recently been responded to by municipal action.

The election of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani in November 2025 signalled a switch in attention that foregrounded civic alternatives to national overreach.

Minneapolis has seen unprecedented rallying by civic and grassroots forces who mobilized to protect persecuted neighbours and co-workers. This response to a crisis represents a politics of care and solidarity. It has also recognized an urban form of “non-status citizenship” beyond legal status, grounded in proximity and moral obligation to neighbours and migrants.

Cities are where many crises are lived, governed and collectively handled most directly. Daily social and economic life in cities encourages practical and creative responses to overlapping crises.

In our current project about multi-level crisis management in Canada and the United Kingdom, we want to better understand the potential of local, urban and community-based solutions to the overlapping crises people currently experience.

Crisis urbanism

We start from the assumption that the urban way of life is central to societies both inside and outside city regions. Cities aren’t just places where multiple crises may collide. They’re also places where people develop ways to navigate them. They do so through shared learning and, in some cases, organized forms of resistance and alternative responses to state strategies.

A study conducted by one of our research partners, urban and suburban studies professor Roger Keil, called this phenomenon crisis urbanism. The research, which is also at the basis of this article, argues that crises have to be seen more as ongoing processes that are part of everyday urban life, rather than singular events.

Cities can create opportunities that national governments might overlook or fail to provide. For example, communities can establish processes for democratic dialogue to confront the crises they face. These efforts go beyond reacting to failure, helping to build alternative institutional capacities.

The COVID-19 pandemic offers a strong example of how local entities stepped in when traditional modes of governance failed in their crisis response. In Toronto’s suburban Peel Region, for example, conventional government public health responses were lacking. In this situation, a community-based network of social service organizations was critical to the delivery of an ultimately successful crisis response.

A 2025 study found that the same network under the name Metamorphosis rallied more than 100 member organizations in response to the province of Ontario’s decision in 2023 — later abandoned — to dissolve Peel Region, the network’s territorial base and functional context of action. Metamorphosis’s “social service regionalism” can be viewed as an example of care and repair politics made visible by seeing crises like a city.

Enduring examples of local strength

An example of how crisis is not an event but a process comes from Scotland. Local organizations there — crucial in organizing a pandemic response from the bottom up — continued their activity even in an unfavourable national political landscape.

Local governments can also respond to crises by changing how they operate. A clear example is Bogotá’s neighbourhood-based Care Blocks, created during the COVID-19 pandemic to address a growing care crisis. The program turned long-standing feminist groups’ demands into public policy by recognizing unpaid care work as a shared social responsibility, not just a private burden.

Through Manzanas del Cuidado (Care Blocks), the city provides free domestic, social, educational, legal and psychological services to unpaid caregivers. By placing these services within walking distance of homes, the program reduces time pressures — especially for women, who do most care work. Rather than offering only short-term relief, Bogotá redesigned local institutions to embed care into their functioning.

As hubs of care, repair and resistance, cities play a vital role in crisis response, bringing together communities and civil society who, with local governments and agencies, can mobilize positive change.

Returning to Minneapolis, Rock icon Bruce Springsteen put it into poetic terms:

“A city aflame fought fire and ice …

Citizens stood for justice

Their voices ringin’ through the night …

Our city’s heart and soul persists

Through broken glass and bloody tears

On the streets of Minneapolis.

Luisa Sotomayor receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Ewan Kerr’s role is funded by the Leverhulme Trust and Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada-Economic and Social Research Council..

Maryam Lashkari’s role is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Ross Beveridge received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, UK.

– ref. From Minneapolis to Toronto and Bogotá, cities showcase new ways to address crises – https://theconversation.com/from-minneapolis-to-toronto-and-bogota-cities-showcase-new-ways-to-address-crises-275262

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Humayun Kabir, Assistant Teaching Professor, Dept. of Environment, Culture, & Society, Thompson Rivers University

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has returned to power after winning a landslide victory in the country’s recent parliamentary elections last week.

The BNP, led by the new prime minister Tarique Rahman, declared victory in the elections after unofficial results showed the party winning two-thirds of the vote. Rahman is the son of former Bangladeshi prime minister and former BNP leader Khaleda Zia, who died in December 2025, and Ziaur Rahman, the sixth president of Bangladesh.

The election also sees the religious party, Jamaat-e-Islami, become the main opposition party for the first time after winning the second-highest vote share.

This election is the first following the 2024 July uprising that led to the ouster of the country’s longest-serving prime minister, Sheikh Hasina.

During a recent research trip to Bangladesh, two months before the recent election, I observed a palpable sense of uncertainty among people. Whether in roadside tea stalls — where people gather over tea, biscuits and betel leaf — or in upscale coffee shops, conversations consistently revolved around the country’s uncertain democratic future and the growing resurgence of religious political forces.

A prevailing sentiment was that the hope and dream for a new Bangladesh after the July uprising appeared to be fading.

Continuity and a rupture

There are valid reasons for such uncertainty. The present interim government, led by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus and formed following Hasina’s ouster, is deeply tumultuous.

Incidents of mob violence, the killing of a prominent leader of the uprising, arson attacks on newspaper offices, violent persecution of Hindu minorities and attacks on Sufi shrines, among others, have left many Bangladeshis worried about the country’s future.

In the absence of Hasina’s Bangladesh Awami League, the party that ruled the country for more than 15 years, the landslide victory of the BNP-led alliance was predictable. The Awami League was banned by the interim government in May 2025.

What is surprising is the rise of the Jamaat-e-Islami, which secured 68 seats in parliament (77 with its alliance). Their success in the election moves them from the political margins to the forefront.

Now, the question is: What trajectory does this election set for Bangladesh’s democratic future? In many ways, the election represents both continuity and rupture — distinct in certain respects, yet familiar in others.

What makes this election different?

First, this election is significant because, for the first time in more than a decade, people were able to cast their ballots in a relatively free and fair environment. The elections held in 2014, 2018 and 2024 during the Awami League’s rule were widely seen as neither free nor fair, and marked by widespread irregularities and intimidation.

Both the BNP and opposition parties also claimed there were irregularities with the recent election.

The 2026 election was also significant because it was a referendum on the July National Charter. Aimed at incorporating the spirit of the July uprising, the charter adopted 84 proposals based on various reform commissions’ recommendations.

Despite concerns about the complexity of these proposals, and arguments that they might be difficult for ordinary citizens to fully comprehend, an overwhelming majority of voters supported the charter. Estimates suggest that more than 62 per cent voted in favour, compared to 29 per cent who voted against it.

The proposed reforms enshrined in the charter include introducing a bicameral parliamentary system, the establishment of a caretaker government to oversee free and fair elections, term-limits for the prime minister, expanding presidential powers and citizens’ fundamental rights, and measures to safeguard judicial independence, among others. As people voted in favour of the charter, the new government is required to implement the reform measures.

Second, the election empowers the Jamaat-e-Islami by expanding their base of supporters and representation in parliament. The political landscape of Islamic religious parties in Bangladesh is broadly streamed in three different fronts: the Jamaat-e-Islami, Sufi Islamic parties and Deobandi madrasa-centric Islamic parties, whose electoral success has never been significant.

For the first time in the country’s history, Jamaat-e-Islami — the dominant Islamic party whose support base largely consists of educated populations in both urban and rural areas — could assume the role of the main opposition.

Historically, however, Jamaat-e-Islami and other religious parties have often acted as kingmakers rather than dominant electoral forces and have struggled to secure significant vote shares independently. Now, as the main opposition party, Jamaat-e-Islami is likely to advocate more strongly for more religion-based policy making. The party may push for policies and institutional measures aimed at expanding the role of Islam in governance and public life.

Third, the July uprising gave rise to a new cohort of Gen Z and youth leaders who played a central role in orchestrating resistance against the authoritarian regime. Some of these leading figures later joined the interim government; however, they subsequently resigned from their positions when their newly formed political party, the National Citizen Party (NCP), chose to contest the election. However, their electoral success remained limited.

This was largely due to their alliance with the Jamaat-e-Islami and internal divisions among the party’s leadership over this strategic decision. Consequently, NCP candidates secured only six seats under the broader Jamaat-e-Islami-led alliance.

While Jamaat-e-Islami succeeded in shifting from the political margins to a more prominent position, the NCP and its leadership experienced the opposite trajectory — moving from front-line political figures to the margins.

The road to democracy: Hopes & challenges

Notably, Tarique Rahman, who returned to Bangladesh after 17 years of self-exile in the United Kingdom, has long faced allegations related to corruption and involvement in a 2004 grenade attack on an Awami League rally that killed two dozen people and wounded about 300 others.

Although he was acquitted of these charges, it will be challenging for him to reform internal practices and distance the party from its legacy of corruption and extortion.

The political landscape in Bangladesh is often shaped by majoritarian ideological narratives, within which Islamic political forces have regained influence by resisting elements of secular-liberal ideals. The shift from secularism to pluralism has been interpreted by some observers as a way of appeasing religious political parties. For the new government, ensuring genuine pluralism and inclusivity will therefore be a significant challenge.

The 2026 election has helped to pacify some uncertainties surrounding the country’s political future. If the July Charter is implemented by the new BNP government, it could lay the foundations for a stable and functional democratic system.

However, the election has also reinstated an entrenched political leadership whose past governance record has been marked by cronyism, kleptocracy, corruption and extortion.

Humayun Kabir 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. Bangladesh’s election represents politics as usual, and some hope for change – https://theconversation.com/bangladeshs-election-represents-politics-as-usual-and-some-hope-for-change-276001

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Mauricio A. Garcia-Barrera, Professor of Psychology, University of Victoria

On any given night, 60,000 people in Canada will go to sleep homeless. Research estimates that more than half of them have had a brain injury at one point in their lives, most of them being injured before becoming homeless. An estimated 22.5 per cent live with moderate or severe brain injuries, a rate nearly 10 times higher than the general population.

Several avenues can lead a person to experience homelessness, including abuse, criminality and other adverse life events, all of which can be interrelated with brain injury. For example, experiencing a brain injury can lead to the onset of a mental health or substance use disorder, impulsivity and aggression, which can, in turn, lead to unemployment, family breakdown or other known causes of homelessness.

“Acquired brain injury” refers to brain damage after birth, either from external physical force (called traumatic brain injury) or internal problems like stroke or infection (non-traumatic). The more severe the brain injury, the greater the impairment, with cognitive abilities often being the most affected.

Cognitive impairment and homelessness

At the CORTEX Lab at the University of Victoria, one of our research interests is the impact of brain injury.

Brain injury often leads to a wide range of cognitive challenges, including mental fog, fatigue, difficulty concentrating and memory problems that disrupt learning and daily functioning. Executive functioning, including decision-making and problem-solving processes, can be particularly affected.

When these impairments go undiagnosed and unsupported, the consequences ripple across every aspect of life: work and school performance decline, relationships suffer and healthy coping mechanisms erode.

Sustaining employment, education and family responsibilities becomes overwhelming. Remembering medications, appointments, and effectively completing tasks such as filling out a form can feel nearly impossible. Financial strain, interpersonal loss and chronic stress compound these difficulties.

Without adequate recovery supports, these factors converge, increasing vulnerability to homelessness and perpetuating a cycle where further brain injuries become more likely.

Systemic gaps in supports

Our research identified several systemic barriers that make it difficult for people living with brain injuries to break the cycle of housing instability and homelessness.

Stigma is pervasive and can undermine the quality of care people receive. People may be discouraged from seeking help when they need it because their trust in systems and service providers is broken.

Health-care and housing systems operate in silos. Long wait-lists, complex application processes and limited communication between organizations make the available services difficult to navigate, especially for people with brain injuries who may require additional support to complete paperwork, attend appointments and advocate for their needs.

Many people with brain injuries rely on income assistance. There is growing concern about the discrepancy between these supplements and the rising cost of living. In today’s rental market, “affordable” housing is financially inaccessible for those relying on income assistance. When housing is obtained, individuals are left with minimal resources to meet their basic needs after rent is paid. This, coupled with under-investment in existing supportive and transitional housing, further limits the availability of appropriate shelter options.

What can we do? Top five solutions

Our community partners’ insights yielded the following recommendations for improving the health and well-being of people experiencing homelessness and brain injury, listed below in order of priority:

1. Provide accessible and affordable housing

People with a brain injury need affordable, accessible housing with special support, including alternative transportation, age-appropriate settings and flexible living options. A housing-first approach with adequate financial help provides the stability needed for successful community living.

2. Enhance resources for service providers

Specialized training for health-care and public service workers who commonly interact with people experiencing homelessness, such as community outreach workers and police, can help to improve the quality of care. The expansion of brain injury health-care services into homeless communities is also key, with particular emphasis on screening and diagnostic services as the first step to connecting people to specialized care.

3. Design needs-based services

Health-care services must consider basic needs that are often overlooked. For example, providers should offer storage, even without ID, so that unhoused patients can safely store their belongings while attending appointments, which can be plentiful following a brain injury.

4. Improve collaboration and adopt a long-term integrated approach

Improving communication between health authorities and housing service providers may facilitate a smoother transition from hospital (post-brain injury) to housing, in turn preventing people from being discharged to the streets. The idea of “care with distinction” is critical, as a team of multidisciplinary health-care professionals are needed to understand needs specific to brain injury, psychiatric or physical conditions, and how these challenges interact in people experiencing homelessness. Continuity of care is also crucial, as brain injury can require lifelong support.

5. Reduce stigma through public health education

Public health education campaigns arose as a promising means for promoting awareness and reducing stigma. By fostering greater awareness for the interconnections between brain injury and homelessness, greater compassion might be promoted.

Supporting a national strategy: Bill C-206

The high burden of brain injury among people experiencing homelessness is undeniable. Bill C-206, an Act to establish a national strategy on brain injuries, represents a critical step toward addressing brain injury in Canada and, as an outcome, addressing homelessness.

The legislation aims to improve prevention, treatment and recovery support for the millions of Canadians affected by brain injury. The bill emphasizes collaboration, public education, and comprehensive care for individuals and families navigating life after a brain injury. A national strategy will have a visible impact not only on affected individuals but on our communities at large.

Mauricio A. Garcia-Barrera receives research funding associated with the work referred in this article from the (former) BC Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, the Vancouver Foundation, Michael Smith Health Research BC, and Mitacs.

Cole J. Kennedy receives funding for the research referenced in this article from the BC Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, Vancouver Foundation, Michael Smith Health Research BC, Mitacs and the BC Brain Injury Association. He is also supported by Island Health and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Grace C. Warren receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Canada Graduate Scholarship – Master’s award.

– ref. Brain injury is almost 10 times more common in unhoused people. Addressing it is key to reducing homelessness – https://theconversation.com/brain-injury-is-almost-10-times-more-common-in-unhoused-people-addressing-it-is-key-to-reducing-homelessness-270162

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Laura Neary, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Waterloo

River deltas are among the most complex and productive environments on Earth. Yet, they face serious threats from upstream industrialization and climate change, which alter supplies of water, sediment and contaminants. Even deltas distant from densely populated and industrialized areas are not immune to these stressors.

Nestled in a remote area of northeastern Alberta is the world’s largest freshwater boreal delta. Spanning 6,000 km², the Peace-Athabasca Delta is the traditional territory of Indigenous nations and a haven for biodiversity. The Delta is recognized internationally as a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance. It also contributes to Wood Buffalo National Park’s designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Despite these recognitions, concerns have persisted for decades that hydroelectric dams on the Peace River, oilsands mines along the Athabasca River and climate change are degrading the Delta by reducing freshwater availability and increasing contaminants.

In 2014, the Mikisew Cree First Nation highlighted these concerns and petitioned UNESCO to include the park on UNESCO’s list of world heritage sites in danger.

This designation would be a first for Canada.

This has renewed calls to establish a lake monitoring program to track environmental changes and their causes. Yet, the Delta’s vast size, remoteness and hydrological complexity pose challenges that are difficult to overcome.

Freshwater availability

During our 25 years of research in the delta, we also recognized the need for lake monitoring to track environmental changes caused by the threats. After engaging with stakeholders and rightsholders, we launched an intensive, multi-faceted seven-year research program in 2015. The research demonstrates methods for ongoing monitoring of freshwater availability and contaminants across the Peace-Athabasca Delta.

Our research highlights that water isotope tracers are effective for tracking freshwater availability across space and time. This method measures ratios of naturally occurring stable isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen in water molecules. It can identify the roles of snowmelt, rainfall, river flooding and evaporation on lake water balance.

Using water isotope tracers, freshwater availability can be expressed as evaporation-to-inflow (E/I) ratios. This metric compares how much water flows into a lake versus how much water leaves by evaporation.

Maps of E/I ratios reveal where lakes are prone to drying from evaporation (areas in orange and red). It also reveals where lakes receive large inputs of river floodwater and precipitation (blue areas).

Time-series graphs reveal a strong influence of climate on freshwater availability. They demonstrate that E/I ratios at 60 lakes across the Delta correspond with a climate index. Departures from this correspondence would potentially signal that freshwater availability is being altered by other human activities.

Industrial contaminants

In 2010, freshwater scientist David Schindler drew attention to the inability of existing monitoring programs to determine “the extent to which mining has increased concentrations of contaminants in the [Athabasca] river over natural background levels.” A key missing piece was that natural background levels, before mining began, remained unknown.

Following subsequent recommendations of a federal Oilsands Advisory Panel report in 2010, we determined the natural (baseline) concentrations of contaminants in lake sediment deposited before oilsands mining began. We then compared this to concentrations in sediment deposited afterwards to assess for pollution.

As shown in the above graph, we applied this method to measurements of vanadium, a metal abundant in bitumen and mine wastes. Results show enrichment at a lake near the mines due to emissions from the mines, but no enrichment at lakes in the Delta. In other words, mining has not increased vanadium concentrations in the lakes of the Delta.

Monitoring is needed to inform policy

Continued use of these approaches is critical for tracking freshwater availability, detecting pollution and determining causes of change. Such information is needed to inform upstream land-use and water-use decisions and policies, and to evaluate their effectiveness.

Water releases from the W.A.C. Bennett Dam on the Peace River are being considered as a strategy to increase freshwater availability in the Delta. Also under consideration is the release of treated oilsands mine wastewater into the Athabasca River to enable landscape remediation.

These decisions come with costs and risks, and their effectiveness must be evaluated if implemented.

Evaluating strategic water releases could be done by measuring water isotope tracers and depth variation at lakes across the Delta before and after each release. These measurements have been adopted for lake monitoring elsewhere in Northern Canada. Their benefit is that these measurements allow us to determine the impact of river floodwaters versus snowmelt on the amount of freshwater in a lake.

New legislation may allow the release of treated mine wastewater into the Athabasca River. If so, robust baselines generated from lake sediment deposited before oilsands development can be used to detect pollution in recently deposited surface sediment.

More than 50 years ago, the Peace-Athabasca Delta Project Group identified the need for long-term monitoring in the Delta. Many years later, UNESCO’s first fact-finding mission recommended expanding monitoring and project assessments to include possible individual and cumulative impacts of industrial developments on Wood Buffalo and the Peace-Athabasca Delta.

This year, UNESCO will conduct another fact-finding mission to decide on Wood Buffalo National Park’s World Heritage status. The approaches we have developed for monitoring directly address long-standing recommendations from UNESCO and many other governance bodies. They also provide stakeholders with tools to safeguard this world-renowned Delta now and in the future.

Laura Kendall Neary received funding from Polar Knowledge Canada’s Northern Scientific Training Program for fieldwork in the Peace-Athabasca Delta and doctoral scholarships from NSERC and Weston Family Foundation.

Brent Wolfe received funding for the research from the NSERC Collaborative Research and Development program (contributing contracts from BC Hydro, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Suncor Energy, and the Alberta Environmental Monitoring Evaluation & Reporting Agency (now Alberta Environment and Protected Areas)), NSERC Discovery and Northern Research Supplement programs, Canada Foundation for Innovation, Polar Continental Shelf Program of Natural Resources Canada, Northern Water Futures program of Global Water Futures and Parks Canada Agency.

Roland Hall received funding for the research from the NSERC Collaborative Research and Development program (contributing contracts from BC Hydro, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Suncor Energy, and the Alberta Environmental Monitoring Evaluation & Reporting Agency (now Alberta Environment and Protected Areas)), NSERC Discovery and Northern Research Supplement programs, Canada Foundation for Innovation, Polar Continental Shelf Program of Natural Resources Canada, Northern Water Futures program of Global Water Futures and Parks Canada Agency.

– ref. The Peace-Athabasca Delta is at risk. Here’s what we can do to evaluate the threats – https://theconversation.com/the-peace-athabasca-delta-is-at-risk-heres-what-we-can-do-to-evaluate-the-threats-272495

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Michel Magnan, Professeur et Titulaire de la Chaire de Gouvernance S.A. Jarislowsky, Concordia University

Every year, millions of workers are injured or die on the job, imposing enormous human and economic costs. The socio-economic impact of workplace safety is hard to avoid and presents governments and organizations with a major challenge.

In the United States alone, more than 2.6 million work-related injuries occurred in 2023. These incidents resulted in an estimated economic cost of US$176 billion and a loss of around 103 million workdays, according to national data.

In Canada, a recent report estimates the economic costs of workplace injuries at $29.4 billion, which is even higher than in the U.S. once population size is taken into account.

A large body of research shows that external pressures shape workplace safety, with finances, regulatory enforcement and corporate governance being key drivers. However, emerging evidence points to the influence of corporate leadership itself — particularly the “tone at the top” set by chief executive officers (CEOs).

Previous studies suggest that certain executive traits can undermine safety. Overconfidence, equity-based pay incentives and regulatory compliance can impact safety policies, often negatively. What remains less explored is the role of a CEO’s personal traits and backgrounds. Our recent study sought to fill that gap.

Early adversity and executive decision-making

Our study examined whether CEOs’ formative experiences help explain differences in workplace safety outcomes.

Our analysis focused on more than 500 CEOs of large U.S. corporations between 2002 and 2011. We identified where each CEO lived between the ages of five and 15, and matched this information to county-level evidence of natural disasters that caused significant economic damage.

CEOs in the top decile of disaster-related economic damage were classified as having experienced an early traumatic experience.

We then assessed whether such exposure translated into better workplace safety performance. We measured this using government injury and illness data, scaled by the total number of hours worked by employees.

After accounting for firm and CEO attributes, we found that firms led by CEOs who grew up amid severe disasters — such as floods, hurricanes or earthquakes — reported significantly fewer workplace injuries than comparable firms (about 24 per cent less, on average).

Further tests revealed that such results were not an outcome of CEO risk aversion preferences. Instead, the differences appeared to reflect distinct managerial choices.

When character counts the most

One plausible explanation for our findings lies in how early adversity shapes values. Experiencing a disaster during childhood may foster empathy and a sense of responsibility toward others.

In a corporate setting, such prosocial tendencies may motivate CEOs to translate their empathy into concrete organizational actions that prioritize employee welfare. These include improving safety standards, investing in employee safety training or adopting technologies designed to mitigate workplace hazards.

Importantly, these effects were nuanced. The relationship between early-life disaster exposure and workplace safety was strongest where CEOs had more power relative to their boards, faced intense pressure to meet earnings targets or operated in industries with weaker union representation.

In such environments, a CEO’s personal values and character may matter more. Leaders who experienced disasters earlier in life appear to be more willing to protect workers, even when it is costly or inconvenient.

Consistent with this interpretation, we also found that firms led by these CEOs were more likely to make concrete operational changes linked to safer workplaces, including investing in health and safety programs and easing excessive employee workloads — practices that are typically linked to lower injury rates.

Implications for governance and policy

Early adversity does not automatically produce better leaders, nor should personal history replace regulation, enforcement or collective bargaining. That said, our findings suggest that leadership is shaped not only by training and incentives, but by life itself.

The findings are noteworthy from governance, leadership and societal perspectives, as they suggest there are some corporate leaders who are willing to confront short-term financial constraints and corporate resistance to making workplaces safer.

For boards, investors and policymakers, understanding leaders’ formative experiences may offer new insight into who is most likely to truly put human safety first.

In an era in which corporate responsibility is increasingly scrutinized, who leads firms can have tangible consequences for millions of workers.

Yu Wang receives funding from National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project-ID:
72302033).

Michel Magnan and Yetaotao Qiu 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. CEOs who experience natural disasters are more likely to lead safer workplaces – https://theconversation.com/ceos-who-experience-natural-disasters-are-more-likely-to-lead-safer-workplaces-275061

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Samuel Freeze, PhD Student in Clinical Forensic Psychology, Simon Fraser University

In the aftermath of violent tragedies like the recent mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., a common panic-fueled and grief-stricken reaction is to rush to simple, tidy explanations. Mental illness, for example, is often used to make sense of what appears to be senseless.

The explanation is appealing because mass shootings feel shocking and sudden, and mental illness offers a way to wrestle with them and try to understand. But the reality is that although mental illness sometimes plays a role in violence, it’s rarely the most important factor.

Regardless, politicians proceed to call for improvements to the mental health-care system, sidestepping more difficult conversations about violence prevention. Framing mass shootings as a mental illness problem misrepresents the evidence, and redirects our attention away from the other psychological, social and structural conditions that increase the risk of violence.

Why mental illness is a poor predictor of violence

Most people living with a mental illness are never violent, and most people who are violent are not living with a mental illness. One estimate suggests that even if all mental illnesses were somehow eliminated, about 95 per cent of violent acts would still need to be explained.

In fact, people living with mental illness are themselves more likely to be victims of violence. And mental illness is much more strongly associated with suicide than violence, especially when guns are involved.

It shouldn’t be treated as a single explanation — it’s a broad label covering hundreds of conditions. Some symptoms of mental illness, like psychosis, are associated with a slightly higher risk of violence. But the vast majority of people experiencing these symptoms will never be violent.

The appeal of mental illness as an explanation is driven in part by stigma. It resonates with people because there’s a commonly held belief that those with mental illness are dangerous, despite evidence to the contrary.

In most cases, other risk factors play a much larger role in explaining violent acts.

Violence risk is about probability, not prediction

Research on violence shows that it rarely emerges from a single cause, but from the interaction and accumulation of multiple risk factors over time in particular contexts and situations.

Professionals who assess the potential for violence focus on specific risk factors — personal, situational and contextual characteristics identified through research — that help to understand someone’s likelihood for future violence.

Even those risk factors simply point to the probability of violence, not certainty.

Substance misuse and intoxication, antisocial traits and attitudes that support violence, experiencing victimization or past trauma, negative peer influence and access to lethal means like firearms are examples of risk factors other than mental health problems that are statistically associated with violence.

These factors often interact with each other and build up over time, potentially shaping motivation, lowering inhibitions and destabilizing decision-making.

Psychiatrists and psychologists involved in the investigation of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado described perpetrators Eric Harris as a psychopath and Dylan Klebold as an “angry depressive.” They noted that Klebold likely would not have carried out the attack on his own. What proved important for attempting to explain his involvement was not depression, but the interaction between anger, grievance, negative peer influence and access to firearms.

This case illustrates how diagnosis alone explains little without paying attention to other factors like social dynamics and access to weapons.

The common pathways behind mass shootings

Mass shootings only make up about one per cent of gun deaths in the U.S., yet they tend to shape the overall discussion about gun violence. The risk factors and motivations involved in mass shootings vary by context (workplace, school) and differ somewhat from those involved in more typical violence.

The definitive role of mental illness in mass shootings isn’t clear, given how complex, unique and statistically rare these tragedies are.

Part of the challenge is that mental illness is defined differently across studies. Overall, severe mental illness appears overrepresented among mass shooters, and having a history of mental health problems, more broadly, is also common. However, rejection, despair, grudges and rage appear to be far more important in explaining why these attacks occur.

Mass shooters tend to be young white men who are socially isolated, struggling at work or in school, and experiencing a sense of alienation. Many report histories of childhood trauma, bullying and social rejection, or at least perceive themselves to have been repeatedly wronged.

Perpetrators may fixate on and ruminate about negative experiences, which can harden into grievances directed at groups or institutions that they feel wronged by. Violence, in this context, then seems justified and can offer a sense of power, revenge or recognition.

Some mass shootings are also tied to extremist ideologies and are intended to garner attention, communicate a message or assert identity within a movement. This may increase a perpetrator’s sense of belonging or purpose. Online environments can act as echo chambers that promote and accelerate radicalization, particularly when someone feels they have been rejected elsewhere.

Many mass shooters also develop an intense interest in weapons and “leak” their plans or grievances to others before an attack.

Recognizing these warning signs can help create opportunities for intervention. At the same time, many people who fit these descriptions will never be violent, highlighting the uncertainty involved in risk assessment.

The future of violence risk assessment

The uncomfortable truth is that we just don’t know for sure what leads to a mass shooting. But focusing on a single risk factor distracts from the many others that research shows are important to pay attention to before they lead to violence.

Preventing future tragedies requires a clearer understanding of how risk develops along a pathway to violence and early intervention to handle warning behaviours.

Viewing violence as a complex process is essential. Reducing it to cursory labels like “mentally ill” makes it harder to address.

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

– ref. Why mass shootings can’t be reduced to a mental illness diagnosis – https://theconversation.com/why-mass-shootings-cant-be-reduced-to-a-mental-illness-diagnosis-275920

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Marissa Nivison, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Psychology, University of Calgary

Parenting can be hard and can feel especially overwhelming when children have strong emotions, such as anger, frustration or excitement, that they are not always able to regulate on their own.

Although children may struggle to manage strong emotions, parents play a critical role in helping them navigate them.

Drawing on our work with children and families, we share practical tips and resources to help parents support their children through emotional ups and downs — big feelings.

The development of processing emotions

Children are not born knowing how to regulate their feelings — it’s a skill they learn as they grow. The ability to process emotions is often learned from modelling, including watching how their parents deal with their own emotions.

In infancy, we see that babies’ cries are a form of emotional communication. For example, this is how babies let their parents know that they are in distress, such as being hungry or needing a diaper change.

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How children’s secure attachment sets the stage for positive well-being

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As toddlers, children often experience new and more complex emotions that they cannot always identify. For example, a two-year-old may feel anger and jealously when introduced to their new baby sibling because their parent’s attention is suddenly focused on the baby instead of them. With limited understanding of their big emotion, they may act out by directing anger toward their baby sibling or parent.

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Expecting again? Tips for helping your first-born child thrive with a new sibling

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As children grow older, they gradually develop their own skills to manage big feelings. Parents can help to build up their child’s “emotional tool kit” through modelling good emotion regulation strategies as well as explicitly teaching children these skills.

Big feelings aren’t necessarily negative. Children often have difficulty regulating big, positive emotions as well, such as excitement or joy.

How parents can help

There are several ways that parents can help children learn how to manage big feelings.

Stay calm. Children are sensitive to the emotions of the adults around them. When possible, approaching your child’s big feelings with a calm presence can help them feel safe and supported. Of course, staying calm is not always easy, especially in the middle of a stressful moment. Many caregivers find that strong emotions can feel contagious or overwhelming.

If you notice this in yourself, it can help to take a short pause. Taking slow, deep breaths, leaving the room momentarily (if possible) or turning away from your child to give yourself time to collect your own emotions can be a valuable reset.

The good news is that there are several resources — many of which are free — that can help strengthen a parent’s ability to regulate their own emotions and promote emotion processing in their children.

Praise positive behaviour. Noticing, recognizing and reinforcing positive behaviours is incredibly important. While it’s natural to react to negative challenging behaviours, it’s just as (if not more) important to acknowledge when your child is handling their emotions well. Reinforcing these positive behaviours has been shown to reduce the number and intensity of negative outbursts over time.

Identify and validate emotions. After a child has settled down from an intense emotional reaction, it can help if the parent explicitly identifies what the child was feeling — for example, “I know you are angry and sad because you cannot have a cookie before dinner.” By identifying the feelings, children are slowly learning to how to recognize their own emotions. This is an important first step in knowing which skills to use to help calm themselves down.

For example, when a child recognizes they are angry, they may know that taking deep breaths makes them feel better. This can also help children to feel that they are in a comfortable environment where they can actually express how they are feeling. Using an emotions wheel or chart that names and illustrates facial expressions of a range of feelings can help parents and children identify and validate emotions.

Practice. Take the opportunity to teach your children about emotions outside of their own feelings. For example, identifying emotions can be turned into a game by making different faces and asking your child what emotions they think you are feeling. Parents can also pause during reading books and ask their child what the characters may be feeling. The Center for Early Childhood Mental Health Consolation at Georgetown University has put together an extensive list of activities that can help you teach your child emotions in everyday life.

Finally, know when to seek additional help. Temper tantrums, outbursts and emotional displays are very common in the toddler and preschool years. Young children are still developing the brain systems that support self-regulation. However, if a child’s outbursts are unusually intense, frequent or prolonged, additional supports may be helpful, such as from a family doctor or pediatrician.

Marissa Nivison receives funding from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Gizem Keskin receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Sheri Madigan receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation, the Calgary Health Foundation, and the Canada Research Chairs program.

– ref. Big feelings: 5 ways parents can help kids learn to regulate their emotions – https://theconversation.com/big-feelings-5-ways-parents-can-help-kids-learn-to-regulate-their-emotions-275173

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Beyhan Farhadi, Assistant Professor, Educational Policy and Equity, University of Toronto

I’m still processing the devastating mass school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C. Like many people across the country, I’m thinking about the families and communities directly impacted while trying to anticipate next steps.

As an academic who researches surveillance technology in Canadian schools,
I am also watching the media landscape for developments in coverage and shifts in discourse.

This is because my preliminary research suggests – based on analysis of news media reports between 2010 and 2025 – a single, tragic story can impact expanded visible security measures and significant investments.

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Read more:
School shootings dropped in 2025 – but schools are still focusing too much on safety technology instead of prevention

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When violence and tragedy erupt, governments and school leaders face intense pressure to act quickly, and urgency can produce policy responses that signal control without a plan to evaluate their impact.

Focus on securing schools

Market research from the United States estimates that billions of dollars a year are invested in “securing” schools, often in response to school shootings.

These measures can feel reassuring in the short term, but decades of U.S. experience following the 1999 Columbine shooting suggest that expanding visible security measures shows limited or mixed evidence of reducing serious violent incidents, and does not provide causal support for the claim that these measures prevent rare violent incidents.

CBC reports that the tragedy in Tumbler Ridge “and other intruder incidents at schools” are “reviving conversations across Canada about school safety.” Since the Tumbler Ridge school shooting, there have been calls to examine emergency procedures not just in Tumbler Ridge and B.C., but also in Manitoba and Alberta.

Premier Danielle Smith suggested the Alberta Ministry of Education may expand school resource officers after upcoming safety audits.

Expanded police presence to address violence

This recent event follows a growing movement in Canadian jurisdictions to expand police presence to address violence in schools.

The British Columbia Ministry of Education fired the Victoria School Board for banning police in schools. In Ontario, Bill 33 is set to expand policing in schools and erode democratic oversight of school boards.

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Read more:
Ontario’s Bill 33 expands policing in schools and will erode democratic oversight

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Scholarly evidence on school policing depends on how studies are designed and findings interpreted. A 2018 evaluation of Ontario’s Peel Region estimated school policing had positive social value based on surveys and stakeholder reports. However, it did not compare schools with and without officers or test whether police presence reduces serious violent incidents.

In contrast, a 2020 U.S.-wide study comparing similar schools before and after increases in police funding did find reductions in non-weapon physical fights. However, it found no reduction in gun-related incidents. It also documented increases in suspensions, expulsions and police referrals for Black students and students with disabilities.

Human rights commissions from both Ontario and British Columbia have cautioned that police programs in schools must meet a high legal threshold and have raised concerns about disproportionate impacts on Black, Indigenous, racialized, disabled and 2SLGBTQ+ students. They highlight that any policy that risks discrimination must be necessary, proportionate and supported by evidence.

This raises an important question: if police integration in schools increases the likelihood that already marginalized students will be criminalized through suspensions, expulsions and arrests — all of which fortify the school-to-prison pipeline — what kind of safety are we building and for whom?

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Read more:
Preventing and addressing violence in schools: 4 priorities as educators plan for next year

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Threat assessment and AI

Another common way schools are expanding security measures is through threat assessment models that embed digital monitoring tools and law enforcement deeper into schooling. This raises important questions about proportionality and democratic oversight, especially when students and their families may not understand how their information is being collected, used or retained.

These models are presented as preventative rather than disciplinary, focused on identifying suspicious behaviour early and intervening before harm takes place.

Evidence supporting threat assessment emphasizes early identification and co-ordinated intervention, not a permanent police presence, routine intelligence gathering or digitally monitoring students.

Expanded digital threat assessment, in particular, is connected to the development of artificial intelligence tools that are marketed to schools as preventative solutions. These solutions include scanning social media, flagging keywords, mapping digital networks and generating “risk scores” based on behavioural data.

In practice, this means that a student’s online activity can be captured and shared across school and law enforcement systems in ways that were not possible a decade ago.

These early intervention tools subject students to continuous monitoring, with private actors mediating the flow of information from students through schools to police.

Relational breakdowns

Research on mass school shootings underscores
how rare and context-specific they are.

While visible security measures may signal action, they do not address the social disconnection and relational breakdowns that often precipitate youth violence in cases where youth are current students at a targeted school, or where they are not (as in the case of Tumbler Ridge).

Students who are marginalized are most likely to experience negative school climates. In schools, these vulnerabilities call for support and trust-building, while in policing contexts, these vulnerabilities are a risk to surveil and detect relative to behavioural baselines.

When police presence expands in schools, the students most in need of care may also be the most likely to be watched. Students who feel watched are less likely to feel trusting of their school community.

Protective social connections

Decades of research on youth violence consistently identify protective social connections not only between students, but also among families, staff and the broader community. Early identification and intervention through multidisciplinary teams that include educators, administrators and mental health professionals are central to prevention efforts.

This does not require engaging in surveillance activities that risk the human rights of students or subject them to criminalization. It does require that we put resources toward educating and supporting youth rather than policing them.

In times of collective grief, the choices leaders make can shape school policy for years. If safety is the goal, relational infrastructure matters.

In this way, prevention depends not only on identifying threats, but on making environments in schools where students and youth feel supported, comfortable seeking help and willing to speak up when a peer needs support.

Beyhan Farhadi receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. More police and surveillance won’t prevent the next school tragedy – https://theconversation.com/more-police-and-surveillance-wont-prevent-the-next-school-tragedy-275872

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Angela Schneider, Director, International Centre for Olympic Studies, Western University

The 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milan and Cortona d’Ampezzo in northern Italy feature eight new medal events and one new official sport: ski mountaineering, or “skimo.”

It’s an endurance sport in which athletes ascend mountains on skis fitted with climbing skins, carry their skis over sections too steep to skin and then descend on alpine terrain. In total, 36 skimo athletes will compete at the Stelvio Ski Centre in Bormio.

The Olympic format features two events: the individual sprint and the mixed relay. Athletes alternate between uphill climbing with ski skins, boot-packing and downhill skiing. Sprint races last about three to four minutes, while the mixed relay features longer, more demanding courses.

Alongside skimo, the 2026 Games have introduced women’s doubles luge, women’s large hill individual ski jumping, a freestyle skiing dual moguls event and alpine skiing team combined.

Skimo stands out within the Olympic landscape as the first new sport to be introduced within the Winter Games since skeleton was introduced at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.

Do we need more skiing at the Games?

With 55 of 109 medals awarded for skiing events at the 2022 Winter Olympics, it’s fair to question whether we need more skiing at the Winter Games. The International Olympic Committee certainly thought so, approving skimo and three additional skiing events for 2026 while removing one.

Alpine skiing debuted at the 1936 Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, while Nordic and ski jumping have been part of the Winter Games since the 1924 Olympics in Chamonix, France.

One of the original skiing disciplines in early editions of the Winter Games was military patrol, a combined skiing and shooting event widely considered a precursor to biathlon.

Milano Cortina has introduced a new variation on this tradition through ski mountaineering. It has been described as the “son of the biathlon without the shooting,” combining rapid transitions, technical descents and endurance climbing under extreme conditions.

What sets skimo apart is its unique focus on upward movement. Unlike most Winter Olympic sports, which emphasize downward or horizontal motion, skimo focuses on human-powered vertical movement — how effectively athletes can climb. Cross-country skiing is one of the only other sports in the Olympics comparable, but the elevation changes during the race are far smaller.

Skimo also broadens the physiological demands on athletes at the Games, rewarding qualities such as pacing, resilience and strategic energy management.

Past and present

Ski mountaineering has deep roots dating back over 1,000 years, long before the activity was formalized as a competitive sport.

It began to emerge in the late 1800s in the Alps as an adventure-based activity before transitioning into organized competition. Its first major race was the Trofeo Mezzalama in Italy in 1933.

The first world championships of the sport were held in 2002 in France. Since then, the event has taken place every two years, alternating with continental championships, alongside an annual World Cup circuit that has helped professionalize the sport and pave its way to Olympic inclusion.

Ski mountaineering is now governed by the International Ski Mountaineering Federation and was featured at the Lausanne 2020 Winter Youth Olympics before earning full Olympic status.

Accessibility and risk

Skimo has the potential to democratize participation in winter sport because it relies on climbing skins and micro-spikes — equipment that is widely available and comparatively affordable.

Because the sport is relatively accessible, participants can take part in a wide range of mountainous environments with minimal technical equipment compared with other mountaineering disciplines. That accessibility, however, does not eliminate risk.

Most ski mountaineering takes place off-piste, where weather, avalanches and navigation hazards increase the risk of accidents.

As interest in the sport grows following its Olympic debut, it may draw inexperienced participants into hazardous terrain. Newcomers, in particular, should seek proper training and use safe routes in regulated environments, ideally with supervision or a partner in case of emergency.

Education around snow sports, safety awareness and responsible participation will be essential to ensure the democratization of ski mountaineering does not come at the cost of increased accidents.

The rise of designated, safer off-piste areas where people can try the sport safely is a good compromise between safety and sustainability.

Canada’s skimo prospects

Canadians are making strides on the international skimo circuit. Emma Cook-Clarke, a former mountain runner, placed sixth in the team event and women’s sprint at the 2025 world championships.

However, Canada narrowly missed Olympic qualification for 2026. This year’s favourites include Switzerland for the women’s sprint, France for the mixed relay and Spain for the men’s sprint.

Looking ahead, future success will require sustained investment. Cook-Clarke could help lead Canada to ski mountaineering gold in four years’ time, but mid- and long-term success will require a lot of work.

Canada’s elite skimo program is still emerging compared with European nations such as Norway, where the sport is well established.

Success should be measured by grassroots growth, which will provide a base for a larger, more robust elite team, and by expanded international experience as athletes compete more frequently on the world circuit.

These developments require resources, which are inevitably limited. Yet investment in ski mountaineering could be in Canada’s best interests. As a new Olympic sport, it presents an opportunity for Canada to position itself as a future leader as it has done in many other winter disciplines.

Skimo’s Olympic debut provides Canada with an opportunity to make those investments and strengthen its position at future Games.

A new direction for the Olympics

Skimo’s inclusion reflects changes in priorities surrounding sustainability, accessibility and the nature of athletic challenge.

The shift comes at a critical moment. The Winter Games face mounting scrutiny over their environmental footprint, particularly as warming temperatures threaten snow reliability in host regions.

Against this backdrop, ski mountaineering offers a meaningful test case for how the IOC can work more diligently toward its climate and sustainability goals. Skimo athletes ascend and descend under their own power rather than relying on the energy-intensive lift systems used in traditional alpine events.

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Read more:
As the climate changes, what does the future hold for the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games?

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While emissions from travel and venue construction remain concerns, the significance of this small shift should not be underestimated, especially in the Italian Alps, which are already experiencing above-average temperatures.

As climate change reshapes winter sport, there is evidence that broader ski culture is shifting toward a more environmentally friendly footing. Skimo is a sign that the Olympics as a whole could follow suit.

May Keeble, an undergraduate student in sports management and coaching from Bath University, contributed to 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. Ski mountaineering is making its Winter Olympics debut at Milano Cortina 2026 – https://theconversation.com/ski-mountaineering-is-making-its-winter-olympics-debut-at-milano-cortina-2026-273895