Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Dimitra Panagiotoglou, Associate Professor, Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health, McGill University

There have been more than 53,000 opioid-related deaths across Canada since 2016. As part of public health efforts to reduce these deaths, many cities offer overdose prevention and supervised consumption sites.

These centres allow people who use illegal drugs to do so under the supervision of a person trained to reverse opioid poisonings. They also offer clean drug use equipment, safe disposal of used equipment and take-home naloxone, a drug that can reverse the effects of opioid overdose.

Between 2020 and 2025, 48 overdose prevention and supervised consumption sites operated in Canada. While studies show they can reduce mortality and health service use for people who use drugs, they are controversial.

People opposed to these sites worry they increase local crime and disorder by attracting drug-related activity like theft, assault, open drug use and hazardous discarded equipment. In Toronto, opposition to the sites increased after a woman was killed near one in east-end Toronto in 2023. The facility later closed after the Ontario government mandated sites within 200 metres of schools or daycare be shuttered.

Recently, our team at McGill University published a study looking at the association between these sites and crime near nine Toronto locations.

For this study, we used publicly available data from the Toronto Police Service and looked at the five major crime indicators (assault, break and enters, auto theft, robbery and theft over $5,000), as well as thefts from motor vehicles and bicycle thefts. These geo-coded data included all incidents reported at the offence or victim level.

What we found

We looked at the number of crimes within 400 metres of a site in the three years after they were opened, and compared that with the number of crimes expected for each neighbourhood had the sites not begun operating. To determine that figure, we accounted for the trends in crime occurring in each neighbourhood in the three years before the sites opened.

In other words, we looked for changes in crime trends as well as crime spikes immediately after sites were opened. We reported our findings for each site, and summarized results across all nine sites.

The results were mixed. The sites were not consistently associated with changes in local crime.

Summarizing the situation at all sites, we found they were associated with a 50 per cent increase in break and enters, and it would take approximately 34 months to return to levels normally expected around the sites. Meanwhile, monthly trends in robbery, theft over $5,000 and bicycle theft declined after sites were implemented.

There were also site-specific associations. Assaults rose about one per cent faster than expected per month near the South Riverdale and St. Stephen’s sites. While that may seem like a modest increase, after three years, assaults were approximately 43 per cent higher than expected in these neighbourhoods. At the same time, the Regent Park site was associated with declines in assault, robbery and bicycle theft trends.

More research needed

While our study provides more insight into how overdose and supervised consumption sites impact their surrounding areas, it also has its limitations. We cannot explain why crime increased near some sites but declined at others. We couldn’t look at changes in open drug use, discarded equipment or mental health act apprehensions because of data availability and quality issues or a lack of geo-co-ordinates.

Nevertheless, our results match what other researchers have found when looking at the associations between sites and crime. In the United States, a 2021 study found that reports of assault, burglary, larceny theft and robbery decreased in the area near one site.

In New York, some researchers have found overdose prevention sites did not cause significant increases in crimes. Other research, however, did find that there was an increase in property crimes near a supervised consumption site.

Here in Canada, recently published research found that there was not a significant change in the rate of fatal shootings and stabbings near supervised consumption sites in Toronto.

Our findings also corroborate what people have observed locally – crime can increase following the opening of overdose prevention or supervised consumption sites. But it doesn’t always.

Instead, the relationship between these sites and crime is complicated. Further research needs to focus on understanding why crime declined in some neighbourhoods but increased in others. These distinctions can help policymakers and public health service providers understand what works, where and why. This is crucial if we are to continue to work with communities.

Dimitra Panagiotoglou receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Health Canada.

– ref. New study: Some crimes increased, others decreased around Toronto supervised consumption sites – https://theconversation.com/new-study-some-crimes-increased-others-decreased-around-toronto-supervised-consumption-sites-273320

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Michael von Massow, Professor, Food Economics, University of Guelph

Canada’s Grocery Code of Conduct came into full effect as of Jan. 1, 2026. Governed by an independent organization, the code sets out guidelines for dealings between retailers and suppliers.

It’s intended to provide transparency and predictability in the relationship between food retailers and their suppliers. All five of Canada’s largest grocers — Empire, Loblaw, Metro, Walmart Canada and Costco Canada — have registered with the code.

The code sets out specific objectives: to contribute to a “thriving and competitive grocery industry,” promote trust between grocery value chain stakeholders, allow for informed business decisions and provide an effective and fair dispute settlement mechanism.

That dispute resolution mechanism, administered by the Office of the Grocery Sector Code of Conduct (OGSCC), is intended as a last resort. The possibility of mediation may encourage parties to resolve disagreements informally before they escalate to formal adjudication.

In addition, the OGSCC will publish an annual report highlighting key trends, challenges, recommendations for code improvements and anonymized case studies of disputes, without naming specific companies.

Was the code ever about food prices?

Public discussion of the code was often conflated with a desire to reduce food prices. While food price regulation is not part of the code, it has been raised in wider discussions about food price inflation.

Statistics Canada data shows that food prices continued to rise across the country in 2025. Prices increased by 3.4 per cent across Canada’s 10 provinces and three territories between May 2024 and May 2025.

Concerns about food price inflation have been longstanding. In 2023, the federal Standing Committee on Agriculture held a meeting to investigate the issue. Members questioned Walmart Canada CEO Gonzalo Gebara and Galen Weston, then president and CEO of Loblaws (and now chair of the board).

Liberal MP Heath MacDonal asked Gebara:

“What do you say to us when we’re seeing the hesitation of Walmart to sign on to the grocery code of conduct? How do we relay that message back to our constituents, who, over the past couple of years, due to all the items and many of the issues you talked about, have been facing a lot of challenges, including the price of groceries?”

While this question does not explicitly tie the code to food prices, many interpreted this, and other statements, as suggesting the code might lower food prices.

Could the code raise prices?

Some industry leaders, however, have suggested the code could increase prices. For example, Weston says he was hesitant to participate in the code due to fears that prices would go up.

The mechanism of potential price inflation is relatively straightforward. The code discourages certain charges and states payment schedules should be negotiated. If grocers lose some benefits due to the limitations of the code, it will cost them money. In such a scenario, it is difficult to imagine that grocers would forgo money from consumers by lowering prices.

Walmart and Loblaws, who were originally resistant, eventually accepted the code after further negotiations. Loblaws’ new president, Per Bank, said the company was content with the revised code and no longer felt it would raise prices. It is worth noting, however, no one has said the code will reduce prices.

Some observers have suggested the code could lower food prices over the longer term. But they were commenting about the benefits of lower charges to suppliers and the potential for investment and innovation in the Canadian food processing sector. These indeed may be long-term benefits, but they’re not written into the code and would take time to materialize.

Are there any benefits to consumers?

There will likely to be some indirect consumer benefits. A more predictable and transparent relationship between retailers and their suppliers could increase choice for consumers by reducing the barriers to new product introduction.

Price stability and predictability make life easier on suppliers and could help sustain Canadian food processors. A loss of food processing capacity in Canada would lead to increased prices.

The code would also help smaller retailers with less bargaining power. By limiting the concessions large grocers can extract from suppliers, it narrows the gap between big and small chains and makes smaller grocers more viable. This is especially important in under-served neighbourhoods where limited retail options restrict consumer choice.

What actually drives food prices?

Food price inflation is primarily driven by supply-side factors and, to a lesser extent, demand. Between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2025, food prices rose by four per cent — faster than the rate of general inflation. Much of that increase was driven by sharp price rises in beef (16.8 per cent), coffee (30.8 per cent), and sugar and confectionery (12.5 per cent).

Beef and coffee prices have been affected by the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events. Beef cow herds are at their lowest point in almost 40 years, due in part to drought in Western Canada and the midwestern United States. High beef prices have also pushed consumers toward other proteins, such as pork and chicken, which saw smaller price increases. Turkey prices remain relatively flat, providing an option for those feeling protein price pressure.

Coffee prices tell a similar story. Extreme weather and disease pressures have reduced yields in producing regions and led to increased prices.

Sugar and confectionery prices increased largely due to tariffs. The U.S. already had protection for its sugar industry, but introduced significant new tariffs on Brazil, Argentina and Columbia, raising organic sugar prices and pulling conventional sugar prices up with them.

Canada responded with reciprocal tariffs, increasing prices here. While some of the tariffs have been reduced, there remains considerable uncertainty. Notably, despite the 12.5 per cent annual increase in prices, prices for sugar and confectionery fell by 4.1 per cent in December 2025.

What comes next?

Canada has experienced significant food price inflation, but the drivers are largely external to and outside the scope of the Grocery Code of Conduct.

While the code may enhance transparency, fairness and competition in the grocery sector, it is not a tool for controlling or lowering grocery prices directly.

But there is room for optimism about grocery costs. The rate of food price increases will slow and we might see some price reductions. Beef cow herds are expected to recover over time, which should ease prices. Beef prices went down marginally in December by 0.2 per cent. Weather remains unpredictable, but in the absence of new extreme events, supply issues should improve and prices should ease for those commodities.

These changes, however, will not be due to the Grocery Code of Conduct, though they will be welcome nonetheless.

Michael von Massow 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 new Grocery Code of Conduct is here, but don’t expect any instant price drops – https://theconversation.com/canadas-new-grocery-code-of-conduct-is-here-but-dont-expect-any-instant-price-drops-272878

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Aasiya Satia, Doctoral candidate, Higher Education Leadership, Western University

Ontario’s Bill 33, passed in November 2025, could change how post-secondary admissions decisions are made, as well as how student fees are managed and what campus services they fund.

Each year, tens of thousands of university and college applicants come from communities that are historically underrepresented in higher education.

These policy changes could shape who gains access to programs, supports and opportunities for success.

The Council of Ontario Universities (COU) and many other educational groups and advocates and students have raised serious concerns about how the bill reaches into educational affairs. Some note that the bill comes at a time when there are ongoing public debates about institutional independence and decision-making.

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The provincial government says Bill 33, which it termed the Supporting Children and Students Act, will make education more transparent and consistent. The law affects school boards, colleges and universities.

For us as scholars whose combined expertise spans strategic planning, equity, anti-oppressive forms of education and learning accessibility, the bill’s reach into admissions raises serious concerns about equity and student rights.

Discussion of ‘merit’

A section of the bill “requires colleges of applied arts and technology and publicly assisted universities to assess applicants based on merit and to publish the criteria and process to be used for assessment into programs of study.”

Greater transparency in admissions is positive. But if merit is defined too narrowly, it could block diverse pathways to post-secondary admissions that recognize different kinds of achievement, leaving out students from marginalized communities.

Studies in professional and medical education show that relying only on grades can miss other signs of potential, like life experience, community work and meeting the needs of society.

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Grades seem objective, but they depend on many factors like family income and access to school and community resources — along with teacher and parent expectations and how much time students have to study while balancing work, family, community and other responsibilities.

Students from low-income, Black, Indigenous, rural or otherwise marginalized communities often face big challenges even before applying to college or university. These challenges reflect longstanding gaps in income and education.

Bill 33 doesn’t explain what “merit” means. Without a clear definition, admissions could end up favouring students who already have advantages. New rules will soon define how merit is measured, and these rules will be very important. If they don’t protect equity-focused pathways, the law could make existing gaps even worse.

Student fees and risk to campus services

Fair admissions are only part of the story. Bill 33 also changes how student fees are handled. These changes could harm students from marginalized communities.

Student groups have raised strong concerns about how Bill 33 could affect ancillary fees and the services they fund.

According to the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, “ancillary fees are democratically approved by students, for students.” These are extra student fees that fund essential services such as food banks, wellness centres, accessibility programs, cultural programs, transportation and safety programs. These services could be at risk if the province gains more control over how fees are defined and charged.

In 2019, student groups successfully challenged Ontario’s Student Choice Initiativ. Through this measure, the province tried to limit ancillary fees but the court ruled it didn’t have the legal authority to do so at the time. Bill 33 responds to that ruling by changing the law itself, giving the province clear authority to regulate student fees.

The Canadian Federation of Students in Ontario has warned that focusing on fee oversight may distract from deeper problems in higher education, including chronic underfunding and high tuition costs.

Could weaken student-led supports, harm equity

Under Bill 33, the government can decide which fees can be charged and under what rules. Most universities clearly list how ancillary fees are used. For example, at McMaster University, these fees help fund transit passes, wellness services, career supports and refugee student programs.

How fees are managed is closely linked to the government’s broader oversight of universities, linking financial decisions to questions of accountability, governance and whose voices are heard in decision-making.

Student groups have long played a key role in raising equity concerns and ensuring local needs are addressed. If more decisions are made at the provincial level, student voices could carry less weight unless students are clearly included in new rules and decision-making processes.

Looking ahead: Equity is not automatic

As universities begin to apply Bill 33, students and faculty may notice changes in how admissions decisions are explained, how student fees are handled and how transparency rules are used.

These changes will not look the same at every campus. Their impact will depend on how the rules are interpreted and whether universities make equity a clear priority in their policies.

While the law may seem neutral, its real impact will depend on how it is put into practice and whose experiences are considered.

Ensuring equitable access to higher education requires careful planning, enough funding and meaningful input from students, faculty and communities most affected by these changes.

Equity will not happen by chance. It will depend on the choices universities and policymakers make now, and on whose voices are heard in those decisions.

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. Ontario’s Bill 33 raises serious concern about campus equity and student rights – https://theconversation.com/ontarios-bill-33-raises-serious-concern-about-campus-equity-and-student-rights-272548

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kent Roach, Professor of Law, University of Toronto

Jon-Adrian (JJ) Velazquez, a New York man who spent half his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, recently sued New York City and its police for US$100 million for his wrongful murder conviction. Velazquez may be known by film buffs for his role in the Oscar-nominated film Sing Sing.

Velazquez may be entitled to millions in compensation if he can prove his factual innocence, typically through DNA evidence at the crime scene. Alas, such evidence is often not available.

The United States has paid almost US$4 billion in damages and settlements to 901 people who have been exonerated of crimes since 1989. This history of wrongful convictions is a warped form of American exceptionalism that I document in my new book Justice for Some: A Comparative Examination of Miscarriages of Justice and Wrongful Convictions .

Proving innocence

Proven factual innocence is a powerful, populist idea. It’s easier to understand and more widely accepted than concepts such as miscarriages of justice, conviction safety or judicial error, which are used to address wrongful convictions in many other countries, including England, Canada and countries in continental Europe.

These more generous approaches used outside the United States better respect the fundamental principle of giving people the benefit of reasonable doubt about their guilt.

It’s very difficult to prove factual innocence. In 2016, a New York court held that Velazquez had failed to prove his innocence despite many weaknesses in the case that led to his 2000 murder conviction.

By 2016, two eyewitness who identifed Velazquez as the person who killed a retired New York police officer had recanted. Some witnesses had initially identified the perpetrator as a Black man with long braided hair; Velazquez is Hispanic and had very short hair. Some said the perpetrator used his right hand to shoot the victim; Velazquez is left-handed.

Consistent with the popular appeal of proven factual innocence, Velazquez was freed in 2021 not by the courts but by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, with President Joe Biden apologizing to him the following year. They were responding to investigative reporting and new DNA testing that excluded Velazquez from a betting slip that the killer touched.

The fact that politicians who may have been hoping for re-election were ahead of the American courts in exonerating Velazquez reveals a lot about the decline of the rule of law in the United States.

DNA exonerations

Prominent American lawyers Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck, the founders of the Innocence Project, argued 26 years ago that DNA exonerations were largely a matter of luck. They predicted in a 2000 book that DNA exonerations would eventually dry up as police only use DNA testing in the small minority of crimes where the perpetrator leaves biological evidence at the crime scene.

Scheck and Neufeld may have been overly optimistic about the competence of American police and prosecutors in their book. Post-conviction, DNA-based exonerations, like Velazquez’s, continue to this day.

DNA is a double-edged sword: it offers compelling evidence of innocence while simultaneously raising the threshold for overturning wrongful convictions. In the U.S., the wrongfully convicted are often expected to prove their innocence through DNA, even though many crimes leave no biological evidence and existing samples are frequently mishandled or unavailable. DNA, in short, serves only a fraction of those wrongfully convicted.

Mass imprisonment in China and the U.S.

The country most closely resembling the U.S. in its insistence on proof of factual innocence is the People’s Republic of China.

Like the U.S., China typically remedies miscarriages of justice only after multiple court proceedings. Intervention by politicians also plays a critical role in obtaining justice for the wrongfully convicted, as it did in the Velazquez case. China has also begun providing more generous compensation to those who can prove their factual innocence.

In both countries, generous compensation for the few who can prove factual innocence risks legitimizing unjust systems that harshly punish the many, including those with wrongful convictions but no meaningful path to justice.

American legal reformers have proposed that a right to claim factual innocence should be added to international law. I argue in Justice for Some, however, that proof of factual innocence would have regressive implications in many other parts of the world that correct miscarriages of justice without such onerous proof. In short, factual innocence would provide justice for fewer people.

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Factual innocence spreads to England

Countries other than the U.S. and China are not immune from the populist appeal of factual innocence.

Since 2014, England has required proven innocence for compensation. This has drastically reduced compensation payments. It’s even resulted in the denial of compensation to people like Velazquez who have been exonerated by DNA.

Victor Nealon spent 17 years in a British prison after being convicted of attempted rape. His lawyers eventually discovered an unknown person’s DNA on clothing that had not been disclosed by investigators, and his conviction was quashed.

Nealon took his compensation claim to the European Court of Human Rights. It ruled in a divided decision that states can require proven innocence without breaching the presumption of innocence. In essence, this allows the wrongfully accused to be denied compensation without regard to the fundamental legal principle that people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Factual innocence requirements can spread from compensation to appeals from convictions.

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Eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of known wrongful convictions

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Those who can prove their innocence deserve justice — but justice should not be limited to them alone. Proven innocence rations justice too narrowly.

It may be the best that mass-incarceration societies like the U.S. and China have to offer. But even though factual innocence is popular and easy to grasp, applying this standard broadly across liberal democracies would likely have regressive effects.

Kent Roach is affiliated with the Canadian Registry of Wrongful Conviction. His book received funding to assist in it being published in open access from the Jackman School of Law at the University of Toronto.

– ref. DNA evidence: A double-edged sword that can actually deny justice for some wrongfully accused – https://theconversation.com/dna-evidence-a-double-edged-sword-that-can-actually-deny-justice-for-some-wrongfully-accused-273788

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ekaterina Rhodes, Associate Professor, School of Public Administration, University of Victoria

Fossil fuel-dependent communities in Western Canada sit at the centre of Canada’s energy decisions. A just and inclusive clean energy transition will depend on how well governments listen to these communities and how fast they deal with the forces working to slow down energy decarbonization.

When it comes to the energy transition, public discussion tends to focus on emissions targets and policies to achieve them. These are important, but they’re just one aspect of the issue. In the oil- and gas-producing regions of Western Canada, conversations and concerns centre on livelihoods, identity and a nagging doubt: does anyone in power grasp rural realities?

Our ongoing research across the region — based on large citizen surveys to focus groups with municipal leaders and analysis of disinformation — highlights that emotions, narratives and perspectives of communities at the heart of Canada’s energy transition politics. As we mark the United Nation’s International Day of Clean Energy today, these voices demand attention before divides deepen further.

Focus groups with municipal staff from 10 oil- and gas-producing communities in British Columbia and Alberta revealed a delicate balancing act. They’re actively pursuing diversification — geothermal projects, hydrogen pilots, tourism expansion, data centres, manufacturing hubs, even rare-earth mineral processing — but most of these efforts build around, rather than beyond, oil and gas.

For many communities, the industry isn’t just jobs. It’s the economic engine funding hospitals, schools, arenas, roads and the very existence of their towns. Abstract talk of an energy transition can feel threatening when it overlooks this.

An Alberta official captured the fear bluntly:

“If you took oil and gas out of our community, I would suggest that there would be no hospital. There would be no schools. There would be no town. The only reason our community exists is to service the oil and gas industry.”

Deep emotional divides

Our 2025 survey of 3,400 residents in non-metropolitan communities across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba helps explains why climate policy ignites public backlash.

Affective climate polarization, which describes the emotional distance between those who support and oppose climate policy, rivals partisan left-right divides in intensity. These emotional climate identities help explain differences in support for climate policy that ideology alone can’t capture — particularly on the political right, where views on climate action are more diverse.

Policy design nuances are critical but complicated by affective polarization. Clean technology mandates and renewable electricity requirements tend to draw broader backing than carbon taxes, which are generally less popular and spark fierce resistance from right-leaning citizens.

Bundling climate policies with just transition measures, such as government-funded training for new jobs, community-owned energy, low-carbon incentives and public transit, can boost support for carbon pricing among the less polarized. However, for those with stronger emotional commitments, these just transition supports are often ineffective and can even trigger backlash.

Climate policy details matter less to people who score high on affective climate polarization. This helps explain why climate policy debates remain so deeply politicized: when emotional attachments to climate identities are strong, people respond more to elite cues and identity-based judgments than to policy design itself.

Municipalities grapple with limitations

Municipal officials battle structural voids. Officials in northeastern B.C. and Alberta juggle economic ambitions and governance limitations. They craft economic strategies and chase low-carbon investments, while being hamstrung by thin staffing and permitting delays stalling projects for years.

The sharpest barrier to the clean energy transition is the absence of coherent, regionally tailored visions from other levels of government. Federal clean growth plans promote critical minerals and hydrogen. Provincial strategies mix liquefied natural gas with renewables.

Locally, these strategies ring hollow — they seem contradictory and urban-centric. A municipal official in B.C. we spoke to decried a “one-size-fits- all” approach, citing propane-powered electric vehicle chargers in -40 C winters: “How do you gain the support … when even the province isn’t actually addressing” regional realities?

We’ve found that public attitudes differ by age, with youth embracing climate sustainability but veterans of oil-tied lives viewing transition as a “hard sell.” Without a common vision recognizing municipal governance limitations, community leaders hesitate on bold plans, wary of backlash in towns deeply connected to the promise and precarity of oil’s boom–bust cycles.

These tensions are being wilfully intensified by the fossil-fuel industry’s propaganda machine, which uses bad-faith arguments to suggest that climate policies and fossil-fuel communities are at odds.

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These arguments often ignore the potential for a well-managed energy transition to improve public health, foster regional development and increase community resilience in these regions.

These are not the only narratives the fossil-fuel industry is using to slow climate action. Our research on Canada’s climate delays shows that fossil-fuel propaganda is being used to falsely portray Canadian oil as low-emissions, to urge Canada to wait for others to act first and to claim that climate policies are more detrimental to workers more than climate change.

Fostering a just energy transition

Governments must engage in genuine listening. Fossil-fuel communities aren’t barriers, but key participants in all energy transition risks and benefits. Co-creating policies with them rather than imposing top-down visions can help grow jobs, revenues and services in Western Canada.

Engagement with communities must also be emotionally attuned. Overcoming climate polarization means restoring trust via local messengers, consistent follow-through and deliberative forums like public assemblies.

At the same time, governments must confront misinformation and propaganda. They can can step in with policies that challenge disinformation legally, regulate ads and fund community energy transformations beyond fossil fuel extraction.

The International Day of Clean Energy spotlights promise. In Western Canada, it also spotlights peril. The energy transition’s success hinges on centring fossil fuel communities as protagonists, not peripherals — turning the transition into a shared opportunity.

Ekaterina Rhodes receives funding from Canada First Research Excellence Fund as part of the University of Victoria-led Accelerating Community Energy Transformation Initiative.

Megan Egler received funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund as part of the University of Victoria-led Accelerating Community Energy Transformation Initiative.

Rowan Hargreaves received funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund as part of the University of Victoria-led Accelerating Community Energy Transformation Initiative.

Samuel Lloyd receives funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund as part of the University of Victoria-led Accelerating Community Energy Transformation Initiative. He also received funding from the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions for a research project that inspired one of the papers included in this article.

– ref. How to include fossil fuel communities in Canada’s clean energy transition – https://theconversation.com/how-to-include-fossil-fuel-communities-in-canadas-clean-energy-transition-273331

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Hyounjeong Yoo, Instructor, School of Linguistics and Language Studies, Carleton University

When I was a child in South Korea, the New Year often began with a familiar song: “Kkachi Kkachi Seollal.” Seollal refers to the Lunar New Year, one of Korea’s most important family holidays, and kkachi means “magpie,” a bird associated with good fortune and joyful beginnings.

Singing the song, we believed, would invite pleasant guests into the home. For my siblings and me, those guests were usually our grandparents — and their arrival marked warmth, continuity and belonging.

Decades later, I now live in Canada, where distance has made such visits from my home country rare. Yet it feels as though the magpie has arrived again — this time on a global screen.

Netflix’s animated film KPop Demon Hunters, which follows adventures of a fictional Kpop girl group (Huntrix) whose members hunts demons by night, now has an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song. This follows recent Golden Globe wins.

The film, created by Korean Canadian Maggie Kang, has musical production by Teddy Park and is voiced by Korean American actors such as Arden Cho, Ji-young Yoo and Audrey Nuna.

I’m interested in how KPop Demon Hunters marks a new phase of the Korean Wave. In this phase, folklore and women’s musical labour come together to challenge how Asian stories have long been sidelined in western media.

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KPop Demon Hunters, like the success of some other recent popular Korean cultural production in the West, reflects diasporic creativity, notes scholar Michelle Cho, whose research focuses on on Korean film, media and popular culture.

Folklore as cultural authority

One of KPop Demon Hunters’s most striking features is its unapologetic use of Korean symbols. The demon hunters wear gat — traditional horsehair hats associated with scholars during Korea’s Joseon dynasty — while battling demons alongside the tiger, long regarded as a guardian spirit of Korea. These elements function as assertions of cultural authority.

Historically, western film and animation have often relegated Asian characters to stereotypes or erased them altogether through whitewashing.

By contrast, KPop Demon Hunters places Korean folklore at its narrative centre. The gat evokes dignity and discipline; the tiger represents protection and resilience. Together, they counter the lingering assumption that mainstream entertainment led by Asian characters is somehow niche or inferior.

By using distinctly Korean imagery — such as the satirical minhwa art style of the film’s Derpy Tiger — the movie firmly anchors itself in a specific Korean context that cannot be generalized or mistaken for a broad, pan-Asian esthetic.

For many in the Korean diaspora — including myself, who grew up rarely seeing people like me centred in mainstream media — this visibility carries emotional weight.

Research in media and cultural studies shows that representation matters not only for how groups are seen by others, but also for how people understand their own place in society. Seeing Korean symbols treated with respect offers a quiet but powerful form of cultural validation.

A matrilineal line of survival

One of the film’s powerful moments is the opening montage. Through a rapid succession of shamanic figures, flappers and disco-era performers, the sequence offers what can be read as matrilineal homage to female Korean musicians across generations.

As writer Iris (Yi Youn) Kim notes, citing a lecture by Asian American studies scholar Elaine Andres, this lineage echoes the real-life story of the Kim Sisters, often described as Korea’s first internationally successful female pop group. After losing their father during the Korean War, the sisters were trained by their mother, the renowned singer Lee Nan-young — best known for the anti-colonial song “Tears of Mokpo” — to perform at U.S. military bases as a means of survival.

The Kim Sisters later became regular performers on The Ed Sullivan Show, captivating American audiences while navigating racist expectations that framed Asian women as approachable, non-threatening and exotic.

Symbolic labour of representing a nation

The fictional group Huntrix inherits this legacy. Like the Kim Sisters, they are expected to embody discipline, professionalism and national representation.

For example, the film shows the group grappling with perfectionism and the intense discipline demanded of them, often maintaining polished public performances while suppressing personal vulnerability to fulfil their dual roles as idols and protectors. On a meta-narrative level, Huntrix is framed as a cultural representative through the use of Korean folklore imagery, like the gat and the tiger.

As “cultural diplomats” both on and off the screen, Huntrix carry not only entertainment value but also the symbolic labour of representing a nation to a global audience.

By embedding this lineage into a mainstream animated film, KPop Demon Hunters acknowledges that KPop’s global success rests on decades of women’s labour, sacrifice and negotiation with western power structures.

Beyond soft power

The film’s success arrives amid the continued expansion of the Korean Wave across global media.

South Korean cinema and television have already reshaped international perceptions through landmark works such as Parasite and globally streamed series like Squid Game. Netflix has publicly committed hundreds of millions of dollars to Korean content, signalling that this cultural shift is structural rather than fleeting.

KPop Demon Hunters demonstrates how Korean popular culture now moves fluidly across media forms — music, animation, film and streaming — while retaining cultural specificity. Its reception challenges the persistent assumption that stories rooted in Asian experiences lack universal resonance.

Recognition alone does not erase inequality, nor does it dismantle the racialized hierarchies built into global media industries either. But sustained visibility can matter. Studies suggest that repeated exposure to multidimensional, humanized portrayals of marginalized groups helps reduce racial bias by normalizing difference rather than exoticizing it.

Holding the sword and the microphone

While the film grows out of cultural histories shaped by U.S. military presence and Cold War politics, it reshapes those influences through diasporic storytelling that centres Korean voices and perspectives.

The magpie’s promise has finally been kept. Korean characters are no longer merely “pleasant guests” or supporting figures in someone else’s narrative. They are protagonists — holding the sword, the microphone and perhaps, one day, an Oscar.

Recently, I found myself rewatching KPop Demon Hunters while eating kimbap and instant noodles, the same comfort foods the characters share on screen. The moment felt small, but meaningful.

It reminded me of something one of my students once said: seeing this level of representation allows those who have long felt wounded by exclusion to finally feel seen.

Hyounjeong Yoo 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. With ‘KPop Demon Hunters,’ Korean women hold the sword, the microphone — and possibly an Oscar – https://theconversation.com/with-kpop-demon-hunters-korean-women-hold-the-sword-the-microphone-and-possibly-an-oscar-273443

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Lei Yu, PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature, Western University

Our contemporary lives are saturated with vibes. You buy an ambient lamp to set a vibe, scroll through shopping sites selling “Tuscan vibes” or walk into a room and instantly sense this party has a buzzing vibe.

Yet when someone asks where the vibe comes from, the answer gets slippery. Is it in the light? Not quite. The light blends into the room, mixing with voices, colours and furniture. It’s not just one thing. Vibe is elusive. It spreads, permeates and connects. It’s in the relationship between things — how people, sounds and materials work together to create a shared feeling.

This is where literary and philosophical thinkers come in. For decades, they’ve explored such elusive sensations — the collective moods that organize everyday life even when we can’t quite name them.

Thinking seriously about vibe reveals something crucial: feeling is a shared form of knowledge shaped by environments — a human experience that may matter more as technology advances.

Long before vibes had a name

The word itself is quite recent. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, vibe appeared in the 1960s as U.S. slang shortened from vibration as a way of describing the emotional charge a person or place gives off.

To say something “has a vibe” is to say your body has vibrated to it in a particular way. It’s not just a thought but a physical adjustment: the space, sound or presence around you has moved you, subtly shifting how you feel.

Philosophers, of course, have long been interested in this same experience, though they called it by a different name. Long before vibe entered everyday speech, thinkers used words like atmosphere or ambience to describe the shared feeling that fills a space and shapes our response to it.

Vibe, in this sense, updates an old philosophical question: how does the world around us make itself felt, not just known?

One of the first modern critics to take this question seriously was Welsh cultural theorist Raymond Williams, who coined the phrase “structure of feeling” in 1954. Williams argued that every historical moment has its own emotional texture; the felt sense of what it’s like to live in that time.

It isn’t a single mood but the background hum of experience that connects people before they can describe it. Think of the buoyant optimism of the 1950s or the political turmoil of the 1960s, similar to what we’re experiencing now. We can sense the mood immediately.

For Williams, this “structure of feeling” made art and culture matter. They recorded not just what people thought but what life felt like.

The business of engineered feeling

A few decades later, German philosopher Gernot Böhme gave this idea a physical body. In The Aesthetics of Atmospheres, he argued that atmosphere is something we encounter, not imagine.

Walk into a cathedral, a café or a store, and the air itself feels different. Your senses are triggered and combine to shape how you experience the ambience. Atmosphere, as Böhme sees it, exists in the space between object and subject, sound and listener, light and body.

Companies and marketers understand this better than anyone. They don’t simply sell objects, they sell worlds of feeling.

Step into a boutique and you’re greeted not by bright displays but by a carefully tuned vibe. The air swirls with fragrance as a salesperson asks if you’d like to sample one. By answering, you fall into the illusion that the perfume alone produces your feeling, when in fact it’s the entire composition — soft jazz, the scent of citrus wood — that moves you.

We are enveloped in these designed environments, and we know that the same scent wouldn’t move us the same way elsewhere.

Brands no longer sell perfume or soap so much as an atmosphere of belonging. They offer a shared world we learn to recognize and desire through our senses. This commercial atmosphere reminds us that our emotional lives are increasingly shaped by design.

Why sensing atmosphere remains human

As artificial intelligence grows ever more capable of performing the tasks we once called creative — writing, composing, painting — it also changes how we think about perception itself.

If machines can analyze patterns and generate words or images, what remains distinctly human may not be our ability to produce things but to feel them. Catching the tone of a voice, noticing how light shifts across a face or sensing the vibe of a room are forms of knowledge no algorithm yet replicates.

That doesn’t mean AI and feeling must be opposites. As we outsource more of our labour to artificial systems, the art of cultivating and interpreting atmosphere may become even more essential.

Learning to name a mood, to notice how spaces and technologies shape emotion, could be one way we stay alert to what connects us as human beings. If AI teaches us efficiency, vibe-thinking teaches us sensitivity. It reminds us that meaning doesn’t live only in data or design but in the air between us — the moods we co-create, the atmospheres we learn to share, the vibe.

Lei Yu 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. #GoodVibesOnly: The shared emotions we don’t quite name – https://theconversation.com/goodvibesonly-the-shared-emotions-we-dont-quite-name-269996

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Paul Yachnin, Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies, McGill University

When I teach Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, many students love the character Ophelia, and so do I. But the play seems to silence her just when readers need to know more about how she sees the world and her place in it — especially the young women in my classes.

After all, as Shakespeare critics have noted, Ophelia is a young woman who is bossed around by her brother and her father and slut-shamed and violently rejected by Hamlet — the prince who said he loved her.

Over the centuries, Ophelia appears frequently in popular western culture — recently in the Taylor Swift song of the same name, just as Ophelia imagery is referenced on Swift’s Life of a Showgirl album cover.

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The pre-Raphaelite muse who inspired Taylor Swift’s The Fate of Ophelia

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Hamlet‘s Ophelia goes mad in the wake of her father’s murder. She ends up falling into a brook and drowning, according to the weirdly poetic account delivered by Queen Gertrude:

“There is a willow grows aslant a brook,

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;

There with fantastic garlands did she come

Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples …”

Finally, Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet, and the Hamnet movie that she wrote with director Chloé Zhao — now nominated for eight Academy Awards — have given me something important to share about Ophelia the next time I teach Hamlet.

Hamnet imagines origins of ‘Hamlet’

Hamnet, novel and movie, tells a compelling story about the origins of the play Hamlet in Shakespeare’s life as O’Farrell and Zhao imagine it, focused on the passionate relationship between Shakespeare and his wife and the tragedy of their son Hamnet’s death from plague at age 11.

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Read more:
After the plague, Shakespeare imagined a world saved from poison, slander and the evil eye

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The film draws on sparse historical details, such as the name of Shakespeare’s wife Agnes (aka Anne Hathaway) and the known death of one of their children.

The film shows us the shattering grief they felt — and envisions Hamlet as a gift of remembrance for the dead Hamnet, a gift that seems strong enough to begin to heal the broken love between Agnes and William.

But in the book and the movie, the potential healing a work of art can catalyze has roots eleswhere: Agnes’s art of natural healing. From her late mother, a woman said by the locals to have been a “forest witch,” Agnes learned how to gather the flowers and herbs that grow in the forests near Stratford and how to concoct them into medicines able to heal the sick and broken bodies of her neighbours.

Regardless of the historical plausibility of Hamnet, could it possibly tell us something about Hamlet that we don’t already know?

In my analysis as a Shakespeare scholar, the film can open up a new way of seeing, loving and standing up for Ophelia, precisely by seeing Ophelia in dialogue with Hamnet’s Agnes.

Face to face with Ophelia

To understand that story, let’s consider that the theatre Shakespeare and his company made in London around the turn of the 16th century is
what I am calling a “thinking machine.”

This idea emerges from collaborative interdisciplinary research I’m doing that brings Shakespeare into conversation about social, environmental and political upheaval and explores the convergence of art, science, technology and human experience.

Why a machine? Like large language models (LLMs) today that train on huge archives of digital data, Shakespeare’s play-making didn’t just draw on previous plays, but also on literary, political and legal language, street talk, sermons, songs — the whole textual and spoken ecosystem of his time and the textual works of earlier ages.

However, unlike LLMs, which use predictive logic to generate what word should follow what word to generate a text, Shakespeare’s plays are human-made mechanisms with meanings that grow larger over time and more complex by way of the creative, networked intelligence of actors and many other interpreters.

Hamlet, itself drawing on a vast trove of literary and cultural works, has generated a multitude of different performances, different critical accounts and thousands of other works of art. The works Hamlet has inspired have also been able to loop back and bring to light aspects of the play that have passed unremarked in earlier interpretations.

Ophelia as healer

Eighteenth and 19th-century Germans, for example, took up Hamlet as a play about their own struggles toward nationhood. Ferdinand Freiligrath wrote a poem “Hamlet” (1844) with the line “Deutschland ist Hamlet.”

That new way of thinking about the play took root across many European nations. It even ended up giving voice to 20th-century Québecois aspirations toward nationhood in Hubert Aquin’s novel Prochain Épisode.

Hamnet, like other interpretations of Shakespeare’s work, can help advance our understanding of Ophelia, a character who has been at the centre of much feminist scholarship across fields for at least the past 40 years and has been a central concern in theatrical, literary and visual art for far longer.

Maggie O’Farrell’s Agnes, brought to life on-screen by Zhao in Hamnet, can begin to bring forward stronger readings of the role of Ophelia.

Building on earlier readings that amplify studies of corruption and governance, we might consider how Ophelia, like Zhao’s Agnes, also sets out to be a healer, but a healer of souls and of the nation itself.

In the play’s Act 4, Opelia’s “mad” talk, heard by ordinary people in the streets, is already stirring the people up against the corrupt monarchy.

Fighting moral disease

The “mad” Ophelia uses herbs and flowers to get at the moral disease that has infected Denmark. Like Hamlet, she is bent on bringing healthy nationhood back to Claudius’s “rotten” state.

The flowers and herbs she offers to the king and queen and to her brother Laertes, or simply imagines she is offering, include, among others, rosemary “for remembrance,” pansies “for thoughts,” and rue, “herb of grace.” They are medicinal drivers of reflection and repentance and offer rich opportunities for symbolic analysis.

But the king and queen don’t heed what the poor “mad” girl has to say, and the play ends with spectacular show of killing and dying. Both Ophelia and Hamlet fail to save Denmark from corruption and death. It is a tragedy, after all.

Let’s consider then that Gertrude’s weird poetic narrative about how Ophelia died was only the first attempt to tell her story.

It falls to me, my students and you to tell it more truthfully for our time — and Hamnet offers a pathway forward.

Paul Yachnin receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Academy Awards 2026: How ‘Hamnet’ will help me lead Shakespeare classes about ‘Hamlet’s’ Ophelia – https://theconversation.com/academy-awards-2026-how-hamnet-will-help-me-lead-shakespeare-classes-about-hamlets-ophelia-273444

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Darryn DiFrancesco, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing, Faculty of Human and Health Sciences, University of Northern British Columbia

Following the recent shooting of Renee Good by an agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the United States, the Donald Trump administration’s latest narrative suggests that “deluded wine moms” are to blame for the violence in ICE-related demonstrations in Minneapolis and across the country.

This mother-blaming is nothing more than an old trick with a new spin.

Organized gangs of ‘wine moms’

Earlier this week, a Fox News columnist wrote that “organized gangs of wine moms” are using “antifa tactics” to “harass and impede” ICE activity. In the opinion piece, he claimed that “confusion” over the what constitutes civil disobedience is what “got 37-year-old Renee Good killed.”

Similarly, Vice-President J.D. Vance called Good a “deranged leftist” while a new acronym, AWFUL — Affluent White Female Urban Liberal — has appeared on social media.

In framing protesters like Good, a mother of three, as confused, aggressive and “delusional,” this narrative delegitimizes and pathologizes maternal activism. This strategy aims to divert blame from the U.S. government and its heavy-handed approach to immigration while also drawing on a centuries-old strategy of blaming mothers for social problems.

What makes a ‘wine mom?’

The term “wine mom” emerged over the last two decades as a cultural symbol of the contemporary white, suburban mother who turns to a nightly glass of wine (or two) to cope with the stresses of daily life.

The archetype goes back much further, reflected in literature, film and television characters, such as the wily Lucille Bluth of Arrested Development.

Yet, this motif is less light-hearted than assumed: a recent systematic review reveals a strong link between maternal drinking and stress, especially for working mothers.

While it would be easy to view problematic drinking as another example of maternal failure, it is important not to. Here’s why.

Mother-blame in history

Throughout history, mothers have found themselves in the midst of what American sociologist Linda Blum calls a “mother-valor/mother-blame binary.”

When behaving in accordance with socially acceptable and desirable parameters — that is with warmth, femininity and selflessness — mothers are viewed as “good.” When mothers violate these norms, whether by choice, circumstance or by virtue of their race or class position, they’re “bad mothers.”

Mother-blame ultimately reflects the belief that mothers are solely responsible for their children’s behaviour and outcomes, along with the cultural tendency to blame them when things go wrong. Yet, as Blum points out, “mother-blame also serves as a metaphor for a range of political fears.”

Perhaps the most striking example of this is the suffrage movement, which represented a direct challenge to patriarchal notions that women belonged in the domestic sphere and lacked the intelligence to engage in political discourse.

Suffragettes in the United Kingdom — many of them mothers — occasionally used extreme tactics, such as window-smashing and arson, while women in the U.S. obstructed traffic and waged hunger strikes.

These activists were framed as threatening to not only the establishment, but also to families and the moral fabric of society.

Ironically, despite the fact that women’s entry into politics led to increased spending and improved outcomes related to women, children, families and health care, scholars have found that mother-blaming was as common after the women’s movement as it was before.

Contemporary mother-blame

Beyond political matters, contemporary mother-blame is rampant in other domains.

Mothers have been blamed for a wide variety of their children’s psychological problems, including anxiety, depression and inherited trauma. In media and literature, mothers are often blamed for criminality and violence, reflecting the notion that “mothers make monsters.”
When children struggle in school, educators and administrators may blame the mother. Mothers risk being called “too passive” if they don’t advocate for their children or “too aggressive” when they do.

Similarly, the “crazy woman” or “hysterical mother” is a well-known trope in custody law, and mothers may be blamed even when their children are abused by others. Mass shootings? Mom’s failure. The list goes on.

By setting up mothering as a high-stakes endeavour, the cultural norm of mother-blame also serves to “divide and conquer.”

In my sociology research, I found that mothers on Facebook worked to align themselves with like-minded “superior” mothers, while distancing themselves from perceived “inferior” mothers. This feeds into the cultural norm of “combative mothering,” which pits mothers against each other.

An old trick with a new spin

The “wine mom” narrative builds on this historical pattern of mother-blame. It is meant to trivialize, delegitimize, divide and denigrate mothers who are, in fact, well-organized and motivated activists concerned for their communities.

While there are legitimate concerns around maternal drinking as a coping mechanism, the “wine mom” label has begun to represent something different. Mothers are reclaiming the title to expand their cause.

As @sara_wiles, promoting the activist group @redwineblueusa stated on Instagram: “They meant to scare us back into the kitchen, but our actual response is, ‘Oh, I want to join!’”

We should acknowledge that rather than causing societal problems, mothers have a long history of trying to fix them, even if imperfectly. Mothers like Renee Good are no exception.

Darryn DiFrancesco 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. Blaming ‘wine moms’ for ICE protest violence is another baseless, misogynist myth – https://theconversation.com/blaming-wine-moms-for-ice-protest-violence-is-another-baseless-misogynist-myth-273786

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ronald W. Pruessen, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Toronto

One year into U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, questions about his health and competence are as pervasive as the gilt sprawling through the Oval Office.

These questions grew even louder following his rambling speech this week at Davos, where he repeatedly referred to Greenland as Iceland, falsely claimed the United States gave the island back to Denmark during the Second World War and boasted that only recently, NATO leaders had been lauding his leadership (“They called me ‘daddy,’ right?”).

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Trump’s annexation of Greenland seemed imminent. Now it’s on much shakier ground.

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Do swollen ankles and whopping hand bruises signal other serious problems? Do other Davos-like distortions and ramblings — plus a tendency to fall asleep during meetings — reveal mental decline even more startling than Joe Biden’s in the final couple of years of his presidency?

This is not the first time in White House history that American citizens have had concerns about the health of their president — nor the first time that historians like me have raised questions.

The experiences of Trump’s predecessors remind us of the dangers inherent in the inevitable human frailty of the very powerful.

Presidents with physical health issues

Frailty can entail crises in physical health like William Henry Harrison’s 1841 death from pneumonia 32 days after his inauguration or Warren G. Harding’s heart attack and death in 1923.

Frailty can also involve weaknesses in brain function, which impact the capacity for analysis and problem-solving.

Bodily trauma can have obvious effects on presidential competence. Sometimes it’s a temporary impact, as with Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1955 heart attack and recovery. But sometimes it’s permanent: Woodrow Wilson never recovered his capacities after an October 1919 stroke, with White House leadership languishing for 18 months under his wife’s gatekeeping until his death.

In other cases, the effect of physical ailments on competence was less clear — and therefore debatable. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s heart problems during the Second World War grew serious enough to contribute to his April 1945 death. Did they also compromise his mental capacities during the controversial Yalta Conference?

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Did John F. Kennedy’s undisclosed Addison’s disease and medication regimes affect his ability to navigate major challenges like the Cuban Missile Crisis or Vietnam?

Mental health concerns

There have also been debates about the possible competence consequences of the behavioural tendencies and mental health conditions of several American presidents:

• Did Abraham Lincoln’s bouts of deep depression affect leadership capacities during multiple Civil War crises, including the Union defeat at Chancellorsville in May 1863 or during cabinet conflicts?

• Did Theodore Roosevelt’s impulsivity help shape what even his secretary of state once privately called the “rape” of Colombia in order to build the Panama Canal? (Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James said Roosevelt was “still mentally in the Sturm und Drang period of early adolescence”).

• Did Richard Nixon’s periodically high stress levels and alcohol consumption influence his decision-making on the Cambodian incursion of 1970 or the Watergate crisis?

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Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States would have given Nixon immunity for Watergate crimes — but 50 years ago he needed a presidential pardon to avoid prison

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Questions and concerns about Trump’s physical and mental health, then, aren’t unique — even if the causes for concern are far more numerous than they were for previous presidents.

The impact of physical health on competence seems the less urgent of worrisome issues. While the Trump presidency as a whole has been notoriously prone to dishonesty, exaggeration and avoidance, the current medical team seems to be offering reasonable transparency.

Tests have been identified — for example, an October 2025 CT scan to assess potential heart issues — and relatively non-alarming diagnoses have been offered (“perfectly normal” CT scan results; common “chronic venous insufficiency” is responsible for swollen ankles).

More troubling is Trump’s mental health — both his full cognitive capacities and his psychological profile.

Cognitive issues?

In 2018 and 2025, Trump was given the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) a screening tool for possible dementia. Despite the president’s claim to having “aced” the test, his score has not been revealed.

Numbers matter here. Out of a maximum 30 points, scores below 25 suggest mild to severe cognitive issues.

Of equal importance, the MoCA provides no insight into markers of mental competence, like reasoning and problem-solving. Well-established test batteries cover such ground (the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale is widely used), but Trump has not likely worked through any. (Neither, to be sure, have any predecessors — though none have raised the concerns so evident in 2026.)

Unofficial diagnoses of personality characteristics also fuel debate about Trump’s competence and mental health. The scale of the president’s ego is a prime example of concern.

Psychological issues?

On one hand, in the absence of intensive in-person assessment, psychiatrists are understandably reluctant to apply the label of “narcissistic personality disorder” (NPD) as defined by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). On the other hand, many observers are also understandably struck by how Trump’s behaviour matches the DSM’s checklist of symptoms for the disorder.

The president clearly displays the grandiose sense of self-importance seen as a primary marker. Trump’s “I alone” and “I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue” boasts of earlier years have grown exponentially by 2025-26. He’s depicted himself as pope or “King Trump” bombing protesters.

More serious are his endless and false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election, that he has the right to torch constitutional norms like “due process” that are enabling ICE abuses in Minneapolis and elsewhere, and that he can disregard the need for congressional approval on policies like reducing cancer research and other health programs.

Trump’s declaration that only “my morality” will determine his defiance of international laws and standards (as in threats to Greenland and Canada and his actual invasion of Venezuela) are also deeply troubling, especially given serious questions about that morality in terms of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Psychiatrists also associate NPD with a sense of open-ended entitlement. Comic examples emerge: rebranding the (now) “Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center,” his lack of embarrassment in relishing the absurd FIFA Peace Prize or María Corina Machado’s surrender of her Nobel Peace Prize.

Brazenness

Trump’s willingness to trample upon rights within the U.S. and his apparent eagerness to disrupt and dismantle the building blocks of the post-Second World War international order are also possible signs of psychological problems.

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He is equally brazen in fostering the wealth of his family and friends: for example, accepting emoluments like multi-million dollar donations for a White House ballroom that will surely be given Trump branding (to compete with the Lincoln Bedroom?) and using Oval Office prestige to turbo-charge massive real estate and financial ventures.

The Trump family’s World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency enterprise “earned” more than $1 billion in 2025, after all.

Against the backdrop of the looming mid-term elections, Trump’s ever-compounding ego and appetites remain of burning concern — along with his overall physical health and mental competence. Other presidents faced similar questions even without the current storm of scandals and extremes.

Will Trump relish the distinction of leaving his predecessors in the dust on this front too?

In the past, Ronald W. Pruessen has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Health and competence are shaping Trump’s presidency. What about his predecessors? – https://theconversation.com/health-and-competence-are-shaping-trumps-presidency-what-about-his-predecessors-273880