Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Yimin Wu, Associate Professor, Tang Family Chair in New Energy Materials and Sustainability, University of Waterloo

Plastic is one of the most durable materials humans have ever made. That durability has made it indispensable in medicine, food packaging and transport. But it’s also created one of the defining environmental problems we have faced.

Hundreds of millions of tonnes of plastic are produced globally every year. Much of it ends up in landfills, incinerators or the natural environment, where it can persist for centuries.

The methods we have for getting rid of plastic pollution have their downsides. Putting it in landfills means chemicals and microplastics can seep into the surrounding environment.

Burning it releases harmful fumes and toxins. Mechanical recycling often downgrades plastics into lower-value products, while chemical recycling typically requires high temperatures, high pressures and large amounts of energy.

Colleagues and I recently published research that explores a very different possibility: using sunlight and an iron-based catalyst to convert common plastic waste directly into acetic acid — the key component of vinegar and an important industrial chemical.

Instead of treating plastic purely as waste, our research shows that it can be transformed into something useful under mild conditions.

Learning from a wood-rotting fungus

The inspiration for our research came from nature. The white-rot fungus (Phanerochaete chrysosporium) is famous for its ability to break down lignin, one of the toughest polymers found in wood. It does this using enzymes that generate highly reactive chemical species capable of dismantling complex carbon structures.

We wondered whether a synthetic material could mimic this strategy.

The catalyst we designed is iron-doped carbon nitride, a semiconductor that absorbs visible light. We then anchored individual iron atoms, creating what scientists call a single-atom catalyst.

Rather than forming nanoparticles, each iron atom is isolated and embedded within the carbon nitride structure. This atomic precision is crucial. Each iron atom behaves like an active site in a natural enzyme, maximizing efficiency while maintaining stability.

A two-step reaction powered by light

The system works through a cascade of light-driven reactions.

Under sunlight and in the presence of hydrogen peroxide, the iron sites activate the peroxide to generate highly reactive hydroxyl radicals. A radical is an atom, molecule or ion that has at least one unpaired electron. This makes them highly chemically reactive.

These radicals attack the long carbon chains that make up plastics, like polyethylene (used in plastic bags), polypropylene (food containers), PET (drink bottles) and even PVC (pipes and packaging).

The polymers are progressively oxidized and broken down into smaller molecules, eventually forming carbon dioxide (CO₂).

Rather than allowing this CO₂ to escape, the same catalyst then performs a second job: it uses sunlight to reduce the CO₂ into acetic acid. In other words, the carbon in plastic waste is first oxidized and then re-assembled into a new, valuable molecule.

Essentially, this approach breaks down plastic and converts the resulting carbon into a commodity chemical in a single system. This distinguishes it from most existing recycling technologies.

Why acetic acid?

Acetic acid is best known as the sour component of vinegar, but it is also a major industrial feedstock. It is used to produce adhesives, coatings, solvents, synthetic fibres and pharmaceuticals.

Global demand runs into the millions of tonnes each year, representing a multi-billion-dollar market.

Currently, most acetic acid is produced through an energy-intensive processes process called methanol carbonylation, whereby methanol is reacted with carbon monoxide at high temperatures.

Converting waste plastic into acetic acid offers a potential circular pathway: instead of extracting new carbon, we reuse carbon already present in discarded materials.

In our experiments, the system produced acetic acid at rates comparably favourable with other reported light-driven plastic conversion methods. When we enhanced light utilization inside the reactor, the production rate increased substantially.

Importantly, the reaction operated at room temperature and normal atmospheric pressure. That contrasts with many chemical recycling methods that require heating plastics to several hundred degrees Celsius.

Handling real-world plastic

Laboratory studies often focus on pure, single plastic types. But real waste streams are mixed and contaminated. We therefore tested different common plastics individually, as well as mixtures.

Our catalyst was able to convert several major commodity plastics. Interestingly, PVC showed particularly strong performance. We believe chlorine released during its breakdown may generate additional reactive radicals, accelerating degradation.

The iron atoms remained atomically dispersed after repeated use, indicating good stability. This matters because catalyst degradation or metal leaching can undermine both performance and environmental safety.

The system does rely on added hydrogen peroxide, which is consumed during the reaction. While hydrogen peroxide decomposes into water and oxygen and is considered relatively benign, future work will need to address how it can be supplied sustainably at scale.

From concept to practice

Scaling up any new chemical process presents challenges. Light penetration, reactor design and the variability of waste plastic feedstocks all affect efficiency. Additives in commercial plastics — such as stabilizers, pigments and plasticizers — can also influence reaction outcomes.

To explore feasibility, we conducted a preliminary techno-economic assessment. This is a way of analyzing the potential economic benefits of an industrial process or product.

While further optimization is required, our analysis suggests that coupling waste cleanup with the production of a valuable chemical could help offset costs — particularly when environmental benefits are taken into account.

More broadly, this work illustrates the power of single-atom catalysts and bio-inspired design. By mimicking the way enzymes control reactivity at precise metal centres, we can achieve complex chemical transformations under mild conditions using sunlight as the energy source.

Rethinking plastic’s life cycle

The problem of plastic pollution will not be solved by a single technology. Reducing unnecessary plastic use, improving product design and strengthening recycling systems are all essential.

Transforming plastic waste into useful chemicals offers a complementary strategy. It reframes plastic not only as an environmental burden but also as a carbon resource.

If we can harness sunlight to drive these transformations efficiently and at scale, yesterday’s discarded packaging could become tomorrow’s industrial feedstock.

The challenge now is to translate our laboratory advances into robust, scalable systems. If successful, it would mark a step toward a more circular economy — one where waste is not the end of the story, but the beginning of a new one.

Yimin Wu receives funding from Tang Family Chair in New Energy Materials and Sustainability, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the seed funding from the Water Institute (WI), Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN) at the University of Waterloo.

– ref. How we turned plastic waste into vinegar: A sunlight-powered breakthrough – https://theconversation.com/how-we-turned-plastic-waste-into-vinegar-a-sunlight-powered-breakthrough-276735

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Christopher Lo, Associate Professor, Psychology, University of Toronto; James Cook University

For $25, you might walk out with a drone. Or a blender. Or a box of something you won’t identify until you tear through the tape.

At “binz” stores, bargain hunters line up early on Saturdays to gain first access to piles of surplus goods dumped into waist-high bins. The merchandise comes from major retailers and online platforms, which are purchased through liquidation auctions and resold.

Binz stores are one highly visible edge of the booming recommerce and liquidation economy. The global recommerce market, which resells returned, refurbished and second-hand goods, is projected to generate more than US$200 billion annually.

Binz stores attract not only low-income shoppers but a broad cross-section drawn by the thrill of discovery and ultra-cheap goods. As the high cost-of-living strains household budgets in Canada, more consumers have traded down, seeking discounts and secondary markets.

Binz stores represent a layer of the secondary market that is equal parts bargain hunt and chaos. Liquidation marketplaces, off-price retailers and salvage wholesalers form a vast ecosystem beneath traditional retail designed to recover value from goods that cannot be sold at full price.

The afterlife of surplus

To understand binz stores, it helps to understand how surplus is created in the first place. They are the cumulative result of supply chain logistics, prediction error and the extraction of value in what might be called retail’s surplus afterlife.

Modern supply chains are one-way highways that move goods from global manufacturers to centralized hubs, then to retail outlets. They are optimized for speed and efficiency, but they are rarely designed to run in reverse.

“Most of the supply chains are designed for moving goods from manufacturer to the consumer. They are not designed for returning stuff,” says Murat Kristal, professor of operations management at the Schulich School of Business at York University.

Going forward, you might drop off a box of 15 at every store, he says. Now imagine going backwards, collecting unsold items, two here, three there, store by store, and then having to transport, sort and store them all in the warehouse while the fashion cycle changes.

Reversing the system multiplies the cost of the “last mile” of delivery — typically the most expensive part of distribution, explains Kristal. These final legs of distribution can account for about half of total shipping costs in some supply chains, according to industry analyses.

In many cases, it is cheaper to liquidate excess inventory in bulk than to reintegrate it backwards through primary distribution channels.

Forecasting the future

Retailers must predict the future, months in advance. A shirt on the shelf today may have been ordered a year ago, after yarns were sourced and factories booked in Southeast Asia.

Shipping full containers lowers per-unit costs, while producing smaller batches increases them. The economics of global manufacturing favours volume and planning production far in advance — a classic example of economies of scale where the cost of producing each individual item falls as the total number of units produced increases.

Companies must forecast how many units will sell in a market: how many small, medium and large, which colours and styles. If they predict 100 and sell 80, 20 remain. This forecasting is not optional “because you need to give a number to your manufacturer,” Kristal says.

Error is built into that bet. Retailers forecast based on past sales and trends. To avoid running out of stock, companies routinely overproduce or over-order to prevent empty shelves and lost sales. In fashion, between 10 and 40 per cent of garments made each year may go unsold. That buffer helps ensure availability but inevitably generates surplus inventory when demand fails to materialize.

Returning items to the warehouse is costly, and storing last season’s inventory makes little economic sense in industries driven by cycles. Liquidation often becomes the rational choice.

But the future is becoming harder to read. “It’s just that the unpredictability of the world we live in is increasing,” Kristal says.

American tariffs, inflation rates and fast-fashion cycles have made retail demand more difficult to forecast. When forecasts are wrong, the surplus moves downstream to third-party liquidators.

Deflating value

Surplus goods lose value over time, but that value rarely disappears entirely. Instead, it continues to be extracted as goods move further downstream from manufacturers to liquidation channels, and ultimately to bargain-hunting consumers.

“With some exceptions, virtually everything that gets manufactured in the world gets sold,” says Mark Cohen, former director of retail studies at Columbia Business School. “Everything has an economic value that gets deflated as merchandise is bought, or merchandise is unsold” at its intended price and venue.

In binz stores, this value decay is prominently visible. Each day has a flat rate for binned items, with prices dropping daily until restock day renews the cycle. In one store, a board game that once retailed for $70 might sell for $25 on restock day, $10 by midweek and $1 by week’s end.

Each change of hands reduces margin, but value can persist longer than assumed. “Eventually, even if it winds up in a junkyard or in a garbage dump, there are increasingly attempts to extract value by repurposing or extracting material,” says Cohen.

The thrill of the hunt

Bargain hunting is not purely economic. It also has a psychological dimension. Research suggests that searching for deals can trigger feelings of excitement and reward, making binz shopping similar to a game of treasure hunt.

When consumers perceive they’re getting a good deal, the brain’s reward circuitry — associated with dopamine and feelings of satisfaction — can become more active, helping explain the emotional appeal of bargains.

“Go as early as possible to get the best merchandise,” says Jonatas Beltrão, a Toronto painter. He first stumbled across a binz store while walking by and became curious about the large tables piled with goods.

Beltrão still laughs about his proudest purchase: a coffee maker that cost $85 on Amazon that he bought for $8.99. He goes every two weeks for the fun of finding brand-name items at a fraction of their original cost.

The uncertainty of what might appear in the binz, and the bragging rights of finding a trophy, help explain why some shoppers keep coming back and how goods continue circulating long past their intended retail life.

Variable rewards can heighten engagement and motivation, making activities from gaming to bargain hunting more compelling because each search might uncover something valuable.

“There’s a buyer for almost everything,” Cohen says.

In that sense, binz stores show the afterlife of surplus goods: leftover merchandise becomes part of a shopping experience built around chance, discovery and the thrill of a good deal.

Christopher Lo 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. The retail afterlife: How surplus goods find new value at ‘binz’ stores – https://theconversation.com/the-retail-afterlife-how-surplus-goods-find-new-value-at-binz-stores-275057

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Brandon Dickson, PhD Candidate, Global Governance, Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo

From 2013-23, Canada’s international post-secondary student population more than doubled to more than one million per year by 2023.

Most of these students studied in Ontario, particularly in urban areas. But the high cost of living in urban areas across Canada, along with limited enrolments, meant there was a subsequent spike of international students also studying in rural regions across Canada.

Our research is exploring the supports that currently exist for international students in rural regions and the efficacy of these supports for retaining international students in those areas.

Recent cap on international students

In 2024, the federal government put a cap on the number of international students in Canada.

Ottawa framed the move as an attempt to alleviate housing shortages and protect international students from “bad actors,” including people who issued fraudulent acceptance letters.

A CBC investigation also found that governments have pursued international students to contribute to Canada’s workforce and also to attract revenues for underfunded colleges and universities — with no attention paid to the impact on housing.

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Read more:
International students are not to blame for Canada’s housing crisis

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The impact of the international student cap has reverberated across Canada. It resulted in a sharp decline in international students across the country, including in rural regions where there is an enduring need for skilled graduates in health care, technology and the skilled trades.

Rural retention of international students

There has been very little Canadian research on rural retention of international students, aside from retaining graduates with health-care skills.

Our exploratory survey, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in partnership with the Canadian Bureau of International Education, was piloted in a rural region in Atlantic Canada.

The survey asked international students who were attending or had graduated from the local university questions about their intention to stay in their study region after graduating, and factors that influence their decisions.

In total, 21 students completed the survey, and three of these students participated in a follow-up interview. We also interviewed two people who worked in international student support roles in the same region.

Housing insecurity was a determinant

Our preliminary findings show that housing security was the among the most significant factors driving international students’ decisions to stay or go in their rural region.

Students in our survey said finding suitable housing was one of the biggest challenges. Half of the respondents noted that lower housing prices were the most influential factor in their initial decision to study in a rural region. However, frustration with finding long-term accommodations posed significant challenges in choosing to stay. In some instances, this also affected even coming to begin studies in the first place.

One student noted they had to move three times between the summer of 2023 and October 2023 due to being unable to find suitable housing when they first arrived. They cited this stress as the key reason they were planning to leave the rural region.

Another international student said the lack of accommodations meant they almost had to cancel their acceptance, noting they signed their lease only a few hours before their flight to Canada. More than one-quarter of our study participants who were planning to leave the rural region noted the lack of housing as the key driver.

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Read more:
Nowhere to stay: Canada needs a rights and responsibility approach to international student housing

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Unique rural employment challenges

More than one-third of international students in our survey initially planned to stay in their rural study region following graduation, but employment impacted this decision.

While for international students, the challenges of finding work post-graduation are widespread across Canada, participants in our study region noted unique challenges in rural areas.

Rural regions are often close-knit communities that rely on these ties when seeking employment, so much so that one of our research participants noted: “When locals meet each other, they’ll go, oh, who’s your father?” For international students, the more limited connections they have in communities correlates with the level of difficulty securing jobs.

Support programs

The Maritime rural region in our study had employment-related programming for recruiting, integrating and retaining international students. These include programs like one-time seminars on job searching or developing resumes, and longer internship opportunities.

Though international students in our survey unanimously noted that they knew such services existed, only three said they had accessed the programming. Those three students commented that these programs increased their sense of belonging and connection in the community.

One international student indicated that the connection from the community program resulted in post-graduation employment. The three students who accessed this programming said the most beneficial supports they accessed were immigration support, career advising and volunteering opportunities.

One interviewee who works in an international student support role described how one “study and stay” program receives far more applications from interested international students than it can accommodate. This provincially supported Atlantic Canada program provides tailored supports beyond the more general employment supports noted above.

Policies made staying complicated

Survey and interview findings also revealed that federal policies complicated efforts to stay in the rural region post-graduation.

One of the support people we interviewed noted how international students who want to stay in Canada often seek Express Permanent Residence, which requires a two-year, full-time employment contract.

Such an employment requirement is often incompatible with the short-term or part-time options available to students and new graduates.

This means international students are less likely to accept work in their fields, and may be required to move to urban areas or accept unskilled positions to find employment to meet these criteria.

Co-ordinated responses needed

We heard from international students that they want to stay and feel committed to rural regions. At the same time, students highlighted the challenge of transitioning from being a student who has access to university supports to being a community member without them.

Addressing housing and employment challenges requires co-ordinated responses in rural regions among universities, local government and industry.

Community-based supports that help recent graduates secure first jobs and offer opportunities for connection and networking are critical. Creative engagement is required across industries, sectors and the federal government to address federal policies for longer-duration work permits. For housing, incentivizing international student residency for landlords and local regions might help.

Housing and employment security appear to be the preliminary foundations for establishing and capitalizing on social and community connections. More research is needed to explore the successes in retaining international students and activating effective supports to do so.

Donna Kotsopoulos receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Ellyn Lyle receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Brandon Dickson 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. Should I stay or should I go? Rural international students face housing, job crunch – https://theconversation.com/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go-rural-international-students-face-housing-job-crunch-276498

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ann Pegoraro, Lang Chair in Sport Management, Lang School of Business and Economics, University of Guelph

Nearly 31 million Canadians watched Team Canada compete at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina earlier this year. With the Paralympics underway, fandom research suggests that millions are expected to tune in again.

With Canada consistently one of the top three countries on the medal table at the Winter Paralympics, and its athletes producing incredible sporting moments, Canadians are in for a treat.

For many of us, the Paralympics are remembered through moments that resonate beyond sport itself. Canadian athletes have delivered performances that not only capture national attention but also challenge longstanding assumptions about disability and elite competition, from Brian McKeever becoming Canada’s most decorated Winter Paralympian to wheelchair basketball victories that electrified arenas during the 2024 Games.

As the Milano-Cortina 2026 Paralympics draws in a growing Canadian audience, understanding the impact of this fandom is important. This isn’t just about sport, it’s also about reshaping how Canadians think about disability.

Paralympic fandom remains understudied

The Paralympic Games are what is referred to as a mega-event in sports, joining the likes of the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games. Yet the Paralympic fandom is understudied compared with other sport mega events.

The Olympics have drawn the attention of researchers for decades, with numerous studies on how fans consume the Games, what Olympic fandom means and how Olympic sponsors connect with fans. Similarly, researchers have spent significant time investigating football fandom and the FIFA World Cup.

But research on Paralympic audiences — including consumption, fandom, attitudes and effects — is limited.

This gap matters. The Paralympic Games are not simply another sporting event. They are one of the largest global platforms where disability, athletic excellence and national identity intersect.

Understanding how audiences engage with the Paralympics helps explain how sport can influence perceptions of disability, shape more inclusive narratives and mobilize support for parasport development.

More Canadians are Paralympic fans

Drawing on a national survey of Canadians conducted in partnership with the Canadian Paralympic Committee, we examined how fandom for the Paralympic Games relates to attitudes toward disability and social engagement.

We found that nearly 40 per cent of Canadians now consider themselves fans of the Paralympics, and seven in 10 believe Paralympic fandom is growing nationwide.

Canadians set viewership records for the 2024 Summer Paralympics in Paris, while the worldwide audience also grew, with more than 1.6 billion views on the social media channels of the International Paralympic Committee, an 81 per cent increase compared with the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics.

With this growing fandom and viewership, Paralympians are providing unprecedented visibility for individuals with disabilities.

The widely successful International Paralympic Committee’s TikTok has also played an active role in attracting young fans, in particular, through edgy campaigns.

Sport as a catalyst for social change

Paralympians are extraordinary athletes. With the Paralympics drawing record viewership and increasing fandom, the Games are a powerful tool for societal change.

Research has shown that societal attitudes toward people with disabilities can shift positively when people watch and follow the Paralympic Games. We wanted to know how rising Paralympic fandom in Canada affects attitudes toward disability.

Preliminary results of our work indicate that Paralympic fans not only have more positive attitudes toward disability in society, but are also significantly more likely to engage in pro-social activities such as donating, raising awareness or advocating for people with disabilities.

Nine in 10 parasport fans in Canada reported engaging in pro-social behaviours, compared with seven in 10 Canadians overall.

The business case for Paralympic sponsorship

Just as brands are recognizing the return on investment of sponsoring women’s sports, the Paralympics are now poised to offer a similar opportunity.

Our research found that consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions all positively increase when they learn that a company sponsors the Paralympics. This increase is larger than similar intentions toward companies that sponsor the Olympics, with 24 per cent of Winter Paralympic fans reporting they made a purchase from a brand because of its Paralympic sponsorship.

Women’s sport fandom is also growing in Canada, and research demonstrates that women’s sports fans are more likely than men’s sports fans to watch or follow the Paralympics. This provides a growing and lucrative audience that could motivate companies to get involved.

What this means going into Milano-Cortina

The rise in fandom suggests Canadians will once again be watching in large numbers. And this is increasingly shaping how we understand disability, excellence and inclusion in sport.

Expanded broadcast coverage, increasing social media engagement and stronger corporate partnerships are helping bring the Paralympics and Paralympians to wider audiences than ever before.

For fans, the Games offer an opportunity to witness extraordinary athletic performances. They also provide a moment to reflect on how sport can shape the way disability is understood in society.

Ann Pegoraro is the Director of the International Institute for Sport Business and Leadership who conducted the research referenced herein. She receives funding from SSHRC.

Ryan Snelgrove receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. More Canadians are watching the Paralympics. Our research shows why that matters – https://theconversation.com/more-canadians-are-watching-the-paralympics-our-research-shows-why-that-matters-277035

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sara Bannerman, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Communication Policy and Governance, McMaster University

Federal political parties are in the process of exempting themselves, retroactively, from a law that would require them to be governed by the same privacy principles as other organizations.

Their efforts come in the wake of a 2024 British Columbia Supreme Court ruling that found the province’s Personal Information Protection Act — unlike federal privacy laws — applies to federal political parties.

The Liberal government’s Bill C-4, currently in the final stages of passing through Parliament, would change that.

Collecting voter data

Political parties and campaigns collect sensitive information about Canadian voters without their knowledge or consent — often working with a range of data and tech companies to do so.

Parties may make political inferences and use the data to decide who to target with ads, who to exclude, whose doors to knock on and which ones to walk by.

The B.C. ruling is critical because no federal law requires federal parties to comply with the privacy principles that businesses and governments must follow. Federal parties have been in a years-long court battle to keep it that way.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Gary Weatherill’s ruling that federal political parties are subject to the B.C. law was centred on three provincial residents who filed complaints in 2019. They accused three federal parties — the Liberals, New Democrats and Conservatives — of refusing to disclose or inadequately disclosing how they collected and used their personal data.

The parties argued the provincial law did not apply to federal political parties. They lost, and the case is under appeal.

Citing the constitutional principle of co-operative federalism, Weatherill ruled that both federal and provincial privacy laws could apply to federal political parties. Federal law did not override provincial law, the decision said, and the parties’ privacy policies could comply with both regimes at the same time without undermining the purpose of either.

With the prospect of further losing this court battle on appeal, the federal parties have banded together in an effort to retroactively change the law.

Exempting themselves

Bill C-4 would prevent provincial and territorial privacy laws from applying to federal parties and would apply retroactively all the way back to the year 2000. If successful, federal political parties wouldn’t be subject to either the basic privacy principles or third-party oversight that governments and businesses, big and small, are subject to.

Under C-4, federal political parties would not “be required to comply” with provincial or territorial privacy laws. B.C. and Québec laws do, at the moment, apply to political parties. They provide some of the only privacy protections applying to political parties in all of Canada.

Imagine if all people and organizations had time machines that allowed them to go back in time to exempt themselves from laws that held them accountable? That’s essentially what the three federal parties are proposing.

If Canadians want privacy rights to apply to federal political parties, there is almost nobody to vote for who will support those rights. The federal parties and virtually all MPs are acting as a united front against Canadian voters’ privacy rights — fighting against those rights together in the courts and almost unanimously passing C-4 in third reading (with the exception of Green leader Elizabeth May).

If there has ever been a moment for the Senate to act as a check on political parties using their majority to legislate in their own self-interest — exempting themselves from laws that apply to everyone else — this was it.

To its credit, the Senate (unlike MPs) studied the bill carefully and heard from expert witnesses, including myself. It also added a sunset clause to the legislation.

Sunset clause provisions

The sunset clause would reverse C-4’s privacy exemption measures, potentially making federal parties once again subject to provincial privacy laws in three years.

Senators failed to go further to insist that the privacy exemptions for federal parties in Bill C-4 be entirely removed. Doing so would have allowed the provincial laws that provide virtually the only privacy protection Canadians currently have against federal political parties to continue to apply.

It would have also allowed the B.C. complainants’ court case to proceed — likely all the way to the Supreme Court, where Canadians’ privacy rights might have been upheld and the case might have shed light on the data federal parties collect.

It remains to be seen whether the House will retain the sunset clause amendment proposed by the Senate. Regardless, C-4 will likely undermine the 2024 B.C. decision and kill the appeal process since the laws at the root of that case would be deemed inapplicable to federal parties.

If the sunset clause is retained, it means at least three more years of political parties working with data companies, harvesting and using unknown troves of personal data with no real accountability.

Sen. Pierre Dalphond’s stated purpose regarding the sunset clause was to put the onus on the government and the three political parties to come up with a meaningful privacy regime for federal political parties within a fixed time frame.

Anyone who’s optimistic that will happen has not been watching the parties fight tooth and nail to collect, keep and hide our data.

Sara Bannerman receives funding from the Canada Research Chairs program, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and McMaster University. She has previously received funding from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s Contributions Program and the Digital Ecosystem Research Challenge.

– ref. Canada’s three main federal political parties are working together to fight voter privacy rights – https://theconversation.com/canadas-three-main-federal-political-parties-are-working-together-to-fight-voter-privacy-rights-277725

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Subhadip Ghosh, Associate Professor, School of Business, MacEwan University

Since American and Israeli missiles began striking Iran, global oil prices have jumped sharply. The conflict has resulted in the disruption of tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which carries about one-fifth of the world’s oil shipments.

For Canadians, the effects have been immediate, with higher prices at the gas pump.

A familiar refrain has already surfaced in Canadian political commentary: higher oil prices are good for Canada. That intuition is understandable, given that Canada is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, with oil and gas being Canada’s highest export earner.

But that claim misses two key points. First, while Canada as a whole might gain from higher oil prices as a net energy exporter, those gains are unevenly distributed across sectors and provinces. Second, the mechanism that softened that pain — a stronger Canadian dollar — has weakened.

Together, these two facts clarify why rising oil prices are hitting Canadians harder than they did in previous decades.

Not all Canadians benefit

Oil and gas are undeniably important to Canada. Oil and gas extraction alone has averaged about five per cent of national GDP since 2000, and the sector supported approximately 446,600 direct and indirect jobs in 2023.

The importance of oil also varies dramatically across provinces. In Alberta and Saskatchewan, for example, oil and gas production accounts for roughly 22 per cent and 16 per cent of provincial GDPs, respectively.

By contrast, in Ontario and Québec — home to about 60 per cent of Canadians — the sector contributes only a small fraction of provincial output.

When crude prices rise, Alberta and Saskatchewan collect more royalties, and energy company revenues climb. For that slice of Canada, conflict in the Persian Gulf can bring economic benefits.

Yet windfall gains are also constrained by infrastructure. Pipeline capacity and production limits mean Canadian producers cannot expand quickly when global prices surge.

The completion of the Trans Mountain Expansion Project in 2024 increased access to Pacific markets, but production cannot be scaled overnight and bottlenecks still blunt the swift supply response needed to realize a windfall gain.

For most Canadians, the picture is simpler and less pleasant. Higher oil prices means higher costs not only at the pump, but also gradually in grocery stores and heating bills, and reduced purchasing power.

A sustained $10 increase in oil typically raises Canadian inflation by roughly 0.3 to 0.4 percentage points over the following year.

How oil shocks spread

Economists typically analyze oil shocks through four transmission channels: terms of trade, income, costs and monetary policy.

The first is the terms-of-trade channel. Because Canada exports more energy than it imports, higher oil prices mean the country earns more for its exports relative to what it pays for imports. That improves Canada’s purchasing power in global markets.

The second is the income channel, which determines who receives those gains: higher oil prices raise producers’ revenues and governments’ royalties, concentrating much of the windfall in oil-producing regions and among shareholders.

The third is the cost channel: oil is a key input into transportation, manufacturing and agriculture, so higher energy prices ripple through supply chains and into household budgets.

The fourth is the monetary policy channel, which often shapes the broader economy. Central banks like the Bank of Canada aim to keep inflation near a stable target. If rising oil prices keep inflation elevated for long enough, policymakers may delay interest rate cuts or keep borrowing costs higher.

Higher interest rates help contain inflation but slow spending and investment across the economy. In short, the same oil shock that boosts Canada’s energy sector can, via inflation and interest rates, slow other parts of the economy.

A weaker currency cushion

Perhaps the most consequential shift over the past decade is the changing relationship between oil prices and the Canadian dollar.

As noted by the Bank of Canada, for most of the 2000s and early 2010s, the Canadian dollar behaved like a petrocurrency. When oil prices rose, the loonie often strengthened as well.

A stronger currency made imported goods cheaper and helped offset some of the inflationary pressure from higher gasoline and energy prices. The exchange rate acted as a natural shock absorber.

That cushion has weakened substantially. Research by Alberta Central, CIBC Capital Markets and several economists all point out that the relationship between oil prices and the Canadian dollar weakened in the mid-2010s and continues to remain weak.

One reason is that investment in Canada’s oil and gas extraction fell 55 per cent from 2014 to 2019, then dropped a further 36 per cent in 2020. This decline reduced the foreign investment flows that once pushed the Canadian dollar higher when oil prices rose.

Second, energy companies are now more likely to return profits to shareholders through dividends and buybacks than to launch new projects. However, many of those shareholders are foreign investors, and even domestic holders, such as pension funds, distribute returns across global portfolios.

As such, the reinvestment of oil windfalls back into the Canadian economy has declined significantly compared to the investment-led boom years of the 2000s. Other factors, like the rise of U.S. shale, have also weakened the oil-currency link.

The practical consequence is that when oil spikes today, Canadians absorb more of the inflationary impact and receive less of the offsetting currency benefit they did a decade ago. For Canada, war-driven oil price spikes are therefore less a national windfall than a redistribution across sectors, provinces and from consumers to energy producers.

With the Canadian dollar no longer rising alongside oil as it once did, price spikes now translate more directly into higher living costs for Canadians.

The author would like to thank Vinh Nguyen, a research assistant and undergraduate student at MacEwan University’s School of Business, for her contribution to this article.

Subhadip Ghosh 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. Middle East conflict is pushing oil prices higher — and most Canadians will feel the costs – https://theconversation.com/middle-east-conflict-is-pushing-oil-prices-higher-and-most-canadians-will-feel-the-costs-277811

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Cate Cleo Alexander, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of Toronto

Would it be obvious if artificial intelligence (AI?) created your new favourite song?

Millions of listeners have recently encountered that question through a viral Afro-soul cover of Papaoutai, the 2013 hit by Belgian artist Stromae. The cover has skyrocketed in popularity across streaming platforms and social media.

But unknown to most audiences, it was created using AI, according to Deezer, a French music-streaming service.

The Afro-soul cover highlights a growing challenge — the difficulty identifying when generative AI has been used in production — and how audiences, platforms and artists are struggling to respond.

When Stromae first released the upbeat dance song Papaoutai as part of the album Racine carrée, it topped the charts in Belgium, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands and Switzerland. More than a decade after release, it’s still one of the most-viewed French-language songs on YouTube.

Some 12 years later, in December 2025, an Afro-soul cover of Papaoutai was uploaded to Spotify. While it’s hard to track the exact reach of the song due to various removals and re-uploads on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, the song currently has almost 80 million streams on Spotify.

The authorship of the Afro-soul version is commonly attributed to mikeeysmusic — a Swedish musician with a verifiable social media presence and discography — Chill77, whose identity is difficult to verify, and Unjaps, an independent record label. None of the artists have made a public statement about the controversy.

Why does all of this matter? Most music platforms lack clear labelling for AI music, and this places the difficult task of identification on listeners.

Identifying AI use in music production

AI-generated music has become a very broad category. As machine learning engineer and researcher Christopher Landschoot argues, the term AI-generated music “is casually tossed around whether AI is used to emulate an effect, automatically mix or master, separate stems, or augment timbre. As long as the final audio has been touched in some way by AI, the term gets slapped on the entire piece.”

It’s hard to tell how and to what extent AI was used in the making of the cover of Papaoutai. Did mikeeysmusic and Chill77 upload Stromae’s original song into an AI program, like OpenAI’s Sora, give it a command and upload the AI-generated result? Did they train an AI program on the vocals of another musician, Arsene Mukendi, to generate choir vocals? Or was the cover an iterative process where the artists fine-tuned and edited the output?

Does it matter when the lyrics and melody were written by someone else?

Identifying AI use in music is difficult, even for scholars like us who study generative AI. A study published by Deezer-Ipsos, which surveyed 9,000 people across eight countries, found that 97 per cent of people couldn’t tell the difference between fully AI-generated music and human-authored music.

A big contributor to the confusion is the lack of response from platforms. While Bandcamp has taken a clear anti-AI stance and works to keep AI-generated music off the platform entirely, other platforms like Spotify have gestured towards governance changes but largely allowed AI music to rack up streams without clearly disclosing the use of AI.

The popularity of short-form videos (like on TikTok), in which users encounter uncontextualized song snippets, further propels the prominence of AI-generated music.

As one journalist argued:

“If listeners cannot tell the difference — and if platforms decline to tell them — then consent becomes impossible.”

Emotional responses on social media

In comment sections, audiences are often surprised to learn that the song was created using AI. Many have praised the cover, describing it as “a lot more instrumental, emotional and grand.”

But these positive feelings abruptly shift upon learning about AI use in the song’s creation. As another Reddit user commented:

“I’m actually so sad it [is AI]-generated. It sounds wonderful, but I personally can not support [AI] taking over creative industries such as music and art. And I know there are plenty of African choirs who could have nailed the vision without the use of [AI].”

Whether audiences choose to listen to AI-generated music is often framed as a moral decision. This is complicated, however, when it becomes increasingly difficult to discern what music is AI-generated or how generative AI was used in its creation.

According to the same Deezer-Ipsos study, 73 per cent of people surveyed “think it’s unethical for AI companies to use copyrighted material to generate new music without clear approval from the original artist.”

Stromae has remained quiet on the issue so far, with audiences speculating about his response to what some see as an AI appropriation of a very personal song written about his father, who died in the Rwandan genocide.

Many English-speaking users, unaware of this context, have used the heavy drums of the Afro-soul version to soundtrack everything from fashion haul videos to comedy shorts. As one TikToker asked:

“Did you ever think that the song about losing your father in the Rwandan genocide would be used, in your lifetime, to post gym thirst traps?”

AI as a tool for remixing

Artists have been grappling with the possibilities and concerns of AI use in music production, but there has been a precedent for “playing” with original songs.

Remix — through cassettes, spin tables and synthesizers — has been a part of music fan culture for decades. There is a rich tradition of fans using technology to cut, copy, paste, play, reimagine and recontextualize music.

Can AI-generated covers — the newest way of using technology to “play” with music — be understood as part of this legacy of remix?

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Read more:
How I used AI to transform myself from a female dance artist to an all-male post-punk band – and what that means for other musicians

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On the legal side, all seems above board — at least in France. In the case of the Papaoutai cover, the French Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers has upheld its legality. They note that Stromae is “properly credited” and that royalties will be shared between Stromae and the record label that produced the cover.

So is it remix? Maybe. Is it legal? Apparently.

But as seen in this example, audiences still struggle with songs extracted from their original context and created with AI technologies, which are themselves inherently extractive.
Does this context shift the perception of this song as a form of extractive remix production?

The Afro-soul cover of Papaoutai illustrates how quickly AI-generated music can circulate. It also signals an increasing amount of debate as artists, audiences, and platforms navigate the future of AI-generated music.

Cate Cleo Alexander has received funding from SSHRC (Doctoral Canadian Graduate Scholarship) and is a member of the Creative Labour and Critical Futures (CLCF) project.

Lauren Knight receives funding from SSHRC (Doctoral Canadian Graduate Scholarship) and is a member of the Creative Labour and Critical Futures (CLCF) project.

– ref. Could you tell if your favourite song was made with AI? The viral ‘Papaoutai’ cover controversy suggests not – https://theconversation.com/could-you-tell-if-your-favourite-song-was-made-with-ai-the-viral-papaoutai-cover-controversy-suggests-not-274607

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kelly Summers, Assistant Professor of History, Department of Humanities, MacEwan University

Vietnam War veterans are suing to block construction of United States President Donald Trump’s proposed triumphal arch in Washington, D.C., arguing that it would detract from the solemnity of nearby Arlington Cemetery.

Having demolished the White House’s East Wing and shuttered the renamed Kennedy Center for “complete rebuilding,” Trump plans to install what he calls an Independence Arch to mark the country’s 250th anniversary this July.

Since Trump’s re-election, Catesby Leigh of the Claremont Institute — a California think tank at the forefront of the “MAGA new right” — has urged him to erect a classical arch to proclaim the “universal significance” of the Declaration of Independence.

Leigh insisted the “nation has had enough of sackcloth and ashes, whether in the form of wokedom’s historically illiterate memes or modernism’s esthetic anorexia.”

Trump embraced the idea. A patriotic landmark would complement his efforts to purge what he called “improper ideology” from Washington institutions like the Smithsonian museum and the National Zoo.

A grand monument would also serve one of the top priorities of the current government: gratifying the president’s ego. When asked who the arch is for, Trump was honest: “Me.”

But the project professes a nobler mission. Trump’s executive order to “make federal architecture beautiful again” praised the Founding Fathers’ use of neoclassicism to “visually connect” the American republic “with the antecedents of democracy” in ancient Athens and Rome.

As a historian who studies the French Republic’s slide into military dictatorship in the early 19th century, what troubles me about this rationale is that there is nothing inherently democratic about arches.

In fact, some of the most famous iterations in ancient Rome and Napoleonic France warn us of the tendency of republics to devolve into autocratic empires.

Recalling Rome

The U.S. founders wanted to avoid the pitfalls of imperial ostentation, militarism and personality cults as they planned their new capital.

An early test was how to commemorate the nation’s first president after his death in 1799.

A hero of the War of Independence, George Washington served two terms as president and set a key precedent by refusing to seek a third.

If he had a Roman forebear, it was the humble farmer Cincinnatus rather than Julius Caesar, whose insatiable ambition toppled the republic and laid the foundation for empire.

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Read more:
Which Roman emperor was most like Donald Trump?

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Early Americans were well-versed in the Roman republic’s rise, corruption and fall.

Under the Republic (509 BCE to 27 BCE), the Roman Senate rewarded victorious generals and their armies with triumphs, celebratory processions under temporary wooden arches. The enduring marble arches of Titus, Septimius Severus and Constantine, meanwhile, were erected during the Empire (27 BCE – 476 CE) to glorify their imperial namesakes.

According to classicist Mary Beard, the parading of captives and loot under triumphal arches underscored the “power of the Roman war machine and the humiliation of the conquered.”

Art historian Kirk Savage notes that early Americans preferred to honour exemplars of civic virtue with “words, not stones or statues.” The nation’s capital already bore Washington’s name — no need to sully it by aping Roman tyrants.

The American republic developed what R. Grant Gilmore, a specialist in historic preservation, calls a “clear, democratic architectural language” that spurned the strident jingoism of Roman monuments.

As later generations warmed to the idea of honouring the country’s great men on the National Mall, the capital’s designers continued to embrace neoclassicism while eschewing triumphal arches.

Instead, they favoured obelisks (the Washington Monument) and temples (the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials), which foreground public service and national unity.

An effort to build an arch honouring Ulysses S. Grant in 1901 was nixed in favour of a grand equestrian statue. While George Washington eventually got an arch, it was in Manhattan as part of the City Beautiful movement.

The absence of arches in Washington, D.C. was not an oversight but a conscious feature of a restrained brand of republicanism.

From Triomphe to Trump

Trump’s desire for an arch was sparked by a more recent precedent set by America’s first ally, France. However, Paris’s famous arch, the Arc de Triomphe, dates from one of the French Republic’s own detours into empire.

When Trump visited Paris in 2017, he was so impressed by the country’s Bastille Day demonstration of “military might” that he instructed his advisers to “top it.”

When Trump hosted his own parade in June 2025, it coincided with two birthdays: the U.S. Army’s 250th and his own 79th. He then set his sights on the Arc de Triomphe, which anchors the Bastille Day parade on the Champs-Elysées.

In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew France’s First Republic by donning a Caesarean laurel wreath. The next year, Emperor Napoleon commissioned a Roman-style arch to mark his Grande Armée’s victory at Austerlitz. Its foundation stone, dedicated to “Napoleon the Great,” was laid on his birthday in 1806.

Never mind that Napoleon died in exile long before his arch’s completion, several regime changes later, in 1836. Trump vowed to “blow it away in every way” with a 250-foot behemoth soon nicknamed the “Arc de Trump.”

Global arches

From Mexico City to Baghdad, diverse political movements have used arches to commemorate foundational moments, pivotal leaders and military triumphs and sacrifices.

Empire-building is a recurrent theme. London’s Wellington Arch stands as imperial Britain’s post-Waterloo refutation of Napoleonic invincibility. Benito Mussolini’s Arch of the Philaeni in colonial Libya featured engravings of Il Duce (“the Leader”) resurrecting the Roman Empire.

Had the Second World War played out differently, architect Albert Speer’s German triumphal arch would have loomed over the Third Reich’s imperial capital.

The meaning of arches, however, can evolve. After the First World War, the U.K. installed New Delhi’s India Gate as a tribute to Commonwealth casualties. Since India’s independence, it has anchored the country’s Republic Day celebrations as its National War Memorial.

The focus of Napoleon’s triumphal arch has likewise shifted to include both fallen soldiers and the victims of French imperialism. Since 1920, the Arc de Triomphe has housed France’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In 1999, a plaque acknowledged that the Algerian War (1954-1962) was an actual war, not a “pacification operation.”

Trump’s blasé attitude to the human costs of war (not to mention colonialism and slavery) is well-documented: will his arch acknowledge them?

A monument in search of meaning

Critics have expressed concerns about the proposed arch’s regulatory oversight, funding and impact on existing commemorative spaces. But another pressing question relates to its symbolism.

The U.S. is bitterly divided and mired in constitutional crisis. The president targets domestic opponents as well as the resources and territory of foreign allies and adversaries.

From imperial Rome to Napoleonic Paris, history’s arches glorified conquest, plunder and the strongmen who erected them.

Is this truly the message the Trump government wants to send as the American republic prepares to mark a major milestone?

Kelly Summers 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. Trump wants an ‘Independence Arch’ — How famous arches warn about dangers to republics – https://theconversation.com/trump-wants-an-independence-arch-how-famous-arches-warn-about-dangers-to-republics-268748

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ken Wilson, Assistant Professor, Department of English and Creative Writing, University of Regina

In my recently published book, Walking the Bypass: Notes on Place from the Side of the Road, I describe standing beside the Regina Bypass, a new (and politically controversial) highway around Saskatchewan’s capital, asking myself how settlers came to own the land that stretched to the horizon in all directions.

Canadian courts have generally treated the numbered treaties as land cessions, though they also recognize them as solemn agreements requiring honourable interpretation.

I recalled what the late Stó:lō Elder Lee Maracle wrote in My Conversations With Canadians: settlers like me rarely get curious about “how the shift from Indigenous authority over the land to Canadian authority over the land occurred.”

I decided to get curious, and what I learned surprised me.

The official story: Surrender

Regina is in Treaty 4 territory. In September 1874, treaty commissioners representing the Crown negotiated that treaty with Cree, Saulteaux and Nakoda chiefs at Fort Qu’Appelle, now a town east of Regina, but then a Hudson’s Bay Co. trading post.

What Treaty 4 means depends on whose story you believe. The federal government tells one story; First Nations treaty Elders and legal scholars tell another. Those stories offer radically different versions of that treaty.

According to the federal government, First Nations surrendered their title to the land through the historical numbered treaties, including Treaty 4. That interpretation depends on the words of the treaty document: First Nations “do hereby cede, release, surrender and yield up” their land.

There’s a problem, however. As historian Sheldon Krasowski points out in No Surrender: The Land Remains Indigenous, there’s no evidence those words were mentioned by the treaty commissioners during the negotiations, or that their translator, Charles Pratt, a Cree-Nakoda catechist who often translated for Anglican missionaries, would have been able to convey the treaty’s legalese into the chiefs’ languages.

When pioneering Cree lawyer Harold Cardinal and historian Walter Hildebrandt explained the meaning of what’s come to be known as the “surrender clause” to First Nations Treaty Elders, those Elders were incredulous that anyone would think the chiefs would have agreed to give up their rights to the land. Elder Kay Thompson (Treaty 4) told Cardinal and Hildebrandt:

“We never gave it up; we never surrendered anything.”

If that interpretation is wrong, then Canada’s legal claim to much of the land west of Ontario rests on uncertain ground.

A different account of Treaty 4

If the so-called “surrender clause” wasn’t interpreted, and if contemporary Treaty Elders say no surrender of land took place, then the federal government’s story about the treaties doesn’t make much sense. And, if there was no surrender of land, then what gave the federal government the right to survey, sell or give away to settlers everything outside of reserves?

How did the notion of “Crown land” come about? How did the shift in authority that Edler Maracle describes happen?

First Nations legal scholars and Elders offer a completely different account of Treaty 4 and the other historical treaties: they were about sharing the land and establishing an ongoing relationship with settlers.

The most important speech of the Treaty 4 negotiations, the one that brought the talks to a conclusion, was made by Chief Loud Voice on the last day of the discussions. He said:

“Let us join together and make the treaty; when both join together it is very good.”

Those words suggest a desire to create a relationship with the newcomers to the Plains, not a surrender of land. Contemporary Indigenous legal scholars agree with this interpretation.

In Two Families: Treaties and Government, writer and lawyer Harold Johnson argues that the treaties represent sacred ceremonies in which First Nations adopted settlers as their kin. That’s why the Elder he consulted suggested he use the Cree word kiciwâminawak — “our cousins” — to refer to settlers.

For Johnson, the key element of the negotiations was the Sacred Pipe Ceremony, which solemnized that adoption, not the treaty document. “The paper at treaty was ancillary to ceremony,” he explains. “My ancestors recognized your paper as your ceremony and participated so as not to offend.”

Ceremony, not paper, constituted the agreement.

What if the story isn’t true?

Interpreting Treaty 4, like the other historical treaties, as a sharing agreement rather than a surrender of land raises profound questions. How did so much land in Saskatchewan, as in other parts of Canada, come to belong to settlers?

This disagreement is not simply about history; it is about what counts as law.

In Saskatchewan, as elsewhere, reserves are a tiny part of the total area. The rest belongs to the Crown or has been sold or given to settlers.

How can that situation be considered sharing? How did the Crown come to possess the land? On what basis was the land sold or given away? Is our title to the land the product of a story that simply isn’t true? Did that shift from Indigenous to Canadian authority happen through a misunderstanding, at best, or trickery, at worst?

These two interpretations aren’t just trivia. The unsettling questions they raise block genuine reconciliation today because the official interpretation relies on a version of the treaty that partners reject. Thinking about those questions, and discussing them with Indigenous Peoples, won’t be easy for settlers, but it needs to happen.

As Dallas Hunt and Gina Starblanket, Cree authors and advocates for Indigenous thoughts, point out:

“Treaty is work; it takes labour to be in relationship with other people.”

Are we settlers ready for that work? The first step might be reconsidering which story about the treaties we believe.

Ken Wilson 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. Treaty 4 brings up hard questions like how did ‘Crown land’ come to be? – https://theconversation.com/treaty-4-brings-up-hard-questions-like-how-did-crown-land-come-to-be-270036

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Fatma Ozdogan, PhD Candidate & Researcher, School of Architecture, Université de Montréal

In April 2012, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle was found on Graham Island in the Haida Gwaii archipelago off the coast of British Columbia. It belonged to Ikuo Yokoyama, a survivor of the earthquake and tsunami that struck northeastern Japan a year earlier, in March 2011. Yokoyama lost his home and three family members.

This year marks the 15th anniversary of the earthquake.

On March 11, 2011 a magnitude-9.0 earthquake occurred off Japan’s northeastern coast. It triggered a tsunami that devastated coastal communities and caused significant damage to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Almost 20,000 people were killed, and economic losses exceeded US$235 billion. Fifteen years later, the disaster remains a reference point in public debate because of the unprecedented damage, and because of the long-term questions it raised about risk, responsibility and preparedness.

Yokoyama’s motorcycle has since become part of a memorial culture dedicated to the 2011 disaster. After receiving offers to have it returned, Yokoyama decided that the motorcycle should be exhibited at the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, where it still stands today as a memorial to those whose lives were affected by the disaster.

The limitations of infrastructure become visible not only in moments of failure, but also in what survives and circulates afterward. And in Japan, the motorcycle has become part of a broader conversation about what remains after catastrophes, along with other objects swept away by the tsunami and later discovered in different parts of the world.

Importance of risk awareness

Japan has long been widely regarded as a global leader in disaster risk reduction. Advanced seismic engineering standards, earthquake-resistant buildings, extensive early warning systems and massive coastal defences such as seawalls and floodgates have been designed to protect the disaster-prone country.

Reconstruction in tsunami-affected areas involved major planning decisions. In many communities, neighbourhoods were relocated to higher ground or further inland, changing multi-generational settlement patterns.

New residential areas were developed in highland areas, while some low-lying coastal zones were converted to green buffers, agricultural land or designated memorial spaces.

Yet, as the tsunami showed, physical infrastructure alone cannot eliminate risk. People’s risk awareness, preparedness and willingness to act swiftly — often informed by local knowledge and disaster education — also play decisive roles in preventing the loss of life.

This understanding directly shaped Life is a Miracle, an initiative launched in Yamamoto, a coastal town severely affected by the tsunami.

During our field research on disaster memory practices in the Tohoku region, we visited the project’s exhibition space and spoke with people involved in documenting the disaster’s legacy.

By using Yokoyama’s motorcycle as an example, it highlights how life itself is fragile and valuable, and how tsunami survival is shaped by warning systems, evacuation infrastructure, land-use decisions, housing location and institutional choices made well before a disaster occurs.

The motorcycle’s journey gained meaning in a country where major catastrophes are integrated into public life. Recurrent earthquakes and tsunamis, along with fires and wartime destruction, have shaped not only city planning policy but also disaster education and commemoration. Across these histories, memory in Japan serves a practical purpose, linking past events to present awareness and future responsibility.

Life is a Miracle puts this claim into practice through clothing bearing its name, each individually numbered and linked to dialogue-based activities that document experiences of loss, displacement and rebuilding and emphasize disaster preparedness. These items prompt conversation in everyday settings. The motorcycle acts as a tangible entry point for reflection on disaster preparedness and memory.

Memory infrastructure

Across the Tohoku region most affected by the tsunami, memorial museums, monuments and preserved school buildings present detailed accounts of evacuation decisions and reconstruction processes. These sites anchor memory in place. Visitors encounter physical traces of the disaster alongside guided tours intended to encourage disaster preparation and reduce future loss.

The 3.11 Densho Road project connects many of these memorial sites through a regional network, mapping their locations across northeastern Japan and sharing information about disaster memory sites and relevant workshops, guided tours and disaster educational programs. More than 300 such sites are registered today.

At the national level, the NIPPON Disaster Prevention Assets framework, launched in 2024 by Japan’s government, certifies facilities and activities that convey past disaster experiences and lessons in accessible ways.

Memorial museums, preserved disaster sites and initiatives such as storyteller programs, disaster-prevention tours and public events can receive this designation after review by an expert committee. The program aims to encourage residents to treat disaster risk as a personal responsibility, motivating people to understand hazards in their communities and take proactive evacuation and preparedness actions.

Yet sustaining disaster memory in Japan also depends on individual and community efforts. Kataribe, survivor-storytellers who share their experiences with visitors and younger generations, play a vital role in this process. Their accounts convey emotion, hesitation and decision-making under pressure in ways that curated exhibitions cannot fully reproduce.

The Life is a Miracle project is part of a larger network of memory infrastructure in Japan. It is one node in a system that treats the remnants of disasters as tools for education and raising awareness. Memory sites enable discussions about disaster risks and preparedness. By sharing experiences and lessons learned, as well as healing for those affected, they make a constant dialogue possible.

Countries around the world face increasing exposure to floods, wildfires and extreme weather. Physical recovery after disasters is often accompanied by public attention that fades within months.

The Japanese case shows how sustaining lessons requires infrastructure. A well-organized memory culture can help keep conversations going years later and integrate valuable lessons into educational and policy frameworks.

Life is indeed a miracle. Whether societies learn from disasters, however, depends on deliberate choices about how experience is translated into enduring practices.

Fatma Özdoğan received funding from Mitacs Inc. through the Mitacs Globalink Research Award to support her research visit at the International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS), Tohoku University. The research presented in this article was conducted in the context of that funded research visit.

Elizabeth Maly has received research funding from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
(JSPS) and the Disaster Resilience Co-creation Center, IRIDeS, Tohoku University.

Julia Gerster receives funding from JSPS, the Uehiro Foundation on ethics and education, and the Disaster Resilience Co-creation Center, IRIDeS, Tohoku University.

– ref. ‘Life is a Miracle,’ but learning from disasters isn’t: Lessons from Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami – https://theconversation.com/life-is-a-miracle-but-learning-from-disasters-isnt-lessons-from-japans-2011-earthquake-and-tsunami-276985