Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jenna Sapiano, Research Fellow, Peace Studies, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

Global security indicators suggest a significant deterioration in peace and stability. By most accounts, the world is now more violent and more dangerous than at any point in recent history.

In 2024, the number of state-based conflicts worldwide reached its highest level since 1946. Military expenditures have risen for 10 consecutive years, surpassing $2.7 trillion annually.

A record number of children have been victims of armed conflict, and gains in women’s rights hang in the balance around the world amid record levels of conflict.

The world is confronting converging crises. In September 2024, the United Nations convened the Summit for the Future, an initiative by the UN secretary-general aimed at addressing the collapse of the post-Cold War multilateral system, as well as the increasing number of conflicts and humanitarian emergencies. All of this is occurring in the climate change era.

These crises are interlinked, as violence becomes more likely as a consequence of rising temperatures and drought conditions. Militaries are also responsible for high levels of greenhouse gas emissions and environmental destruction from war amounting, in some cases, to the crime of ecocide.

Increased military spending

The overwhelming response to rising global violence and insecurity has been to boost military funding.

In Europe, this is partly driven by a justified fear of Russian aggression following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The risk of Russia dragging NATO into a conflict remains a constant concern, which was evident when Russia recently sent drones over Polish and Romanian airspace.

At the 2025 NATO summit, under pressure from the Americans, members pledged to allocate five per cent of their GDP annually to core defence needs and defence and security-related expenses by 2035. Most European countries had already increased their military budgets in 2024; so has Russia.

China’s military spending has consistently increased over the past 30 years. The United States, the world’s largest military spender, also boosted spending in 2024 as it continues to send vast amounts of military aid to Israel amid allegations it’s committing genocide against the Palestinians.

---

Read more:
Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza? International court will take years to decide, but states have a duty to act now

---

The cost of neglect

Meanwhile, organizations invested in peacemaking and peacebuilding continue to face funding shortages. The sector has been described as “being stripped and downsized.”

This was on display when Donald Trump’s administration defunded and shut down the United States Institute of Peace, a congressionally established institution, within months of taking office.

Nevertheless, peace organizations have struggled with funding cuts for some time, experiencing reduced support for core costs and a shift towards more project-based funding, which has increased competition and pressure from donors.

---

Read more:
Kenya’s peacebuilding efforts hold valuable lessons for the rest of the world, but gaps remain

---

The consequences of underfunding peace are not abstract.

American funding cuts and a global backlash against women’s rights have pushed gender equality off the agenda. Women-led peace initiatives, in particular, face a lack of funding, even as this year marking the 25th anniversary of the United Nations’ Women, Peace, and Security agenda, which highlights the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts.

Nonetheless, violence against women and girls remains severe in places like Afghanistan, where the Taliban has created a system of gender apartheid, and Palestine, where the Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, has called Israel’s deliberate killings of Palestinian women and girls a femi-genocide.

A global crisis of violence

In this more globally fragmented world, international peace architecture is crumbling amid growing tensions between powerful states, and humanitarian needs continue to rise largely due to violent conflicts. So why do governments persist in spending more on their militaries and arms, while investing very little in peacebuilding and peacemaking?

This trend is only making the world more dangerous for everyone. As Chris Coulter, executive director of the Berlin-based Berghof Foundation, a non-governmental and non-profit organization supporting people in conflict,
reminds us: “A truly secure world needs dialogue and peacebuilding, not just defence budgets.”

Many others in the peace community have made similar appeals.

The world is still learning how to build sustainable peace. Many of the peace agreements signed over the past few decades have fallen apart, and parties have resumed fighting. Even in places where agreements have held, structural and everyday violence remains widespread, especially for women.

Deal-making rather than solutions

We are also witnessing a concerning shift from peacemaking to deal-making, along with the abandonment of liberal peacemaking norms, such as inclusivity and impartiality.

Further evidence of the failure of peacemaking is the move towards short “tactical pauses” in fighting rather than the negotiation of more sustainable solutions to conflicts.

Unless states rebalance their investments towards peacebuilding, the current trajectory points to escalating insecurity, further undermining international norms, human rights and security. Disproportionately relying on military spending for security purposes fails to prevent conflict and has a detrimental impact on gender equality, human rights and peacemaking.

States must resist the urge to continually increase their military budgets to the excessive levels they are now approaching; instead, they must also invest in peace research, mediation efforts and peacebuilding organizations.

Jenna Sapiano 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 world on the brink: Why governments must invest in peace, not just arms – https://theconversation.com/the-world-on-the-brink-why-governments-must-invest-in-peace-not-just-arms-264543

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Adam Skoyles, PhD Candidate, School of Planning, University of Waterloo

The housing affordability crisis is top of mind for many around the world, including Canadians. Between 2019 and 2024, house prices in Toronto and Montréal had an average annual increase of 6.7 per cent and 10.2 per cent, respectively.

Prices throughout the country are expected to continue increasing over the next decade and as a result, the pressure is intense to rapidly increase residential development.

Yet, municipal governments must balance this pressure with other tasks, like preparing for the effects of climate change. Some of the most pressing challenges for cities include meeting their housing and climate change goals without massive changes in land use to maintain green spaces and the benefits they provide to people.

Natural spaces like parks and woodlands provides many diverse benefits to city residents, from helping to cool off surrounding neighbourhoods to providing recreational areas.

The advantage these spaces have over grey infrastructure is that they can simultaneously help combat multiple challenges faced by cities, including poor air quality, heatwaves and flooding. When nature is intentionally used to combat these types of challenges, it is referred to as nature-based solutions.

Nonetheless, nature-based solutions are still rarely implemented in developments. Therefore, it’s important to identify and use key opportunities that can help communities balance their competing goals by increasing the use of nature-based solutions.

By highlighting these opportunities, we can inform municipal governments, developers and residents about how communities can be built to successfully combat climate change and other challenges.

In our recent study, we interviewed planners and developers throughout Ontario to identify these opportunities.

Nature in development

Municipal planners and private land developers across Ontario are obliged by provincial policy to consider nature in their decisions about the planning and development of neighbourhoods.

However, this largely happens because they are required by law to protect municipal natural heritage systems (large woodlots or wetlands, for example), and not because they understand or support the benefits from nature, such as flood prevention.

Natural features that fall outside the natural heritage system, such as smaller woodlots or individual trees, are not protected by provincial policy. Instead, they can be protected by municipal policy or bylaws. However, these policies and bylaws vary, and some municipalities do a better job than others in protecting nature for their residents.

Developers often see protected nature as a barrier to development, but some of them also understand that it provides benefits to residents. Some try to make use of nature in innovative ways, like building natural pathways or naturalized creeks through a subdivision.

Unfortunately, municipalities sometimes push back against these innovations because of concerns over maintenance costs and worries about possible interference with infrastructure.

---

Read more:
Bringing forests to the city: 10 ways planting trees improves health in urban centres

---

Nature and climate change

Overall, the planners and developers we interviewed recognized that nature can help communities fight the effects of climate change.

They stated that planning policies and bylaws are also starting to change in ways that can address these concerns. For example, many municipalities have established tree canopy targets or introduced more restrictive stormwater management requirements.

But climate change is rarely stated as the reason for a change to policy and bylaws. For example, a city might recognize tree cover is important for the city environment and introduce a tree protection bylaw, but that does not mean the bylaw addresses climate change.

Similarly, developers might plant trees to beautify a neighbourhood and make it more desirable for home buyers, but they might not do this to reduce climate change impacts. Addressing climate change only implicitly or as a side effect makes it much harder to co-ordinate different actions and can limit their overall effectiveness.

A main reason why the climate change benefits of nature are considered only implicitly is that planners and developers are uncertain about how reliable the information is for quantifying these benefits.

Another problem is that municipalities differ in how they address these issues, which creates highly variable regulatory conditions. Having province- or nation-wide standards would help fix this issue.

Though they are not yet widely implemented across Canada, some municipalities use green development standards as a key mechanism for introducing benefits of nature in developments. These standards work, for example, by mandating a minimum percentage of green landscaping on a development site. Unfortunately, Ontario’s recently passed Bill-17 has created uncertainty around these standards.

Ways to support nature-based solutions

There are key opportunities to support building more sustainable and climate-ready communities through increased use of nature-based solutions in developments. These opportunities largely come through policy, tools and people:

1. Provincial and municipal policy changes that consider the climate change benefits of nature-based solutions could help increase its use in development. This could be done by strengthening and expanding green development standards, like those currently implemented in some cities.

2. Developing and using tools that can rigorously quantify the climate change benefits of nature-based solutions could also have substantial impact. These tools could clarify the benefits of nature-based solutions and provide a solid argument for their increased use.

3. Collaboration between the public and private sectors is crucial to encourage increased use of nature-based solutions. Whether it is working together to craft realistic policy goals or to incorporate new tools, both sectors are key to ensuring changes are effective and efficient.

Adam Skoyles has received funding from Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Michael Drescher receives or has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness, and the Natural Assets Initiative. Michael Drescher has had a volunteer position for Carolinian Canada and has worked with the Ontario Land Trust Association.

– ref. Canadian cities can prepare for climate change by building with nature – https://theconversation.com/canadian-cities-can-prepare-for-climate-change-by-building-with-nature-263608

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Gio Dolcecore, Assistant Professor, Social Work, Mount Royal University

Lavender marriages, traditionally entered into by LGBT+ individuals to conceal their sexual orientation, are on the rise, according to several news sources, with some even calling them a “trend.”

Historically, lavender marriages refer to unions — often between two consenting LGBT+ individuals — formed as a way of concealing same-sex attraction in a society where being openly queer could mean social ostracism, career ruin or even criminalization.

Crucially, they were not loveless. On the contrary, they were bonds of protection and safety between two people navigating the reality of bias, prejudice and discrimination of society and politics.

Lavender marriages can be confused with mixed orientation marriages, but there is a difference: in mixed-orientation marriages, partners have different sexual orientations from one another. That doesn’t mean these relationships don’t make sense — plenty of couples do well without sharing the same orientation.

But are lavender marriages actually making a comeback? The answer is complicated. While social progress has made queer lives more visible, many still fear coming out because of social, religious, cultural and political pressures.

---

Dating today can feel like a mix of endless swipes, red flags and shifting expectations. From decoding mixed signals to balancing independence with intimacy, relationships in your 20s and 30s come with unique challenges. Love IRL is the latest series from Quarter Life that explores it all.

These research-backed articles break down the complexities of modern love to help you build meaningful connections, no matter your relationship status.

---

The roots of lavender marriages

Nowhere were lavender marriages more visible than during Hollywood’s Golden Age (1930-60s), when the Motion Picture Production Code — known as the Hays Code after the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America from 1922 to 1945 — imposed restrictions on “immorality” and demanded that stars maintain a carefully constructed image.

For example, the 1933 film Queen Christina portrayed an androgynous queen who shared a kiss with another woman. If the film were released a year later than it was, the androgynous image and kiss would have had to be removed to comply with Hays Code.

Notable examples in Hollywood include actor Rock Hudson, whose studio reportedly orchestrated a marriage to shield his private life from public scrutiny, and stage actress Katharine Cornell, whose marriage to director Guthrie McClintic was widely regarded as a partnership of convenience that allowed both to live more authentically in private.

Earlier still, silent film idol Rudolph Valentino faced speculation about his sexuality, and was rumoured to have entered into marriages that offered him protection amid tabloid attacks.

For these celebrities, lavender marriages were not only about survival in a hostile era, but also a way of retaining access to their careers, audiences and cultural influence.

Queer censorship today

It is unsurprising that lavender marriages have returned to public discussion, given that similar concerns of queer censorship are currently happening.

Inside Out 2 (2024) was rumoured to remove a transgender character to avoid international backlash, while Elio (2025) was also rumoured to erase queer subtext from the movie’s final cut.

Censorship of queer culture is on the rise as political and social movements directly attack the LGBTQ+ community. Examples include book censorship policies, exclusion of queer art and rising violence against drag performances.

---

Read more:
We must all speak out to stop anti-LGBTQ legislation

---

These realities were poignantly illustrated in the 2022 Pakistani film Joyland, which captures the grief and danger of living inauthentically when family bonds, social safety and political punishment are at stake.

Similar stories are surfacing in real life. In 2024, People profiled a 90-year-old grandmother who came out as bisexual after her husband’s death, revealing their 63-year union had been a lavender marriage of mutual protection.

Another People story followed a woman raised in a conservative Mormon community who married a man to conform, only to come out at 35 and reconnect with her first love.

Even today, couples negotiate these dynamics in new ways — Business Insider recently highlighted a gay man and straight woman who married not to hide but to redefine love on their own terms, while rejecting the label of “lavender marriage.”

The pressure to pass as heterosexual — whether by marrying, dating or travelling with opposite-sex friends — remains a strategy of safety for many queer people around the world.

Lavender and lesbians

The symbolism of lavender itself has particular resonance in lesbian culture. Throughout the 20th century, the colour became a coded reference to women who loved women, at once stigmatizing and unifying.

During the “Lavender Scare” of the 1950s, the U.S. government dismissed and persecuted lesbians and gay men in federal employment under the guise of “security risks.”

Yet lavender was also reclaimed as a badge of solidarity and resistance. Early lesbian feminists incorporated lavender into marches, protest sashes and art, using it as a way of asserting presence and pride in a culture that demanded invisibility.

The impact of concealment

Academic research consistently shows that concealment of sexual orientation remains widespread. A 2019 global public health study from estimated that 83 per cent of lesbian, gay and bisexual people worldwide hide their orientation from most people in their lives.

Research in Hong Kong found that concealment increases loneliness and diminishes feelings of authenticity, directly impacting well-being.

In Canada, a 2022 study of LGBTQ+ health professionals revealed how concealing one’s identity shapes daily decisions about disclosure, often producing stress and internal conflict in professional settings. Bisexual individuals frequently report concealing their orientation to avoid stigma from both heterosexual and queer communities.

---

Read more:
Queerphobic hate is on the rise, and LGBTQ+ communities in Canada need more support

---

“Passing” as straight is often a survival strategy shaped by stigma, with lasting consequences for identity, relationships and health. Lavender marriages remind us that queer lives have always been shaped by the tension between resistance and survival. Visibility itself can be an act of defiance, whether on a movie screen, in a march or in daily life.

However, visibility carries real risks: estrangement from family, discrimination or social backlash, political punishment or threats to personal safety. At the same time, concealment has often been a pragmatic choice to preserve dignity, livelihood and community.

Redefining marriage and partnership

These histories and contemporary examples reveal that marriage and partnership have never been one-size-fits-all.

For queer people, unions can be built around protection, friendship, parenting, finances or chosen kinship, just as much as romance or desire. To call them all “lavender marriages” risks oversimplifying the complex ways people craft love and survival.

Modern marriage is not bound by tradition alone; it is defined by the people who build it and by the choices they make to balance safety, authenticity and resistance in a world still learning to accept them.

This dual significance — lavender as both concealment and resistance — helps explain why the term continues to resonate today, as scholars, activists and communities revisit these marriages not simply as personal compromises, but as reflections of broader homophobia and gendered policing that continue to share queer history.

Gio Dolcecore 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. Lavender marriages: What queer unions and relationships can teach us about love and safety – https://theconversation.com/lavender-marriages-what-queer-unions-and-relationships-can-teach-us-about-love-and-safety-264179

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By David Silver, Chair in Business and Professional Ethics, University of British Columbia

Aspiring autocrats are increasingly pressuring businesses to co-operate with their quest for wealth and power, such as by demanding they direct corporate funds towards their personal enrichment or fire personnel who are critical of them.

Autocrats undermine democratic societies by rejecting the rule of law, the separation of powers, free and fair elections and the rights of vulnerable groups. They also threaten free markets by tying business success to political co-operation and obedience rather than to skill in the marketplace.

On this International Day of Democracy, these threats remind us that the business community is a critical part of democratic society and it shares responsibility for protecting it.

Public reaction often splits when companies are regarded as having capitulated to autocratic demands, as when Paramount settled a lawsuit with U.S. President Donald Trump over editorial decisions in the production of a CBS interview.

---

Read more:
ABC’s and CBS’s settlements with Trump are a dangerous step toward the commander in chief becoming the editor-in-chief

---

In such cases, some direct their anger towards the companies, arguing they have an obligation to resist. Others argue that such moral anger is misplaced because these businesses are simply acting in a rational manner to protect their interests.

These two reactions mirror a longstanding division over the moral agency of businesses and the responsibilities they hold in society.

Finances versus morals

While business ethicists see corporations as governed by a range of moral duties, many others see them as pure profit-maximizers who cannot be held to any moral standard. Legal scholar Joel Bakan, for instance, argued in his 2004 book that if a corporation were a real person, it would be a psychopath.

According to this “psychopathic” view, society can positively shape the behaviour of corporations through regulation and enforcement. Businesses can also claim that it’s good for their bottom line to align their actions with the interests of their stakeholders and the rest of society.

However, whether it’s in a company’s best financial interest to adhere to any moral standard is ultimately an empirical question. Doing the “right” thing does not necessarily guarantee the highest profit.

The moral case for businesses to resist autocratic demands is more straightforward. As a scholar in business ethics, I recently wrote about this in Corporations and Persons: A Theory of the Firm in Democratic Society.

The book uses philosophical methods to argue that, despite metaphysical, economic and legal arguments to the contrary, corporations are fully morally accountable for their actions and they have a number of moral duties relating to the democratic governance of society.

Defending liberal democracy

Liberal democratic states like Canada share a fundamental commitment to the freedom and equality of all their citizens, and it’s the shared responsibility of everyone in society to help uphold these commitments when they’re threatened.

The idea that even businesses have a duty to help protect liberal democracy is not new. Consider American economist Milton Friedman, a conservative icon who famously argued that the primary social duty of firms is to make profits for shareholders.

Writing against the backdrop of the Cold War, he decried how the business leaders of his time were channelling society into an oppressive form of socialism through a misguided sense of “social responsibility,” and urged them to resist participating in this march towards “unfreedom.”

A similar call is appropriate as business leaders respond to the demands of today’s autocrats. When these leaders capitulate, it further consolidates autocratic power and makes it harder for other institutions — such as law firms and universities — to resist. Each act of capitulation is thereby another step away from a free society.

The moral responsibility of businesses

When acts of resistance are completely futile, we may excuse businesses that capitulate to authoritarian demands. But these excuses don’t hold up for powerful companies whose public resistance can help stem the rising tide of authoritarianism.

Those who believe that companies bear no moral responsibility will argue that their responses to autocratic demands are driven solely by self-interest.

From this view, business leaders must weigh the risk of retaliation for acts of resistance against the dangers of ceding power to authoritarians — who may, in turn, make increasingly costly demands or personal threats. They must also weigh the long-term reputational damage their firms might incur for capitulating.

However, as I argue in my book, this amoral view of the firm doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. One common argument is that businesses cannot be expected to act morally because market competition will discipline those that voluntarily forgo profits.

But this line of thinking is flawed, and ignores the fact that we demand competitors in all sorts of arenas — including in sports and war — to adhere to moral standards.

While corporations face several kinds of pressures that can make it difficult for them to live up to their moral obligations, they are nonetheless still morally accountable for what they do. Similarly, the moral agency of businesses is not erased by their being threatened by autocrats with the abusive use of state power.

What can companies do?

Businesses have tools that can help them manage their risks while honouring their duty to resist autocratic demands. These include standing together in solidarity, and relying on courts and other parts of society still committed to liberal democratic values to help protect their interests.

It’s therefore not up to the business community alone to defend liberal democratic society against autocracy.

However, as I argue in the book, the successful defence of liberal democracy against authoritarianism calls for an all-of-society effort that critically includes morally responsible leadership from within the business community.

David Silver 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. Businesses have a moral responsibility to stand up to autocrats – https://theconversation.com/businesses-have-a-moral-responsibility-to-stand-up-to-autocrats-263170

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Simon Blouin, Postdoctoral Fellow, Astronomy, University of Victoria

When the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Observatory goes online later this decade, it will create one of science’s biggest data challenges. The SKA Observatory is a global radio telescope project built in the Southern Hemisphere. There, views of our Milky Way are clearest and the SKA’s remote sites limit human-made radio interference.

The project spans two sites: approximately 131,000 Christmas-tree-shaped antennas in western Australia and 200 large dish antennas in the Karoo region of South Africa. As part of this international collaboration, Canada has established a data-processing centre at the University of Victoria.

---

Read more:
Canada’s participation in the world’s largest radio telescope means new opportunities in research and innovation

---

The SKA Observatory will produce around 600 petabytes of data each year. That amount would take 200 years to download using an at-home internet connection of 100 megabytes per second.

This data volume exceeds by a significant margin even what is produced by the Large Hadron Collider, often considered to be the world’s premier big data science project.

Research aims

Among its many science goals, the SKA detects faint radio signals emitted during the Cosmic Dawn, roughly 50 million to one billion years after the Big Bang, when the very first stars and galaxies lit up the universe.

The SKA will also test Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity by timing signals from pulsars (rapidly spinning neutron stars) with high accuracy.

Another goal is understanding fast radio bursts – brief, intense radio pulses from distant sources. The SKA is expected to detect fast radio bursts far more frequently than current instruments, providing a large dataset to help determine their cause, building on work done by facilities like Canada’s CHIME telescope.

Initial data from the SKA is expected in 2027, with the start of major science operations in 2029 as the array is built and commissioned in phases.

Canada’s role

Handling the large volume and complexity of SKA data requires a global network of specialized computing facilities, collectively known as SKA Regional Centres (SRCs).

Canada became a member of the SKA Observatory research project in 2024. Shortly after joining, Canada committed to establishing one such centre.

The Canadian SRC (CanSRC) will be the sole SRC in the Americas, serving as an important node for processing, storing and providing streamlined access to SKA data. It will allow researchers to focus on scientific analysis rather than data management hurdles.

Big Astronomy

The SKA is part of astronomy’s ongoing evolution toward “Big Science,” where international collaboration becomes essential for scientific breakthroughs. This large-scale approach not only changes how science is funded, but also how it is conducted.

While the SKA will still accommodate traditional investigator-led proposals — where individual scientists or small teams request specific telescope time and computational resources for more focused projects — most of its observing power will target ambitious, multi-year projects designed by large international teams.

Canadian researchers participate in all of the SKA Science Working Groups and have co-chaired four of them in recent years. Canada is recognized as a world leader in studies of pulsars, cosmic magnetism and transients, as well as in low-frequency cosmology, areas where the SKA will make some of its most transformative discoveries.

Astronomical data management

Building, developing and managing CanSRC requires collaboration among the National Research Council’s Canadian Astronomy Data Centre, with four decades of experience in astronomical data management; the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, offering high-performance computing resources; CANARIE, operating the high-speed research network for data transfer; and the University of Victoria’s Arbutus cloud platform, supplying the scalable infrastructure.

The project leverages expertise concentrated within the University of Victoria’s Astronomy Research Centre, which brings together researchers from the University of Victoria, the National Research Council Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre and TRIUMF, Canada’s national particle accelerator centre.

Importantly, CanSRC ensures that researchers have access to SKA data. The capabilities developed through CanSRC will strengthen Canada’s digital ecosystem for the future.

Digital discovery

CanSRC will serve as a gateway for developing and expanding the use of advanced data methods and algorithms, helping scientists from research and industry sectors harness massive datasets.

Applications of these techniques extend far beyond astronomy, with potential uses in medical imaging, remote sensing and artificial intelligence.

Falk Herwig receives funding from the National Research Council of Canada and the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

JJ Kavelaars receives funding from the National Research Council of Canada and the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Sébastien Fabbro receives funding from the National Research Council of Canada and the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Simon Blouin 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. Information collected by the world’s largest radio telescope will be stored and processed by global data centres – https://theconversation.com/information-collected-by-the-worlds-largest-radio-telescope-will-be-stored-and-processed-by-global-data-centres-255268

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sura Alwan, Clinical Instructor in Medical Genetics (Teratology & Birth Defects Epidemiology); Co-Director, TERIS (The Teratogen Information System), University of British Columbia

Over the past couple of months, headlines have warned expectant parents that something as ordinary as a pain reliever or an antidepressant taken during pregnancy could “cause autism.”

The stories have focused on acetaminophen (also known as paracetamol or the brand name Tylenol) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), such as Prozac (fluoxetine) and Zoloft (sertraline).

But here is what the headlines leave out: acetaminophen is commonly used during pregnancy to manage fever, pain or stress, all of which can themselves affect fetal development. Similarly, SSRIs are prescribed for depression or anxiety, conditions that also influence pregnancy outcomes. In many cases, it may well be the illness, not the treatment, that shapes child development.

Both classes of medications have been studied extensively for decades. Yet despite what the headlines suggest, the evidence that acetaminophen or SSRIs cause autism is weak, inconsistent and easily misinterpreted.

With a background in genetics and clinical teratology — the scientific study of birth defects — my research examines how maternal exposures in pregnancy interact with genetic and environmental factors to influence child development. From this perspective, I want to explain why the research on acetaminophen and SSRIs is often misunderstood, and why reducing complex science to alarming headlines does more harm than good.

With the recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel on SSRIs in pregnancy, and the public claims made by United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. regarding acetaminophen and autism, there is a need for evidence-based information. While my focus will be on autism, the same issues apply to media coverage linking pregnancy exposures to attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Association is not causation

Much of the research behind these headlines is observational. Such studies can spot associations but cannot prove cause and effect. The associations they identify are usually small to modest, and other factors are often responsible.

Confounding is a good example. Pregnant women may take acetaminophen because they have a fever, but fever itself has been linked to higher risks of neurodevelopmental outcomes such as neural tube defects. Similarly, someone prescribed SSRIs may be experiencing depression or anxiety, which on their own are associated with differences in pregnancy outcomes and child development. Here, the medication may appear to be the cause, when in reality it is the condition being treated.

Another problem is misclassification. Most studies rely on mothers recalling how often they used acetaminophen during pregnancy. Memory is imperfect: some under-report, others over-report, and details about dose or timing are often missing.

With SSRIs, misclassification can arise when prescriptions are used as a proxy for exposure. A woman may fill a prescription in early pregnancy but stop taking the medication later, while records still count her as continuously exposed. Both scenarios distort results.

Even the outcomes themselves are not always measured consistently. Diagnoses like autism spectrum disorder vary across countries and over time. Some studies use parental questionnaires instead of medical diagnoses, which can be subjective. Two children with the same traits might be classified differently depending on who reports them.

When researchers adjust for these kinds of factors, the apparent risks often shrink or even disappear.

Research shortcomings and media spin

Beyond these challenges, research in this area has other limitations: timing and dose are often recorded crudely; use of other medications taken at the same time is not systematically assessed; results are inconsistently replicated; and while biobank and biomarker studies — which analyze measurable biological signals, such as blood levels of a substance, to indicate exposure — hold promise, they are uncommon and usually capture exposure only once.

Furthermore, studies that report positive associations are more likely to be published, and once they are, news outlets are far more likely to amplify findings that sound alarming than ones that reassure. “Everyday painkiller linked to autism” makes a clickable headline; while a more balanced one that might read something like “Evidence inconsistent, no strong effect found” does not.

This cycle amplifies fear, leaving parents confused and anxious.

The real dangers of untreated conditions

It also matters what happens when pain, fever, depression or anxiety go untreated.

High fever in pregnancy is known to increase the risk of neural tube defects and other complications. Untreated maternal depression and anxiety can lead to poor prenatal care, substance use, preeclampsia, premature birth, impaired bonding and even suicide — one of the leading causes of maternal death.

In these cases, acetaminophen and SSRIs are not just helpful. They can be lifesaving.

Understanding autism

Autism is not caused by a single medication or choice. It is a complex neurodevelopmental difference with a strong genetic basis. Heritability estimates are around 70–80 per cent, meaning much of the variation in risk is tied to parental traits and shared family environments.

Autism also clearly runs in families: siblings of autistic individuals are 10 to 20 times more likely to be diagnosed, and many parents or relatives show autistic traits even without formal diagnoses. This familial pattern reinforces that genetics and shared environment play a major role.

Sibling studies add weight by comparing siblings where one was exposed to a medication in pregnancy, and the other was not.

If the medication were truly causing autism, clear differences would appear. But often they shrink or disappear, pointing instead to shared genetics and environment.

Of course, environmental factors can still play a role. But to suggest that a common medication like acetaminophen “causes” autism oversimplifies the picture and risks stigmatizing families, while fuelling guilt among mothers who already face intense scrutiny during pregnancy.

Communicating risk responsibly

One of the greatest challenges is not the research itself, but how its results are communicated. Studies often report risks using relative measures. For example, a study might report that acetaminophen use is associated with a 30 per cent increase in autism risk. That sounds alarming. But in absolute terms, the difference is much smaller.

Autism affects about three in every 100 children. Even taking the highest reported increase in studies — a 30 per cent relative rise — that number only goes up to about four in 100. In other words, instead of 97 children without autism, you’d have 96. So while the increase is real, the absolute change in risk remains small.

Therefore, balanced communication matters. When parents hear only the alarming side, some may stop taking needed medications abruptly, which can be dangerous. Others may endure untreated illness out of fear. Clinicians and researchers should emphasize absolute risks, acknowledge limits, and aim to inform, not frighten.

Informed, not alarmed

The lesson isn’t that acetaminophen or SSRIs are risk-free. No medication is. But decades of research show that, when clinically indicated, they are generally safe in pregnancy. The risks of untreated illness are often greater.

Autism is a condition caused by many factors, including genetics, not something to blame on common medications — or mothers.

Expectant parents deserve clear, compassionate, evidence-based information, not fear-driven headlines. Association is not causation, absolute risks are small, and informed choice should never be replaced by alarm.

Sura Alwan is the founder and executive director of PEAR-Net Society, a Canadian nonprofit that advocates for maternal fetal health and safety of medications and other environmental exposures during pregnancy.

– ref. Autism is not a scare story: What parents need to know about medications in pregnancy, genetic risk and misleading headlines – https://theconversation.com/autism-is-not-a-scare-story-what-parents-need-to-know-about-medications-in-pregnancy-genetic-risk-and-misleading-headlines-264964

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Dax D’Orazio, Peacock Postdoctoral Fellow in Pedagogy, Department of Political Studies, Queen’s University, Ontario

With a suspect in custody in the murder of MAGA activist Charlie Kirk, it’s clear Kirk’s legacy is bound to be as polarized as the campus culture wars trenches where he dwelled.

On Sept. 10, a shooter killed Kirk at Utah Valley University while he was speaking to a large audience.

At age 18, Kirk co-founded Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a conservative non-profit organization focused on education that would eventually become a force in American politics and culture.

As a public speaker, his events attracted thousands of attendees all over the country. Online, he amassed huge numbers of followers across several different mediums and platforms.

Most importantly, he earned the admiration of United States President Donald Trump, who appreciated Kirk’s ability to galvanize young conservative voters and therefore contributed to Trump’s return to the White House in 2024. Kirk is now slated to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously.

Kirk’s legacy, however, needs to include his controversial and sometimes discriminatory ideas. He was emblematic of a polarized public discourse and how mainstream conservatism has shifted towards more extreme positions.

But his impact cannot be reduced simply to the ways he represented that shift towards extremism, including flirtations with Christian nationalist and white supremacist ideas.

His death is also sadly emblematic of the frightening rise in political violence in the United States since 2016.

---

Read more:
Charlie Kirk shooting: another grim milestone in America’s long and increasingly dangerous story of political violence

---

As a scholar focused on the law and politics of free expression on university campuses, I’m struck by how Kirk also symbolizes how campuses have become central to contemporary politics and culture.

Political anchors in campus politics

No longer just the site of occasional culture war battles, university campuses are the dividing line between different political persuasions, a training centre for new generations of political activists and the target of public policy and executive power like never before.

Put another way, if a political movement is going to sustain itself, it will need to anchor itself in campus politics. That’s where it can draw intellectual legitimacy, reproduce itself with the young and ambitious and generate ample fodder for social media virality.

Like the culture warriors that came before him, Kirk was motivated by a simple but profound insight that’s often credited to the late Andrew Breitbart, founder of the alt-right news platform that bears his name: politics is downstream from culture.

In other words, focusing political energy on changing a society’s culture will affect electoral politics, and a narrow focus on electing representatives in legislatures misses the importance of culture.

Yet, this insight far precedes Breitbart. Current culture wars crusades — like the campaign to remove traces of critical race theory from higher education — are drawing inspiration from an unlikely source: Antonio Gramsci, the once-imprisoned Italian communist activist known for the theory of “cultural hegemony.”

---

Read more:
Why the radical right has turned to the teachings of an Italian Marxist thinker

---

When the revolutionary fervour of the 1960s waned and the political pendulum began swinging in the opposite direction, some progressives thought they could embed themselves and their ideas in public institutions because electoral politics seemed like a dead end. Increasingly, conservatives are using some of those same political tactics.

While most people think of civil rights, the Vietnam War or feminism in the context of social movements, conservatives recently gave us the Tea Party movement. Similarly, for a long time, progressives boasted a lively independent media presence, along with potent critiques of mainstream media bias.

Now conservatives are becoming dominant in the alternative media sphere too, with the Democratic Party realizing it needs to catch up after after the 2024 election that saw influencers and podcasters play an important political role.

If you’re interested in changing the culture, you simply cannot ignore youth. What’s the most effective way of capturing the hearts of minds of youth? It’s education.

Conservative campus activism

Founded in 2012, Kirk’s TPUSA initially reflected a traditional form of conservative campus activism, sticking with familiar themes like limited government and individual liberties.

But when he and others adopted a more edgy and confrontational style of engagement, people started paying attention, including deep-pocketed donors and political strategists. Kirk had found a way to address a long-running problem for conservatives: speaking persuasively to young and educated people. The problem was particularly acute on campus, arguably the beating heart of American liberalism.

Rather than cultivating bookish disciples of Milton Friedman or Ayn Rand, Kirk instead downplayed some of the traditional themes of American conservatism and created a more aggressive and unapologetic image, one bound by grievance and a populist desire to restore the “glory days.”

The approach, suited to the social media age, helped popularize Trump’s populist MAGA doctrine.

Suddenly, conservatives started to organize more effectively on campus. They found additional wind at their backs amid a wave of public attention paid to an alleged free speech crisis that was stifling conservatives, but also the partial product of a concerted network of conservative political figures.

Pioneering political strategist

Kirk’s experimentation would cement TPUSA as a major conduit between campuses and the Republican Party.

The momentum Kirk and others created on campus and online has since been carried by lawmakers, who’ve unleashed a wave of bills at the state level that impose restrictions on what can be taught and threaten institutional autonomy and academic freedom.

In Florida, for example, tenured professors are reviewed for “productivity” every five years and content restrictions (like “non-western” ideas) are resulting in censorship. In Ohio and Kentucky, state legislatures embarked upon similar moves and banned diversity, equity and inclusion officers and programs on their campuses.

So while Kirk wasn’t necessarily revolutionizing conservative thought, he will surely be remembered as a pioneering political organizer and a major source of support for the MAGA movement.

‘Professor Watchlist’

Kirk wasn’t exactly a household name in Canada, but some of his campus campaign strategies have trickled into Canada in the past decade or so.

For example, at the height of the Jordan Peterson affair at the University of Toronto in 2017, the now psychology professor emeritus announced and then abandoned an idea with similarities to one launched by TPUSA the previous year.

---

Read more:
Campus culture wars: Why universities must ditch the dogma

---

The TPUSA’s “Professor Watchlist” has a mission “to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” Critics rightfully point out that such lists have led to harassment and threaten academic freedom.

Reverberations in Canada

At least since the escalation of Trump’s “51st state” rhetoric, Canadians have seemingly grown wary of the shock-and-awe style of punditry that’s common south of the border. But Canada has been gripped by some of the same campus controversies and debates.

---

Read more:
Campus tensions and the Mideast crisis: Will Ontario and Alberta’s ‘Chicago Principles’ on university free expression stand?

---

A University of Toronto professor is on leave following an “apparent tweet reacting to” Kirk’s fatal shooting. This suggests Kirk’s murder will have reverberations on Canadian campuses.

The American campus culture wars have largely been a metaphor until now. That is despite campuses occasionally resembling battlegrounds, especially in the wake of Trump’s first victory in 2016, like at the University of California Berkeley and the University of Florida.

Sadly, Kirk’s murder has shown a frighteningly literal face of this, and the stakes are high for both political and university life.

Dax D’Orazio receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

– ref. How Charlie Kirk became a pioneering MAGA political organizer on campuses – https://theconversation.com/how-charlie-kirk-became-a-pioneering-maga-political-organizer-on-campuses-265156

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Triveni Srikaran, PhD Candidate, Department of History, McMaster University

In our age of digital influencers, it could be easy to believe that building a professional network is a modern phenomenon.

However, long before the dawn of social media, women artists in late Victorian and Edwardian London mastered this art.

Although they weren’t the first in history to do so, they crafted a revolutionary style of social networking — not for the sake of fame, but as a means to break down systemic barriers and challenge the gender norms that dominated the English art world.

A historical framework for success

Historians David Doughan and Peter Gordon have documented the rise of women’s clubs in Britain, and feminist art historians Maria Quirk and Zoë Thomas have emphasized how these networks enabled women artists to professionalize and promote their work.

This article explores how the frameworks of authenticity, trust and mutual support established by these women laid a strong foundation for their professional success — a strategy that remains strikingly relevant today.

Exclusion and the art world

During the Victorian era, the art world operated like an exclusive “old boys’ club” that kept female talent at bay. Prestigious institutions like the Royal Academy largely excluded women, denying them entry for many years.

It wasn’t until 1860 that the first female member, Laura Herford, gained acceptance by submitting her application under the ambiguous name “L. Herford.” Once her true identity was revealed, the embarrassed academicians had no choice but to reconsider their policies.

Despite this landmark achievement, crucial training opportunities, such as life drawing, remained inaccessible to female students. Women were sidelined from major exhibitions organized by their male counterparts and excluded from influential social clubs where valuable connections and potential patronage were often made.

The few artworks they managed to sell were generally limited to themes like flowers or still lifes, which fetched much lower prices compared to the grand historical paintings that propelled their male colleagues to stardom.

Members of the press and art critics, predominantly male, dismissed their efforts as mere “amateur” pursuits — a label that served to undermine their professional credibility. In this stifling environment, the system was designed to ensure women artists were never given a fair chance.

The rise of women’s art clubs

Confronted with a system that marginalized them, determined women artists formed their own women’s clubs aimed at overcoming institutional barriers.

In late 19th and early 20th-century London, several prominent women’s art organizations emerged, including the Society of Women Artists, the Women’s Guild of Arts, the Women’s International Art Club, the Pioneer Club and the Lyceum Club.

Each of these groups was founded on a commitment to professional development, mutual support and the essential need for a united voice.

My emerging research explores the dynamics of women’s networks by closely analyzing letters, documents, exhibition catalogues and contemporary newspapers related to these organizations, and so far has identified three vital functions:

1. Fostering artistic development

At a time when formal networking opportunities were scarce for women, organizations like the Pioneer Club (1892) and the Lyceum Club (1903) emerged as crucial, supportive environments. These clubs began with the ambitious vision of creating a space for personal and artistic growth and also provided venues for connection and collaboration.

They also offered the rare chance for members to stay overnight, giving women the freedom to travel for their work without a chaperone.

Founded in 1907, the Women’s Guild of Arts became a dynamic hub where members could learn, showcase their art, receive constructive criticism and hone their skills. These networks fostered mentorship and empowered women artists to refine their craft within a supportive community.

2. Creating independent exhibition opportunities

In the face of exclusion from male-only exhibitions, women artists established their own platforms. They launched their own venues to bypass the gatekeepers of the art world and connect directly with their audiences.

A striking example is the Society of Women Artists, founded in 1855, which has hosted annual “women-only” exhibitions that not only sparked public conversation but also created a lasting space for visibility.

The Women’s International Art Club, established in 1898, broadened this mission, forming a transnational network that enabled its members to exhibit and sell their works across Europe, America and Australia.

3. Building community and professional identity

Women’s clubs emerged as the original networking hubs, similar to modern meetups. For those often labelled “amateurs,” joining organizations like the Society of Women Artists, Women’s International Art Club or Women’s Guild of Art offered a pathway to professional development and recognition.

These social networks fostered a supportive environment where members could share advice and provide emotional backing as they navigated careers filled with systemic challenges. This ecosystem highlighted how working together was crucial in driving individual successes.

Their enduring legacy

The story of early women’s art clubs highlights a crucial chapter in the history of creative entrepreneurship. These women both created their own professional opportunities and worked to change societal perceptions of women in the arts.

The strategies they used to navigate a restrictive environment still resonate today.

---

Read more:
When it comes to social networks, bigger isn’t always better

---

In a digital landscape filled with fleeting followers and superficial likes, their legacy prompts us to reflect on the fundamental need for human connection, and the extent to which true success still hinges on building a community rather than simply amassing a following.

Triveni Srikaran’s research is funded by McMaster University, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art at Yale University.

– ref. Influencers of a bygone era: How late Victorian women artists mastered the art of networking – https://theconversation.com/influencers-of-a-bygone-era-how-late-victorian-women-artists-mastered-the-art-of-networking-262659

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Alexandra Flynn, Associate Professor, Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia

Imagine if every time a hospital was built, it came with an expiry date. Twenty-five years later, it would be sold to the highest bidder and patients would be told to find care elsewhere.

This is unthinkable in health care, yet this is precisely how we treat affordable housing in Canada. Government programs provide funding for the construction of affordable housing, but without long-term commitments to ensure those same housing units remain affordable.

As the federal government puts the finishing touches on planning its new housing programs, we must ensure that affordable housing stays affordable for generations.

Governments pour billions into new housing programs, but the homes that are built aren’t required to remain affordable over the long term, meaning they often slip back into the speculative market after just a few decades.

Government programs subsidize the capital costs of housing construction, with rent affordability guaranteed for a limited period (usually 10-20 years). A recent study found that Canada lost 10 affordable housing units for every new one built over a decade.

The implication is that land is a tradeable asset as governments forget it’s also the foundation for homes, communities and stability. If governments are serious about solving the housing crisis, they must change that.

Canada has done it before. In the 1970s and ’80s, governments invested heavily in co-operative housing, creating tens of thousands of permanently affordable homes that continue to serve communities today. Those investments prove what’s possible when land and housing are treated as long-term public goods rather than short-term commodities.

---

Read more:
‘Home sweet home’ is a dying dream: Federal election promises won’t solve affordable housing crisis

---

Holding land in perpetuity

Community land trusts (CLTs) are the next generation of that vision. They extend the principle of permanence to a wider range of housing types, neighbourhoods and community uses, ensuring that affordability and stability are not just won but protected for generations.

A new report by my UBC colleague, Kuni Kamizaki, entitled A Case for Community Land Trusts in Canada: Promising Community Practices and Public Policy Options, shows how CLTs can reframe the housing conversation in creating a long-term, affordable housing stock. It’s not simply about how many homes we build, but who controls the land beneath them.

CLTs are membership-based, non-profit organizations that acquire and hold land in perpetuity for community benefit. People then purchase long-term leases in individual units.

This means that the land is removed from speculative markets, stewarded democratically and the housing is locked in as affordable, often for 99 years or more. Unlike situations where properties are sold and affordability disappears after 10 to 25 years, CLTs preserve it permanently.

This is not a distant dream. Kamizaki identifies roughly 45 CLTs operating or forming across Canada, more than 60 per cent of them launched in the last five years. They range from the Community Land Trust Foundation of BC to Toronto’s Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust, each committed to collective ownership, community governance and significant affordability.

Meeting local needs

CLTs flip the switch on the usual policy logic. Too often, publicly owned land is sold to private developers, representing — as Kamizaki puts it — “a long-term loss of public good and a lost opportunity to build non-market housing with deep affordability.”

Once sold, the land is gone, along with the chance to secure permanent affordability. CLTs keep that land in community hands, using it to meet local needs rather than feed speculative demand.

The benefits go beyond economics. CLTs can advance reconciliation and racial justice by challenging the real estate practices that have displaced racialized communities for decades. This treats land as a relationship rather than a commodity, an understanding rooted in stewardship, responsibility and belonging. In other words: turning housing into homes.

Vancouver’s Hogan’s Alley Society shows this potential in action. Once home to a thriving Black community, the neighbourhood was demolished in the 1970s in the name of urban renewal. The organization is now working to reclaim that land through a CLT, rebuilding a Black cultural hub grounded in long-term stewardship and land-back principles. This is housing justice intertwined with cultural restoration.

But CLTs cannot expand on good will alone. The National Housing Strategy Act recognizes housing as a human right, yet Canadian policies still treat it as a market commodity first and a necessity second.

Market-based “solutions” inevitably recreate the same conditions — speculation, gentrification, displacement — that produced the crisis.

---

Read more:
Housing co-ops could solve Canada’s housing affordability crisis

---

How to advance CLTs

Kamizaki’s report outlines several steps governments can take to make CLTs a central part of Canada’s housing strategy, including the following:

1. Prioritize permanent affordability over short-term targets;
2. Support CLTs led by racialized and marginalized communities as acts of reparation;
3. Transfer public land into community hands;
4. Create legal frameworks tailored to CLTs;
5. Provide stable funding and technical support through a national CLT hub.

These are structural commitments that address the core questions: Who owns land? Who decides how it’s used? Who benefits from public investment?

CLTs answer these questions by matching the permanence of the right to housing with the permanence of land stewardship. They take the volatility of the market out of the equation and put democratic decision-making into the hands of the people who live in and care for their communities.

---

Read more:
Canada’s housing crisis will not be solved by building more of the same

---

Many studies reinforce the conclusion that CLTs deliver lasting affordability, protect against displacement, and strengthen community ties. The real question is whether Canada has the political will to embrace them.

The housing crisis is urgent, and so is the opportunity. We can keep funding market Band-aids that expire in a generation, or we can take land off the speculative market, put it in community hands and make houses into homes. For good.

Alexandra Flynn receives funding from SSHRC and CMHC.

– ref. Turning houses into homes: Community land trusts offer a fix to Canada’s housing crisis – https://theconversation.com/turning-houses-into-homes-community-land-trusts-offer-a-fix-to-canadas-housing-crisis-264757

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By David J Finch, Professor and Senior Fellow, Institute for Community Prosperity, Mount Royal University, University of Calgary

Canada is facing a productivity crisis that threatens wages, competitiveness and long-term prosperity. Canadian productivity lags behind the United States by 28 per cent and ranks 18th among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

Productivity is the economic value of the goods or services produced compared to the amount of work it took to produce them. Productivity should matter to every Canadian, because it directly influences inflation and income, and its effects are felt by all.

---

Read more:
Canada is falling behind its peers in terms of living standards — can it catch up?

---

Productivity emerges from the interplay of three forces: robust capital investment, a supportive business environment and, most critically, people with the competencies the economy demands.

People play a disproportionate role, as they not only drive investment decisions but also shape the business climate. Collectively, people are known as human capital: the knowledge, skills and capabilities embedded in the workforce.

Building this capital is a shared responsibility of families, educators, employers and policymakers. It begins early in life and continues throughout both formal and informal learning experiences. The question is whether Canada’s current approach to building that capital is fit for the challenges ahead.

We are researchers in management and economics who collaborated with a team of researchers and industry experts on The Productivity Project, concerned with how Canada develops its human capital. Partners in this project include the Alberta Centre for Labour Market Research, the Canada West Foundation, Mount Royal University’s Institute for Community Prosperity and the LearningCITY Lab.

Post-secondary education and its limits

In Canada, post-secondary education plays an oversized role in developing human capital. The percentage of the population that has completed post-secondary education in Canada is 63 per cent — 22 per cent higher than the OECD average.

Today, 15 per cent of the working-age population have graduate degrees, the same share that held bachelor’s degrees in 1997.

Canada also invests 20 per cent more in post-secondary education than the OECD average. Yet despite this, it’s also a global leader in graduate underemployment. The number of unemployed degree holders now exceeds the number of jobs requiring such qualifications by a factor of five.

Compounding this is a persistent mismatch between the competencies Canadian workers have and those the economy needs. Research indicates Canada’s most pressing shortfall lies in foundational competencies, not in job-specific expertise, as is commonly assumed. Chief among these is adaptability — the capacity to learn, unlearn and relearn.

Adaptability depends on literacy: the ability to comprehend, analyze and apply information to new problems. Canada scored above the OECD average in a recent international assessment, but the data shows that only slightly above half of the Canadian workforce can meet the increasing literacy demands of most jobs. Research suggests that a one per cent improvement in literacy can boost productivity by up to five per cent.

This gap between the competencies Canadian workers have and those the economy needs will only widen with the rapid rise of artificial intelligence and automation.

Canada’s demographic squeeze

Demographic shifts are heightening Canada’s productivity challenge. Like most developed countries, Canada’s education system has its roots in the Industrial Revolution, when life expectancy was just 40 years.

---

Read more:
In 2025 and beyond, schools need to teach more than just ‘the basics’

---

For individuals born in 2024, life expectancy is projected to be 83 years. Longer lives now mean longer working lives: 40-year careers are now the norm, and 60-year careers are fast approaching.

Yet Canada continues to spend $60 billion annually on a post-secondary education system optimized for a single stage of life — young adulthood — rather than a lifetime of learning. Eighty-three per cent of post-secondary students are 29 or younger, and 67 per cent under 25.

The human capital system that has sustained Canada’s social and economic prosperity over the past 150 years doesn’t possess the capacity to lead Canada into the future. The solution is not as simple as spending more money; the future demands a paradigm shift in how Canada develops its human capital.

The first step is to detach from the current model and ask a fundamental question: what is the most effective way to unlock the full productivity of all Canadians?

Rethinking the learning model

Over the past year, our multidisciplinary team of researchers and industry experts at The Productivity Project explored this question through a six-report series, Productivity and People. This series synthesizes interdisciplinary research, with new data to explore a new learning paradigm.

Two conclusions stand out. First, a true paradigm shift requires collaboration among policymakers, employers, credentialing bodies, learning providers and individuals.

Second, learning pathways are limitless and today, only a fraction of learning occurs in classrooms; the vast majority takes place in workplaces, community organizations, libraries, places of worship, on sports fields and stages, and through podcasts, blogs and books.

Accelerating this paradigm shift offers Canada a unique opportunity to improve its productivity by unlocking the value of existing learning assets.

From closed systems to open learning

Two decades ago, the technology sector faced challenges much like those confronting today’s post-secondary system. Its response was to embrace open innovation — harnessing ecosystem collaboration to accelerate innovation.

Open learning unlocks the full learning ecosystem, from the workplace to volunteering and self-directed learning. Open learning resembles a dynamic climbing wall, where learners are empowered to explore infinite learning pathways. The result is a far more inclusive and agile lifelong learning system, designed to drive innovation through collaboration and competition.

Open learning stands in contrast to the legacy higher education system. In Canada, public institutions control an estimated 90 per cent of the post-secondary marketplace, and often lack the incentives, culture and structures to deliver the dynamic and innovative learning the country needs. The result is a post-secondary experience resembling not a climbing wall of endless possibilities, but an inflexible ladder from a bygone era.

Unbundling learning and credentials

While post-secondary institutions don’t monopolize learning, they do monopolize recognition. As a result, at the centre of this paradigm shift is the unbundling of learning pathways from the recognition of learning.

Today, a bundled four-year degree composed of 40 courses costs about $75,000. Given this, it’s not surprising that almost one-third of students never complete their degree.

An unbundled system would allow individuals to select their own learning paths, with outcomes assessed and certified by an independent authority that has the support and legitimacy of the provincial government.

The importance of unbundling teaching from assessment is not new. In 2009, the European Higher Education Area released the Leuven Communiqué declaration that set priorities for the expansion of lifelong learning through the open recognition of all learning.

In Canada, governments applied the principle of unbundling when they introduced driver licensing more than a century ago. The driver’s license remains the country’s most extensive open learning system: individuals learn however they wish, and a standardized, independent assessment determines competence.

To confront Canada’s lagging productivity, the country needs to fundamentally change how human capital is developed. Canada’s future social and economic prosperity depends on leaders willing to champion a new human capital paradigm that aligns with today’s realities and anticipates tomorrow’s opportunities.

Janet Lane, a senior fellow at the Canada West Foundation, co-authored this article.

David J Finch receives funding from the Alberta Centre for Labour Market Research.

Joseph Marchand currently receives funding from the Government of Alberta to create and fund the Alberta Centre for Labour Market Research. He has previously received federal funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

– ref. To close its productivity gap, Canada needs to rethink its higher education system – https://theconversation.com/to-close-its-productivity-gap-canada-needs-to-rethink-its-higher-education-system-264663