The Conversation – Canada – Page 48

August 18, 2025

Midlife adults are overextended with multiple roles

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Gail Low, Associate Professor, Chair International Health, MacEwan University

Fifty-somethings are getting caught between helping younger generations and tending to their own growth. (Shutterstock)

Late midlife adults are one of Canada’s largest yet most under-recognized and over-extended resources. They quietly tend to the health and well-being of millions of younger and older people, in person or from a distance.

From August 2024 to July 2025, Canada’s late midlife adults — those between the ages of 55 and 64 — collectively worked more than 100 million hours per month in a wide range of occupations like retail, law, engineering and health care.

In addition, Statistics Canada estimates they’re contributing 552 million hours per year formally volunteering, such as in crisis centres and schools. Late-to-midlife adults across Canada spent another 1.342 million hours doing unpaid informal volunteering.

Across Canada, baby boomers spent 1,219,000 hours of their 1,342,000 informal volunteer work hours directly helping family members like a parent or a sibling. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a good number were adding another 20 caregiving hours to their work week, whether in their own home or in a family member’s.

Aging and caregiving

Both of us research population and individual aging. We have watched our own siblings feeling caught between supporting parents and supporting their children, deferring their own health needs in the process. This is no surprise, because about one in five midlife women are caring for a child and more than one-third are providing care for an adult.

A typical caregiver has been providing 35 hours of care per week for more than four years. Adding three more hours per week would put them at the tipping point for anger and depression or just giving up.

A middle-aged woman in a blue shirt standing between an older woman and teen — One in five midlife women is caring for a child and more than one-third are providing care for an adult.
(Shutterstock)

In today’s economy, most people work to earn a living, as opposed to funding leisure and future retirement.

For nearly half of Canada’s caregivers, full-time work isn’t optional. For six out of 10 of them, neither is figuring out how to find formal supports.

Research indicates four in 10 working caregivers worrying about paying their bills. It is not hard to fathom why many caregivers start their day tired and anxious.

Elongated caregiving is on the rise on the home front as well. More young adult children in their early 20s to mid-30s are living with a parent. With persons 55-64 years of age holding two-thirds of household wealth in Canada, young adults are more likely to save for the future under their parents’ roofs.

A recent study estimates that 18 per cent of young adults self-identify with high anxiety and another 13 per cent with depression while almost half worry about losing their jobs.

Canada’s late midlife adults were also significantly mentally distressed, more so than older Canadians, during the pandemic. They also felt judged and more alone than older Canadians. Family conflicts and breakdowns were a source of stress, which other researchers identified as a risk factor for family conflicts, with anxiety and even suicidal thinking.

Research tells us this demographic is unlikely to use community support services for things like meal preparation or fitness for themselves. Around one in four who needed health services had trouble accessing them. Others reported that they either did not get around to accessing services or wanted to go it alone. Research about how they stayed afloat during COVID-19 was lacking and remains largely absent.

How people look at aging

In his book about psychosocial development, Life Cycle Completed, psychologist Erik Erikson remarked that historic change has the power to make people stop and rethink what old age looks like.

Across 20 countries, at age 60, health satisfaction has had a great deal to do with how people see themselves aging.

Before COVID-19, we designed a study that surveyed more than 500 Canadians in their 50s. They were feeling most pessimistic about aging physically, including their state of health. When it came to loss, what resonated most was difficulty making friends and seeing “old age” as a depressing time.

Two women preparing food in a kitchen — A typical caregiver has been providing 35 hours of care per week.
(Shutterstock)

For these 50-somethings, being caught between helping younger generations and tending to their own growth was detrimental to self-confidence. Making time for activities that help people learn about and see good in themselves is time well spent.

In the aftermath of COVID-19, late midlife adults are looking at an uncertain future. Statistics tell us that they currently anticipate poor health as early as age 71, and their own demise around age 81.

Recent surveys further reveal they’re juggling an average of $300K in debt and are worried about household essentials, with with one in three also unprepared for the soaring cost of living, particularly for basic expenses and if already living paycheque to paycheque. Some even link historic shifts in co-residing young adults with older adults’ increasing debt loads.

Meanwhile, federal funding priorities focus on programs for youth and on raising potential midlife caregivers’ awareness of older people’s support needs.

Late midlife adults represent one of our nation’s major resources, given the socioeconomic and health-related roles they play as caregivers to young and old. But resources can become depleted: they need care, respect and sensitivity themselves in order to continue in those roles.

It’s time to ask late midlife Canadians about the burdens they’re carrying, if the load is becoming too heavy, and how they are managing the load. This is a conversation well worth having.

Gail Low receives funding from the RTOERO Foundation, University of Alberta, and MacEwan University. She works for MacEwan University and volunteers for the Gateway Association.

Gloria Gutman is Professor Emerita at Simon Fraser University. She is a Past-president of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics, Canadadian Association on Gerontology, and International Network for Prevention of Elder Abuse.

– ref. Midlife adults are overextended with multiple roles – https://theconversation.com/midlife-adults-are-overextended-with-multiple-roles-246886

August 18, 2025

Size matters, but so does beauty and vigour — at least when it comes to peacocks

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Rama Shankar Singh, Professor (Emeritus) of Biology, McMaster University

In 1871, Charles Darwin introduced his theory of sexual selection by female choice in The Descent of Man. He suggested females of a species would exhibit a preference for beauty and ornamentation when choosing mates, leading to a prevalence of those traits.

Darwin claimed this explained the evolution of the peacock’s long tail. More than 150 years later, evidence from peafowl research challenges Darwin’s theory.

Our research on the peacock’s long tail discovered a simple developmental rule that explains its symmetry, complexity and beauty. It suggests peahens choose their mates on the basis of size, vigour and beauty, not beauty alone, as Darwin had thought.

Darwin’s assumptions

Darwin saw the peacock’s impractically long tail as maladaptive; it was too long to be explained by his grand theory of natural selection that held that species evolved only traits that could help them survive.

As he wrote to a fellow scientist: “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!”

Darwin made two implicit assumptions that, our research shows, undermine his sexual selection theory. First, Darwin could not see that maladaptation can also be a product of adaptation since trade-offs between traits are common in nature.

Peacock tails here refer to the long, irridescent feathers that trail behind. Taller trains (the height when the feathers are fanned out) can be beneficial to males in securing mates, but at the same time, long tails are maladaptive because, for example, they may hinder escape from predators.

a peacock without its showy feathers — After mating season, peacocks shed their long trains.
(J.M.Garg/Wikimedia Commons)

Second, Darwin assumed peahens admired the peacock tail “as much as we do” and the birds assessed mates on the basis of esthetic appeal. He argued that birds have a feel for beauty. Later, this explanation would set the stage for research exploring how females assess beauty in their mates.

Researchers focused on the tail’s brightly coloured eye-shaped spots, but a large number of studies have been done over the last 30 years and no uncontroversial support for eyespot-based female choice has been found.

Complexity and vision

As a fruit fly geneticist interested in the variation and evolution of sex and reproduction-related genes, I unexpectedly stumbled on the evolution of the peacock’s long tail. I noticed its excessive complexity and wondered if peahens saw what we see.

I examined museum specimens of peacock tails and made two important discoveries. First, I found that a zigzag/alternate arrangement of follicles gave rise to the symmetry, complexity and beauty of the peacock’s train. It is remarkable that this alternate arrangement, the densest form of spherical packing known, would produce such wonderful effects when applied to living things.

a black and white engraving of a peacock sitting in a branch. — An illustration of a peacock published in Darwin’s *The Descent of Man*.
(Wikimedia Commons)

Second, because feathers and eyespots are parts of the same structure, the size of the train and the number of eyespots are developmentally correlated. Peahens cannot see eyespots and train size as separate traits, as we do; peahens react only to the green-blue colour of the eyespots and the eyespots are too small to see from distance. Therefore peahens view the tails as one complex trait that combines train size and some aspects of the eyespot colours.

What this means is that females cannot see eyespots without seeing the train first, which raises the possibility of direct selection based on the train and not the indirect result of selection through the attractiveness of the eyespots.

Since sexual selection and mate choice are an important part of the standard evolutionary processes involved in natural selection, there is no need for a separate sexual selection theory. Darwin was wrong in this respect.

Addressing beliefs

For a variety of reasons, the sexual selection theory found scant support during Darwin’s time. Naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection, was among those who argued sexual selection was subsumed under natural selection.

But Darwin had other reasons to push his sexual selection theory. He used it to solve three problems at once. First, of course, to explain the evolution of secondary and often exaggerated sexual traits, particularly in birds, including peafowl.

Second, he used his theory to explain race formation in humans, arguing for inherent race-specific standards of beauty that worked as a means of isolation between races.

Prevailing Victorian views, however, held women as weak and unable to exercise decisive preference on males. They also saw appreciation of beauty as an exclusively human trait not shared with other animals. This led Darwin to craft a theory attributing beauty-based female choice in birds and beauty-based male choice in humans.

Last, Darwin used peacock feathers to challenge the religious establishment and open the door to the esthetic appreciation of the animal world — beauty, intelligence and morality, which were taken as God-given.

This research provides reasons to reflect on why sexual selection theory is controversial, even after a century and a half. Sexual selection as a process of mate choice is common sense, but sexual selection as a theory is wrong.

Rama Shankar Singh received funding from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada He is affiliated with Centre for Peace Studies, McMaster University.

– ref. Size matters, but so does beauty and vigour — at least when it comes to peacocks – https://theconversation.com/size-matters-but-so-does-beauty-and-vigour-at-least-when-it-comes-to-peacocks-261070

August 18, 2025

Canada and the U.K.’s conditional recognition of Palestine reveals the uneven rules of statehood

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Catherine Frost, Professor of Political Science, McMaster University

Canada and the United Kingdom have said they will recognize Palestinian statehood during the United Nations General Assembly in September, provided certain conditions are met.

Canada’s position is premised on seeing political and military reform from the Palestinian Authority, the governing body responsible for the autonomous Palestinian territories.

The U.K., responding to a severe food crisis in Gaza, said it would extend recognition unless the Israeli government agrees to a ceasefire, takes steps to “end the appalling situation in Gaza” and commits to a “long-term, sustainable peace.”

These cautious, conditional endorsements reflect the workings of a dated international system that governs the birth of states. France, by contrast, has opted to recognize Palestine without conditions. What explains these different approaches?

Officially, state recognition is governed by international law. In practice, it is subject to a complex mix of national, global and moral considerations.

This process grants existing states significant discretion in recognizing new ones, with the expectation that such decisions serve international peace. But this can result in an uneven statehood process for aspiring nations.

How states are born

The 1933 Montevideo Convention outlines the core criteria for statehood recognition: a permanent population, control over a defined territory, a functioning government and the capacity to open relations with other states.

When recognition is given on this basis, it is essentially acknowledging that these qualities are already in place. Yet these requirements are not iron clad, and some experts have argued that recognition can also be extended on humanitarian or moral grounds, such as in response to human rights violations.

In such cases, recognition becomes more of a statement that a state should have the opportunity to exist, rather than a confirmation that it already does. The classic case would be a group facing colonial domination. The American colonies appealed to this principle in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, for example.

Because individual states decide when such exceptions apply, these measures provide uncertain relief for aspiring nations.

As a final step, new states can apply for membership in the UN. This application is first considered by the UN Security Council. If nine states agree, and none of the council’s permanent members object, the application continues to the UN General Assembly for approval.

But a single veto from any of the five permanent members — China, France, Russia, the U.K. and the United States — can paralyze statehood at the start. In 2024, for example, the U.S. vetoed Palestine’s request for full UN membership.

Statehood in waiting

To date, 147 of 193 states in the United Nations recognize Palestinian statehood. Palestine has also had special observer status at the UN since 2012, and before that it had limited standing before international courts typically reserved for states.

But Palestine is not the only instance where the international system has struggled to address atypical or contested statehood.

After a wave of recognitions in post-colonial Africa and post-Second World War Europe, the recognition of new states slowed to a crawl toward the end of the 20th century. This trend suggests there is a conservative quality to the recognition system.

Wary of rewarding violent separatism, international bodies have traditionally favoured negotiated solutions for state birth, including upholding a parent-state veto over any independence efforts.

This principle was most clearly articulated by the Canadian Supreme Court in a 1998 advisory opinion. It warned that an independent Québec, without first agreeing on terms of exit with the rest of Canada, was unlikely to gain international recognition.

There is wisdom to this approach, but such rules cannot prevent political breakdown in every case. A growing number of unrecognized states have left millions stranded in political limbo.

This includes Somaliland, which split from Somalia in 1991 and has been operating as a de facto state ever since without receiving formal recognition from any other country.

Palestine is not an instance of state breakup, but rather an unresolved case of colonization and occupation. Decades of negotiations with Israel, the occupying power, have failed. Yet formal statehood has still proven elusive. A cumbersome recognition system may be helping to keep the problem alive.

Cracks in the system

Even when recognition occurs, the results can be disappointing.

South Sudan, the UN’s newest member, was universally recognized in 2011 under close UN supervision and with the consent of its parent state, Sudan. Yet it quickly descended into civil war — a conflict it has yet to fully emerged from.

Kosovo was recognized by states like the U.S. and Canada when it declared independence in 2008 following the breakup of Yugoslavia, but it still has fewer recognitions than Palestine.

A handful of states like Togo and Sierra Leone even began de-recognizing it under pressure from Kosovo’s one-time parent state, Serbia, although there is a broadly accepted principle that once a state is recognized, barring any complete disaster, it should remain recognized.

Meanwhile, rising sea levels threaten to leave some island states like Tuvalu without the territorial requirements for normal statehood. The International Court of Justice has signalled the statehood of such nations should survive, but has not said how.

These examples suggest the current state recognition system is ill equipped to face today’s changing world.

Allowing established states to set the rules for who qualifies is unlikely to solve these current problems. While setting special terms for new entrants may have value in the short term, the longer term need is for a more fair and transparent system.

Experts are working on ways to make the system more inclusive for aspiring states and unrepresented peoples, including by opening up access to diplomatic venues. If successful, these measures could change the way future states are born.

Catherine Frost receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Canada and the U.K.’s conditional recognition of Palestine reveals the uneven rules of statehood – https://theconversation.com/canada-and-the-u-k-s-conditional-recognition-of-palestine-reveals-the-uneven-rules-of-statehood-262418

August 17, 2025

Online reviews influence what we buy, but should they have that much power over our choices?

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Katie Mehr, Assistant Professor, Marketing, Business Economics, and Law, University of Alberta

Imagine you’re looking to buy a new grill. You want to make sure you purchase a well-built, easy-to-use grill for you and your family. How can you determine which one is best to purchase?

On the one hand, you can rely on information the manufacturer provides to understand things like what material the grill is made from, how big it is and whether it has additional features like a grease management system. But this information doesn’t really tell you what it’s like to own the grill, or whether the grill will work well for your summer barbecue aspirations.

For that, you probably want to hear from people who have bought and used the grill and can speak to its quality.

This example highlights the appeal of product ratings and reviews: by providing insight from people who actually bought and used the grill, aspiring grill owners learn more about what owning it will be like.

Predicting experience

People rely on reviews because they want to predict what their experience will be like with a product. They see reviews as a good source of information for making this prediction.

Reviews are also plentiful and almost costless to produce and access, bolstering the likelihood that people use them. And, people can sort through reviews to find information about specific attributes and benefits of the product (for example, whether a grill evenly cooks steak), which can help address specific queries or concerns.

Taken together, these benefits lead people to rely on reviews to determine whether they should buy a given product.

In fact, reviews are so heavily relied upon that they influence product sales and even stock prices. Given up to 98 per cent of consumers read reviews before making a purchase, the out-sized role reviews have makes sense.

But should people rely so heavily on reviews? The answer to this question is much more nuanced. On the one hand, product reviews are easy to access, provided by a third party (not the same entity trying to sell the product) and are often written with good intentions.

On the other hand, academic research, including my own, has shown there are many reasons to suspect reviews are not quite as valuable as they may seem.

Bias in reviews

Many of these reasons stem from a common argument, which is that reviews may not provide an objective, unbiased measure of product quality. Indeed, a number of seemingly irrelevant factors affect the star ratings and reviews that are given.

For example, asking raters to fill out both an overall rating and several attribute ratings leads them to give a higher overall rating when their experience with the product was subpar. Additionally, filling out a review on a smartphone leads reviewers to provide more emotionally driven, less specific reviews.

The context of product use can also affect ratings given; a winter jacket is rated more favourably when the outdoor temperature is warmer because raters attribute their comfort not to the warm temperatures, but to the coat. And, receiving a special designation, like being a “Superhost” on Airbnb, can actually decrease average ratings, as raters now compare their experience to higher expectations when determining what rating to give.

Previous research has also documented how the way reviews are displayed affects review readers’ product perceptions. For instance, people often make categorical distinctions between favourable and unfavourable ratings, while being insufficiently sensitive to differences between ratings of the same valence (for example, between 1 and 2 stars or 4 and 5 stars).

Additionally, people often heavily weigh a product’s average rating, at the expense of considering important quality signals, like the number of ratings and price.

AI and fake reviews

More recently, additional concerns have been raised about review quality. Fake reviews can make up a sizeable proportion of available reviews, and businesses that are more affected by these reviews, like smaller, independently owned restaurants, are more likely to engage in review fraud.

Additionally, the proliferation of AI has led to an increase in chatbot-authored product reviews, which can be difficult for both companies and consumers to filter out.

Taken together, reviews can be a useful source of information, but have a number of important flaws and limitations. In theory, providing information about what owning a product is actually like from a neutral, third-party source is extremely useful.

In practice, however, the execution of this vision leaves room for improvement and future research.

Katie Mehr 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. Online reviews influence what we buy, but should they have that much power over our choices? – https://theconversation.com/online-reviews-influence-what-we-buy-but-should-they-have-that-much-power-over-our-choices-261162

August 17, 2025

As negotiations on a global plastics treaty stall, cleanup efforts are more vital than ever

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Chelsea Rochman, Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

Representatives at the recent United Nations conference in Geneva have once again failed to negotiate a binding global treaty to tackle plastic pollution. The Switzerland gathering was the sixth round of talks in less than three years and was held after countries failed to reach agreement at a 2024 meeting in South Korea. Chair of the negotiating committee, Luis Vayas Valdivieso, said countries will now work on finding a date and location for another meeting.

Plastic pollution is a global crisis. An estimated 23 million metric tons of plastic waste enters global aquatic ecosystems annually. This massive amount is expected to more than double by 2030 if we don’t change our relationship with plastic. To avoid this fate, we cannot focus just on prevention or cleanup — all actions to tackle plastic pollution must occur together.

Urgent and co-ordinated action is needed to reduce plastic production, redesign plastics to manage toxic chemicals and increase recyclability, improve waste management systems and clean up pollution.

Among these strategies, cleanup — recovering plastic waste from the environment — is often considered a lower priority compared to prevention at the source. Preventing plastic pollution is imperative, but we must not forget that plastic left in the environment does not disappear. It persists, accumulates, breaks apart into micro- and nanoplastics and continues to cause harm.

As long as we are producing plastics there will be leakage into the environment. As such, cleanup is needed to mitigate ecological, economic and social impacts of plastic pollution now and in the future.

Scaling up cleanup solutions

Cleanup efforts are most often carried out by hand through volunteers. These can range from a couple of people cleaning their local park or beach to large groups coming together for an event.

Cleanups remove millions of kilograms of trash from the environment each year. However, with plastic pollution becoming an ever-growing problem, we need to increase cleanup efforts by orders of magnitude.

International collaboration is necessary to tackle this global problem. At the University of Toronto Trash Team, we came together with Ocean Conservancy to found the International Trash Trap Network (ITTN), a global network of local groups working together to clean up plastic pollution using trash traps.

What is a trash trap?

Trash traps are technologies designed to clean up plastic waste from aquatic ecosystems. They range in design from simple river booms to roaming robots that clean beaches.

Trash traps are increasingly used to supplement manual cleanup efforts. They can work around the clock to target pollution, both on land and in waterways, cleaning areas that are unsafe or inaccessible for humans.

Some trash traps can also clean up small plastic waste, such as microplastics, that humans often miss as they are difficult to see.

With every trash trap program in the network, local stakeholders come together to clean up plastic waste, monitor local sources and pathways, engage and inform communities about the issue, and contribute to an open-source global cleanup database to inform and motivate upstream solutions to prevent plastic pollution.

The ITTN serves as a platform for anyone using a trash trap to share their local impact and facilitate knowledge exchange to motivate and empower global action to clean up, monitor and prevent plastic pollution.

Benefits of cleanup efforts

Although cleanup primarily addresses the symptoms of plastic pollution, it can address the root causes through its additional benefits. Citizen scientists have recorded data on the weight and count of items they collect during cleanup events. This is evident in the extensive datasets compiled by organizations such as Ocean Conservancy, which has logged 40 years of data from volunteer-led International Coastal Cleanup events.

Using this data, we can better understand local sources of pollution, identify prominent pollutants and prioritize specific solutions that will have the greatest impact. Policies to reduce single-use plastic consumption in Canada, and in U.S. states like California and Maryland, have been developed based on evidence from cleanup data.

Cleanup data collection is a means for developing baselines and to measure policy efficacy. In the United States, shoreline cleanup data was recently used to demonstrate that plastic bag policies significantly reduced the proportion of plastic bags in shoreline litter.

Cleanup also serves as a powerful platform for public communication about plastic pollution. A significant driver of our plastic pollution crisis is human behaviour. As such, we must also consider how public understanding and perception of plastic pollution affects behaviour change and support for policy change.

Bringing communities together to clean up and share information facilitates community engagement and inspires hope. What’s more, by allowing individuals to encounter the problems caused by plastic pollution firsthand, this experience often changes their perspective on the issue from being just another news story to a reality.

The hands-on nature of cleanup empowers communities to act, reduce the issue and motivates calls for social and policy change.

Although cleaning your local park, beach or waterway might seem like a small act, it is an important tool for reducing plastic pollution, increasing awareness and informing polices that have lasting impact.

By strategically increasing cleanup efforts, we can target areas of greatest impact, incite behavioural change, and collect and share monitoring data. This can inform baselines, trends over time, reduction targets and solutions for plastic pollution — reducing the harm of plastic pollution while we work locally and globally to prevent it.

Chelsea Rochman receives funding from Canadian government institutions and some local partners – PortsToronto, Waterfront BIA, Nieuport Aviation, and others – to fund cleanup work on the Toronto Waterfront.

Britta Baechler and Hannah De Frond do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. As negotiations on a global plastics treaty stall, cleanup efforts are more vital than ever – https://theconversation.com/as-negotiations-on-a-global-plastics-treaty-stall-cleanup-efforts-are-more-vital-than-ever-262875

August 17, 2025

‘Fixing’ neurodivergent kids misses the point — it’s the schools that need to change

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Amina Yousaf, Associate Head, Early Childhood Studies, University of Guelph-Humber

The start of the school year brings excitement and new routines. But for many neurodiverse children, it also marks the return of being misunderstood.

Parents may notice their child struggling with transitions, overstimulated by noisy classrooms or labelled “disruptive” after a few days. Educators, meanwhile, may not be equipped to interpret behaviours that fall outside the expected norms.

Some education programs, like Ontario’s Kindergarten Program, emphasize play-based curricula and encourage assessment of students’ development across varied domains of learning. However, traditional notions of school “readiness” can still linger.

In my experience as an educator and mentor to student teachers, I’ve sometimes observed this “readiness” being narrowly interpreted as sitting still, following routines and complying with adult directions.

For many neurodiverse children — those with autism, ADHD, sensory processing differences or other cognitive variations — these misunderstandings can lead to missed supports, exclusionary practices and long-term inequities in education and life outcomes.

When systems fail to understand and accommodate neurodivergent individuals early on, these challenges often persist into adulthood, affecting quality of life and social inclusion.

Racialized children are overlooked

Although public awareness of neurodiversity is growing, many children in Canada are still diagnosed too late to benefit from early intervention.

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, while the median age of autism diagnosis is around 3.7 years, only 54 per cent of children are diagnosed before age five, meaning nearly half miss the most critical developmental window.

But diagnosis is only part of the issue. Many neurodiverse children are never identified at all, either because their behaviours are misread or because their families face systemic barriers to health-care and assessment services.

Research shows that South Asian immigrant families, especially in Ontario, often experience delays in autism diagnosis due to stigma, language barriers, cultural misunderstandings and difficulties navigating complex or unfamiliar systems.

First Nations, Inuit and Métis families are also underrepresented in autism data. These communities often face a “frozen in time” response from health and social services — a term that reflects outdated or inflexible systems with little culturally relevant support and/or screening tools to support their needs.

As a result, many racialized children are disproportionately diagnosed late, or not at all, and are denied the early support that could transform their lives.

School-related distress

School transitions can be stressful for neurodivergent students when environments emphasize rigid behavioural norms and overlook diverse ways of learning. Emerging research suggests that these challenges often begin in the early years and continue to shape students’ educational pathways.

Research also shows students with Autism Spectrum Disorder experience school transitions as periods of heightened stress because of changes in relationships, routines and expectations, primarily when individual needs are not adequately supported.

Without adequate training in neurodiversity, many educators feel unprepared and rely heavily on diagnoses to guide support. When educators aren’t prepared, this can result in exclusionary teaching practices, and missed supports and long-term inequities for students. School-related distress is overwhelmingly concentrated among neurodivergent students, and it’s often linked to environments that are inflexible or unresponsive to their needs.

These systemic gaps contribute to the growing school attendance crisis and underscore the need for more inclusive, neuroaffirming educational practices.

Often, educational settings focus on changing the child rather than adapting the system. School systems must shift away from deficit-based approaches, which regard neurodivergent children in terms of what they lack. These approaches overlook systemic barriers, blame students for their challenges and overlook their strengths.

Instead, school systems should focus on transforming the learning environment itself. A neuro-inclusive model reframes behaviours not as problems within the child but as a sign the school environment may not be supportive of their needs. This perspective prioritizes belonging, flexibility and universal support, starting with how we design classrooms, not how we label children.

Neurodiversity is not a problem to fix

Rather than seeing neurodivergence as a problem to diagnose, educators should approach it as a difference to understand. Neurodiversity, first popularized by autistic advocates in the 1990s, recognizes that neurological differences are part of natural human variation.

From this lens, behaviours like fidgeting, stimming or requiring extra transition time are seen as expressions of self-regulation and cognitive needs. A recent educational psychology article reframes stimming as a bodily practice that supports focus and emotional processing in environments designed for neurotypical norms.

Educational systems often create barriers because schools are not built with diverse ways of knowing and being in mind. Neurodiversity is not a problem to fix; it’s a dimension of human diversity to embrace.

Inclusion should not depend on labels; it should be a proactive strategy. Designing classrooms for cognitive and sensory differences from the start ensures all children, especially those from racialized and underserved communities, feel like they belong and can thrive.

What educators and families can do

Creating inclusive classrooms doesn’t require waiting for a diagnosis, it requires a mindset shift. Frameworks like universal design for learning (UDL) offer educators multiple ways for children to engage, express themselves and participate. In early years settings, this might look like:

visual schedules and picture cues to support transitions;
flexible seating, movement breaks or calming corners;
storybooks and materials that reflect neurodiversity as part of everyday life;
observing strengths before jumping in to “fix” perceived deficits.

Research supports these approaches. An inclusive preschool study found that using UDL strategies such as choice-making, varied materials, flexible seating and multimodal activities, led to better skill development, emotional regulation and engagement in both diagnosed and undiagnosed children.

Another 2023 study found that UDL-informed circle-time practices — like predictable routines, participation options and movement supports — fostered greater student participation and a sense of belonging in early-year classrooms.

When classrooms are intentionally designed for neurodiversity, they serve everyone better, from day one.

A call to start September differently

As the new school year starts, educators must shift from asking “is this child ready for school?” to “is the school ready for this child?” This reframing challenges deficit-based notions of readiness and calls for schools to adapt their environments, practices and mindsets to welcome all learners equitably.

This change means educators must slow down, listen to behaviours with curiosity and remember that all children communicate differently. It also means school boards, education ministries and provincial governments need to give educators the tools, time and training to recognize neurodiverse learners with care.

When support is no longer conditional on a formal diagnosis or a child being regarded as having exceptional needs, schools open the door to educational equity. When neurodiverse children are seen and valued from the start, rather than excluded or expected to be fixed, they are more likely to thrive.

As Ontario’s own policy documents show, school systems already have a strong foundation for inclusive practice. What’s needed now is the will to put those principles into action, starting in September.

Every child deserves to feel like school is a place for them.

Amina Yousaf 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. ‘Fixing’ neurodivergent kids misses the point — it’s the schools that need to change – https://theconversation.com/fixing-neurodivergent-kids-misses-the-point-its-the-schools-that-need-to-change-258267

August 15, 2025

Air Canada flight attendants have issued a strike notice: Here’s what you need to know

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By John Gradek, Faculty Lecturer and Academic Program Co-ordinator, Supply Network and Aviation Management, McGill University

The union representing Air Canada flight attendants issued a 72-hour strike notice to the company, setting the stage for a potential work stoppage on Aug. 16.

In response, the airline issued a 72-hour lock-out notice to Air Canada flight attendants, stating it had begun preparations to suspend flights in anticipation of the strike.

Taken together, these actions have effectively set the stage for the first complete shutdown of Air Canada due to labour strife since Air Canada pilots held an 11-day strike in 1998.

A shutdown would have a significant impact on Air Canada’s passenger travel plans during the height of the summer travel season.

Impact on passengers during peak travel

Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge carry approximately 130,00 passengers a day, and about 25,000 of these travellers include those returning to Canada from abroad.

All of these passengers are covered by Canada’s Air Passenger Protection Rights, which airlines are obligated to implement in the event of flight cancellations. These regulations are intended to ensure passengers are treated fairly and have recourse when things go wrong.

The concern during this peak travel season is the availability of seats on other carriers that Air Canada is obligated to secure for passengers on its cancelled flights.

The resulting shortage of capacity will undoubtedly result in cancelled vacations or family gatherings, with Air Canada offering refunds to those passengers for whom it will be unable to find acceptable travel arrangements.

Negotiations at an impasse

The airline and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) have been negotiating a new collective agreement since March. Air Canada said recently negotiations have reached an “impasse” over issues like wages and labour conditions.

The wages issue has been highlighted as a major negotiation item by CUPE, with examples of junior flight-attendant salaries that are substantially below the Canadian minimum wage.

Based on my analysis of collective agreement wage rates for Air Canada CUPE flight attendants, I estimate current wages would need to rise by about 32 to 34 per cent to match the 2025 purchasing power of what flight attendants earned in 2014, after adjusting for inflation.

According to CUPE, Air Canada only pays flight attendants when the aircraft’s brakes are released at departure until the brakes are applied on arrival, meaning any work they do before boarding and after deplaning isn’t compensated.

The union says flight attendants in Canada perform about 35 hours of unpaid duties every month.

Efforts to address unpaid work

Several attempts have been made by labour groups over the years to address the practice of unpaid duties for flight attendants. This culminated with the introduction of private member’s Bill C-415 in October 2024 by NDP MP Bonita Zarrillo.

The bill proposed amending the Canada Labour Code to require employers to pay flight attendants for all time spent on pre-flight and post-flight duties, as well as for mandatory training programs at their full rate of pay.

Bill C-415 received First Reading in Parliament, but did not progress beyond, expiring at the end of the parliamentary session in January 2025.

But support for such legislation remains strong, as demonstrated by a letter sent by the Leader of the Opposition to the Minister of Labour on Aug. 5.

A February 2025 article in The Conversation Canada noted the efforts of organized labour in obtaining ground pay for flight attendants and concluded:

“With contract negotiations underway, CUPE’s airline division has an opportunity to push for better working conditions and pay structures that reflect all hours worked. Canadian airlines must address the issue of unpaid labour and, ultimately, implement more equitable workplace standards for flight attendants.”

A number of airlines have implemented flight attendant pay that goes beyond the traditional “flight pay.” Delta Airlines was the first carrier to introduce the practice in 2022, followed by American Airlines in 2024.

United Airlines has included a similar provision in a proposed contract now awaiting ratification. In Canada, both Porter Airlines and Pascan Aviation offer flight attendants pay for work performed during the boarding process.

High stakes for both sides

It is worth noting the collective agreement negotiation strategies of both CUPE and Air Canada. CUPE has been quite transparent in its goals for its Air Canada members, citing wage increases needed to return to a living wage — for junior flight attendants, in particular — and the need to obtain pay for currently uncompensated work.

These goals have remained steadfast through the eight months of dialogue with Air Canada, and have been supported by a 99.7 per cent vote in favour of a strike if negotiations fail.

Air Canada’s negotiation strategy mirrors its 2024 negotiations with pilots, when it relied on government intervention to pressure them to reach an agreement, but ultimately yielded late in the process to most of the pilots’ demands.

This may yet be Air Canada’s plan this time as well, with a strike deadline looming in the early hours of Saturday, Aug. 16.

Is is worth noting that previous collective agreement negotiations with Air Canada and its flight attendants have been characterized by significant political intrigue, which many in the industry had believed to be a thing of the past. It remains interesting reading.

If a strike does proceed, Air Canada could face financial losses in the range of $50 to $60 million a day — a sum that will undoubtedly have Air Canada back at the negotiation table within the week.

John Gradek 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. Air Canada flight attendants have issued a strike notice: Here’s what you need to know – https://theconversation.com/air-canada-flight-attendants-have-issued-a-strike-notice-heres-what-you-need-to-know-263171

August 14, 2025

Why child-care vouchers aren’t the answer for working families this fall

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Daniel Foster, Policy Researcher, Atkinson Centre for Society and Child Development, University of Toronto

As backpacks come off the shelves and parents fuss over what to put in lunch boxes, many families face a more stressful back-to-school dilemma: who’s going to watch the kids when school’s out? For too many Canadian households, September means resuming the annual hunt for affordable, reliable child care.

Just in time, an old idea is being repackaged as a potential solution. In response to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s call to cabinet members for ideas to cut public spending, some private child-care providers are pushing for child-care vouchers, where public dollars are directed to parents instead of being invested in actual child care.

The Association of Childcare Entrepreneurs, a group representing Canadian for-profit providers, claims in a blog post that giving cash directly to families would cut government red tape and save billions by reducing the need for “complex audit procedures” and “federal oversight structures.”

The voucher program suggested by the association is a demand-side funding model, with public money tied to individual families and their purchasing choices rather than supporting child-care services for the entire community.

But bureaucratic red tape is the backbone of a functioning system: it provides safety standards, fair staff wages, oversight of public dollars and intentional planning to ensure every community has access to care.

When public support shifts from building services to subsidizing consumption, the system unravels. We’ve seen it happen before.

Just ask Australia

Australia offers one of the clearest cautionary tales. Its Child Care Subsidy program is structured around a parental choice model, whereby public funds are allocated to families based on income and employment status.

The Australian government spends A$13.6 billion annually on its child-care subsidy program, yet child-care fees continue to rise. Many families still struggle to afford them, and there are reports of serious — even criminal — infractions within the sector.

This system allows operators to set their own prices and doesn’t require them to justify how public dollars are spent. Rather than reducing costs for families or improving service quality, subsidies are mismanaged in ways that lead to their absorption into private profits or their use for expansion into wealthier markets.

It’s no small wonder this model appeals to commercial interests.

Between 2013 and 2024, 78 per cent of new child-care spaces in Australia were created by for-profit providers, mostly in high-income urban areas where parents can afford to pay. Meanwhile, lower-income and rural communities were largely left behind.

This is a model that expands care where it’s profitable, not where it’s needed.

Shifting the burden to families

Voucher systems like Australia’s place the burden of navigation on parents. Instead of empowering families, they often exclude those who face language barriers, housing instability or non-standard work schedules.

Even affluent parents find it difficult to locate care and evaluate its quality. Research shows that for-profit providers often deliver lower-quality care, yet dominate in areas with more disposable income.

Canada is already seeing signs of what happens when for-profit child care expands without strong oversight.

Red flags at home

The 2024 report from Québec’s Auditor General warned that for-profit growth, fuelled by generous fee rebates to parents, had caused the child-care system to deteriorate.

The report found many commercial operators failed quality assessments, committed serious safety violations such as poor sanitation and improper medication practices, employed unqualified staff and neglected to conduct mandatory background checks.

In 2022, the former provincial minister for families called government support for private daycare the “biggest mistake the Québec government committed in the last 25 years.”

The problem isn’t limited to Québec. In Alberta, a recent review by the provincial Auditor General found more than half the audited child-care operators that received public grants had discrepancies in their claims. Some billed for hours never worked. Others didn’t pass on wage top-ups to staff or fee reductions to families. One month, a provider was overpaid by $26,000 due to a bogus claim.

These are symptoms of a model built on self-reporting without oversight. When oversight is weak, public dollars can vanish without delivering a public good.

A better way forward

When governments directly fund providers, they can correct for system weaknesses and withhold funds from those who don’t meet financial, safety or quality regulations.

That’s the real choice before us: do we want a child-care system built on profit and personal risk or one grounded in public responsibility and equitable access?

The demand for child care is outpacing supply in Canada. Parents are justifiably frustrated, and quick fixes like vouchers can seem appealing.

But these vouchers come at the cost of deregulation. Governments have the tools to expand child care quickly and responsibly by enforcing clear standards, supporting a qualified workforce and prioritizing communities that need it most.

Vouchers strip away those tools and shift responsibility from public systems to individual families, leaving access to child care shaped by geography, income and luck.

What families need isn’t a market gamble, but a guarantee that no matter where they live or how much they earn, their children can count on safe, high-quality care. That’s the promise of a public system, and it’s something a voucher can’t deliver.

Daniel Foster works for the Atkinson Centre, which receives funding from the Atkinson Foundation, the Lawson Foundation, the Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation, and The Waltons Trust.

Kerry McCuaig works for the Atkinson Centre, which receives funding from the Atkinson Foundation, the Lawson Foundation, the Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation, and The Waltons Trust.

– ref. Why child-care vouchers aren’t the answer for working families this fall – https://theconversation.com/why-child-care-vouchers-arent-the-answer-for-working-families-this-fall-261828

August 14, 2025

Grok 4’s new AI companion offers up ‘pornographic productivity’

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jul Parke, PhD Candidate in Media, Technology & Culture, University of Toronto

The most controversial AI platform is arguably the one founded by Elon Musk. The chatbot Grok has spewed racist and antisemitic comments and called itself “MechaHitler,” referring to a character from a video game.

“Mecha” is generally a term for giant robots, usually inhabited for warfare, and is prominent in Japanese science-fiction comics.

Grok originally referred to Musk when asked for its opinions, and burst into unprompted racist historical revisionism, like the false concept of “white genocide” in South Africa. Its confounding and contradictory politicism continues to develop.

These are all alarming aspects of Grok. Another concerning element to Grok 4 is a new feature of social interactions with “virtual friends” on its premium version.

The realm of human loneliness, with its increasing reliance on large language models (LLMs) to replace social interaction, has made room for Grok 4 with AI companions, an upgrade available to paid subscribers.

Specifically, Grok subscribers can now access the functionality of generative AI intertwined with patriarchal notions of pleasure — what I call “pornographic productivity.”

Grok and Japanese anime

an animated character with big eyes looks surprised — Misa Amane from one of Musk’s favourite Japanese animes, ‘Death Note.’
(Wikimedia/Deathnote)

Ani, Grok 4’s most-discussed AI companion, represents a convergence of Japanese anime and internet culture. Ani bears a striking resemblance to Misa Amane from the iconic Japanese anime Death Note.

Misa Amane is a pop star who consistently demonstrates self-harming and illogical behaviour in pursuit of the male protagonist, a brilliant young man engaged in a battle of wits with his rival. Musk referenced the anime as a favourite in a tweet in 2021.

While anime is a vast art form with numerous tropes, genres and fandoms, research has shown that online anime fandoms are rife with misogyny and women-exclusionary discourse. Even the most mainstream shows have been criticized for sexualizing prepubescent characters and offering unnecessary “fan service” in hypersexualized character design and nonconsensual plot points.

Death Note‘s creator, Tsugumi Ohba, has consistently been critiqued by fans for anti-feminist character design.

Journalists have pointed out Ani’s swift eagerness to engage in romantic and sexually charged conversations. Ani is depicted with a voluptuous figure, blonde pigtails and a lacy black dress, which she frequently describes in user interactions.

The problem with pornographic productivity

I use the term “pornographic productivity,” inspired by critiques of Grok as “pornified,” to describe a troubling trend where tools initially designed for work evolve into parasocial relationships catering to emotional and psychological needs, including gendered interactions.

Grok’s AI companions feature exemplifies this phenomenon, blurring critical boundaries.

The appeal is clear. Users can theoretically exist in “double time,” relaxing while their AI avatars manage tasks, and this is already a reality within AI models. But this seductive promise masks serious risks: dependency, invasive data extraction and the deterioration of real human relational skills.

When such companions, already created for minimizing caution and building trust, come with sexual objectification and embedded cultural references to docile femininity, the risks enter another realm of concern.

Grok 4 users have remarked that the addition of sexualized characters with emotionally validating language is quite unusual for mainstream large language models. This is because these tools, like ChatGPT and Claude, are often used by all ages.

While we are in the early stages of seeing the true impact of advanced chatbots on minors, particularly teenagers with mental health struggles, the case studies we do have are grimly dire.

‘Wife drought’

Drawing from feminist scholars Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy’s concept of the “smart wife,” Grok’s AI companions appear to respond to what they term a “wife drought” in contemporary society.

These technologies step in to perform historically feminized labour as women increasingly assert their right to refuse exploitative dynamics. In fact, online users have already deemed Ani a “waifu” character, which is a play on the Japanese pronunciation of wife.

AI companions are appealing partly because they cannot refuse or set boundaries. They perform undesirable labour under the illusion of choice and consent. Where real relationships require negotiation and mutual respect, AI companions offer a fantasy of unconditional availability and compliance.

Data extraction through intimacy

In the meantime, as tech journalist Karen Hao noted, the data and privacy implications of LLMs are already staggering. When rebranded in the form of personified characters, they are more likely to capture intimate details about users’ emotional states, preferences and vulnerabilities. This information can be exploited for targeted advertising, behavioural prediction or manipulation.

This marks a fundamental shift in data collection. Rather than relying on surveillance or explicit prompts, AI companions encourage users to divulge intimate details through seemingly organic conversation.

South Korea’s Iruda chatbot illustrates how these systems can become vessels for harassment and abuse when poorly regulated. Seemingly benign applications can quickly move into problematic territory when companies fail to implement proper safeguards.

Previous cases also show that AI companions designed with feminized characteristics often become targets for corruption and abuse, mirroring broader societal inequalities in digital environments.

Grok’s companions aren’t simply another controversial tech product. It’s plausible to expect that other LLM platforms and big tech companies will soon experiment with their own characters in the near future. The collapse of the boundaries between productivity, companionship and exploitation demands urgent attention.

The age of AI and government partnerships

Despite Grok’s troubling history, Musk’s AI company xAI recently secured major government contracts in the United States.

This new era of America’s AI Action Plan, unveiled in July 2025, had this to say about biased AI:

“[The White House will update] federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.”

Given the overwhelming instances of Grok’s race-based hatred and its potential for replicating sexism in our society, its new government contract serves a symbolic purpose in an era of doublethink around bias.

As Grok continues to push the envelope of “pornographic productivity,” nudging users into increasingly intimate relationships with machines, we face urgent decisions that veer into our personal lives. We are beyond questioning whether AI is bad or good. Our focus should be on preserving what remains human about us.

Jul Parke receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.

– ref. Grok 4’s new AI companion offers up ‘pornographic productivity’ – https://theconversation.com/grok-4s-new-ai-companion-offers-up-pornographic-productivity-260992

August 14, 2025

Grok 4’s new AI companions offer ‘pornographic productivity’ for a price

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jul Parke, PhD Candidate in Media, Technology & Culture, University of Toronto

“Mecha” is generally a term for giant robots, usually inhabited for warfare, and is prominent in Japanese science-fiction comics.

These are all alarming aspects of Grok. Another concerning element to Grok 4 is a new feature of social interactions with “virtual friends” on its premium version.

Specifically, Grok subscribers can now access the functionality of generative AI intertwined with patriarchal notions of pleasure — what I call “pornographic productivity.”

Grok and Japanese anime

Death Note‘s creator, Tsugumi Ohba, has consistently been critiqued by fans for anti-feminist character design.

The problem with pornographic productivity

Grok’s AI companions feature exemplifies this phenomenon, blurring critical boundaries.

While we are in the early stages of seeing the true impact of advanced chatbots on minors, particularly teenagers with mental health struggles, the case studies we do have are grimly dire.

‘Wife drought’

Data extraction through intimacy

Previous cases also show that AI companions designed with feminized characteristics often become targets for corruption and abuse, mirroring broader societal inequalities in digital environments.

The age of AI and government partnerships

Despite Grok’s troubling history, Musk’s AI company xAI recently secured major government contracts in the United States.

This new era of America’s AI Action Plan, unveiled in July 2025, had this to say about biased AI:

“[The White House will update] federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.”

Jul Parke receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.

– ref. Grok 4’s new AI companions offer ‘pornographic productivity’ for a price – https://theconversation.com/grok-4s-new-ai-companions-offer-pornographic-productivity-for-a-price-260992