Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Qian Liu, Assistant Professor of Law and Society, University of Calgary

I met Lufang Chen, a 30-year-old bank clerk based in the Fujian province of China, in 2016, after she had married a man she initially turned down years earlier. Although she preferred to remain single, and he was not her type anyway, she gave in to avoid the label “leftover woman.”

The derogatory and stigmatizing term “leftover woman” — or Sheng nü in Chinese — is used to describe one’s social status and refers to women in their late 20s and beyond who have never married. The label suggests these women have failed to “sell” themselves on the marriage market at the “best” time and have therefore become leftover products that are depreciating rapidly.

At the time I was conducting interviews for my book on the lived experiences of these women — Leftover Women in China: Understanding Legal Consciousness through Intergenerational Relationships — released last August, Chen told me she married out of an obligation to live up to parental expectations:

“I only got married to free my parents from the pressure imposed on them by gossipy, nosy relatives, as well as to ease their worries about my future. After all, my parents have sacrificed so much and are always ready to do everything for me.”

Chen was especially grateful to her parents for buying her an apartment when she could barely cover her living expenses. Her parents were also prepared to provide child care once, not if, she had a child.

What this story reveals is not simply a cultural expectation around marriage, but how parental financial support can reshape the autonomy of young adults.

Structural forces and family dynamics in China

In recent decades, the extreme unaffordability of housing in urban China has made it almost impossible for young adults to purchase a home without financial support from their parents. Meanwhile, as inflexible work schedules and overtime have become the norm, grandparenting has become crucial to ensuring young adults can focus on their careers.

Leftover Women in China demonstrates how the downflow of family resources — from the older generation to the young, including housing and child care support — results in a sense of guilt and provides the justification for parental intervention in marital decisions.

This phenomenon ultimately reduces effective communication among family members and marginalizes the desires of young adults.

Many of these so-called “leftover women” don’t feel it’s appropriate to openly discuss or negotiate marital choices and childbearing with their parents. Instead, a sense of guilt prompts these daughters to focus on perceptions of parental expectations that prioritize their parents’ desires and often go even beyond what their parents explicitly request.

Canadian classrooms reveal family pressure

Eventually, as a university professor, I noticed this type of parent-child interaction also appears in the West, including Canadian society.

Take students’ academic performance and career decisions, for example. I observed a strong sense of guilt and desire to repay parents, especially among students of mine whose parents have endured hardship or offered unconditional support.

Students from immigrant families have frequently mentioned pressure to succeed academically. When I asked about their motivations, they often responded by saying they want to live up to parental expectations. This sense of duty seemed especially strong among students whose parents were highly qualified professionals in their home countries and now work long hours in manual or unskilled labour to provide for their families.

As Vivian Louie, professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College, suggests, immigrant parents’ sacrifices often motivate their children to excel academically. This is also supported by a socio-legal study on responsibility, love and guilt in Latino mixed-status families.

Over the years, many students have told me their parents don’t need to explicitly ask them to pursue a lucrative career, nor have they necessarily discussed it with them. Instead, students pick up cues from societal and community perceptions of success to make their parents proud.

When parental support becomes essential

This phenomenon, however, is not limited to students with immigrant backgrounds. A sociological study on career decisions of Harvard law students reveals that students from low-income or working-class backgrounds frequently felt that failure to obtain a lucrative position would let their families down due to the financial sacrifices their family members have made for them.

The more I spoke with my students, the more I realized that Canadian young adults are facing increasing parental intervention in particular due to the persistence of inflation and housing unaffordability.

More of them than ever before are living with their parents well into their 20s to reduce costs. For many, this has become a necessity rather than a choice.

According to a 2025 Statistics Canada report, financial support from parents for down payments has become both crucial and widespread among young homeowners. In British Columbia, for example, average parental financial support for a first-home down payment exceeds $200,000.

It’s true that collectivist culture in Chinese society contributes to the desire for “leftover women” to meet parental expectations and prioritize their needs and interests. But my observations in Canadian classrooms suggest that parental financial support — combined with the sacrifices they make for their children — can also cultivate guilt among young adults in individualist cultures like Canada.

Qian Liu receives funding from the International Development Research Centre and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

– ref. When young adults can’t afford independence, family expectations fill the gap — from China’s ‘leftover women’ to Canada’s pressured youth – https://theconversation.com/when-young-adults-cant-afford-independence-family-expectations-fill-the-gap-from-chinas-leftover-women-to-canadas-pressured-youth-270013

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Long Li, Professor, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta

Our planet is unique for its ability to sustain abundant life. From studies of the rock record, scientists believe life had already emerged on Earth at least 3.5 billion years ago and probably much earlier.

But how a habitable environment developed, and how the very first life emerged on the early Earth, remain puzzling. One of the big challenges for Earth to be habitable in its infancy was the weak solar energy it received.

Astrophysical models indicate that the sun had only about 70 per cent of its current luminosity when the Earth was born around 4.5 billion years ago. That would have resulted in Earth’s surface being frozen until around two billion years ago.

Nonetheless, scientific investigations indicate the Earth had warm oceans and habitable environments as early as 4.4 billion years ago. This contradiction is known as the faint young sun paradox.

Solving this paradox and the generation of the first life both involve a key chemical compound — ammonia. But the source of ammonia on the early Earth before biological nitrogen processing emerged remains unknown.

Colleagues in China and my research group at the University of Alberta recently published our study of minerals deposited from hydrothermal fluids in oceanic crusts drilled from the South China Sea basin. We discovered that mineral-catalyzed chemical reactions in underwater hydrothermal systems can produce the necessary ingredients for a habitable world and life on Earth.

Hypothesis of the origin of life

Earth’s first life is hypothesized to be generated by a series of abiotic processes, also known as abiogenesis. Under this hypothesis, the building blocks of the first life were synthezised on Earth from basic inorganic compounds by abiotic reactions, or were brought to here by meteorites.

In 1953, American chemist Stanley Miller, then a graduate student working with Nobel Prize laureate Harold Urey at the University of Chicago, discovered production of amino acids in his experiments simulating lightning in an early-Earth atmosphere composed of water moisture and several gases (methane, ammonia and hydrogen molecules).

These life-building blocks could subsequently deposit into the ocean for life development. This ground-breaking discovery by Miller implied that abiogenesis of life on Earth is possible.

Gases like methane, ammonia and hydrogen were not only essential compounds for synthesis of organic matter in Miller’s experiments. They are also key ingredients to establishing a habitable environment on early Earth.

They have all been proposed as potential contributors, either directly as greenhouse gases or indirectly as amplifiers of other greenhouse gases, to warm up early Earth’s surface under the faint young sun.

Where did these gases come from?

A problem, though, is that these gases were not the primary components on early Earth’s surface in the first place. Instead, the dominant forms of carbon and nitrogen were carbon dioxide and dinitrogen.

That means the very first step toward making Earth habitable and generating the first life had to be inorganic reactions to turn carbon dioxide into methane and dinitrogen into ammonia, also known as abiotic carbon and nitrogen reduction reactions.

Where and how did these reduction reactions take place?

The world’s ocean floors contain abundant hydrothermal systems where cold seawater flows into deep oceanic crust and subsequently mixes with ascending magmatic fluids. The mixed hot fluids are emitted back through hydrothermal vents such as black smokers or white smokers.

Along this pathway, water and dissolved components can react with primary minerals in the oceanic crust to produce secondary minerals and other byproducts. Methane and dihydrogen, formed by mineral-catalyzed abiotic reduction reactions during this process, have been widely observed in the emitted hydrothermal fluids.

Therefore, underwater hydrothermal systems have been considered as the most likely incubator for habitable environment and the origin of life.

Searching for evidence

Yet there still exists a missing piece in this picture: the abiotic reduction of dinitrogen has not been confirmed to occur in hydrothermal systems. Scientists have searched hard for evidence of this reaction, abiotic ammonia, but have had no luck so far.

The ammonia (mostly in its dissolved form, ammonium ion) that has been detected in hydrothermal fluids collected from active vent mouths turned out to be mainly biological and not abiotic in origin.

The relatively small amount of abiotic ammonium there might be can easily be concealed by the large amount of biological ammonium in seawater. It is impossible to avoid seawater contamination while collecting submarine hydrothermal fluid samples.

However, secondary minerals deposited from hydrothermal fluids can lock some ammonium into their internal structures and protect it from being contaminated by shallow seawater and mixing with biological ammonium. Therefore, studying secondary minerals in the deep oceanic crust can better unravel the ammonium source and producing mechanism in the deep hydrothermal systems.

However, such samples are not easily to collect. The International Ocean Discovery Program has made tremendous efforts to drill deep into the oceanic crust to collect samples. Luckily, a set of secondary mineral samples were discovered in a 200-metre drill core from the South China Sea.

A missing piece of the puzzle

For our study, we looked into a specific chemical feature, namely nitrogen isotopes, for the ammonium locked in the hydrothermal minerals.

Nitrogen has two isotopes with atomic mass 14 and 15, respectively. Mineral-catalyzed abiotic dinitrogen reduction strongly prefers to use the one with an atomic mass of 14. That results in a unique nitrogen isotope signature in the ammonium it produces.

Our results are consistent with this isotopic signature. This demonstrates production of ammonia or ammonium by abiotic dinitrogen reduction in underwater hydrothermal systems.

This discovery adds a missing piece of puzzle to our theories about the origins of life on Earth. These underwater hydrothermal systems at the bottom of the ocean enabled the first-step reactions of all life-constituting elements on our planet.

Long Li receives funding from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

– ref. How the ocean’s hydrothermal systems made the first life on Earth possible – https://theconversation.com/how-the-oceans-hydrothermal-systems-made-the-first-life-on-earth-possible-271920

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Stewart Prest, Lecturer, Political Science, University of British Columbia

It was a moment of global clarity. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech to the world’s political and economic elite gathered in Davos this week described global realities, past and present, with a candour and nuance rarely heard from a serving politician.

The message was twofold.

First, Carney made clear that the world has changed, and the old comfortable ways of global politics are not coming back. Those who wait for sanity to return are waiting in vain. We are in a world increasingly shaped by the threat and the use of hard power. All states must accept that reality.

Despite this, Carney’s second and more hopeful message was that while the globally powerful may act unilaterally, others — notably “middle powers” like Canada — are not helpless.

By finding ways to co-operate on areas of shared interest, states like Canada can pool their limited resources to build what amounts to a flexible network of co-operative ties. Taken together they can provide an alternative to simply rolling over and taking whatever great powers like the United States dole out.

There’s also little choice in the matter if countries want to remain independent. As he eloquently put it: “If we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”

From ‘elbows up’ to capitulation, and back

The speech represented a remarkable departure from Canada’s usual approach to its relationship its neighbour to the south.

For all the talk of “elbows up” during the 2025 federal election campaign, the Carney government has been somewhat ambivalent since then. It’s placed its hopes in achieving a renewed trading relationship and normalized relations with the U.S. through a combination of good faith negotiations and a steady stream of conciliatory gestures on issues that seemed to matter most to U.S. President Donald Trump.

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Read more:
Mark Carney’s apology to Donald Trump: Far from ‘elbows up,’ it seems Canada has no elbows at all

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That resulted in Canada committing significant funds to combat a largely non-existent fentanyl trafficking problem and to meet American demands for increased military funding. At times the conciliation verged on placation, as when Canada unilaterally ended relatiatory tariffs on American goods to no discernible effect.

This strategy clearly was not working, however, as Carney made clear in Davos.

While neither America, nor Trump, were mentioned by name, there’s no doubt who’s driving the dramatic global changes Carney was describing. At times the veneer became very thin as Carney reiterated Canada’s support for the sovereignty of Greenland as a territory of Denmark.

In fact, the speech was remarkably blunt in its rebuke of America’s foreign policy during Trump’s second term, drawing attention, as others have, to how U.S. actions leave almost everyone, including Americans, worse off.

Trump’s response

That not-so-subtle barb was not lost on the audience, either in the room or across the Atlantic in the White House.

Trump wasted little time in firing back in the manner and style the world has become accustomed to. During his own address to the World Economic Forum the next day, Trump delivered a rambling and at times confusing speech.

He reiterated his intent to annex Greenland while confusing the island multiple times with neighbouring and also sovereign Iceland, and he took time to single out Carney by name.

“Canada lives because of the United States,” he said. “Remember that, Mark, next time you make your statements.”

The comments provided helpful proof of Carney’s argument, demonstrating the naked threat of power by the American president to coerce its neighbour and ostensible ally. It revealed the kind of “gangster” mindset we see often from Trump, as he effectively said: “Nice country, Mark. Be a shame if something happened to it.”

Critique of past

As blunt as Carney’s assessment of the present was — that the rules-based, liberal international order has faded away — in some ways his critique of the past was even more remarkable. The prime minister spoke with a candour one wouldn’t expect to find at the podium at Davos.

Effectively, Carney correctly characterized the old order as one defined as much by its hypocrisy as by its rules. He acknowledged that countries like Canada benefited from a system in which rules are applied unevenly, and superpowers continue to shape outcomes.

This idea, along with the the need to look ahead in order to survive a new order, appeared to underpin Carney’s exhortation not to mourn the rapidly vanishing old order.

Carney clearly hopes a new system may emerge that is not only more resilient to diverse and unpredictable threats, but is more honest and just.

By finding common ground on shared issues, middle powers can act in accordance with their own values and interests, instead of deferring to the proclaimed values of global power that are frequently violated in practice. Power will always matter, but it doesn’t have to be all that matters.

History in the making?

Carney’s Davos remarks were powerful by any measure. But will he back up his words with action in the months and years ahead?

His speech was met with a rousing standing ovation, and has justly received plaudits from around the world for its clear-eyed description of a less forgiving world order and its vision for how states like Canada can continue to thrive within it.

Whether it proves a speech for the ages, however, depends on what happens next. If Canada is serious about charting a new path, distinct from the great powers of the world, it must do more than talk. Acts like deploying symbolic forces to Greenland if necessary will show a seriousness of purpose. Canada cannot expect others to stand with it if it doesn’t stand with them.

Similarly, Canada must reject schemes like Trump’s “board of peace,” a thinly disguised attempt to replace institutions of global governance with a body composed by and serving at the president’s whim.

Carney has captured the world’s attention with this speech. There’s a lot hanging on what he does with that attention.

Stewart Prest 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. Mark Carney’s Davos speech marks a major departure from Canada’s usual approach to the U.S. – https://theconversation.com/mark-carneys-davos-speech-marks-a-major-departure-from-canadas-usual-approach-to-the-u-s-274090

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Saskia Sivananthan, Affiliate Professor, Department of Family Medicine, McGill University

At a recent party, another guest, a nurse, asked what I do for a living. I explained that as a health policy researcher, my work focuses on helping health-care systems co-ordinate care for dementia as effectively as for major conditions like cancer, diabetes or stroke. She stopped me mid-sentence.

“I don’t think you should use cancer as a comparison,” she said. “Cancer doesn’t have the stigma that dementia has. Most cancers can be treated and cured. Dementia can’t. You just can’t compare the two.”

The conversation brought to the forefront that dementia today occupies the same stigmatized, system-neglected space that cancer did half a century ago. And history shows us that stigma, not simply the absence of cures, delays progress.

Dementia taboos mirror cancer

Before the 1970s, a cancer diagnosis was widely considered a death sentence. Most physicians did not disclose the diagnosis, despite surveys showing the majority of patients wanted to know. Doctors said they concealed the truth to avoid “taking away hope” and because families preferred that patients remain unaware.

The word cancer itself was taboo. Euphemisms like “a growth” or “the Big C” were used, if the illness was discussed at all. Cancer carried the stain of shame, seen by some as a sign of personal weakness, and still does, particularly in the case of certain types of cancers like lung or liver cancer. Others viewed it as karma or divine punishment. People with cancer were quietly excluded, so much so that obituaries rarely listed cancer as the cause of death.

Sound familiar? It should.

A 2022 Canadian survey of family physicians found that 75 per cent provided care to a patient with cognitive impairment whom they had not yet informed of a diagnosis. The reasons varied: families or patients preferred not to know; clinicians felt they had no meaningful treatment to offer; or they feared “labelling” patients.

We still use dismissive expressions like “senior moment” in reference to symptoms of dementia. The word dementia itself literally translates to “out of one’s mind.” In many cultures, dementia is considered shameful and thought to be the result of witchcraft or punishment for a previous wrongdoing.

And the social exclusion is real. Dementia advocate Kate Swaffer calls it “prescribed disengagement,” the sense that society quietly ushers people with dementia out of public life.

Cancer did not change its stigma entirely because it became curable. It became curable faster because stigma was specifically being addressed and advocacy co-ordinated to push for funding and system change.

Stigma and system gaps preceded cancer breakthrough era

In fact, the first class of cancer treatments — options like surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and early hormonal therapies — were introduced as far back as the 1940s, but their survival benefits were modest, much like the first generation of Alzheimer’s drugs today.

Because stigma around cancer was so entrenched, people avoided screening, delayed seeking help or refused treatment altogether, reinforcing poor outcomes and deepening the stigma.

Subsequent breakthroughs, like targeted therapies and other transformative drugs of the 1990s and 2010s, did change survival dramatically. But they landed in a landscape that had already been reshaped by something else: system co-ordination, focused, public stigma-reducing campaigns and a dramatic shift in cancer research funding.

Advocacy built the foundation for cancer system change

Starting in the 1970s, through co-ordinated advocacy led by advocates like Mary Lasker, governments began large-scale injections of research funds for cancer, built organized screening programs, launched public awareness campaigns, created standardized care pathways and invested in co-ordinating care infrastructure .

Moving cancer out of silence and into public conversations also altered clinical behaviour. Physicians increasingly disclosed diagnoses and encouraged early diagnosis, enabling earlier intervention. Survivorship became part of the narrative. Anti-discrimination frameworks strengthened. Cancer came to be understood through a public health lens rather than a moral one.

By the time highly effective therapies emerged, the system and society was far more ready for them.

Building conditions for change in dementia care

If we want the same for dementia, we need the same foundations: Co-ordinated care pathways with the infrastructure to support it, disclosure norms, national and provincial leadership bodies and ongoing public education campaigns with government backing.

I am an optimist at heart. The fact that my dinner companion now sees cancer as relatively destigmatized is, paradoxically, a sign of hope. It shows how profoundly public understanding can change within a generation.

To shift the stigma means a shift in access to care and the system itself.
Cancer shows us that stigma reduction isn’t accidental. It is created through leadership, investment and system design. Dementia deserves nothing less.

Saskia Sivananthan is affiliated with the Brainwell Institute, a dementia focused policy think tank

– ref. Ending dementia stigma could change its trajectory: Cancer’s history shows why – https://theconversation.com/ending-dementia-stigma-could-change-its-trajectory-cancers-history-shows-why-273674

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Lianne M Lefsrud, Professor and Risk, Innovation & Sustainability Chair (RISC), University of Alberta

Psychological safety — the belief that it is safe to speak up with concerns, questions or mistakes — is widely recognized as essential for organizational learning, innovation and workplace safety.

Yet its absence — interpersonal fear — is rarely examined in investigations of serious workplace incidents. My new research on workplace fatalities, conducted with several co-researchers, suggests this missing factor may help explain why hazards so often go unidentified or unreported.

We surveyed more than 4,600 workers and analyzed thousands of incident reports across five mine sites and over 100 mining and contractor companies. We asked workers: “Why aren’t hazards identified or reported?”

We found that interpersonal fear — the perception that speaking up or challenging the status quo will lead to humiliation or punishment — was one of the strongest predictors of silence. Workers who were more likely to be fearful were also more likely to withhold information.

A pattern we’ve seen before

Our recent findings echo earlier research I conducted following a fatal mining accident near Fort McMurray, Alta., in 2017, when a Suncor employee fell through ground softened by a leaking tailings pipeline and was unable to free himself.

I led a team analyzing geohazards associated with working around oilsands tailings ponds. During a safety workshop that concluded the two-year investigation, my co-researchers and I asked the attendees to answer the same question — “Why are hazards not identified or reported?”

We expected technical responses, but instead, they focused overwhelmingly on human and organizational factors: lack of training, fear, inappropriate risk tolerances, external pressures, cultural inaction and complacency.

The predominance of fear shocked us. Workers described being more afraid of the social consequences of reporting hazards than of the hazards themselves. As a result, they were putting their own lives at risk.

Our newer, larger study confirms this pattern at scale. Using machine-learning techniques, we were better able to identify where fear was most likely to flourish, its organizational causes and consequences and how it undermines companies.

We found management dismissiveness, a lack of managerial action or follow-up and a lack of training were more likely to cause fear — especially among contractors — and suppress hazard identification and reporting.

Fear isn’t limited to the frontline

Employees lower in company hierarchies tend to experience less psychological safety. But senior leaders are not immune to it either. They can encounter situations where raising concerns feels risky, particularly in executive settings where disagreement can be interpreted as “too political,” disloyal or a sign of weakness.

Leadership scholar Amy Edmondson’s research helps explain this dynamic. Her psychological safety matrix shows that fear flourishes when high performance standards are combined with low psychological safety.

In teams with high levels of psychological safety and highly challenging tasks and standards, she found employees are curious and engaged problem-solvers. However, when the same high standards exist without psychological safety (where people believe that they might be punished or humiliated for speaking up), anxiety prevails.

The goal is to have your team experience the first scenario. Because psychological safety operates at the team level, organizations can have multiple teams doing similar high-risk work with dramatically different outcomes, depending on whether people feel safe enough to speak up.

Creating safer systems starts with leadership

Since interpersonal fear is shaped by perception, it doesn’t matter whether leaders believe they are approachable; what matters is whether their teams think they are. If employees are spending more time worrying about managing impressions than operations, hazards go unreported and people are unknowingly put at risk.

Creating safer workplaces requires cultures where speaking up is not punished, dismissed or discouraged. Leaders can start by asking themselves questions: who is least likely to challenge me at work? What information might I not be hearing as a result?

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Read more:
Silence speaks volumes: How mental health influences employee silence at work

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Often, the employees with the most job security, such as union reps or those nearing retirement, are the most honest sources of insight. Listening to these voices is often a good place to start.

Research shows that organizations can improve psychological safety through practical leadership changes. Supervisors who listen, seek feedback, share reasoning behind decisions and are team-oriented instead of self-serving are more likely to create and maintain psychological safety.

Leaders should also pay attention to variations across teams. Useful questions to ask include:

• Which teams are feeling fearful?

• Which teams are feeling curious and engaged?

• How can you create more high-performance teams?

Understanding why some teams feel safer than others can reveal opportunities for improvement.

For leaders, the greatest worry should be whether your employees are afraid to speak up. Be suspicious of “good news only” green dashboards, obsequious agreement or stony silences. Do not punish messengers — rather, embrace their candour as a gift and a sign that your organization is preventing harm.

Lianne M Lefsrud receives funding from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Alberta Justice, WorkSafeBC, Mitacs, Alberta Innovates, and the Lynch School of Engineering Safety and Risk Management endowed funds.

– ref. Fear at work is a hidden safety risk — and it helps explain why hazards go unreported – https://theconversation.com/fear-at-work-is-a-hidden-safety-risk-and-it-helps-explain-why-hazards-go-unreported-272886

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Joshua Gonzales, PhD Student in Management at the Lang School of Business and Economics, University of Guelph

It is a stereotype that Canadians apologize for everything. We say sorry when you bump into us. We say sorry for the weather. But as we trudge through the grey days of winter, that national instinct for politeness hits a wall of fatigue.

The temptation is obvious. With a single click, Gmail’s “Help me write” or ChatGPT can draft a polite decline to an invitation or a heartfelt thank you for a holiday sweater you’ll never wear.

It’s efficient. It’s polite. It’s grammatically perfect.

It’s also a trap.

New research suggests that when we outsource our social interactions to AI, we are trading away our reputation. Using AI to manage your social life makes you seem less warm, less moral and significantly less trustworthy.

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Learning a language is hard, but even native speakers get confused by pronunciation, connotations, definitions and etymology. The lexicon is constantly evolving, especially in the social media era, where new memes, catchphrases, slang, jargon and idioms are introduced at a rapid clip.
Slanguage, The Conversation Canada’s new series, dives into how language shapes the way we see the world and what it reveals about culture, power and belonging. Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of linguistics.

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The trap of efficiency

In our consumer economy, we love automation. When I order a package, I don’t need a human to type the shipping notification; I just want the box on my doorstep. We accept — even demand — efficiency from brands.

But our friends are not brands, and our relationships are not transactions.

The new study published in Computers in Human Behavior — entitled “Negative Perceptions of Outsourcing to Artificial Intelligence” by British academic Scott Claessens and other researchers — suggests that emotional dynamics follow different rules than those shaping more practical situations. The researchers found that, while we tolerate AI assistance for technical tasks like writing code or planning a daily schedule, we punish it severely in social contexts.

When you use AI to write a love letter, an apology or a wedding vow, the recipient sees a lack of effort instead of a well-written text. In relationships, effort is a strong currency of care.

Less warm, less authentic

You might think you can hack this system by being honest. Perhaps you tell your friend: “I used ChatGPT to help me find the right words, but I edited it myself.”

Unfortunately, the data doesn’t indicate this is much of a solution.

Claessens’ work investigated a “best-case” scenario, where a user treated AI as a collaborative tool, employing it for ideas and feedback rather than verbatim copying, and was fully transparent about the process.

The researchers found that the social consequences of this approach are highly task-dependent: for socio-relational tasks like writing love letters, wedding vows or apology notes, participants still rated the sender as significantly less moral, less warm and less authentic than someone who didn’t use AI.

However, for instrumental or non-social tasks like writing computer code or dinner recipes, this collaborative and honest use of AI didn’t lead to negative perceptions of moral character or warmth, even if the user was still perceived as having expended less effort.

This creates a uniquely modern anxiety for the polite Canadian. We apologize to maintain social bonds. But if we use AI to craft that apology, we sever the very bond we are trying to hold onto. An apology generated by an algorithm, no matter how polished, signals that the relationship wasn’t worth the 20 minutes it would have taken to write it yourself.

Authentic inefficiency

This friction isn’t limited to text messages.

I’ve observed a similar pattern in my own preliminary research on consumer behaviour and AI-generated art. This work was conducted with Associate Prof. Ying Zhu at the University of British Columbian, Okanagan and will be presented at the American Marketing Association’s Winter Conference.

Consumers often reject excellent AI creations in creative arts fields because they lack the moral weight of human intent.

I believe we’re entering an era where inefficiency and imperfection will become premium products. Just as a flawed hand-knit scarf means more than a mass-produced, factory-made one, a clunky, typo-ridden text message from a friend is becoming more valuable than a sonnet written by a random internet language model.

The renowned “Canadian Sorry” is only meaningful because it represents a moment of humility, a pang of guilt, the effort used to find the right words. When we outsource this type of labour, we outsource the meaning too.

So as you tackle your inbox this winter, resist the urge to let the robot take the wheel for every case. Your clients might need the perfect email, but your friends and family certainly don’t. They want to know you cared enough to find the words yourself.

Joshua Gonzales 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. Slanguage: How the use of AI for apologies could cause the ‘Canadian Sorry’ to lose its soul – https://theconversation.com/slanguage-how-the-use-of-ai-for-apologies-could-cause-the-canadian-sorry-to-lose-its-soul-273046

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Mitchell L. Hammond, Assistant Professor of History, Western University

Hours after Donald Trump began his second term as United States president on Jan. 20, 2024, he signed an executive order to end American membership in the World Health Organization (WHO) after one year. This restarted a process that the first Trump administration initiated in July 2020 but was reversed by Joe Biden.

The withdrawal is set to take effect this week, although WHO officials may not officially accept it because the U.S. has unpaid dues from the last two years. No matter how events play out, the rift signals the start of an uncertain new era in global public health.

In the withdrawal announcement, the Trump administration cited the WHO’s “mishandling” of the COVID-19 pandemic and its inability to remain independent from the political influence of member states. This reflected Trump’s belief that the WHO leadership favoured China in early 2020 by praising its initial COVID response while faulting the U.S. for closing its border to Chinese travellers.

Other observers acknowledged the need for reform of the WHO’s cumbersome bureaucratic structure and criticized its inability to translate scientific research about COVID into useful guidance about masking and social distancing.

Such criticisms should not obscure the WHO’s enormous contribution to global health or how U.S. interests have been intertwined with its successes. Viewed historically, its great strength lies in sustained collaboration rather than short-term emergency response.

Vaccine diplomacy

In my research for Epidemics and the Modern World and its forthcoming revision, I have explored how the U.S. conducted “vaccine diplomacy” in developing countries. After the Second World War, the U.S. discerned an alignment between its strategic objectives and the soft power it gained from campaigns against epidemic diseases and childhood immunization programs.

For example, in 1967, American funding and leadership encouraged the start of the WHO’s Intensified Smallpox Eradication Program (ISEP) in African countries. This work involved collaboration with global rivals such as the Soviet Union, which contributed large quantities of freeze-dried smallpox vaccine.

When the ISEP began, at least 1.5 million people worldwide died from smallpox annually. Only 13 years later, the WHO declared the disease eradicated from nature in 1980. This success encouraged efforts to eradicate polio, which accelerated after 1988 when the WHO launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative with support from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other partners.

Another important collaboration began in 1974 when the WHO and international partners launched the Expanded Program on Immunization to help prevent six childhood diseases (polio, diphtheria, pertussis, tuberculosis, measles and tetanus).

After 1985, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) invested billions of dollars in the program. Global childhood immunization levels reached 80 per cent by the early 1990s and continued to pay health dividends thereafter.

An analysis published last year in the Lancet estimated that, in the last 20 years, USAID-funded programs had helped prevent over 90 million deaths globally, including 30 million deaths among children.

Dismantling global influence

In public health, as in other arenas, the Trump administration has discarded participation in global alliances and instead sought bilateral agreements with other countries.

By July 2025, the Trump administration had formally dismantled USAID and cancelled funding for more than 80 per cent of its programs. Modelling conducted by Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols suggests the lapsed programs have already caused roughly 750,000 deaths, mostly among children.

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International aid groups are dealing with the pain of slashed USAID funding by cutting staff, localizing and coordinating better

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The U.S. has also already begun to cede influence over the objectives of global health programs. At the World Health Assembly in May 2025, the U.S. did not sign the WHO Pandemic Agreement intended to foster collaboration among governments, international agencies and philanthropies after the COVID-19 pandemic.

At that same meeting, China pledged to increase its voluntary contributions to the WHO to US$500 million over the next five years. Practically overnight, China will replace the U.S. as the WHO’s largest national contributor and undoubtedly steer priorities in global health programs towards its interests.

Disease monitoring and global threats

A more immediate concern is the disruption to surveillance for ongoing disease challenges and emergent threats.

Since 1952, the WHO’s Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System has provided a platform for monitoring of cases and the sharing of data and viral samples. Information from institutions in 131 countries contributes to recommendations for the composition of seasonal influenza virus vaccines. The U.S. may be left out of this global system, which will hamper efforts to match vaccines to the circulating strains of flu.

The WHO also dispatches response teams around the world for outbreaks of numerous diseases such as mpox, dengue, Ebola virus disease or Middle East respiratory syndrome. The exclusion of American scientists will hamper these efforts and diminish the nation’s capacity to protect itself.

The policy shift in the U.S. poses challenges for Canada both as its northern neighbour and as a strong financial supporter of the WHO. The recent spread of measles within Canada, which resulted in loss of the country’s elimination status, reminds us that disease outbreaks are inevitable but progress in public health is not.

Renewed support of the WHO and other multilateral efforts, although desirable, should be matched by expanded investment in programs for disease surveillance and research, vaccine procurement and public health communication. Federal and provincial governments and the Public Health Agency of Canada will all have roles to play as Canada faces disease threats in a rapidly changing world.

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

– ref. How the U.S. withdrawal from WHO could affect global health powers and disease threats – https://theconversation.com/how-the-u-s-withdrawal-from-who-could-affect-global-health-powers-and-disease-threats-273768

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Addisu Lashitew, Associate professor, Business, McMaster University

Canada has announced an agreement to reduce its 100 per cent tariff on electric vehicle (EV) imports from China to 6.1 per cent. The tariffs will be replaced by an annual import quota of 49,000 EVs in 2026, rising gradually to 70,000 by 2030.

This phased opening is designed to help Canada diversify its supply chain and accelerate EV adoption without relying on subsidies. In return, China will lower tariffs on Canadian canola to 15 per cent by March and remove tariffs on a few other Canadian goods.

The rollback of Canada’s EV tariff wall marks a significant shift in the Canadian trade relationship with China. It also represents a notable de-escalation of trade tensions during a period of intense economic uncertainty, driven largely by protectionist American policy.

It will not, however, reshape Canada’s auto market overnight.

A modest opening with outsized effects

The initial 2026 quota amounts to about 2.5 per cent of total new vehicle sales in Canada, which was just below two million vehicles in 2025. In global terms, it’s also a modest amount, equivalent to only 2.2 per cent of BYD’s estimated 2025 EV sales (2.26 million vehicles) and three per cent of Tesla’s estimated 2025 EV sales (1.65 million vehicles).

For Canada’s struggling EV market, however, the policy change could provide a meaningful boost. The end of the federal Incentives for Zero-Emission Vehicles program in 2025 increased EV prices by roughly eight to 12 per cent. Higher upfront costs slowed demand, and EVs now account for about nine per cent of new vehicle sales, down from 15 per cent in 2024.

By opening the market to innovative EVs from China, the new policy should expand access to lower-cost models and help revive demand. China’s EV market includes more than 100 EV brands, including BYD, which recently overtook Tesla as the world’s largest EV maker.

The new policy also features other major brands like Geely, SAIC Group, Nio and XPeng, with several models priced within at about $30,000. Increased price competition could narrow the affordability gap that has slowed adoption since incentives were withdrawn.

Pivoting to China for diversification

The quota system likely reflects concern within Ottawa that unrestricted access for Chinese EVs could flood the Canadian market and disrupt local manufacturing. A phased opening gives automakers time to adjust and helps consumers become familiar with new Chinese brands.

It may also encourage foreign manufacturers to expand local assembly or partnerships to cater to growing EV demand. The government expects the deal to catalyze Chinese joint-venture investment that will deepen and diversify Canada’s EV supply chain.

The agreement also signals an effort to reduce Canada’s dependence on the United States, which is the destination for about 92 per cent of Canada’s auto and auto parts exports. This shift, however, starts from a very low base.

While China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner, merchandise exports to China were only $29.9 billion in 2024, or about 7.3 per cent of exports to the U.S.

For that reason, the seemingly ambitious target of increasing merchandise exports to China by 50 per cent by 2030 will not materially change Canada’s reliance on the U.S.

It is better understood as one element of a broader strategy to reduce exposure to an increasingly inward-looking and unpredictable partner.

The deal could also complicate Canada’s position ahead of future renegotiations of the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement. Prime Minister Mark Carney can reasonably argue that import volumes are small relative to total auto sales in Canada and the U.S. At the same time, deeper engagement with China signals alternatives and may modestly strengthen Canada’s leverage.

More EV adoption at lower government cost

The trade opening could support EV adoption at lower fiscal cost. The Incentives for Zero-Emission Vehicles program, which stalled after its funding was exhausted, cost the government $2.6 billion and supported approximately 546,000 EV purchases.

When rebates lapsed, annual EV sales declined by more than one-quarter, falling from 264,000 in 2024 to 191,000 in 2025.

As Canada contends with a growing fiscal deficit, expanding consumer choice through trade may prove more durable than relying on subsidies.

It not only reduces the need for public spending but also reduces the future cost of adoption by putting pressure on incumbents such as Tesla and GM to cut prices to compete with new entrants like BYD.

A wider set of affordable models should lift demand and, as the customer base expands, strengthen the case for faster charging network expansion. This could help Canada return to its mandate of 50 per cent EV sales by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2035, which was recently paused.

Why the quota needs a hard end date

Tariffs and quotas are often framed as temporary protections that give domestic producers breathing room amid competitive pressure. In practice, they can be difficult to unwind because beneficiaries lobby to preserve them.

Canada’s rollback of its tariff wall on Chinese EVs is unusual, precipitated by trade tensions with the U.S. and punishing reciprocal tariffs by China on its canola imports.

Absent similar pressure, the newly introduced quotas could outlive the intended five-year window. Automakers and their political allies will defend them, just as they defended the blanket EV tariffs that denied Canadians of access to affordable EVs.

Canada should explicitly commit to eliminating the quota by 2030. Moving to an open market regime will benefits consumers, strengthens competitiveness and supports environmental goals.

Addisu Lashitew 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. Lower tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles could boost adoption and diversify Canada’s trade – https://theconversation.com/lower-tariffs-on-chinese-electric-vehicles-could-boost-adoption-and-diversify-canadas-trade-273769

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Daphne Rena Idiz, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Arts, Culture and Media, University of Toronto

In late December 2025, it seemed like everyone went to “the cottage.” This is a reference to the steamy Crave megahit Heated Rivalry. Even The Guggenheim Museum of New York and Ottawa Tourism has jumped on the Heated Rivalry bandwagon.

Heated Rivalry has launched the careers of Texas native Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, from British Columbia. The actors play hockey rivals-turned-lovers Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander.

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The Heated Rivalry obsession is widespread, having topped Crave’s No. 1 most-watched spot for weeks and taken global audiences, TV networks and online algorithms by storm.

Storrie and Williams have appeared at the Golden Globes, on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and on Late Night with Seth Meyers.

In an era where data-crunching increasingly offers predictions about market-driven success, all this might make viewers wonder if Heated Rivalry has cracked the algorithmic code.

Risk-taking gone right

Was the show a bet on #booktok fans? Heated Rivalry is based on a book that is part of the popular Game Changers series by Canadian author Rachel Reid.

However, as scholars who have examined contemporary TV production, we agree with acting coach Anna Lamadrid that Heated Rivalry would never have been made if left solely to algorithmic analysis.

The standard algorithm-driven approach designed to entice the widest possible audience — typical of U.S. streaming giants like Netflix — would argue the series had limited appeal, no star power and a niche audience.

More likely, as creator Jacob Tierney told Myles McNutt, a professor of media studies, Crave trusted him and his vision. Tierney previously made the popular and award-winning shows Shoresy and Letterkenny.

As Tierney told McNutt, Heated Rivalry was greenlit by Crave but needed additional financing. Tierney approached several studios, but received notes “that would fundamentally change the story, or fundamentally change the tone.”

In a recent CBS interview with Montréal-born actor François Arnaud, who plays older gay hockey player Scott Hunter, Arnaud said he “didn’t think the show could have been made in the U.S.” He said Heated Rivalry was “at a big streamer before” that wanted changes, including “no kissing until Episode 5.”

Heated Rivalry is an example of risk-taking gone right at a time when there are calls to cancel international streamers in favour of investing in homegrown film and TV. Its success is also the result of a confluence of industry-level transformations in Canadian production and streaming.

A confluence of conditions

In the 1950s, only a few Canadian broadcasters made content entirely “in-house.” Production and distribution companies were operated by government-funded agencies, including the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the National Film Board of Canada.

Creative content consisted mostly of news and filmed theatre or dance productions. In the 1960s, pay TV emerged and appetite built for racier variety TV, game shows and talk shows.

By the 1970s, the baby boomer bubble — combined with arts funding and more affordable video and editing equipment — changed everything. Low-cost content for niche audiences proliferated on cable TV.

The Canadian media system moved toward independent production. Production companies were separated from broadcasters, owned and run by different people. But the ability to green-light Canadian-scripted TV shows still depended on acquiring distribution licences from a few major broadcasters.

This triggered funding from the Canada Media Fund and provincial or territorial tax credits, which still finance most productions. To spread financial risk, many dramas were co-productions between Canada and other countries.

By 2005, in the wake of broadband and the growth of more audacious content produced for smaller audiences, Canadian broadcasters shifted to reality (“unscripted”) TV as a relatively inexpensive genre that could draw big audiences.

Still, breakthrough dramatic programs — like Corner Gas (2004-09), Little Mosque on the Prairie (2007-12), Kim’s Convenience (2016-21) and Schitt’s Creek (2015-20) — dealt with the complexity and specificity of Canadian society.

Steamy streaming

Today, several key policy changes and corporate consolidations have brought smaller, riskier and explicitly Canadian projects to the screen.

The Online Streaming Act and the recently updated definition of Canadian content have targeted streaming services like Netflix and Crave to incentivize the production and discoverability of Canadian shows.

Shifts in policy have supported Canadian content, including funding for underrepresented voices. Heated Rivalry’s development ran parallel to recent policy and industry shifts.

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Bell Media, the largest Canadian media company, owns CTV and Crave. In March 2025, it acquired a majority stake of United Kingdom-based global distributor Sphere Abacus. This played a key role in Heated Rivalry’s development.

The Canada Media Fund contributed $3.1 million to Heated Rivalry. Culture Minister Marc Miller has also noted in addition to the federal funding, the series received tax credits. Eligible Canadian film or video productions can receive a refundable tax credit.

Bell Media committed to the show budget in March 2025, including a contribution from recently acquired Sphere Abacus.

Sean Cohan, Bell Media CEO, has said the company saw Heated Rivalry as a show that could move the conglomerate “from being seen as a legacy broadcaster to a digital-media content player with global impact.”

The series was shot in just over a month at a budget of less than CDN$5 million per episode and before long, stars Williams and Storrie were whisked away to the Golden Globes.

What’s next for Canadian productions?

Crave is already promoting Slo Pitch starring Schitt’s Creek actor Emily Hampshire and featuring Heated Rivalry’s Nadine Bhaba.

Set to premiere in 2026, this 10-episode mockumentary series follows a queer, underdog softball team. While the show is also about gay sports, it’s in a league all its own — promising “beer, lesbians and baseball.”

Is Crave a beacon of hope for Canadian content? Maybe Canadian producers and distributors can leverage the Heated Rivalry effect to galvanize Canadian and international audiences onto more Canadian-produced intellectual property (IP).

The issue of IP is now a key sticking point in multiple unresolved lawsuits by Netflix, Amazon and Spotify that have been brought to the federal government.

The looming Warner Bros Discovery (Warner Bros, HBO) acquisition by Netflix will directly impact Crave. As HBO Max’s sole Canadian distributor, there’s some worry about what could happen to this lucrative content for the Canadian streamer should Netflix gobble up all of the IP — a major issue for distribution deals and Canadian creatives.

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How do we define Canadian content? Debates will shape how creatives make a living

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Not to stretch the hockey metaphor too tight, but policy sets the rules of the game. Corporate and government funding bring the players to the rink. Producers and writers aspire to be winning coaches. Audiences want to be on the edge of their seats.

They also want more choices: exploring riskier storylines, meeting new talent and seeing their own lives — and Canadian content — on screen. With Heated Rivalry’s success, they seem to have it all this season.

Daphne Rena Idiz receives funding from the Creative Labour and Critical Futures (CLCF) project.

Claudia Sicondolfo receives funding from SSHRC for Archives in Action and Platforming Leisure and is a Board Member for the Toronto Queer Film Festival.

MaryElizabeth Luka receives funding from University of Toronto Cluster of Scholarly Prominence program (Creative Labour Critical Futures) as well as from periodic competitive, peer-adjudicated Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council funding programs for research in their areas of expertise.

– ref. Heated Rivalry: How investment in Canadian content can pay off at home and abroad – https://theconversation.com/heated-rivalry-how-investment-in-canadian-content-can-pay-off-at-home-and-abroad-272982

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Guillermo Candiz, Assistant Professor, Human Plurality, Université de l’Ontario français

Since February 2025, thousands of Venezuelan asylum-seekers have been turned away from the United States-Mexico border and denied the right to apply for protection in the U.S. Along with other Venezuelans who were living in the U.S. and have been deported, they’ve been forced to head south, either back to Venezuela or to other countries in Central and South America.

This phenomenon — commonly described as reverse migration — raises important questions about the capacity or willingness of countries in the region to ensure the safety and security of these migrants.

As part of ongoing research, we talked to asylum-seekers and collected their insights during our field work in Costa Rica in November and December 2025. Our interviews revealed that those who abandoned the hope of crossing into the U.S. made the decision for many reasons.

Expecting a better life in Venezuela was not among them. Instead, many faced repeated obstacles along the way, which accumulated over time into what can be described as journey fatigue.

Exhaustion

The migrants we interviewed experienced physical exhaustion from long periods of waiting, economic hardship, fear and incidents of violence in Mexico, as well as fraud and theft, while access to institutional or humanitarian support steadily declined.

The final blow for most of them came from changes in the U.S. asylum and temporary protection policies. These included the termination of the two‑year humanitarian parole program, the freezing of asylum application processing for Venezuelans and nationals of 18 other countries and the inclusion of Venezuelans in travel bans restricting entry for citizens of 39 countries.

These policy shifts were combined with the abrupt cancellation of what was known as the CBP One mobile application and all previously approved appointments made using the app.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s app allowed asylum-seekers to submit biographic information to set up an appointment prior to their scheduled arrival at a port of entry. This sudden change dashed the hopes of thousands who had been waiting for an opportunity to request asylum at the U.S. border.

Decisions to head back south rather than continue pursuing entry into the U.S. are made under conditions of high uncertainty. Migration regimes, support infrastructure and facilitation networks change rapidly — some disappearing as others emerge — and often without clear mechanisms for sharing information among migrants or those trying to help them.

In this environment, many people remain trapped for months in waiting spaces, with no real possibility of moving forward and no means of survival while waiting, resorting to begging or informal work.

A Venezuelan couple we interviewed at the Costa Rica–Panama border described how they often sang in restaurants or begged to feed their family, pay for bus travel between countries, and, at times, secure a roof over their heads when shelters run by religious organizations were unavailable.

Not safe to return

For international organizations and receiving countries, “voluntary return” is often presented as a preferred solution.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) administers the Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration (AVRR) Program. As we learned during our Costa Rican field work, the IOM facilitates the return of Venezuelans to their home country when they reach Panama.

But whether a return is feasibile depends directly on conditions in the country of origin. Most Venezuelan migrants we interviewed didn’t think it was safe for them to return home.

U.S. intervention creates more uncertainty

The recent U.S. intervention in Venezuela and the capture of President Nicolás Maduro did nothing to change this political scenario.

Instead, it has injected regional uncertainty that transcends Venezuela’s borders. After Maduro’s capture, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez assumed the role of interim president, suggesting the country’s authoritarian regime can survive the U.S. intervention.

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The Trump administration says it will oversee Venezuela during an unspecified transition period, but the implications are unclear.

The post-invasion situation does not include the transition of power to opposition leaders like González Urrutia or Corina Machado, even though Machado just handed over her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump.

Settling elsewhere

Within this tense and uncertain climate, many displaced Venezuelans heading south consider settling in Chile, Colombia or Costa Rica as alternative destinations.

That’s despite the fact that these countries lack the institutional capacity and infrastructure to absorb sustained reverse migration and are showing growing signs of rejecting Venezuelans.

This is evident with the recent election of Jose Antonio Kast in Chile, whose campaign focused on controlling “irregular immigration,” threatening mass deportations of migrants — mostly Venezuelans — and fuelling a climate of social hostility.

As we found during our research in Costa Rica, the country’s asylum system is stretched to the limit and appointments to put in a refugee claim can take more than two years to be scheduled, not counting the adjudication process.

These delays and the uncertainty of outcomes for migrants cause anxiety among displaced people and discourage them from attempting to seek protection in Costa Rica.

Research on transit migration to the U.S. or Europe has shown that these movements are fragmented, multi-directional and often circular. Policy changes — both in countries of destination and transit — new opportunities for social support or jobs, new intimate relationships or new information on possibilities of border crossing reshape migration trajectories.

Venezuelan reverse migration reflects similar dynamics, but unfolds in even more uncertain and precarious ways because the capacity of various states to meet the needs of displaced people is severely limited. This leads to even more severely fragmented routes for return migrants than for those travelling north.

Global North must step up

In light of these dynamics, it’s crucial to reaffirm the international protection regime and to recognize the historical responsibility of northern countries — including the United States, Canada and EU member states — to ensure effective access to asylum for people displaced by violence, conflict and persecution.

Any reform of regional migration governance must begin from this core principle.

We therefore call on governments, international organizations, humanitarian groups and civil society to uphold international protection regimes and to design responses that reflect the complex realities of shifting migration flows and the rights of people on the move.

Guillermo Candiz receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Tanya Basok receives funding from Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada

– ref. American border crackdown forces Venezuelan migrants on a perilous journey back south – https://theconversation.com/american-border-crackdown-forces-venezuelan-migrants-on-a-perilous-journey-back-south-272974