The Conversation – Canada – Page 56

November 27, 2025

Tracking with care: The ethics of using location tracking technology with people living with dementia

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Madalena Pamela Liougas, PhD Candidate, Rehabilitation Science Institute, University of Toronto

Imagine you’re 83 years old, living with dementia in a long-term care home. Lately, your caregivers keep asking you to wear a bracelet on your wrist 24/7. They say it’s for your safety, so they can locate you quickly when needed.

At first, you think it’s OK, and it looks like a watch, so you go along. But you soon notice it never comes off. You must wear it everywhere, even in private spaces like your bed and bathroom. This becomes annoying, especially when you realize that it doesn’t have any functions that are useful to you.

What you may be unaware of is that it also collects information about your daily movements.

This technology is a real-time location system (RTLS), and it’s becoming increasingly common in hospitals and long-term care homes. They are promoted as improving physical safety and quality of care and are used for nurse calls, contact tracing, preventing unaccompanied exits and more.

Research demonstrating RTLS’s worth is sparse, and its use raises questions around data security, privacy and control. This is the case for those most affected by RTLS — older adults, family caregivers and direct care staff — whose perspectives are often overlooked in technology research.

Older people sitting at a table and a younger person standing, speaking with them — Care staff in a study said it was often simpler to locate residents in person.
(Pexels/Jsme Mila)

Real-time location systems

An RTLS works like an indoor GPS. Residents under care at a long-term care home (and sometimes staff) wear a tag or a bracelet with a sensor that communicates with beacons placed throughout the walls and ceilings of the building. The system enables the tracking of people wearing the sensor in real time, and collects movement data. It can also send automated geo-fencing alerts, such as when someone enters or exits a room.

Interest in RTLS in long-term care and other health-care settings largely stems from the belief that they can be useful for predicting changes in health and well-being if clinical algorithms could be developed to analyze movement data.

As part of a larger project, our research team conducted a study with residents, family caregivers, direct care staff and administrators in one home that purchased an RTLS. Administrators and family caregivers told us that RTLS could make care safer and more efficient by increasing staff’s ability to continuously monitor residents and enable quicker intervention.

However, staff informed us that it was often simpler to locate residents in person, and that they lacked time and resources for continuous remote monitoring of residents or to investigate and respond in real time.

This reinforced our findings from an earlier study of this technology in a hospital setting that similarly suggested that RTLS may increase staff workload. More concerningly, we found that administrators, staff and caregivers had limited awareness of this technology’s ethical implications, including its impact on residents, and lacked the knowledge and skills to involve residents in decision-making.

Power and control

In the setting we studied, consent for the use of RTLS came from substitute decision-makers — often a family caregiver — as most residents of the home lived with severe cognitive impairment or dementia. Many caregivers consented quickly, believing RTLS would help staff stay aware of residents’ whereabouts, without fully considering residents’ preferences. Few family caregivers involved residents in the consent process, despite their legal obligation as their substitute decision-makers to align decisions with residents’ values.

While most residents agreed to wear the bracelet, some explicitly rejected the idea of sharing their location data with family or staff. Over time, many wearers found no direct value in it and frequently described it as uncomfortable and heavy.

Caregivers didn’t fully know what data was collected by RTLS, who owned the data or how it would be used to improve care beyond localization. Still, most believed that having more information about residents’ movements was beneficial and morally justified the continuous surveillance.

Although privacy rights are protected by law in Canada and the United States, many family caregivers told the researchers they believed residents gave up those rights by entering long-term care. Some also sought access to RTLS data collected about their family members, expecting it would be shared to enhance transparency, although this never happened.

Staff faced their own challenges. Some were unsure how to explain RTLS’s benefits and risks to residents and to their families or respond to residents’ concerns. They lacked guidance on whether to respect a resident’s refusal to wear the tracking bracelet or override it based on family consent.

This left staff uncertain about how to balance residents’ autonomy with their duty of care, and contributed to moral distress among employees.

Future considerations

Our research suggests RTLS offers uncertain benefits and creates new challenges in an already under-resourced sector. Its use also raises ethical concerns, particularly around surveillance and control, which can exacerbate power imbalances and perpetuate digital ageism and digital ableism.

Digital ageism refers to discrimination on the basis of age that intersects with digital economies. Examples include limited or stereotypical representation of old age or older people in data training sets, tech design that doesn’t reflect the heterogeneity of older users, the push to replace humans with technologies in caring for older adults and automated algorithmic decision-making that discriminates against older adults.

Decision-making around RTLS needs to fully involve those who will be affected by these technologies. Before deciding to wear a tracking bracelet, residents and families should be supported in discussing this with care staff who help them to understand and reflect on:

What information will this technology collect?
Who will see it?
How will it be used in practice to improve my care?
Are these improvements worth compromising my privacy?

This is ethical decision-making: transparent, collaborative and grounded in dignity.

Alisa Grigorovich receives funding from AMS Healthcare (Fellowship in Compassion and Artificial Intelligence) and SSHRC.

Madalena Pamela Liougas 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. Tracking with care: The ethics of using location tracking technology with people living with dementia – https://theconversation.com/tracking-with-care-the-ethics-of-using-location-tracking-technology-with-people-living-with-dementia-268459

November 27, 2025

Could a national, public ‘CanGPT’ be Canada’s answer to ChatGPT?

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Fenwick McKelvey, Associate Professor in Information and Communication Technology Policy, Concordia University

As generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini and others reshape the digital landscape, much of the conversation in Canada has focused on commercial innovation.

But what if AI were developed as a public utility rather than as a commercial service? Canada’s long history with public service media — namely the CBC and Radio-Canada — offers a useful model for thinking about how AI could serve the public amid growing calls for a public interest approach to AI policy.

Commercial AI has largely been built on the assumption that user-generated content posted online is available to train commercial AI. Focusing so much on the technical success of generative AI ignores that its innovations depend on access to global cultural knowledge — the result of treating the internet as a “knowledge commons.”

AI would have been impossible without public data, and much of that data was taken without contributing back to the public system. Canada, in fact, has a historical link to AI innovation.

Early work in automated translation involved a tape reel that was anonymously sent to IBM in the 1980s containing Canadian parliamentary transcripts. The multilingual material helped train early translation algorithms. What if Canada intentionally trained the future of AI in the same way?

CanGPT: a Canadian public-service AI

A growing number of countries are experimenting with national or publicly governed AI models. Switzerland, Sweden and the Netherlands are all building AI systems with the goal of creating public AI services. The Canadian federal service has some of its own experiments with its own alternative to ChatGPT, CanChat, but it’s only an internal tool.

In Montréal, many arts-based organizations have begun discussing creating their own commons-based AI infrastructure and tools, but they lack infrastructure and resources to advance their mission. A national initiative could help.

There is precedent for this approach. When radio and television first emerged, many countries created public broadcasters — like the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) in the United Kingdom and the CBC in Canada — to ensure new communication technologies served democratic needs.

A similar approach could work for AI. Instead of letting companies build the future of AI, Canadian Parliament could sponsor the creation of its own AI model and expand the mandate of an organization like the CBC to deliver better access to AI. Such a public model could draw on materials in the public domain, government datasets and publicly licensed cultural resources.

CBC/Radio-Canada also has an enormous, multilingual archive of audio, video and text going back decades. That corpus could become a foundational dataset for a Canadian public-service AI, if treated as a public good.

A national model could become an open-source system available either as an online service or as a locally run application. Beyond providing public access, CanGPT could anchor a broader national AI strategy rooted in public values rather than commercial incentives.

Setting democratic boundaries for AI

Developing CanGPT would force a needed debate about what AI should and should not be able to do. Generative AI is already implicated in deepfake pornography and other forms of technology-assisted violence.

Today, the guardrails governing these harms are set privately by tech companies. Some platforms impose minimal moderation; others, like OpenAI, ban politicians and lobbyists from using ChatGPT for official campaign business. These decisions have profound political implications that shape content moderation and social media governance.

Content moderation and acceptable-use policies could be solved through normative principals embedded in CanGPT. A publicly governed AI model could allow Canadians to debate and define these boundaries through democratic institutions rather than through technology firms.

Why a public AI model matters

Public AI is a different tack than government’s infrastructure-heavy approach to AI. The federal government — despite growing concerns that we are in an AI bubble — has invested billions in a big, costly AI Sovereign Compute Strategy.

The policy might be ineffective, end up going largely to American firms and dismantle Canada’s capacity to build public-interest AI.

Canada’s AI agenda has a big environmental impact. A public-good framework could encourage the opposite: frugal, energy-efficient models that run on smaller, local machines and prioritize targeted tasks rather than massive, multi-billion parameter models like ChatGPT. A smaller public model could contribute to this by having a lower environmental footprint.

This approach could stand in direct contrast to the federal government’s efforts to build large-scale AI, as reflected in the massive data centre investments outlined in recent federal budgets. Canada has made major investments in big AI projects. If the bubble bursts, however, smaller-scale AI initiatives may offer a less risky future.

Imagining a public future for AI

Building CanGPT would not be simple. Questions remain about how to fund it, how to update it and how to maintain competitive performance compared with commercial AI.

But it would open a national conversation about AI’s social purpose, regulatory standards and the role of public institutions in digital infrastructure. CanGPT is, admittedly, a strange idea, but it might be precisely what is lacking in Canada’s approach to public service media and digital sovereignty.

At minimum, imagining a public AI model opens the possibilities of new ways to deliver on the promises of AI other than another subscription sold to us by Big Tech.

Fenwick McKelvey receives funding from Social Science and Humanities Research Council and the Fonds de recherche du Québec.

– ref. Could a national, public ‘CanGPT’ be Canada’s answer to ChatGPT? – https://theconversation.com/could-a-national-public-cangpt-be-canadas-answer-to-chatgpt-231170

November 27, 2025

Beyond Zohran Mamdani: Social media amplifies the politics of feelings

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Merlyna Lim, Canada Research Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University

Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City mayor has spurred global celebrations and pride. Scores of social media users worldwide celebrate and claim him as one of their own.

Muslims across the globe, including in Indonesia — home to the world’s largest Muslim population, where I was born and raised — rejoice that he is Muslim. Indians take pride in Mamdani’s Indian roots. Ugandans cheer his victory because Kampala is his birthplace.

Representation does matter. It can be deeply affirming to see someone whose identity resonates with you succeed in a foreign political landscape.

However, Mamdani didn’t win simply because of who he is. He won because of what he did, the politics that his campaigns were based on — a platform that focuses on the cost of living, from utility bills to grocery bills to bus fares to child care to rent — and, more importantly, the feelings, the trust and cohesion generated in the network of people who organized with and for him.

As a scholar who examines digital media and information technology in relation to citizen participation and democracy, I know that political behaviour research has long observed that voters don’t choose based on policy alone: they vote based on identity, group belonging, emotional attachments and symbolic cues, all of which speak to “the politics of feelings.”

This refers to politics that mobilize and build power through shared feelings and emotional bonds.

Identity, platform, visibility

That Mamdani is Muslim — the son of a South Asian African Muslim father and a Hindu Indian mother, born in Uganda — and that he has lived an immigrant community experience in New York is a formidable part of his story.

This profoundly matters in a political landscape that often marginalizes such identities — and helps explain why he has become so visible online and globally.

Viral videos, algorithmically boosted content and his public persona amplified this visibility. Online, the Zohran Mamdani phenomenon illustrates the power of emotion-driven mobilization, the process through which emotional currents bring people into alignment or connection with a cause, figure or community.

Identity and emotion have always been central to politics. Social media didn’t invent the politics of feelings; it accelerated and amplified them.

Branding a politician

Social media political participation doesn’t operate within a deliberative civic culture, but within an algorithmic marketing culture where algorithmic targeting and data-driven marketing principles shape how persuasion, visibility and emotion circulate.

Branding shapes the way content looks and feels. Algorithms push what’s likely to grab attention, and human users — naturally drawn to emotion — interact with it, feeding the system in return. Together, they produce a self-reinforcing loop where high-arousal content dominates, as a consequence of the interplay of marketing logic, machine learning and user behaviour.

The algorithm rewards emotion, not analysis. It privileges what’s instantly legible — a name, a face, a faith — over the collective labour and work behind a political movement.

Hope, pride as well as fear, outrage

Posts highlighting Mamdani’s Muslim, immigrant or brown identity, whether in celebration or attack, elicit emotions — hope, pride, fear or outrage. These emotions fuel engagement, which algorithms amplify, generating cycles of visibility which can simultaneously mobilize support and provoke backlash.

Indeed, the same identity categories that make him so celebrated abroad have also been weaponized against him at home in the United States.

Through social media disinformation fuelled by racism and Islamophobia, Mamdani’s opponents have framed him as a “Muslim extremist,” “communist,” “jihadi terrorist,” “brown” and “dirty” or a “threat” to American values.

The flattening happens from both sides: he is either attacked for his identity or adored because of it.

The irony is sharp. For example, some Indonesians embrace a man named Mamdani — Mamdanis are part of the Khoja Shia community — while turning a blind eye to anti-Shia persecution at home.

Similarly, some Modi supporters claim Mamdani’s Indian heritage without acknowledging that he is a vocal critic of Modi.

Identity becomes politicized

We can see similar dynamics elsewhere. Sadiq Khan’s visibility as a Muslim mayor of London generated both celebration and Islamophobic backlash on social media, amplified through viral videos, memes and algorithmically boosted news cycles.

In Canada, former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s youthful, multicultural and photogenic persona generated strong emotional attachment and global circulation while overshadowing his substantive political work.

This is how identity becomes politicized. By focusing the debate on who someone is, attention is diverted from what they stand for. It’s easier to categorize than to engage with structural critique.

In an algorithmic age, we consume politics in byte sizes, where visibility often displaces understanding and emotional attachment overshadows knowledge-seeking. It’s easier to celebrate a face than to join a struggle.

Emotion meets lived experience

But visibility is not the same as electoral power. We learn from Mamdani’s case that, for local politics, symbolism is rarely enough. It operates in a different register from national or global scales.

While Mamdani’s online persona benefited from algorithmic amplification, his campaign was also built on grassroots, volunteer-based mobilization combining door-knocking and neighbourhood conversations across the city of New York.

In local elections, voters aren’t distant algorithmic audiences. They’re neighbours, co-workers and community members who experience the effects of policy in their daily lives. A candidate’s identity, promises and track record must resonate with the residents’ tangible needs. Branding and emotional attachment help, but they cannot replace direct knowledge of local realities and persistent organizing work.

Mamdani platform

To cast a ballot for Mamdani in New York, voters needed to not only embrace his identities, but also his platform and the fact that, like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, he’s unapologetically a democratic socialist.

The word “socialism” is not widely accepted in the United States, as it’s often conflated with “communism” — the remnant of Cold War anti-communism propaganda. It’s not popular in Indonesia, India and Uganda either.

Whether Mamdani will fulfil his voters’ expectations is too early to tell. What is clear is that his story isn’t just about Muslim pride or immigrant success. It’s about what’s possible when people organize across differences for a common cause. It’s about choosing to see beyond who someone is to what they stand for.

Merlyna Lim 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. Beyond Zohran Mamdani: Social media amplifies the politics of feelings – https://theconversation.com/beyond-zohran-mamdani-social-media-amplifies-the-politics-of-feelings-269792

November 27, 2025

Beyond Zohran Mamdani: Social media amplifes the politics of feelings

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Merlyna Lim, Canada Research Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University

Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City mayor has spurred global celebrations and pride. Scores of social media users worldwide celebrate and claim him as one of their own.

Representation does matter. It can be deeply affirming to see someone whose identity resonates with you succeed in a foreign political landscape.

This refers to politics that mobilize and build power through shared feelings and emotional bonds.

Identity, platform, visibility

This profoundly matters in a political landscape that often marginalizes such identities — and helps explain why he has become so visible online and globally.

Identity and emotion have always been central to politics. Social media didn’t invent the politics of feelings; it accelerated and amplified them.

Branding a politician

The algorithm rewards emotion, not analysis. It privileges what’s instantly legible — a name, a face, a faith — over the collective labour and work behind a political movement.

Hope, pride as well as fear, outrage

Indeed, the same identity categories that make him so celebrated abroad have also been weaponized against him at home in the United States.

The flattening happens from both sides: he is either attacked for his identity or adored because of it.

The irony is sharp. For example, some Indonesians embrace a man named Mamdani — Mamdanis are part of the Khoja Shia community — while turning a blind eye to anti-Shia persecution at home.

Similarly, some Modi supporters claim Mamdani’s Indian heritage without acknowledging that he is a vocal critic of Modi.

Identity becomes politicized

Emotion meets lived experience

Mamdani platform

– ref. Beyond Zohran Mamdani: Social media amplifes the politics of feelings – https://theconversation.com/beyond-zohran-mamdani-social-media-amplifes-the-politics-of-feelings-269792

November 27, 2025

New study finds Pacific Northwest birds are becoming more common in the mountains as the climate warms

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Benjamin Freeman, Assistant Professor, School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology

We know that climate change is affecting animals and habitats across our world, but figuring out how isn’t always easy. In fact, for years, I told audiences we simply could not know how mountain birds in the Pacific Northwest were responding to climate change. But as my recent research proves, I was mistaken.

It wasn’t for lack of scientific interest — biologists worry that mountain species are vulnerable to warming temperatures. It wasn’t for lack of personal interest — I grew up among the snow-capped mountains of the region and wanted to know what was happening in my own backyard. It was because we lacked the data.

Specifically, I thought there was no historical data describing where Pacific Northwest birds lived along mountain slopes prior to recent climate change. Historical data provides a crucial baseline. With good historical data in hand, researchers can compare where species live now to where they used to live. In protected landscapes where people aren’t directly changing the habitat, climate change is the main force that could impact where birds live.

As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, I had found historical datasets and conducted resurveys in far-flung locations from Peru to Papua New Guinea. Yet I did not know what was happening to the birds living in the mountains visible from campus.

The city of Vancouver is visible in the distance from nearby mountain peaks — Researchers conducted surveys in the mountains near Vancouver, B.C. to find out how climate change is impacting birds that live in the area.
(Benjamin Freeman)

Then, one day I found a scientific paper describing an impressive bird survey from the early 1990s from these nearby mountains. I contacted the lead author, wildlife ecologist Louise Waterhouse, who told me she still had the original data and was interested in a resurvey.

The expectation is that mountain species should respond to hotter temperatures. Some species like the warmer areas at the base of the mountain, while others require cold areas near the mountain top.

Bird surveys

The general prediction is that plants and animals will move to higher elevations where temperatures remain cool, as if they are riding a slow-motion escalator. This spells trouble for mountaintop species, which have nowhere higher to move to. For them, climate change can set in motion an “escalator to extinction.”

To determine whether this was true, I first had to relocate the locations that Waterhouse and her colleagues had surveyed. Global positioning system units did not exist at the time, so they marked their survey locations on maps. I spent days in the forest, tracing my finger along the map as I walked through the woods.

Luckily for me, Waterhouse conducted her surveys in old-growth forests. With their towering trees and massive decaying logs on the forest floor, it was easy to tell when I stepped from the surrounding younger forest into one of these ancient groves.

Then I had to do the modern surveys. This required waking up at 4 a.m. for a month. Birds are most active in the early morning, so that’s the best time to conduct research.

While it’s never fun to set an early alarm, it was glorious to spend dawn among giant trees listening for birds. One morning a bobcat padded along a mossy log just a couple of metres from where I stood.

Another day a barred owl swooped noiselessly past me like a forest ghost. And every morning I conducted survey after survey, scribbling the species I encountered in my notebook.

What we found

After the survey work was completed, our team analyzed the data. We found that temperatures have increased by around 1 C in southwestern British Columbia since the early 1990s.

We wondered whether this warming would set the escalator to extinction in motion. But the main response we found was that species still live in the same slices of mountainside but have become more abundant at higher elevations. That suggests most species living in old-growth forests in this region are resilient to climate change so far.

Our resurvey is kind of like going to your doctor for a routine physical exam, but for an entire bird community. We found most species are doing well, akin to a general good report from your doctor. But we also identified problems.

Most notably, the Canada jay has dramatically declined and is on the escalator to extinction. This grey-and-white bird, also known as “whiskey jack,” is well-loved for its bold behaviour and intelligence and is considered by some to be Canada’s national bird. Follow-up research is urgently needed to help these charismatic jays persist in this region.

Our study provides a clear picture of how birds are responding to climate change in the mountains near Vancouver. This information is directly useful to land managers and conservationists.

I think back to the years when I said this study was impossible. If I hadn’t come across Waterhouse’s study that one grey afternoon, the hard-won data that she and her team collected might have been lost.

Now, as an assistant professor at Georgia Tech, I have created the Mountain Bird Network to save and share such legacy datasets from mountains across the globe. Who knows what other mountains have high-quality historical data?

Thinking about mountain birds, I realize my toes are tapping as I look to the alarm clock and decide that maybe I need more 4 a.m. wake-ups in my life.

Benjamin Freeman receives funding from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation.

– ref. New study finds Pacific Northwest birds are becoming more common in the mountains as the climate warms – https://theconversation.com/new-study-finds-pacific-northwest-birds-are-becoming-more-common-in-the-mountains-as-the-climate-warms-270041

November 26, 2025

Peace in Ukraine? Believe it when you see it, especially if Russian demands are prioritized

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Oleksa Drachewych, Assistant Professor in History, Western University

The United States recently — and suddenly — announced a 28-point peace plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, seemingly jointly written with Russian delegates, and presented it to Ukraine.

The leaked contents of the peace plan caused concerns for Ukrainian representatives, European leaders and some American politicians.

Yet it has nonetheless led to “meaningful progress”, according to the White House, on a revised peace proposal drafted by Ukrainian and American delegates in Geneva. Ukraine has reportedly agreed to the deal, with minor tweaks, while Russia says it’s premature to say a resolution is close, even as Russian representatives met with U.S. delegates in Abu Dhabi to discuss the revised plan.

What was in the first plan?

The leaked initial 28-point plan was criticized for asserting many Russian demands that date back to the initial peace negotiations of March and April 2022:

It placed a limit of 600,000 troops on Ukraine’s military;
It prevented Ukraine from having long-range missiles;
It placed a permanent ban on Ukrainian membership in NATO;
It included protections of Russian language and the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

It also explicitly gave the entire Donbas region of eastern Ukraine to Russia, and called on the international community to recognize full Russian control of the Donbas and Crimea and control of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia on the front lines.

In return, there would be “reliable security guarantees” envisioned by U.S. President Donald Trump: a NATO-style “Article 5” for Ukraine. This would mean if Ukraine was purposefully attacked by Russia in the future, the U.S. and other parties involved would come to Ukraine’s defence through sanctions, diplomatic pressure and military support, if necessary.

In many of the economic and security arrangements that could emerge from the agreement, Russia and the United States would manage them together under the terms of the 28-point plan.

The original plan also offered amnesty to all parties for any crimes and atrocities committed during the war, meaning Russia would not be brought to justice for war crimes. It also called for Russia’s return to European and global affairs, ending its political isolation with the West by reforming the G8. In short, the agreement would essentially act as if the war in Ukraine never happened.

Was this a joint U.S.-Russia plan?

The origins of the peace plan have been widely debated. The stilted language in the English version has led some to speculate it was translated from Russian).

American senators said U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, when briefing them, called the deal a “Russian wish list.” The draft reportedly came as a result of meetings held in Florida between Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, a noted Putin supporter.

Rubio has insisted it was a U.S.-crafted document while Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia could accept the peace plan.

The fact that the document tended to mirror many of Russia’s demands immediately put Ukraine, and Europe, on the defensive.

Trump declared that Ukraine would have until American Thanksgiving — Thursday, Nov. 27 — to agree to the plan. He has since softened his stance. But he’s also lambasted Ukraine’s leadership for not showing sufficient “gratitude” for American efforts to bring peace to Ukraine.

In response, European leaders offered their own peace plan. They largely removed some of Russia’s most egregious demands, keeping some of the 28 points, while placing sensitive issues like NATO membership as something to be determined by NATO members and Ukraine.

Details of Europe’s plan

But it also acceded to some Russian demands, including accepting a cap on Ukraine’s military and offering Russia re-entry into the G8. It included a provision for territorial swaps with negotiations starting from the current front lines instead of recognizing Russia’s annexations.

European proposals include using frozen Russian assets as reparations for Russia’s aggression, eliminating any of the amnesty clauses and making the European Union and NATO the key players in any future political, economic and military security arrangements.

The European deal also removes key qualifiers in the original 28-point plan that could be manipulated by Russian misinformation — namely that Ukraine would be forced to face Russia alone if it struck either St. Petersburg or Moscow with a missile or it failed to “de-Nazify”, a common and erroneous Russian line of attack against Ukraine.

The Kremlin rejected the European counter-plan outright.

Where does the deal stand now?

Ukrainian and American officials recently met in Geneva to discuss the peace plan. Emerging from the meeting, European leaders were cautiously optimistic while insisting a lot more work needed to be done. Trump stated that “something good just may be happening.”

So what resulted from that meeting? Few details have been leaked. Sources have shared that the 28-point plan has now been pared down to 19. It has also been suggested that key issues like territorial swaps and NATO accession have been left for Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss at a future meeting.

Ukrainian officials have said the plan has been substantially revised and reflects Ukraine’s concerns.

The Russian response has been cagey, to say the least. Since there’s been no formal presentation of any revised peace plan, they are electing to say nothing firm. But U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll recently met with Russian delegates in Abu Dhabi.. Russian sources, meanwhile, have restated their preference for the original 28-point plan.

Seeing is believing

While this appears to be the most notable progress in the peace process in months, expectations should be tempered until there’s a presidential summit between Zelenskyy and Putin and until their signatures are on a treaty.

Such momentum for peace has happened in the past. And it has often been scuttled by the key sticking points of both nations. Ukraine has continued to demand extensive security guarantees, justice for Russian war crimes, and has rejected territorial swaps. Russia has wanted a pliable Ukraine and one that could remain in its orbit politically and economically. Fundamentally, these positions haven’t changed.

At this point, it appears the Ukrainians have managed to bring the Americans to their side in the latest peace talks, which reflects the importance Ukraine places on U.S. support in their fight against Russia. Russia has elected to say little, but if it was to agree to the revised deal, it would represent a seismic shift.

For those reasons, believe in the success in the peace process when you actually see it.

Oleksa Drachewych 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. Peace in Ukraine? Believe it when you see it, especially if Russian demands are prioritized – https://theconversation.com/peace-in-ukraine-believe-it-when-you-see-it-especially-if-russian-demands-are-prioritized-270436

November 26, 2025

Ontario’s Bill 33 expands policing in schools and will erode democratic oversight

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Salsabel Almanssori, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Windsor

Ontario’s new Bill 33, what the province calls the Supporting Children and Students Act, gives Education Minister Paul Calandra sweeping authority to take over boards. It also mandates boards to work with local police to implement school resource officer programs where they are available and opens the door to removing school board trustees entirely.

When Ontario passed Bill 33 last week, the government framed it as a necessary intervention to “put school boards back on track” and strengthen “our ability to keep our schools safe” and “students’ ability to succeed.”

Earlier this year, the education minister took over over five school boards using earlier versions of these powers, citing financial mismanagement. He’s now signalled more boards are in his sights under Bill 33.

As an education scholar, educator and parent with children in Ontario’s public schools, I am alarmed by the repercussions this bill will have on student safety and the future of equitable and democratic schooling in the province.

I am far from alone. Student trustees, advocacy groups and the NDP warn the bill will silence local voices and erode the democratic oversight that is central to public education.

Teacher unions criticize this legislation and the steps taken towards it as an attempt to centralize control while avoiding the real issues: chronic underfunding, understaffed classrooms, deteriorating infrastructure, poor mental health supports and cuts to special education.

Policing won’t improve safety

Despite government claims, there is no evidence that policing in schools improves safety. In decades of international research, studies have consistently shown that policing in schools does not prevent violence. Instead, it contributes to the school-to-prison nexus, a continuum through which punitive school practices increase young people’s contact with police, courts and long-term criminalization.

In mandating police access to school premises and other school-police collaboration, Bill 33 names no exception even in boards where “school resource officer” programs were ended after sustained grassroots advocacy and community consultation.

Policies that mandate sanctioned surveillance, control, punishment, violence or contribute to the threat of incarceration to preserve state interests — “carceral” approaches — predict lower achievement, higher dropout rates and increased likelihood of later arrest.

A 2025 study on mass incarceration and schools makes a similar point: tackling the over-representation of racialized people in prisons must be integrated with systemic responses to providing equitable opportunities through schooling and community-based resources. When schools rely on policing, they don’t solve the roots of harm.

The expansion of policing in schools disproportionately affects Black, Indigenous and racialized students, students with disabilities, immigrant and lower-income youth and otherwise marginalized communities. These groups are significantly more likely to be suspended, expelled or referred to police even when accounting for the severity of behaviours.

Criminalization inside schools also intensifies racial disparities in society.

Mandated policing will deepen student mistrust

Police presence also changes how students respond to harm. I study violence in schools and in my own research on what I call “the snitch factor,” I find a hidden layer of harm shapes how young people decide whether to disclose violence. Many students avoid reporting because they expect escalation, retaliation or being labelled as the problem rather than helped.

Students see disclosures leading to discipline and punishment, not support. When schools adopt carceral responses, students learn that reporting can bring more risk than resolution.

Bill 33’s policing provisions risk amplifying these dynamics. When students believe that disclosure will trigger police involvement or harsh punishment, they often stay silent. This undermines safety, particularly for youth who already mistrust institutional responses.

Local democracy is at stake

One of the most profound changes in Bill 33 is its weakening of local governance. Allowing the minister to appoint supervisors, it shifts power from elected trustees to political appointees who do not live in the communities they oversee.

Without trustees, communities lose a key mechanism for oversight, transparency and responsiveness. It also accelerates stakeholder concerns about increasing privatization and centralization in the education system, trends that have accompanied funding cuts and service erosion.

Policing Free Schools, which has led provincial advocacy to remove policing from schools, argues that Bill 33 is a top-down political intervention that ignores evidence. Their position is grounded in an international coalition and research showing that police presence increases harm.

Teacher unions have also warned that mandatory policing will worsen inequities and distract from the real issues of underfunding and staff shortages

Their voices are among concerned responses from communities across the province who understand what safety in schools requires.

An equitable path exists, backed by evidence

The research points toward effective, non-carceral approaches that improve safety and well-being in schools, including:

Restorative and relational approaches to harm reduction and trauma-informed mental health supports
Culturally responsive and anti-racist practices
Violence prevention programming
Smaller class sizes and improved staffing and teacher retention
Extracurricular programs and youth leadership opportunities
Family and community partnerships

Notably, none of these are part of Bill 33.

Safety through well-funded education

Safety is not created through policing; it is created through trust, support and well-funded public education. Bill 33 threatens all three.

Across Ontario, communities are already organizing to challenge the harms the bill will produce and to push for evidence-based approaches that support students.

Bill 33 will reshape the landscape, but it has also strengthened the resolve of those committed to safe, well-funded and democratic schools.

Salsabel Almanssori receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

– ref. Ontario’s Bill 33 expands policing in schools and will erode democratic oversight – https://theconversation.com/ontarios-bill-33-expands-policing-in-schools-and-will-erode-democratic-oversight-270345

November 26, 2025

Encouraging young people to vote requires understanding why they don’t

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Christopher Alcantara, Professor of Political Science, Western University

Around the world, political institutions are under threat and democracy hangs in the balance. Deepening political divisions, political apathy and the rise of opportunistic populist leaders have all contributed to widespread democratic backsliding and a rise in authoritarianism.

Meeting this challenge requires active and engaged citizens. In Canada, there’s a strong sense that civic engagement is on the decline, especially among young people. Recent research commissioned by the Max Bell Foundation — a charity that works to improve educational, health and environmental outcomes for Canadians — suggests that the real story may be more complex.

Our research on political engagement has found that while today’s young Canadians are participating less in conventional political activities, they are increasingly active in other less traditional ways. How do we encourage youth to engage in all forms of civic life?

Ballots versus boycotts

Our analyses of Elections Canada voting data and survey data, collected through the Canada Election Study and Democracy Checkup projects, clearly illustrate that young people differ from older Canadians in how they participate in civic and political life.

Canadians between the ages of 18 and 34 are less likely to vote than those in other age cohorts and had the steepest decline in turnout from 2015 to 2021, when fewer than half of eligible young Canadians voted.

Young people are generally less knowledgeable and politically informed than older adults.

A graph shows voter turnout numbers in recent Canadian federal elections by age — Voter turnout numbers in recent Canadian federal elections by age.
(Elections Canada)

At the same time, young Canadians are at the forefront of discussing politics online, following politicians on social media and mobilizing their peers through digital platforms. They are more likely to take part in protests, petitions and political consumerism — from boycotts to buycotts — and to volunteer with community organizations and political campaigns at higher rates than other age groups.

a graph shows levels of political participation by age — Data on levels of political participation by age.
(Democracy Checkup surveys)

The real story isn’t that youth don’t care or aren’t political. It’s that they are turning away from conventional, formal participation in favour of alternative ways of sharing and expressing their views.

Explaining changing participation norms

Our analysis suggests that younger Canadians differ from their older counterparts across key factors that shape whether and how they participate.

Many young Canadians cite a lack of time as a barrier to engagement, have lower levels of political knowledge, report slightly lower levels of interest in politics and struggle to make the connection between politics and the issues they care about.

Our work also suggests that youth are noticeably less likely to see civic participation like voting as a duty, and they’re much more likely to be influenced by whether they believe their participation will make a difference.

This presents a particular challenge, because youth also tend to express higher levels of skepticism that their participation matters.

One final surprising finding is that more attention may need to be paid to understanding how political polarization affects youth. Young people may be increasingly put off from politics by hostility and conflict that they want to avoid.

Civic engagement beyond election day

Youth don’t seem to be tuning out but are instead finding different ways to engage. Nonetheless, declining interest in political engagement through formal institutions represents a real concern for democracy in Canada.

So how to build upon the areas where youth are already engaging, and bring young people back into conventional forms of civic engagement like voting?

Our conversations with civil society organizations suggest that civic engagement starts with effective civic education programs in schools, while highlighting the challenges these programs face — from educator training to curriculum design and sustainability over time.

They also highlight the challenge of reaching older youth, especially those referred to as NEET by statisticians — not in employment, education or training. Our interviewees shared their own successful strategies and emphasized the importance of reaching out to youth where they are and through the media and platforms that they prefer.

What comes next?

Democracies around the world are under pressure, and Canada is no exception. In this moment, it’s more critical than ever to pay attention to youth civic engagement.

Investing in civic education and encouraging civic participation early in life helps ensure young people have a voice in politics. But perhaps more importantly, it can also demonstrate how civic engagement can lead to change and challenge the feelings of powerlessness that drive disengagement. Youth participation helps build habits that last a lifetime and is essential to sustaining democracy for generations to come.

The future of Canadian democracy is in the hands of our youth. They must be equipped with the knowledge and the skills to shape it for the better.

Christopher Alcantara receives funding from Max Bell Foundation for this research report.

Craig Mutter receives funding from Max Bell Foundation for this research.

Laura Stephenson receives funding from Max Bell Foundation for this research.

– ref. Encouraging young people to vote requires understanding why they don’t – https://theconversation.com/encouraging-young-people-to-vote-requires-understanding-why-they-dont-270015

November 26, 2025

Online harassment is silencing Canada’s health experts — institutions need to do more to protect them

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Heidi J. S. Tworek, Professor of History and Public Policy, University of British Columbia

Canada has lost the measles elimination status it has held since 1998. To regain that status, one crucial factor is hearing from researchers who speak about vaccine safety in public.

Canada can’t afford to lose expert voices at a moment when the threat of vaccine-preventable diseases is rising. Yet our work suggests that online harassment is a growing deterrent that is driving researchers and scientists out of the conversations needed at this time.

Harassment is a long-standing problem in academia. While it occurs within different institutions and disciplines, it has increasingly taken the form of online attacks from people outside of academia. It’s a phenomenon that accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, and one where health experts are left to cope alone.

Canadian institutions and research organizations need to create broad support for these individuals.

The harms of online harassment

Our recent study on prominent Canadian health communicators — including university researchers and public health officials — found that 94 per cent, or 33 of 35 interviewees, had faced online abuse during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Online harassment goes beyond vaccines and COVID-19; climate change, gender diversity, immigration and other topics have all triggered a backlash. But we found that vaccination was one of the topics most likely to trigger abuse, and it’s an issue that has become increasingly politicized in Canada.

As with many issues in Canada, developments in the United States have played a major role. For instance, a 2021 study on vaccine hesitancy in Canada showed how social media conversations on vaccinations were heavily influenced by discussions in the U.S. It turned out that Canadians followed a median of 32 Canadian accounts and 87 American accounts.

With such interconnected information ecosystems, anti-science harassment directed at American researchers routinely spills into Canadian online spaces. This is worsened when senior officials in the U.S. administration publicly express a lack of support for immunization and evidence-based health recommendations.

Canadian universities and academic institutions need to develop mitigation and support strategies to deal with online harassment fuelled by these realities.

We can learn from action plans by U.S.-based universities and coalitions. Canada can also learn from models in countries like the Netherlands that have created national initiatives to support researchers experiencing harassment.

Hostility that threatens public health

While academics should be comfortable having their ideas challenged, technology-facilitated harassment is very different. Online harassment is often linked with other forms of targeted abuse and includes acts of doxxing, reputation attacks or threatening and sexualized messaging, among others.

Though this hostility often targets individuals working on politically contested issues, researchers from equity-deserving groups face online abuse that builds on systemic inequities related to race, gender, sexuality and other identity factors.

Online abuse can harm mental health, provoke fears about employment or grants and undermine academic freedom, as the Canadian Association of University Teachers observes. Our research found that health communicators faced the “psychological toll” of reading hostile emails day after day, with several reporting fear, sadness or anxiety in response to threats of violence.

A racialized expert recounted how personal attacks on her appearance and background “take a toll,” while a health journalist said that messages like one wishing her “blood clots” sometimes kept her awake at night. Several interviewees described exhaustion, worry and depressive symptoms, highlighting the hidden burden of online harassment.

Besides having serious personal, institutional and societal consequences, this reality risks creating information gaps that could be quickly filled by conspiracy theories. Some health researchers decided to stop media interviews or social media posts on controversial issues. So should they simply avoid public engagement on contentious topics?

While this approach might lessen the risks, it would also dramatically reduce the impact of their expertise. Public engagement is not only a key part of research grants but it also ensures that Canadians benefit directly from research.

Currently, scholars and public health communicators targeted with online abuse mainly use individual coping strategies such as deleting social media accounts, withdrawing from public communication or accepting abuse as inevitable.

These strategies, however, leave individuals to address attacks in isolation. While such measures provide temporary relief, they reinforce self-censorship and hamper public access to expert knowledge.

The need for ‘wraparound’ support

Institutions need to adopt “wraparound” support. This approach acknowledges researcher agency and institutional responsibility through a rights-based framework. It also shifts responsibility from individuals to institutions.

Unlike many universities’ current siloed and inflexible approach, a wraparound approach co-ordinates and integrates multiple domains of support.

For instance, some targeted individuals may not face legal or safety risks but can benefit from psychological support. Others may need assistance with cybersecurity risks or removing online mentions of personal information like their home address or children’s school.

Our institution, the University of British Columbia, for example, offers cybersecurity assistance, mental health support and other key elements of a response.

However, when we consulted faculty and staff, we learned that people found it daunting to figure out all the supports available and how to access them. We created an online resource to help. York University solved that problem by creating a map.

Canadian universities can also turn to international models for inspiration. Fourteen universities in the Netherlands, for instance, participate in a joint SafeScience initiative, which offers guidance and a national helpline to report incidents. Germany’s SciComm-Support provides resources, training and free counselling to researchers.

If we expect scientists and health experts to speak out about issues like measles vaccination for the good of society, they must know that their employers and institutions will stand with them, that they will have their backs.

Canada cannot prepare for future public health emergencies, like another pandemic, without protecting the safety of researchers and their freedom to pursue their lines of inquiry without fear.

Immunity and Society is a new series from The Conversation Canada that presents new vaccine discoveries and immune-based innovations that are changing how we understand and protect human health. Through a partnership with the Bridge Research Consortium, these articles — written by academics in Canada at the forefront of immunology and biomanufacturing — explore the latest developments and their social impacts.

Heidi J. S. Tworek receives funding from the Bridge Research Consortium (BRC), part of Canada’s Immuno-Engineering and Biomanufacturing Hub, which in turn is funded by the Canada Biomedical Research Fund, Canada Foundation for Innovation and the BC Knowledge Development Fund. She also receives funding from the Canada Research Chair Programme and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Chris Tenove receives funding from the Bridge Research Consortium (BRC), part of Canada’s Immuno-Engineering and
Biomanufacturing Hub, which in turn is funded by the Canada Biomedical Research Fund, Canada Foundation for Innovation and the BC Knowledge Development Fund.

Netheena Neena Mathews receives funding from the Bridge Research Consortium (BRC), part of Canada’s Immuno-Engineering and Biomanufacturing Hub, which in turn is funded by the Canada Biomedical Research Fund, Canada Foundation for Innovation and the BC Knowledge Development Fund.

– ref. Online harassment is silencing Canada’s health experts — institutions need to do more to protect them – https://theconversation.com/online-harassment-is-silencing-canadas-health-experts-institutions-need-to-do-more-to-protect-them-267532

November 25, 2025

Calls for grizzly hunts to return to Western Canada oversimplify a complex ecological issue

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Tandeep Sidhu, Assistant Professor, University of Manitoba

Highly publicized grizzly bear attacks have ignited calls to reopen grizzly trophy hunts across Western Canada. The most recent push came from the B.C. Wildlife Federation, a conservation and hunting advocacy organization that called for a hunting season on grizzlies after a bear attacked a group of schoolchildren in Bella Coola, B.C., leaving two people critically injured and two others seriously hurt.

The federation made the call while the circumstances of the attack were still unknown. Conservation officers now believe the attack involved a grizzly sow and her cubs. This does not dismiss or mitigate the traumatic nature of the incident, but it raises questions about why the federation would amplify this call during the early stages of an investigation.

Amid calls for British Columbia to revisit its grizzly hunting ban, Todd Loewen, Alberta’s minister for forestry and parks, has indicated he’s considering lifting his province’s ban in response to a growing number of grizzly attacks.

Alberta banned sport hunting of grizzlies in 2006. A similar ban was imposed in B.C. in 2018, drawing criticism from hunters and support from First Nations and the general public.

In 2024, Loewen introduced a framework allowing grizzlies to be killed by wildlife responders, rather than conservation officers, and some have questioned whether the right grizzly was euthanized in the program’s first kill.

The current debate about hunting grizzlies is being increasingly driven by emotion and political pressure.

Grizzly encounters are rare

A moral panic is a period marked by widespread, often exaggerated, concern about a perceived threat to a community. It relies on typically sensationalist media reporting echoing the claims of “moral entrepreneurs,” like advocacy groups, to induce public support for policy changes.

The recent grizzly attacks are already being used to fuel such a panic. Yet grizzly encounters are rare and often stem from surprise encounters, people encroaching on grizzly territory or sow grizzlies defending their cubs. The context of these incidents must be considered.

Every year, thousands of people encounter grizzly bears at national and provincial parks, including wildlife photographers, hikers and other naturalists, without incident.

Some people have expressed concerns that grizzlies are venturing away from their traditional habitats. But these observations may be the byproduct of a productive bumper crop season, which leads to a greater dispersion of berries that are crucial for hibernation foraging.

Predator control claims don’t match the evidence

Some hunters cite grizzlies and other predators as a contributor to declining elk populations across the Rockies. However, data from Alberta largely demonstrates that elk populations have trended upward, not downward.

Some evidence suggests elk population declines in mountainous hunting zones. It remains unclear as to why hunting interests would take precedence over natural ecological processes.

Hunting predatory animals is also a space that capitalizes on conspiracy theories and pseudoscience, despite the sector’s desired public image of science-based management and conservation.

For example, the B.C. Wildlife Federation has stated grizzly hunting was banned in B.C. with “no scientific rationale.”

This framing ignores substantial scientific evidence, including non-hunting-related mortalities, continued habitat loss, climate change that’s affecting denning patterns and increasing the risk of human conflict, and the fact that many grizzly populations are classified as “threatened.”

The claim there is no science to warrant a ban on grizzly hunting oversimplifies an inherently complex ecological issue.

Economic arguments miss the larger picture

The hunting industry has long claimed the economic value of trophy hunting. However, grizzly bear tourism creates more jobs and generates more revenue than trophy hunting. New research from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem has found that a single grizzly bear generates US$46,000 annually for the local economy.

Beyond this, framing wildlife solely through economic value reproduces a colonial dynamic in which natural resources are assigned value based on their economic and extractive potential.

There is also growing and widespread concern that changes to hunting policies in Alberta are spearheaded at the behest of the hunting industry itself. Loewen’s portfolio involves making decisions surrounding wildlife management, and some critics have raised concerns about his previous ownership of an outfitting business.

Loewen’s family owns Red Willow Outfitters, a hunt-guiding business. While the minister has indicated he’s working with lawyers and the province’s ethics commissioner over potential conflicts of interest, he has implied he doesn’t see any cause for concern.

Colonial dimensions of wildlife management

Grizzly bears, like wolves and bison, have tremendous cultural significance to many First Nations, including the Blackfoot people.

This connection that many First Nations communities have to native wildlife and their knowledge structures was disrupted by settler-colonialism.

These knowledge structures and worldviews are re-emerging. Examples include Indigenous-led stewardship of grizzlies in the Great Bear Rainforest in B.C. and the signing of the Grizzly Bear Treaty, led by the Piikani First Nation, in Alberta.

Reopening grizzly hunting would result in substantial cultural harms to many Indigenous communities. A comparable case unfolded in Wisconsin in 2021, when hunters killed almost one-quarter of the wolf population. Beyond its ecological harms, the hunt caused tremendous sociocultural harms to the Ojibwe.

Conservation and safety are not at odds

Calls to reopen grizzly hunting overlook the need for greater investment in public education and conflict mitigation to protect a threatened species. They also ignore that poaching is a driving cause of grizzly mortality and is likely under-reported.

Many recent attacks have involved sows with cubs, raising questions about how killing grizzlies could bolster conservation when the species is one of the slowest reproducing mammals. While sow grizzlies with cubs would likely be exempt from any hunt, they are responsible for many recent attacks. It is unclear how a hunt could reduce these incidents when the bears most likely to be involved would not be targeted.

The argument for reopening grizzly hunts is not about conservation or public safety. Trophy hunting remains tied to longstanding colonial practices and ideas about establishing masculine dominance, rather than ecological necessity.

Rural communities have demonstrated that existence with grizzlies and wolves is possible. Therefore, the question is not whether coexistence is achievable, but whether there is the political will to facilitate it.

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

– ref. Calls for grizzly hunts to return to Western Canada oversimplify a complex ecological issue – https://theconversation.com/calls-for-grizzly-hunts-to-return-to-western-canada-oversimplify-a-complex-ecological-issue-270267