The Conversation – Canada – Page 59

November 12, 2025

Bringing the dance studio home can improve balance and reduce the risk of falls for older women

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Emma Hsiaowen Chen, PhD Candidate in Health & Exercise Science, Concordia University

Exercise can help reduce the risk of falls — a major cause of injuries in older adults — but only four per cent of older Canadian women complete 30 minutes of daily physical activity. As a PhD candidate in health and exercise science at Concordia University, I am interested in developing fun and accessible balance-training programs using online dance classes.

Dance can act as a fun “exercise in disguise.” Studies have consistently shown that dance can inspire social connections, improve mood and aid cognition, while also leading to improvements in mobility, endurance and walking abilities.

It is also an ideal form of balance training because learning various dance steps requires high precision of movement, which can help increase our proprioception (our perception of our body movement and position in space). This can help improve or maintain our postural stability.

Age and postural stability

Postural stability refers to our ability to stay upright and control our body’s position in space. This ability relies on sensory and motor systems. Our vision helps see potential obstacles or tripping hazards, the vestibulocochlear system of the inner ear helps with our sense of orientation as well as hearing, and finally our somatosensory system, which comprises the body’s sense of touch, pain, temperature and position, works to feel the surfaces beneath our feet.

After these sensory signals reach the brain, they are sorted and then the appropriate motor response is selected for our musculoskeletal system to execute

With age, postural stability reduces as the sensory systems experience change. We measure this decline by having people stand as still as possible and observing how much they move or sway. If someone sways more, they are considered less stable and at greater risk of falls.

While research on in-person dance classes of various styles have consistently shown improvements to postural stability and fall risk, these classes are often inaccessible. Many older women face barriers to exercise such as lack of transportation, caregiver roles at home, inaccessible exercise facilities etc. Additionally, specialized dance teachers are often only found in larger cities that act as dance hubs. Online dance classes can offer solutions to reduce barriers and improve access for older adults.

Bringing the dance studio home

Working with Andreas Bergdahl, PhD, and Mary Roberts, PhD, our research published in International Journal of Exercise Science has found that online dance classes improve the postural stability, dynamic balance and calf strength of older women. In this work, we recruited women aged 65+ from Montréal to participate in 75-minute ballet-modern inspired classes twice per week, for 12 weeks over Zoom.

Each dance class started with a 15-minute warm-up followed by:

Pliés (bending the knees)
Tendus (standing on one leg and extending the other one out)
Balancé sequence (a travelling step done to a waltz rhythm)
Jose Limón/Martha Graham sequence (styles of modern-dance that emphasize fall recovery and rounded shapes of the spine)
Cooling-down with seated stretches

These exercises were selected because they emphasize transferring weight, balancing on one leg, bringing the body off centre and contracting the leg as well as core muscles. A helper was present on Zoom for each dance class to help with technical support and monitor online participants for safety.

Before the first class, halfway through the study, and at the end, participants completed in-person assessments of their leg strength, dynamic balance and postural stability.

Within six weeks, participants showed reductions in how much they swayed side-to-side while standing still (what is called mediolateral sway) and increases in their dynamic balance. By the end of the program, they also had greater calf-muscle strength, assessed as the number of heel-raises participants completed in 30 seconds.

Improvements in these abilities can translate to greater ease in daily activities that require weight transfers, such as walking, stepping down from the sidewalk or even chores like sweeping the house.

Benefits of online access

Even after COVID-19 lockdowns have ended, online dance classes can serve an important role in reaching people who are traditionally left out.

For those living in remote locations, for caregivers who cannot spend too long away from their loved ones or even for older adults anxious to walk on icy streets in the winter, online programs can provide a level of accessibility and new opportunities to socialize and exercise. They also give opportunities for people to express themselves creatively from the comfort of their own homes.

Our current studies are exploring how different styles of online dance programs, combined with blood flow restriction training, can benefit older adults. This provides more options to suit people’s interests and varying mobility needs. Additionally, we are working to share our program with communities. To date, our research has reached older women across Canada, Mexico, Colombia and Spain, encouraging them to remain active and independent.

While many of us have returned to in-person programming, let’s not forget the benefits of online access. Bringing the dance studio home can still help people connect, socialize and improve their balance.

Emma Hsiaowen Chen receives funding from Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé – Formation de doctorat 2024-2025 (346910). Her MSc work presented here was funded by the Canadian Graduate Scholarships – Master’s Program 2022 and the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé – Formation de Maîtrise 2022-2023 (319116). She works as a freelance dance instructor specialized in teaching older adults.

– ref. Bringing the dance studio home can improve balance and reduce the risk of falls for older women – https://theconversation.com/bringing-the-dance-studio-home-can-improve-balance-and-reduce-the-risk-of-falls-for-older-women-268266

November 12, 2025

Team work and power plays: What Alberta’s Bill 2 says about Canadian democracy

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jared Wesley, Professor, Political Science, University of Alberta

Across Canada, elected representatives are opting to toe the party line on major discussions about the future of the country — or even to sit out the debates entirely.

Take recent events in Alberta. Bill 2 (the Back to School Act) ended a provincewide teachers’ strike by imposing a contract and ordering more than 50,000 teachers back to work. Most government members of the Alberta legislature (MLAs) chose to remain silent throughout the entire dispute.

The incident drew national attention because the government also invoked the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ notwithstanding clause to remove the teachers’ Charter right to strike.

Limiting debate

But the other half of the story is the process: party discipline helped push the law through the legislature in record time. For Canadians elsewhere, Bill 2 is a window into how hyper-partisanship and polarization can weaken the checks and balances meant to restrain premiers and prime ministers from acting unilaterally.

Here’s what happened in practical terms: the government moved the bill from first reading to final passage in less than 12 hours, after which teachers were ordered back and a four-year agreement was set in law.

Approved by members of the government caucus, debate windows were cut to just one hour and concluded in the early hours of the morning.

The speed mattered as much as the substance: it limited the chance for MLAs to probe details, air local concerns or test alternatives in public. It also sidestepped an important constitutional responsibility: according to the notwithstanding clause, legislatures — not cabinets or premiers — are charged with removing Canadians’ rights.

According to critics of Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party (UCP), that duty is meant to be exercised after meaningful debate.

Why would a legislature — whose members are elected to debate, amend and oversee — vote to shorten its own deliberation on bills, particularly those that affect fundamental freedoms?

Our research in our book No “I” in Team: Party Loyalty in Canadian Politics points to a simple, powerful answer: hyper-partisanship has evolved from traditional “party discipline” (voting together) into “message discipline” (speaking together). Leaders and their entourages co-ordinate what caucus members say and do, reward conformity and punish dissent. In that environment, opposing fast-tracked legislation can feel like deserting “the team.”

Choosing silence

Message discipline reshapes everyday incentives inside caucus.

Rather than seeing alternative arguments as quality control, members learn to treat them as obstacles. Rather than pushing for extended committee study or open negotiation, they face heavy pressure to back procedures that guarantee quick passage and limit the ability of opposing parties to weigh in. This means members of the governing caucus sometimes choose to silence themselves to prevent their opponents from engaging.

Over time, MLAs become more willing to trade their own leverage — floor time, clause-by-clause scrutiny, amendments — for the promise of team unity.

Bill 2 shows how those incentives and tools play out in real life. The government framed speed as a virtue and unity as a necessity; caucus members delivered both. The result was swift law-making on a file with broad public impact and limited room for local voices or cross-party problem-solving.

None of this depends on one leader or one issue. Once normalized, the approach can be applied to labour disputes, health-care reforms, school governance or tax changes — any area where moving quickly is easier than debating in public.

But when disagreements are handled through discipline rather than deliberation, conflict doesn’t disappear. It often relocates, sometimes spilling outside the governing caucus. This is made more likely when constituents pressure their representatives to act as delegates rather than partisans.

Locker-room mentality

Earlier this year, UCP MLA Peter Guthrie resigned from cabinet and was expelled from caucus after sustained criticism of his party’s ethics record.

He has since emerged a steady critic of the government, assuming the role of Independent as Canada’s parliamentary traditions intended all representatives to play: holding the government to account through members’ statements and Question Period. That he felt unable to do so within cabinet or caucus is a symptom of the hyper-partisanship we cover in our book.

For those beyond Alberta, that’s why Bill 2 matters. The notwithstanding clause justifiably drew the most attention, but it isn’t the whole story. Canadians need to pay attention to how hyper-partisanship pushes parliamentarians into decisions that mute their own roles as delegates of their constituents, overseers of government and trustees of the public good.

When legislatures are organized as team locker rooms first and democratic institutions second, elected representatives are more likely to support rule changes and time limits that make government faster and more centralized, and less likely to insist on the public work that tests ideas before they become law.

In that sense, Bill 2 is a case study, not an outlier. The mechanics are portable.

Watch for the telltale signs in other parts of the country: tight debate clocks, late-night sittings, caucus silence in constituencies and message unity presented as proof of strength. Our research suggests those are the symptoms of message discipline at work — and the reason Canadians across the country should pay attention to what happened in Alberta.

Jared Wesley receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Alex Marland received funding from an SSHRC Insight Grant with Jared Wesley and Mireille Lalancette to study Canadian parliamentarians crossing the floor that supported this research.

Mireille Lalancette receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for this project.

– ref. Team work and power plays: What Alberta’s Bill 2 says about Canadian democracy – https://theconversation.com/team-work-and-power-plays-what-albertas-bill-2-says-about-canadian-democracy-269373

November 12, 2025

Rudeness is hurting auditors’ ability to protect the public — here’s how

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ala Mokhtar, Assistant Professor in Accounting, McMaster University

Auditors play a crucial role in keeping the financial system honest. Their job is to protect investors by making sure financial reports are accurate and trustworthy, helping people have confidence in financial markets.

Auditors are trained to be level-headed, impartial watchdogs that remain skeptical when evaluating evidence so they can give an objective opinion on whether a company’s financial statements are fairly reported.

Without auditors, the public would struggle to trust what companies say about their finances. But this, of course, depends on auditors doing their jobs objectively and consistently.

Our new study, co-authored with Tim Bauer from the University of Waterloo and Sean Hillison from Virginia Tech, shows something unexpectedly human gets in the way of auditors doing their job well: incivility, or rudeness. When clients snap at, dismiss or belittle auditors, it doesn’t just sting — it can wear away at audit quality.

Maintaining audit quality

The quality of audits has become a growing concern among regulators. In recent years, both Canadian and American audit watchdogs have reported concerning rates of audit deficiencies.

These deficiencies include failing to properly test accounting estimates by firms, failing to test key controls that prevent errors or fraud and overlooking whether management’s significant assumptions were reasonable.

Regulators are urging auditors to “step up” by doing a better job of scrutinizing their financial statements.

Understanding and addressing how client incivility affects auditor performance could be a crucial step toward improving audit quality in financial reporting.

When rudeness gets in the way

To find out how often auditors face incivility, my co-researchers and I surveyed 70 auditors across Canada and the United States at all ranks, from entry-level auditors to auditors at the partner level.

We defined incivility as minor disrespectful actions that break workplace norms of mutual respect. These behaviours are often rude and discourteous, displaying a lack of regard for others.

We found that auditors don’t experience incivility from time-to-time — they experience it a lot. Ninety per cent of auditors said they had encountered negative client behaviour at some point in their careers.

Seventy-seven per cent said clients had rudely told them how to do their jobs or questioned their procedures. More than 60 per cent had their skills or abilities questioned and more than 50 per cent had been ignored or faced hostility when approaching a client. One-third reported being bullied — a more serious form of incivility — at some point in their career.

Rude clients, weaker audits

We wanted to know whether auditors’ experiences with incivility actually affected auditors’ judgment and skepticism. Did auditors brush off rude behaviour and continue to diligently do their work?

To test this, we ran an experiment with 114 experienced auditors. We asked them to read a scenario showing an interaction between an auditor and their client. In one version the client was openly rude, while in the other version, the client was not portrayed as rude.

The auditors were then asked how likely they would be to challenge an aggressive accounting choice — that is, a decision by the client to report a preferred inventory write-down amount supported by weak assumptions.

We found that auditors who read about a scenario with an uncivil client became less likely to challenge an obviously aggressive accounting choice by the client — the opposite of what auditing standards call for in a situation where skepticism matters.

Why did this happen? Our findings suggest that emotional distress from interacting with the rude client interfered with auditors’ judgment, leading to less effective scrutiny of the client’s decisions.

How active coping can help

Auditors play a vital role in protecting investors and the public by ensuring that companies’ financial statements can be trusted. Our findings suggest that something as commonplace as everyday discourtesy can have very real, negative effects on audit quality.

But there is some good news. Our research also found that the right coping strategies can help auditors recover their focus.

When auditors were encouraged to use an active coping approach — like looping in a senior colleague to intervene with the situation — their willingness to push back against the aggressive accounting choice largely returned to normal levels. Active coping prevented the distress of the rude exchange from interfering with auditors’ judgment.

By contrast, passive approaches, such as venting or trying to accept the situation, didn’t show the same clear benefit.

Together, these results suggest that client incivility triggers emotional distress that blunts auditors’ judgment, and that active coping helps auditors refocus on the facts and their duty to the public.

Protecting audit quality

For firms and regulators trying to maintain audit quality, negative behaviour from clients should be treated as a risk factor, not a normal, everyday inconvenience. If left unaddressed, persistent rudeness or pressure from clients can undermine auditors’ ability to do their jobs.

Fortunately, the solution is simple and low-cost. Audit firms can equip auditors with concrete coping playbooks and train them to use active coping when they encounter incivility. Rather than expecting auditors to grin and bear rude treatment, firms can equip them to address incivility actively by bringing in a senior member who can handle the rude client.

It’s a simple step that helps prevent audit quality from slowly deteriorating, and protects the integrity of financial reporting and the people responsible for upholding it.

Ala Mokhtar 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. Rudeness is hurting auditors’ ability to protect the public — here’s how – https://theconversation.com/rudeness-is-hurting-auditors-ability-to-protect-the-public-heres-how-267953

November 12, 2025

To tackle e-waste, teach kids to be responsible consumers

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Saidia Ali, Environmental Scientist, PhD Candidate, Toronto Metropolitan University

The world is undergoing rapid electronification and digital transformation, reshaping how we live. Many of us have numerous electronic devices around us at all times, from smartphones and watches to our home appliances and cars.

A sharp increase in e-waste has accompanied the surge in electronic equipment. In 2022, 62 million tons of e-waste was produced globally.

Canada’s e-waste tripled between 2000 and 2019 and is expected to reach 1.2 billion kilograms by 2030. These statistics demonstrate an urgent environmental crisis that demands new ways of thinking and educating future generations.

A key part of tackling the problem is educating people about it. As educators, we need to expand school education to include resource recovery, sustainability and pro-environmental behaviours to inform students on what to do with their old gadgets.

The language and techniques we use to communicate this issue in classrooms play a significant role in helping children understand and engage with safe e-waste management.

Schools and educators must equip youth of all ages with the values, attitudes, knowledge and skills necessary to manage e-waste responsibly.

Gaps and limitations

My research uses machine learning tools to develop effective circular economy policies focused on e-waste management in Canada, with insights reflecting Ontario’s evolving practices.

In Ontario, schools are failing to provide comprehensive and consistent e-waste education, leaving a dangerous gap in our students’ environmental literacy.

Environmental education in Ontario introduces students to the concept of environmental stewardship and the provincially mandated curriculum does include it in a cross-disciplinary manner. However, due to decreased priority and budget cuts, attention on e-waste and resource conservation is absent.

According to a 2024 report by EcoSchools Canada, a number of obstacles exist to successful school e-waste management such as COVID-19, provincial inconsistencies, curriculum disconnect, custodian participation, poor school engagement and a lack of key infrastructure and information.

The Ontario government and municipalities have made efforts in revising the school curriculum, with non-profits stepping in to help bridge the knowledge gap.

For example, in municipalities like Peel Region, teachers’ resources include a plethora of interactive, online activities and lesson plans that focus on the 3Rs and proper sorting, as well as additional workshops, events, games and other resources for students in grades K to 8.

Likewise, Durham Region offers a specific presentation, including one for grades 7 and 8 entitled “Electronic Waste: The Hidden Impact of Our Gadgets,” allowing students to discover the possible environmental, social and economic consequences of devices.

Several schools are also active participants of the EcoSchools program, a certification initiative originally developed by the Toronto District School Board to promote environmental education and action.

The program offers opportunities for student-led projects such as e-waste collection drives and awareness campaigns, providing meaningful experiential learning.

Although these are valuable and necessary, the focus and depth of these initiatives are often at the discretion of individual teachers and schools, leading to an uneven and often limited understanding of the e-waste problem. While commendable, these programs represent a patchwork rather than a cohesive, province-wide strategy.

Furthermore, a lot of education on waste tends to place much emphasis on recycling. While recycling is an important part of the solution, comprehensive e-waste education should also emphasize reducing consumption, repairing and reusing electronics and understanding the principles of a circular economy. Educational institutions and educators need to equip students to be able to critically question our throw-away culture.

The path forward

Educational institutions can play a substantial role in devising initiatives that will help future generations build foundational knowledge about sustainable e-waste management.

At the Montgomery School in Saskatoon, students have taken part in a project that allows them to disassemble old electronics to learn about e-waste, its materials and proper disposal. As part of an initiative, students look through the school’s garbage bins to see what could be reused.

The project links classroom learning with Saskatchewan’s grade 6/7 curriculum of understanding the social effects of sustainability issues, such as waste management, and encouraging students to think critically about technology use and environmental responsibility. The students have been successful in making keychains from old circuit boards that they sold at a school event to raise money for upcoming projects.

A CBC News segment on the Montgomery School’s e-waste project.

Provincial education ministries must take the lead by embedding clear learning expectations into their provincial curriculum in subjects like science, technology, geography, social studies and civics. This will ensure that all students, regardless of their school or location, receive an introductory understanding of this growing issue.

Cross-sectoral collaboration among provincial governments, school boards, municipalities and environmental organizations will be key in developing high-quality curriculum-linked educational materials.

Other initiatives can include organizing field trips to recycling facilities or setting up e-waste collection campaigns to allow students to see the impact of sustainable activities.

Schools can also invite guest speakers to give students an opportunity to learn from front-line environmental experts who have first-hand knowledge of sorting through e-waste.

Integrating e-waste literacy into the curriculum is a crucial step toward creating a more sustainable future. It will involve much more than just teaching students where the recycling bin is. It is about providing the know-how that will help them challenge our throw-away culture and empowering them to become responsible consumers.

Saidia Ali is affiliated with CanRepair Canada.

– ref. To tackle e-waste, teach kids to be responsible consumers – https://theconversation.com/to-tackle-e-waste-teach-kids-to-be-responsible-consumers-265712

November 11, 2025

How number systems shape our thinking and what it means for learning, language and culture

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jean-Charles Pelland, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Psychosocial Science, University of Bergen

Most of us have little trouble working out how many millilitres are in 2.4 litres of water (it’s 2,400). But the same can’t be said when we’re asked how many minutes are in 2.4 hours (it’s 144).

That’s because the Indo-Arabic numerals we often use to represent numbers are base-10, while the system we often use to measure time is base-60.

Expressing time in decimal notation leads to an interaction between these two bases, which can have implications at both the cognitive and cultural level.

Such base interactions and their consequences are among the important topics covered in a new issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society journal, which I co-edited with colleagues Andrea Bender (University of Bergen), Mary Walworth (French National Centre for Scientific Research) and Simon J. Greenhill (University of Auckland).

The themed issue brings together work from anthropology, linguistics, philosophy and psychology to examine how humans conceptualize numbers and the numeral systems we build around them.

What are bases, and why do they matter?

Despite using numeral bases on a daily basis, few of us have reflected on the nature of these cognitive tools. As I explain in my contribution to the issue, bases are special numbers in the numeral systems we use.

Because our memories aren’t unlimited, we can’t represent each number with its own unique label. Instead, we use a small set of numerals to build larger ones, like “three hundred forty-two.”

That’s why most numeral systems are structured around a compositional anchor — a special number with a name that serves as a building block to form names for other numbers. Bases are anchors that exploit powers of a special number to form complex numerical expressions.

The English language, for example, uses a decimal system, meaning it uses the powers of 10 to compose numerals. So we compose “three hundred and forty-two” using three times the second power of 10 (100), four times the first power of 10 (10) and two times the zeroth power of 10 (one).

This base structure allows us to represent numbers of all sizes without overloading our cognitive resources.

Languages affect how we count

Despite the abstract nature of numbers, the degree to which numeral systems transparently reflect their bases has very concrete implications — and not just when we tell time. Languages with less transparent rules will take longer to learn, longer to process and can lead to more calculation and dictation errors.

Take French numerals, for example. While languages like French, English and Mandarin all share the same base of 10, most dialects of French have what could politely be called a quirky way of representing numbers in the 70-99 range.

Seventy is soixante-dix in French, meaning “six times 10 plus 10,” while 80 uses 20 as an anchor and becomes quatre-vingts, meaning “four twenties” (or “four twenty,” depending on the context). And 90 is quatre vingt dix, meaning “four twenty ten.”

French is far from being alone in being quirky with its numerals. In German, numbers from 10 to 99 are expressed with the ones before the tens, but numbers over 100 switch back to saying the largest unit first.

Even in English, the fact that “twelve” is said instead of “ten two” hides the decimal rules at play. Such irregularities spread far beyond languages.

How bases shape learning and thought

Base-related oddities are spread out across the globe and have very real implications for how easily children learn what numbers are and how they interact with objects such as blocks, and for how efficiently adults manipulate notations.

For example, one study found that lack of base transparency slows down the acquisition of some numerical abilities in children, while another found similar negative effects on how quickly they learn how to count.

Another study found that children from base-transparent languages were quicker to use large blocks worth 10 units to represent larger numbers (for example, expressing 32 using three large blocs and two small ones) than children with base-related irregularities.

While Mandarin’s perfectly transparent decimal structure can simplify learning, a new research method suggests that children may find it easier to learn what numbers are if they are exposed to systems with compositional anchors that are smaller than 10.

In general, how we represent bases has very concrete cognitive implications, including how easily we can learn number systems and which types of systems will tend to be used in which contexts.

A group of people in white protective suits and head protectors stand in front of a robotic spacecraft — Technicians lower the Mars Climate Orbiter onto its work stand in the Spacecraft Assembly and Encapsulation Facility-2 in 1998.
(NASA)

At a cultural level, base representation influences our ability to collaborate with scientists across disciplines and across cultures. This was starkly illustrated by the infamous Mars Climate Orbiter incident, when a mix-up between metric and imperial units caused a $327 million spacecraft to crash into Mars in 1999.

Why understanding bases matters

Numeracy — the ability to understand and use numbers — is a crucial part of our modern lives. It has implications for our quality of life and for our ability to make informed decisions in domains like health and finances.

For example, being more familiar with numbers will influence how easily we can choose between retirement plans, how we consider trade-offs between side-effects and benefits when choosing between medications or how well we understand how probabilities apply to our investments.

And yet many struggle to learn what numbers are, with millions suffering from math anxiety. Developing better methods for helping people learn how to manipulate numbers can therefore help millions of people improve their lives.

Research on the cognitive and cultural implications of bases collected in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society journal can help make progress towards our understanding of how we think about numbers, marking an important step towards making numbers more accessible to everyone.

Jean-Charles Pelland’s work has been made possible by financial support from the ‘QUANTA: Evolution of Cognitive Tools for Quantification’ project, which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 951388).

– ref. How number systems shape our thinking and what it means for learning, language and culture – https://theconversation.com/how-number-systems-shape-our-thinking-and-what-it-means-for-learning-language-and-culture-268168

November 11, 2025

How number systems shape our thinking, and what this means for learning, language and culture

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jean-Charles Pelland, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Psychosocial Science, University of Bergen

That’s because the Indo-Arabic numerals we often use to represent numbers are base-10, while the system we often use to measure time is base-60.

Expressing time in decimal notation leads to an interaction between these two bases, which can have implications at both the cognitive and cultural level.

The themed issue brings together work from anthropology, linguistics, philosophy and psychology to examine how humans conceptualize numbers and the numeral systems we build around them.

What are bases, and why do they matter?

Because our memories aren’t unlimited, we can’t represent each number with its own unique label. Instead, we use a small set of numerals to build larger ones, like “three hundred forty-two.”

This base structure allows us to represent numbers of all sizes without overloading our cognitive resources.

Languages affect how we count

Even in English, the fact that “twelve” is said instead of “ten two” hides the decimal rules at play. Such irregularities spread far beyond languages.

How bases shape learning and thought

In general, how we represent bases has very concrete cognitive implications, including how easily we can learn number systems and which types of systems will tend to be used in which contexts.

Why understanding bases matters

– ref. How number systems shape our thinking, and what this means for learning, language and culture – https://theconversation.com/how-number-systems-shape-our-thinking-and-what-this-means-for-learning-language-and-culture-268168

November 11, 2025

To survive today’s economy, university students are using circus-like tactics

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Alison Taylor, Professor, Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia

The skills “every student needs” for the 21st century include competencies in technology, problem solving and communication — and character qualities like adaptability and grit.

This is according to the World Economic Forum, but by now, we should be familiar with this kind of rhetoric. Think tanks, employers and policymakers amplify similar ideas around what graduates need to get good jobs and contribute to economic growth.

Such discourse and policy put pressure on universities to be more responsive to a labour market that is more precarious than the one faced by previous generations.

In turn, university students feel pressure to make the best decisions. It’s small wonder that more students are adjusting their study and career plans in efforts to secure their futures.

My recent book, Juggling Rhythms, frames university students’ diverse tactics (and survival skills) as “circus arts.” This way of examining student experiences is deeply informed by what I heard in interviews with students, and reveals aspects of their experiences that would not otherwise be apparent.

Working while studying full-time

I gained insight into these questions during a research study that I led between 2018 and 2023, which focused on undergraduate students who work while studying full-time at two research-intensive universities in Canada.

We approached this research aware of the plethora of advice for students to make themselves employable. We wondered: What do students themselves think? How are they feeling about their future careers — excited and eager, anxious and pessimistic or somewhere in between?

More than half of undergraduates engage in term-time work while studying and many pursue other forms of work-integrated learning as well.

Undergraduates are recognizing the importance of 21st century “circus arts” as they labour to learn in today’s economy, characterized by extreme wealth inequality, globalization and the dominance of multinational corporations.

Circus arts metaphors

The “circus arts” metaphors were sparked by qualitative research with 57 students at one university between 2020 and 2022. Our methods included focus group interviews, life maps, audio diaries and one-on-one follow-up interviews.

Of these 57 students, 39 identified as female, 40 were racialized, 16 were international and 17 were first-generation Canadian. They were enrolled in a range of programs across campus, many in the largest faculties of arts and science.

In my book, I consider how students are concerned with:

• How to manipulate different “objects” (juggling)

• How to adjust and recalibrate their activities and expectations (high-wire walking)

• How to learn their limits and bend in ways that don’t compromise care for self and others (contortion); and

• How to expend energy instrumentally and avoid burnout (sword swallowing).

Varying degrees of freedom and ease

Different students take up these “circus arts” in varied ways and degrees of freedom and ease. For instance, many students juggle more than paid work and studies.

Women are more likely to juggle volunteer work required for admission into feminized professional programs as well as care work in families. International students add the labour of acclimatizating to a new country with employment to offset disproportionately high tuition.

I observe that the art of high-wire walking tends to be less challenging for students who enter university with varied experiences and who have strong safety nets provided by families.

In contrast, financially insecure students, especially those who are racialized or live with disabilities, navigate more cautiously as they try to anticipate obstacles.

For example, one interviewee, Lucy, relayed how her disability required her to adjust studies and work when she was close to the point of burning out. First-generation student, Michael, had little room for error as he lived “paycheque to paycheque” on earnings from his retail job while pursuing full-time studies.

Costs of contortion and competition

Dominant discourses frame youth as autonomous, independent decision-makers who exhibit Gumby-like capacities to stretch and compress themselves into education and employment systems.

However, I observe that the “art of contortion” also involves discovering the costs of hyper-flexibility and limits on the ability to stretch in different directions.

For example, Kay came “pretty close to dropping out” because of mental health issues that were exacerbated by the competitive climate on campus. Fortunately, support from her parents and a sympathetic employer on campus helped her persevere.

Similarly, Janice, a racialized international student, compared her cohort to a “herd of lions trying to kill each other.” Her perception of steep competition for work placements coupled with her challenges to “fit in” to Canadian systems led to her realization that “there’s only so much we can take” and “you don’t have to take the path that every other person takes.”

Sword swallowing

Students learn their limits as they bump up against the rigidity of demanding education and employment systems and as they navigate family expectations.

Pressure to take on too much can be irresistible in a context where a bachelor’s credential is no longer seen as sufficient and the smorgasbord of extra-credential activities is dizzying.

The dangers of sword swallowing — which involves suppressing one’s natural defence mechanisms — are reflected in students’ comments about burnout, exhaustion and poor mental health.

For example, Helena’s disability meant that she was always playing “catch up” despite the long hours she put into her studies. When combined with a retail employer who wasn’t accommodating, she reflected, “my mental health isn’t that great” and “my personal battery is dead.”

Erosion of familiar pathways

Participants in the study perceived an imperative to be planful, employable and productive (what I call “PEP talk”) because of the erosion of familiar institutional pathways and institutional safety nets coupled with the uncertain value of university credentials.

What could universities do to reduce the time pressure on students who experience the most precarity? There are calls to tie universities even more closely to job markets: mandating work-integrated learning, adding micro-credentials and packing more into programs.

I’m not convinced these approaches will do the trick. Instead, I think we need to move away from universities trying to meet the demands of constantly shifting global labour markets by producing graduates who can “hit the ground running.”

Paradigm shift needed

A paradigm shift is needed for three main reasons. First, the timescale of universities is (and should be) longer than the economic quarter. Innovation and responsiveness to communities does not mean reacting to every report on business.

Second, everything is not up to universities. Employers must take more responsibility for creating rewarding and sustainable entry-level positions with training. This does not mean adding more unpaid internships.

Finally, more institutional supports are needed to create the space and time for students to decide who they aspire to be, explore possible directions for work and career and discover what they value (including things beyond economic returns on educational investments.

This could mean lower tuition, more financial support for financially insecure students and the equitable distribution of work opportunities on campus.

It also means instructors and researchers modelling the kind of patient and careful scholarship that will help us see our way forward in a complex and crisis-prone world.

Alison Taylor received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. To survive today’s economy, university students are using circus-like tactics – https://theconversation.com/to-survive-todays-economy-university-students-are-using-circus-like-tactics-264839

November 11, 2025

Remembrance Day: How the Canadian Armed Forces could help solve the youth employment crisis

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ilona Dougherty, Managing Director, Youth & Innovation Project, University of Waterloo

Every year on Remembrance Day, I think about my grandfathers — my American grandfather who flew his Stinson L-5 along the coast of Burma and my Hungarian grandfather who fought in the Second World War.

I also reflect upon my grandmothers, one of whom used her language skills to translate for army officers and the other who suffered the loss of her first child while her husband was overseas.

These stories are often shared in our family as remembrances of young people who served and sacrificed during difficult times.

Buried deep in the Liberal government’s recently released 2025 budget is a line that is worth paying attention to: “Modernizing the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) enhances opportunities for youth to serve and lead.” With that one sentence, the federal government connected the dots between Canadian sovereignty, youth employment and youth service.

But if Canada hopes to see its current generation of young people thrive, it must ensure that youth employment and youth service programs are expanded.

The only way this will happen, given the investments outlined in the federal government’s budget, is if organizations dedicated to youth employment issues and youth service work closely together to ensure the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) figures out how to recruit and meaningfully retain young Canadians.

Paltry investments

As outlined in the budget, there is a clear commitment from Mark Carney’s Liberals to rebuild and reinvest in the CAF to protect Canadians and lead internationally. This commitment includes an investment of more than $9 billion in 2025-2026.

An important part of this rebuilding will require recruiting and retaining new members, which is being facilitated by a significant pay increase for the lowest paid recruits.

But as young people in Canada face the worst job market in more than a decade, which is only projected to worsen with the widespread adoption of AI, it was troubling that funding related to tackling youth unemployment was limited in this year’s budget.

The investment in Canada Summer Job placements, while up from the investment made in the 2024, was only brought back to pre-pandemic funding levels, not actually increased.

The Youth Employment and Skills Strategy investment in the budget was up slightly from 2025-2026, but down significantly from 2024-2025 and far below investments made in 2019-2020.

The only significant increase came with the investment in the Student Work Placement Program, which increased by more than $100 million per year.

The most generous read of investments in youth employment-related programs in the 2025 budget would suggest the government is investing approximately $220 million more per year. But this pales in comparison to the $20.4 billion over five years that the government has committed to investing in recruiting and retaining “a strong fighting force” for the CAF.

When it comes to youth service, supporting young people who are struggling to enter the job market — and providing them with opportunities to serve their communities — can be achieved in part through the Youth Climate Corps and the Canada Service Corps. Combined, their budgets represent a moderate increase in spending of about $20 million per year.

But it’s unclear whether the Canada Service Corps will receive additional funding in the future, parallel to the Youth Climate Corps funding, or whether it will be phased out and replaced.

Despite it being touted as a budget containing generational investments, the government has made minimal investments to seriously tackle the youth employment crisis in the 2025 budget.

Recruitment challenges

It’s no secret that recruiting and retaining new members is a significant challenge for the CAF. A 2025 Auditor General of Canada’s report outlines how the CAF is not recruiting and training enough candidates to meet its operational needs.

To make matters worse, even when a recruit does join, a recently leaked internal report suggests that many leave in frustration shortly after joining due to their inability to get trained and to secure roles within the CAF that they’re interested in.

Adding to this is the CAF’s well-documented issues with radicalization and hate speech, racial discrimination and sexual harassment. As an external monitor outlined in a recent report, “a culture that is largely misogynistic has created an environment that allows and sometime encourages unprofessional conduct to persist.”

Despite recent apologies and signs that things are changing for the better within the CAF, these issues make the institution unattractive for young Canadians even if they don’t feel as though they have any other employment options.

There is also the perception that joining the army means going into active combat. Around 65.2 per cent of CAF members ever deploy — and deploying doesn’t necessarily mean active combat. In fact, it can very often mean humanitarian missions either domestically or internationally.

Making the CAF attractive to youth

All of this presents a unique opportunity for Canadian policymakers.

There are many organizations in Canada working to tackle youth employment — and the CAF has just been given what can actually be called a generational investment. That investment could significantly enhance existing government initiatives aimed at addressing the youth employment crisis and preparing young people for the future of work.

For this to happen, youth employment and service organizations must leverage the government’s investment in the CAF to expand their impact. At the same time, the CAF will need to engage with civilian organizations that specialize in recruiting and supporting young people. CAF recruiters should adopt best practices in youth-focused recruitment, training and retention to ensure meaningful participation and long-term success.

Young people will only be attracted to and stay in the CAF if they feel valued, if they’re offered meaningful opportunities to contribute and if intergenerational collaboration is prioritized.

In a time of multiples crises, none of them can be viewed in isolation. Disparate groups need to work together to address their unique challenges.
Canadian young people have a lot to offer — they’re the most educated generation in Canadian history, they have the desire to make a difference, their brains are wired to be bold problem solvers and they have diverse and relevant lived experiences.

This is a generation Canada can’t afford to leave on the sidelines of its economy or in the fight for Canadian sovereignty.

Ilona Dougherty 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. Remembrance Day: How the Canadian Armed Forces could help solve the youth employment crisis – https://theconversation.com/remembrance-day-how-the-canadian-armed-forces-could-help-solve-the-youth-employment-crisis-268433

November 11, 2025

Feel like you can’t get a job? You’re not alone — but here’s how to work around it

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jason Walker, Program Director & Associate Professor Master of Psychology Health and Wellness & Master of Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Adler University

You did everything they told you to do. You earned the credentials, spent hours on your resume and revised multiple cover letters. You worked side gigs, volunteered, learned new software and perfected your LinkedIn profile. Yet, you can’t get a callback for an interview.

It’s as if your application vanished into the abyss of a company database, and the “thank you for applying” emails are piling up. So-called entry-level jobs now need years of experience, and junior roles expect postgraduate degrees.

You are likely wondering what you’re missing, but it’s not you — it’s the system. Across the United States, Canada and United Kingdom, automation now does the screening before a human ever has a look. Companies say they can’t find talent, yet many have stopped training people.

On paper, the labour market looks healthy, but in practice, it feels impossible to navigate. However, there are ways through it, backed by data and success stories. Here’s how to outsmart a system that seems to have forgotten the people part of hiring.

No one’s 20s and 30s look the same. You might be saving for a mortgage or just struggling to pay rent. You could be swiping dating apps, or trying to understand childcare. No matter your current challenges, our Quarter Life series has articles to share in the group chat, or just to remind you that you’re not alone.

Read more from Quarter Life:

A generation struggling to find work

Whether you’re in London, New York or Toronto, the pattern is the same: a generation of qualified people blocked from the job market, and companies insisting they can’t find talent.

In Canada, job vacancies have dropped by half from approximately 984,000 in 2022 to roughly 505,000 by mid-2025. Unemployment has skyrocketed to 7.1 per cent, the highest in the last four years.

In the U.S., a similar story rings true. Unemployment hovers around 4.1 per cent — what economists call “full employment,” but the reality behind the statistics is less than stable. Job openings have fallen dramatically since the post-pandemic peak from 12 million in 2022 to about 8.8 million this year. That means fewer employment opportunities and more qualified candidates competing for the same positions.

Among younger workers, unemployment stands at approximately 8.5 per cent, nearly double the national average. Over one-third of graduates are employed in jobs that don’t require their degree.

Across the Atlantic, approximately 12.5 per cent of young people in the U.K. are currently not in education, employment or training — the highest rate in more than a decade. The unemployment rate holds at 4.8 per cent.

The International Labour Organization estimates 262 million young people — nearly one in four — are outside both work and education. The jobs exist, but the access and opportunity don’t.

Entry-level jobs no longer exist

If it feels like getting hired is impossible, there’s a reason for that. The “entry-level job” is effectively dead — the bridge between education and work has literally vanished.

In the U.S., more than 65 per cent of employers are expecting “prior experience” for entry-level roles. Meanwhile, the OECD reports that corporate spending on education and training has stagnated across almost all advanced economies.

Employers want it all — the education, the certifications and the experience — but rarely invest in developing it. As I wrote recently in Forbes: “We’ve built a work culture that glorifies resilience while quietly producing exhaustion.”

That pressure now starts long before people even get an interview. Candidates are somehow expected to be flexible, adaptable and endlessly qualified even before they’ve earned their first paycheque.

The math doesn’t add up.

Automation has also made things worse. A recent Harvard Business School study found that 80 per cent of resumes are filtered out automatically before being read.

The National Bureau of Economic Research notes that time-to-hire has doubled since 2010, with most delays happening before human review. In other words, most candidates have lost before they ever enter the race.

5 ways to beat the modern job market

The new hiring landscape rewards strategy, not volume. Here are five evidence-based approaches that will increase your odds of breaking through the job search barriers:

1. Stop applying to everything, and start applying smarter.

Sending 100 resumes isn’t a strategy, nor is it productive. Refocus on 10 to 15 roles that align with your skills and expertise. Customization still matters: one study found tailored applications triple response rates.

2. Build proof, not promises.

Applications that provide real-world work examples are twice as likely to receive a callback for an interview, even if they don’t quite have all the competencies being asked for. You can achieve this by building a visible portfolio: think of a dashboard, a writing sample or anything that demonstrates what you can do.

3. Make the algorithm work for you.

Pay attention to the job descriptions, use the exact keywords, avoid columns and keep it simple — remember, AI isn’t looking for how fancy your resume looks. The same Harvard Business School report showed that formatting alone disqualifies thousands of strong applicants every day.

4. Bypass AI and talk to humans.

Your network will typically save you. Sixty to 70 per cent of hires happen through networking and direct referrals. Get on people’s radars by reaching out to peers and building your network.

5. Reframe career gaps.

Career breaks are not a risk nor an indicator of someone’s performance, but that’s often how employers see it. Flip the narrative by talking about the skills you gained during gaps, like a new certification or volunteering. Interestingly, non-linear career paths are the norm, not the exception, in every major economy today.

If you’re an employer, the way forward is also data-driven: start reinvesting in training, invest in mentorship and rethink what you need from a new employee.

OECD data shows that organizations offering early-career development gain measurable returns in productivity and retention within two years. The solution isn’t finding ready-made talent — it’s creating it.

We need to get back to being human. Many organizations are demanding to “do more with less” and complaining about lack of talent, but we have to remember that talent, like a fine wine, takes time.

The bottom line

The old rules — get the degree, work hard and wait your turn — no longer apply. Today, what actually matters isn’t how many jobs you apply to, but how clearly you can show your value and connect with people.

If you’re job hunting in 2025, don’t wait for a system to discover you. Instead, make it impossible to be ignored. Show your worth publicly, tangibly and confidently. Remember, although the screening process may be automated, hiring decisions are still made by humans.

The problem isn’t a lack of talent. It’s a lack of vision — from the systems that stopped looking for potential and started chasing perfection.

Jason Walker 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. Feel like you can’t get a job? You’re not alone — but here’s how to work around it – https://theconversation.com/feel-like-you-cant-get-a-job-youre-not-alone-but-heres-how-to-work-around-it-268355

November 10, 2025

Sex work on trial: What the recently dismissed constitutional challenge means

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Treena Orchard, Associate Professor, School of Health Studies, Western University

Most Canadians have access to workplaces that are safe, promote health and autonomy and, most importantly, are protected by the law. But for people in criminalized professions, including sex work, it’s a different story.

In Canada, sex work itself is legal. But most aspects associated with doing sex work — purchasing sexual services and communicating for that purpose — are illegal.

R. v. Kloubakov, a recent Supreme Court of Canada case, demonstrates how basic elements of the workplace for sex workers are not only contested under the law, but they’re also being decided upon without the input of people in the profession.

This ruling upholds the constitutionality of Canada’s sex work legislation, which many sex workers advocated against in 2014 when the laws were changed to include the criminalization of clients. This legislative shift negatively impacts sex workers because it creates a climate of anxiety among clients, who can become more aggressive with workers because they fear being “outed” or arrested by police.

For more than two decades, I have had the privilege of learning about these issues directly from women, men and transgender people in India and several Canadian cities, including Vancouver, London and Kitchener-Waterloo, who do this work.

Alongside their intelligence, wit and deep insights into human nature, the sex workers I’ve known cultivate profoundly meaningful communities and care for one another in exemplary ways.

The ‘legal-but-illegal’ paradox

When it comes to sex work, there are three primary approaches to legislation, beginning with the abolitionist framework, sometimes called the Sex Buyer Law or the Swedish or Nordic model. This system decriminalizes people who sell sex, provides supports to help workers exit sex work and makes the purchase of sex a criminal offence.

Canada adopted this framework in 2014 as part of Bill C-36, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act.

Next is legalization, a legislative model in which governments introduce specific laws and regulations allowing certain forms of sex work to take place under controlled conditions. Authorities can impose a very controlled framework governing numerous aspects of the sex industry, including forced HIV/STI testing, restrictions on advertising and strict workplace-licensing rules.

Examples of this legislative approach are seen in countries like the Netherlands, Germany and Greece.

The third approach is decriminalization, which removes all laws and regulations that criminalize or penalize sex work, including its sale, purchase, advertisement and involvement of third parties such as managers and brothel keepers. This framework allows sex workers to retain agency and control over their work.

New Zealand and Belgium are examples of countries that have decriminalized sex work.

Over the past decade, Canada’s sex work laws, however, have grown increasingly punitive, even though the number of arrests has decreased. Canadian sociologist Chris Smith found sex work–related arrests peaked at nearly 2,800 in 1992 and fell to just 11 by 2020.

And, as Smith argues, there is a mismatch between legislation and the actual crime, which significantly affects sex workers’ conditions and safety.

Inside the R. v. Kloubakov decision

In a unanimous decision on July 24, 2025, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the constitutional challenge by Mikhail Kloubakov and Hicham Moustaine against Canada’s sex work laws. At issue were two parts of Canada’s sex-work criminalization legislation: receiving material benefits from sex workers and the procuring of sexual services.

The men, who were drivers for an escort agency in Calgary and were also responsible for transferring money earned by sex workers to the agency operators, pleaded guilty of separate charges related to human trafficking.

The trial judge had found them guilty of violating the Criminal Code by profiting from sex workers. She stayed proceedings on whether current sex work laws impacted the safety of sex workers.

The case challenged the constitutionality of the sex work laws, but ignored the difficulties of working in a criminalized profession subject to intense police surveillance stemming from receiving material benefits and procuring offences.

These offences make sex workers vulnerable to a range of harms, including institutional abuse, targeted violence, xenophobic raids leading to deportations and closures of safe indoor workspaces, constant threats of surveillance, and unwanted contact with law enforcement.

Research shows that in some Canadian cities, fears associated with police surveillance (such as being outed as a sex worker and racially profiled) are so prevalent that sex workers hesitate to contact police after facing violent armed robberies.

The court overlooks dignity

In R. v. Kloubakov, the Supreme Court of Canada did not prioritize the safety and security objective in its analysis. Instead, it treated it as just another issue among others. The court also failed to engage meaningfully with evidence relating to the lived experiences of sex workers. Decisions about sex workers’ rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms should not be made without sex workers at the table.

Criminalizing sex work is not a benign act with abstract consequences.

It isolates sex workers from society and resources, and positions them as targets for violence, discrimination and labour exploitation. It also contravenes regulatory approaches from the United Nations Human Rights Council, which views the criminalization of sex workers as a form of gender-based discrimination and advocates for a human-rights framework that aligns with decriminalization.

In a country that claims to care about all of its citizens, it’s imperative that we stand with those among us who are forced to struggle for basic human rights in their chosen profession — whether taking up that profession is dictated by pleasure, empowerment or survival.

What to expect going forward

This debate is far from over. Some of the issues the court declined to rule on will be raised in the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform v. Canada case that is currently pending before the Ontario Court of Appeal after being struck down in 2021 by the Ontario Supreme Court.

This case challenges several sex work prohibitions on the grounds that they violate sex workers’ rights to freedom of expression, life, liberty, security of the person and equality, all of which are protected by the Canadian Charter.

While the case is on hold, Canadians can enhance what they know about sex work from organizations who advocate for sex worker rights, sex workers who write about their experiences and a host of other cultural spaces.

Treena Orchard has received funding from CIHR, SSHRC, and Western University, but no research funds were used in the creation of this article.

– ref. Sex work on trial: What the recently dismissed constitutional challenge means – https://theconversation.com/sex-work-on-trial-what-the-recently-dismissed-constitutional-challenge-means-267163