Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Noah Eliot Vanderhoeven, PhD Candidate, Political Science, Western University

Amid threats from United States President Donald Trump to make Canada the 51st state, the Toronto Blue Jays’ season started with protocols aimed at avoiding booing during the American national anthem and the removal of someone wearing a “Canada is not for sale hat” at the ballpark.

Nonetheless, the Blue Jays are being heavily marketed as “Canada’s team” as they advance to the American League championship after beating the New York Yankees, America’s most storied baseball team.

Why do the Blue Jays frame themselves as not just Toronto’s team, but Canada’s? And is their current post-season run their biggest and most important opportunity in years to fully establish themselves as representing all of Canada?

Truly Canada’s team?

The Jays serving as Canada’s team may make sense since they’re the only Canadian team currently playing in Major League Baseball (MLB). But to some Canadians, positioning the Jays as the nation’s team may not sit well.

After all, for baseball fans in Québec, memories of the now-defunct Montreal Expos still loom large.

For fans closer to the Windsor-Detroit border, the Detroit Tigers are a more proximate and accessible team.

Finally, some British Columbia MLB enthusiasts — despite the trips Blue Jays fans make to take over T-Mobile Park when the Blue Jays play the Seattle Mariners — still opt to support the Mariners since the team is so much closer than the Blue Jays are in Toronto.

What all this means is that to some Canadian baseball fans, the Blue Jays aren’t really Canada’s team — they’re just Toronto’s.

Huge market

It’s unsurprising that the Toronto Blue Jays organization, owned by Rogers Communications — “proud owner of Canada’s team” — is intent on framing the squad this way because it provides a substantial financial boon. The Jays benefit greatly from being Canada’s team by compelling baseball fans from across the country to attend their games, and most importantly, to watch them on television.

Despite playing north of the border and earning revenues in the weaker Canadian dollar, the Jays operate in one of MLB’s largest markets — Toronto — and can also market to fans across the country. That gives them the largest geographical market in professional baseball — an entire nation.

This massive audience contributes to equally massive television ratings, even at a time when most MLB teams are struggling for regional television revenues. Being “Canada’s team” has also allowed the Blue Jays to spend competitively over the past 10 years and operate a Top 5 payroll, as they have in 2025, alongside other teams in huge markets like Los Angeles and New York.

Cross-border trash-talking

In the midst of the series against the Yankees, Prime Minister Mark Carney met with Trump to discuss trade, tariffs and security. Intitial reports suggested the meeting, held just days after Trump made yet another veiled annexation threat, went well.

But the ongoing backdrop of tense relations between the U.S. and Canada is perhaps echoed by some of the commentary about both teams.

Early in the season, the Yankees’ play-by-play man, Michael Kay, called Toronto “not a first-place team” despite the Blue Jays having just passed the Yankees for first place in the American League East.

In September, Jays colour-commentator and former catcher, Buck Martinez, said that the Yankees were “not a good team.”

Also in September, a Baltimore Orioles television analyst, Brian Roberts, questioned how well Canadians understood baseball, leading to the Blue Jays themselves defending the baseball intelligence of their fans.

There was even a popular hoax online about Trump not inviting the Blue Jays to the White House should they win the World Series — an invite he’s extended to many championship teams in American sports leagues.

Stoking Canadian nationalism

Ultimately, the Blue Jays bested the Yankees and are advancing to the American League championship series. Blue Jays players and their manager, John Schneider, have spoken of the intense atmosphere Blue Jays fans create for their opponents and how the team draws on the support of the entire nation of Canada.

The Jays’ success so far in the post-season in this current political moment — as Trump is once again making veiled threats about making Canada the 51st state during tense trade negotiations — presents the Blue Jays with perhaps their best opportunity to fulfil their role as Canada’s team.

In a season defined by rivalry, politics and national pride, the Blue Jays are proving that even America’s pastime can become a canvas for Canadian nationalism.

Noah Eliot Vanderhoeven 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. Toronto Blue Jays: Amid Canada-U.S. tensions, ‘Canada’s team’ is excelling at America’s pastime – https://theconversation.com/toronto-blue-jays-amid-canada-u-s-tensions-canadas-team-is-excelling-at-americas-pastime-266882

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Aviroop Biswas, Assistant professor, University of Toronto

We all know about the benefits of physical activity — not just to reduce the risks of chronic disease and physical injuries but also to improve mental health and productivity at work. But many people just don’t get as much physical activity as they should.

The World Health Organization’s physical activity guidelines recommend adults strive for 150 to 300 minutes of moderately intense aerobic physical activity every week, or 75 to 150 minutes if the physical activity is vigorous.

Given the amount of time many people spend working, getting more physical activity at work and/or during commutes to and from work might make these goals more feasible for working people.

Evidence-based strategies for employers

My research conducted with colleagues at the Institute for Work and Health, an independent non-profit research institute, illustrates the many ways employers can play a role to encourage this part of a healthy lifestyle. Even small changes, such as encouraging workers to move more than they currently do, can yield meaningful heart health benefits.

Offering a range of physical activity options, from structured programs to pleasant walking spaces, can be motivating for a wide range of employees. Even fostering an environment that helps employees mentally disconnect from work for a short time can make it easier for them to engage in healthy behaviours.

Below are strategies employers can use to promote physical activity among workers, based on IWH research studies.

1. Promoting physical activity throughout the day

Employers can encourage workers to make it part of their workday routine to head to the gym before going to work or go on a run during their lunch hour.

To reinforce that message, our research shows that workplaces can offer a range of programs and amenities. These include access to a pleasant place to walk, jog or bike; access to a field or open space for ball games or other sports; a nearby gym or fitness centre; organized fitness classes; organized recreational sports teams; showers and/or change rooms; and programs to improve health, fitness or nutrition.

In our large study based on data from about 60,000 people (a sample chosen to be representative of the makeup of the Canadian population), those who said that their workplaces offered all of the programs and amenities listed above were twice as likely to be active as those who were offered none. They were also 1.5 times as likely to be moderately active.

Although such a buffet of offerings may seem out of reach for employers, a large group of workers — 25 per cent of the study sample — reported having all these offerings at or near their workplaces. We also found that people were more likely to be physically active when they had access to any combination of the above, compared to having none of the above.

When highlighting the benefits of a rewards package to potential employees, workplaces might want to showcase environmental features such as nearby parks and gyms as well as programs and amenities. All have been found to promote physical activity.

2. Emphasizing that every bit of movement counts

Workplace wellness advocates know that some workers are already committed workout aficionados who need no convincing. In another study focused on how workers actually move throughout the day, we found that exercise buffs made up one in 10 workers in a sample of more than 8,000 individuals (a sample that was also representative of the Canadian working population).

As part of our research findings, compared to the sedentary workers who sit most of the day (and who make up about three in 10 Canadian workers), these exercisers have a 42 per cent lower risk of developing heart disease over 10 years.

But here’s the good news: we also found 50 per cent of the working population fall somewhere between these two extremes in how much they move throughout the workday.

Think of the sales associates who don’t sit still for long at work or the nurses who do a mix of desk duties and highly physical tasks. These workers all have lower heart disease risks compared to the deskbound workers.

We should note one important exception from our research study, which is the group of workers who do strenuous, physical work all through the workday — for example, construction workers. Workers in this group — about one in 10 of the labour force — have the same heart health risks as sedentary workers. That’s because heavy, continuous exertion can place stress on the body, potentially raising blood pressure and counteracting the typical benefits of physical activity.

But for everyone else, the message from our study is that every little bit of movement counts in terms of lowering workers’ odds of developing heart disease.

3. Tapping into internal champions

One of our ongoing studies at the Institute for Work and Health suggests that workplace wellness champions can be powerful motivators. These can be formally designated advocates like wellness leads or human resources staff, but they can also be informal proponents — individuals who are genuinely and spontaneously passionate about healthy living.

Our study suggests that the informal champions tend be more trusted by colleagues and therefore more effective as motivators, but because they typically do this champion work on the side, they can run the risk of burnout.

Our message to employers is they should identify and support champions within their organizations, both formal and informal, by recognizing the value they bring to building a healthier workplace and equipping them with resources they need.

The importance of upstream factors

No matter what or how many initiatives are put in place to promote wellness, employers also need to look beyond individual behaviour and motivation if they want to encourage a physically active lifestyle among their employees. They have to recognize that upstream factors play a role in shaping individuals’ exercise choices. These include factors related to people’s working conditions.

Employers need to ask themselves: do their employees feel they can disconnect from work for 20 minutes to go for a walk? Do only certain employees (for example, the managers and high-performers) have the flexibility to join the company ball team? If the organization highlights the gyms and fitness clubs in the neighbourhood as one of the appeals of working there, can everyone afford the membership fees?

In short, while everyone would agree a more physically active lifestyle is important, employers may need to take a hard look at how workload, work flexibility, supervisor support and other psychosocial work factors contribute to motivating or disincentivizing a physically active lifestyle among their employees.

The payoff is worth it. Active workers are less likely to develop chronic diseases, are more resilient to stress and more engaged in their work. This translates into fewer absences, better performance and higher job satisfaction. By making it easier for employees to move during the day, employers can support a healthier workforce.

Aviroop Biswas receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research. The Institute for Work & Health is supported in part through funding from the Ontario Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development. He is also the President of the Canadian Association for Research on Work & Health.

– ref. How employers can promote physical activity among workers: 3 messages based on research – https://theconversation.com/how-employers-can-promote-physical-activity-among-workers-3-messages-based-on-research-259897

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Xi Chen, Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, University of Guelph

As Canada navigates an ongoing tariff dispute with the United States, small businesses and startups are emerging as a source of economic growth that could help Canada assert greater independence from its largest trading partner.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has warned that Canada cannot rely on the U.S. any longer and must instead achieve “economic autonomy.” Ottawa’s efforts to remove internal trade barriers and expand infrastructure projects are central to this objective, paving the foundation to revitalize the Canadian economy.

Another key part of this agenda is fostering entrepreneurship — the engine for new opportunities and economic growth.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the Canadian economy. As of December 2023, small businesses made up 98.1 per cent of all employer businesses in Canada, accounted for 63.7 per cent of the private labour force and 48 per cent of Canada’s GDP (gross domestic product) over the 2017-21 period. They also represented 38.2 per cent of the total value of exported goods.

Although exporting has traditionally been dominated by larger, innovation-intensive SMEs — particularly those with significant intellectual property — recent data shows an increase in exports from smaller, service-oriented firms, many of them immigrant-led.

These businesses are playing an increasingly important role in diversifying Canada’s export base and reducing dependence on any single market — particularly the U.S.

The lean startup model

For many aspiring entrepreneurs, one of the most popular frameworks for launching a business is the lean startup method, developed by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Eric Ries and expanded on in his 2011 book, The Lean Startup.

This practice has been widely adopted by incubators and accelerators, some of which require new ventures to meet hundreds of mentors and potential customers for consultation.

The Lean Startup provides a recipe for starting businesses with minimal cost, fast iteration and higher success rate. The philosophy behind it is for entrepreneurs to validate their market before investing tons of resources into building a product.

Since its publication, The Lean Startup has been used by millions of entrepreneurs around the world. The book advises entrepreneurs to “get out of the building” and talk to potential customers, but it doesn’t specify how much effort entrepreneurs should invest in market validation — how many people to consult or how often to do so.

Market validation is the process of testing a product or service idea with its target market to confirm if there’s real demand for it and whether it is viable for success. Although it’s central to the lean startup approach, many entrepreneurs shy away from it for different reasons.

Some entrepreneurs want to protect their business ideas from being stolen by others. In addition, new ventures have scarce resources that need to be allocated to multiple tasks, and market validation competes for the limited attention and resources of entrepreneurs.

The ‘sweet spot’ for market validation

In a recent study, my co-author Stephen X. Zhang and I set out to understand which entrepreneurs are more likely to invest in market validation, and how much investment is optimal for new venture performance. We conducted a three-wave survey with 210 entrepreneurs and their co-founders from Canada, Chile and China.

We measured the self-efficacy of entrepreneurs — how confident they felt about market and entrepreneurial success — and asked co-founders to report their ventures’ market validation frequency and hours. We found that entrepreneurs with moderate levels of confidence invested most resources into market validation. They sought feedback more frequently and invested more time in understanding potential customers.

Entrepreneurs with low confidence either didn’t think market validation was worthwhile or they found it too intimidating. Those with high confidence didn’t think it was necessary to validate their market because they were already convinced of their success.

More importantly, we found that a moderate level of market validation led to the strongest new venture performance. Checking in with about four to five people monthly was the most efficient. Interestingly, this number coincides with the most efficient size of social network, as well as the number needed for user testing.

The results suggest that effective market validation is more about quality and consistency than quantity. Talking to a small, diverse group of knowledgeable contacts on a regular basis is optimal for enhancing new venture performance.

Yet there is a precaution: we did not study the quality of informants. Five people may be enough for qualitative methods such as interviews, but it may not be enough for quantitative methods such as surveys.

What this means for new entrepreneurs

Our findings can make the task starting a new business less daunting for entrepreneurs. Instead of trying to interview hundreds of customers or skipping validation entirely, early-stage entrepreneurs can start small.

If you have an idea, find five people that are most knowledgeable and relevant for the idea, and ask their opinions about the product or service you envisioned. If they like the idea, develop a minimum viable product to test it out. If not, revise your idea or try a different one.

In addition, understanding the way confidence has an impact on how entrepreneurs seek feedback can help organizations and mentors improve their coaching methods.

Entrepreneurs with low confidence may benefit from support that builds self-efficacy through vicarious learning, such as observing and simulation, to make feedback less intimidating. Those with excessive confidence may need to be challenged to provide evidence for their assumptions and reminded of the value of customer feedback in challenging even deeply held convictions.

Xi Chen 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. Small sample, big impact: How talking to just 5 people can improve startup success – https://theconversation.com/small-sample-big-impact-how-talking-to-just-5-people-can-improve-startup-success-266661

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Xi Chen, Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, University of Guelph

As Canada navigates an ongoing tariff dispute with the United States, small businesses and startups are emerging as a source of economic growth that could help Canada assert greater independence from its largest trading partner.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has warned that Canada cannot rely on the U.S. any longer and must instead achieve “economic autonomy.” Ottawa’s efforts to remove internal trade barriers and expand infrastructure projects are central to this objective, paving the foundation to revitalize the Canadian economy.

Another key part of this agenda is fostering entrepreneurship — the engine for new opportunities and economic growth.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the Canadian economy. As of December 2023, small businesses made up 98.1 per cent of all employer businesses in Canada, accounted for 63.7 per cent of the private labour force and 48 per cent of Canada’s GDP (gross domestic product) over the 2017-21 period. They also represented 38.2 per cent of the total value of exported goods.

Although exporting has traditionally been dominated by larger, innovation-intensive SMEs — particularly those with significant intellectual property — recent data shows an increase in exports from smaller, service-oriented firms, many of them immigrant-led.

These businesses are playing an increasingly important role in diversifying Canada’s export base and reducing dependence on any single market — particularly the U.S.

The lean startup model

For many aspiring entrepreneurs, one of the most popular frameworks for launching a business is the lean startup method, developed by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Eric Ries and expanded on in his 2011 book, The Lean Startup.

This practice has been widely adopted by incubators and accelerators, some of which require new ventures to meet hundreds of mentors and potential customers for consultation.

The Lean Startup provides a recipe for starting businesses with minimal cost, fast iteration and higher success rate. The philosophy behind it is for entrepreneurs to validate their market before investing tons of resources into building a product.

Since its publication, The Lean Startup has been used by millions of entrepreneurs around the world. The book advises entrepreneurs to “get out of the building” and talk to potential customers, but it doesn’t specify how much effort entrepreneurs should invest in market validation — how many people to consult or how often to do so.

Market validation is the process of testing a product or service idea with its target market to confirm if there’s real demand for it and whether it is viable for success. Although it’s central to the lean startup approach, many entrepreneurs shy away from it for different reasons.

Some entrepreneurs want to protect their business ideas from being stolen by others. In addition, new ventures have scarce resources that need to be allocated to multiple tasks, and market validation competes for the limited attention and resources of entrepreneurs.

The ‘sweet spot’ for market validation

In a recent study, my co-author Stephen X. Zhang and I set out to understand which entrepreneurs are more likely to invest in market validation, and how much investment is optimal for new venture performance. We conducted a three-wave survey with 210 entrepreneurs and their co-founders from Canada, Chile and China.

We measured the self-efficacy of entrepreneurs — how confident they felt about market and entrepreneurial success — and asked co-founders to report their ventures’ market validation frequency and hours. We found that entrepreneurs with moderate levels of confidence invested most resources into market validation. They sought feedback more frequently and invested more time in understanding potential customers.

Entrepreneurs with low confidence either didn’t think market validation was worthwhile or they found it too intimidating. Those with high confidence didn’t think it was necessary to validate their market because they were already convinced of their success.

More importantly, we found that a moderate level of market validation led to the strongest new venture performance. Checking in with about four to five people monthly was the most efficient. Interestingly, this number coincides with the most efficient size of social network, as well as the number needed for user testing.

The results suggest that effective market validation is more about quality and consistency than quantity. Talking to a small, diverse group of knowledgeable contacts on a regular basis is optimal for enhancing new venture performance.

Yet there is a precaution: we did not study the quality of informants. Five people may be enough for qualitative methods such as interviews, but it may not be enough for quantitative methods such as surveys.

What this means for new entrepreneurs

Our findings can make the task starting a new business less daunting for entrepreneurs. Instead of trying to interview hundreds of customers or skipping validation entirely, early-stage entrepreneurs can start small.

If you have an idea, find five people that are most knowledgeable and relevant for the idea, and ask their opinions about the product or service you envisioned. If they like the idea, develop a minimum viable product to test it out. If not, revise your idea or try a different one.

In addition, understanding the way confidence has an impact on how entrepreneurs seek feedback can help organizations and mentors improve their coaching methods.

Entrepreneurs with low confidence may benefit from support that builds self-efficacy through vicarious learning, such as observing and simulation, to make feedback less intimidating. Those with excessive confidence may need to be challenged to provide evidence for their assumptions and reminded of the value of customer feedback in challenging even deeply held convictions.

Xi Chen 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. Small sample, big impact: How talking to just five people can improve startup success – https://theconversation.com/small-sample-big-impact-how-talking-to-just-five-people-can-improve-startup-success-266661

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ramona Pringle, Director, Creative Innovation Studio; Associate Professor, RTA School of Media, Toronto Metropolitan University

Imagine an actor who never ages, never walks off set or demands a higher salary.

That’s the promise behind Tilly Norwood, a fully AI-generated “actress” currently being courted by Hollywood’s top talent agencies. Her synthetic presence has ignited a media firestorm, denounced as an existential threat to human performers by some and hailed as a breakthrough in digital creativity by others.

But beneath the headlines lies a deeper tension. The binaries used to debate Norwood — human versus machine, threat versus opportunity, good versus bad — flatten complex questions of art, justice and creative power into soundbites.

The question isn’t whether the future will be synthetic; it already is. Our challenge now is to ensure that it is also meaningfully human.

All agree Tilly isn’t human

Ironically, at the centre of this polarizing debate is a rare moment of agreement: all sides acknowledge that Tilly is not human.

Her creator, Eline Van der Velden, the CEO of AI production company Particle6, insists that Norwood was never meant to replace a real actor. Critics agree, albeit in protest. SAG-AFTRA, the union representing actors in the U.S., responded with:

“It’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation. It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion, and from what we’ve seen, audiences aren’t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience.”

Their position is rooted in recent history: In 2023, actors went on strike over AI. The resulting agreement secured protections around consent and compensation.

So if both sides insist Tilly isn’t human, the controversy, then, isn’t just about what Tilly is, it’s about what she represents.

Complexity as a starting point

Norwood represents more than novelty. She’s emblematic of a larger reckoning with how rapidly artificial intelligence is reshaping our lives and the creative sector. The velocity of change is dizzying, and now the question is how do we shape the hybrid world we’ve already entered?

It can feel disorienting trying to parse ethics, rights and responsibilities while being bombarded by newness. Especially when that “newness” comes in a form that unnerves us: a near-human likeness that triggers long-standing cultural discomfort.

Indeed, Norwood may be a textbook case of the “uncanny valley,” a term coined by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori to describe the unease people feel when something looks almost human, but not quite.

But if all sides agree that Tilly isn’t human, what happens when audiences still feel something real while watching her on screen? If emotional resonance and storytelling are considered uniquely human traits, maybe the threat posed by synthetic actors has been overstated. On the other hand, who hasn’t teared up in a Pixar film? A character doesn’t have to feel emotion to evoke it.

Still, the public conversation remains polarized. As my colleague Owais Lightwala, assistant professor in the School of Performance at Toronto Metropolitan University, puts it: “The conversation around AI right now is so binary that it limits our capacity for real thinking. What we need is to be obsessed with complexity.”

Synthetic actors aren’t inherently villains or saviours, Lightwala tells me, they’re a tool, a new medium. The challenge lies in how we build the infrastructures around them, such as rights, ownership and distribution.

He points out that while some celebrities see synthetic actors as job threats, most actors already struggle for consistent work. “We ask the one per cent how they feel about losing power, but what about the 99 per cent who never had access to that power in the first place?”

Too often missing from this debate is what these tools might make possible for the creators we rarely hear from. The current media landscape is already deeply inequitable. As Lightwala notes, most people never get the chance to realize their creative potential — not for lack of talent, but due to barriers like access, capital, mentorship and time.

Now, some of those barriers might finally lower. With AI tools, more people may get the opportunity to create.

Of course, that doesn’t mean AI will automatically democratize creativity. While tools are more available, attention and influence remain scarce.

Sarah Watling, co-founder and CEO of JaLi Research, a Toronto-based AI facial animation company, offers a more cautionary perspective. She argues that as AI becomes more common, we risk treating it like a utility, essential yet invisible.

In her view, the inevitable AI economy won’t be a creator economy, it will be a utility commodity. And “when things become utilities,” she warns, “they usually become monopolized.”

Where do we go from here?

We need to pivot away from reactionary fear narratives, like Lightwala suggests.

Instead of shutting down innovation, we need to continue to experiment. We need to use this moment, when public attention is focused on the rights of actors and the shape of culture, to rethink what was already broken in the industry and allow space for new creative modalities to emerge.

Platforms and studios must take the lead in setting transparent, fair policies for how synthetic content is developed, attributed and distributed. In parallel, we need to push creative institutions, unions and agencies to collaborate in the co-design of ethical and contractual guardrails now, before precedents get set in stone, putting consent, fair attribution and compensation at the centre.

And creators, for their part, must use these tools not just to replicate what came before, but to imagine what hasn’t been possible until now. That responsibility is as much creative as it is technical.

The future will be synthetic. Our task now is to build pathways, train talent, fuel imagination, and have nuanced, if difficult, conversations.
Because while technology shapes what’s possible, creators and storytellers have the power to shape what matters.

Ramona Pringle 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. What AI-generated Tilly Norwood reveals about digital culture, ethics and the responsibilities of creators – https://theconversation.com/what-ai-generated-tilly-norwood-reveals-about-digital-culture-ethics-and-the-responsibilities-of-creators-266564

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Noah Eliot Vanderhoeven, PhD Candidate, Political Science, Western University

Amid threats from United States President Donald Trump to make Canada the 51st state, the Toronto Blue Jays’ season started with protocols aimed at avoiding booing during the American national anthem and the removal of someone wearing a “Canada is not for sale hat” at the ballpark.

Nonetheless, the Blue Jays are still being heavily marketed as “Canada’s team” as they square off against the New York Yankees, America’s most storied baseball team.

Why do the Blue Jays frame themselves as not just Toronto’s team, but Canada’s? And is their current post-season run their biggest and most important opportunity in years to fully establish themselves as representing all of Canada?

Truly Canada’s team?

The Jays serving as Canada’s team may make sense since they’re the only Canadian team currently playing in Major League Baseball (MLB). But to some Canadians, positioning the Jays as the nation’s team may not sit well.

After all, for baseball fans in Québec, memories of the now-defunct Montreal Expos still loom large.

For fans closer to the Windsor-Detroit border, the Detroit Tigers are a more proximate and accessible team.

Finally, some British Columbia MLB enthusiasts — despite the trips Blue Jays fans make to take over T-Mobile Park when the Blue Jays play the Seattle Mariners — still opt to support the Mariners since the team is so much closer than the Blue Jays are in Toronto.

What all this means is that to some Canadian baseball fans, the Blue Jays aren’t really Canada’s team — they’re just Toronto’s.

Huge market

It’s unsurprising that the Toronto Blue Jays organization, owned by Rogers Communications — “proud owner of Canada’s team” — is intent on framing the squad this way because it provides a substantial financial boon. The Jays benefit greatly from being Canada’s team by compelling baseball fans from across the country to attend their games, and most importantly, to watch them on television.

Despite playing north of the border and earning revenues in the weaker Canadian dollar, the Jays operate in one of MLB’s largest markets — Toronto — and can also market to fans across the country. That gives them the largest geographical market in professional baseball — an entire nation.

This massive audience contributes to equally massive television ratings, even at a time when most MLB teams are struggling for regional television revenues. Being “Canada’s team” has also allowed the Blue Jays to spend competitively over the past 10 years and operate a Top 5 payroll, as they have in 2025, alongside other teams in huge markets like Los Angeles and New York.

Cross-border trash-talking

As the series with the Yankees continues, Prime Minister Mark Carney met with Trump to discuss trade, tariffs and security. The meeting, held just days after Trump made yet another veiled annexation threat, reportedly went well.

But the ongoing backdrop of tense relations between the U.S. and Canada is perhaps echoed by some of the commentary about both teams.

Early in the season, the Yankees’ play-by-play man, Michael Kay, called Toronto “not a first-place team” despite the Blue Jays having just passed the Yankees for first place in the American League East.

In September, Jays colour-commentator and former catcher, Buck Martinez, said that the Yankees were “not a good team.”

Also in September, a Baltimore Orioles television analyst, Brian Roberts, questioned how well Canadians understood baseball, leading to the Blue Jays themselves defending the baseball intelligence of their fans.

There was even a popular hoax online about Trump not inviting the Blue Jays to the White House should they win the World Series — an invite he’s extended to many championship teams in American sports leagues.

Stoking Canadian nationalism

Ultimately, the Blue Jays ended up winning the American League East, guaranteeing the Jays a home-field advantage against the Yankees. Blue Jays players and their manager, John Schneider, have spoken of the intense atmosphere Blue Jays fans create for their opponents and how the team draws on the support of the entire nation of Canada.

The Jays’ success so far in the post-season in this current political moment — as Trump is once again making veiled threats about making Canada the 51st state during tense trade negotiations — presents the Blue Jays with perhaps their best opportunity to fulfil their role as Canada’s team.

In a season defined by rivalry, politics and national pride, the Blue Jays are proving that even America’s pastime can become a canvas for Canadian nationalism.

Noah Eliot Vanderhoeven 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. Toronto Blue Jays: Amid Canada-U.S. tensions, ‘Canada’s team’ takes a run at America’s pastime – https://theconversation.com/toronto-blue-jays-amid-canada-u-s-tensions-canadas-team-takes-a-run-at-americas-pastime-266882

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jordan Loewen-Colón, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Smith School of Business, Queen’s University, Ontario

What if your biggest competitive asset is not how fast AI helps you work, but how well you question what it produces?

Business leaders tend to prioritize efficiency and compliance in the workplace. It’s one of the reasons why so many are drawn toward incorporating generative AI technologies into their workflows. A recent survey found 63 per cent of global IT leaders worry their companies will be left behind without AI adoption.

But in the rush to adopt AI, some organizations are overlooking the real impact it can have on workers and company culture.

Most organizational strategies focus on AI’s short-term efficiencies, such as automation, speed and cost saving. What tends to be overlooked are the impacts AI has on cognition, agency and cultural norms. AI is fundamentally restructuring not only what we know, but how we know it.

As AI becomes more integrated, it will continue to influence organizational tone, pace, communication style and decision-making norms. This is why leaders must set deliberate boundaries and consciously shape organizational culture in relation to AI integration.

Once embedded into workflows, AI influences workplace defaults: which sources appear first, what tone a memo takes and where managers set the bar for “good enough.” If people don’t set these defaults, tools like AI will instead.

As researchers who study AI, psychology, human-computer interaction and ethics, we are deeply concerned with the hidden effects and consequences of AI use.

Psychological effects of AI at work

Researchers are beginning to document a number of psychological effects associated with AI use in the workplace. These impacts expose current gaps in epistemic awareness — how we know what we know — and how those gaps can weaken emotional boundaries.

Such shifts can affect how people make decisions, calibrate trust and maintain psychological safety in AI-mediated environments.

One of the most prominent effects is known as “automation bias.” Once AI is integrated into a company’s workflow, its outputs are often internalized as authoritative sources of truth.

Because AI-generated outputs appear fluent and objective, they can be accepted uncritically, creating an inflated sense of confidence and a dangerous illusion of competence.

One recent study found that in 40 per cent of tasks, knowledge workers — those who turn information into decisions or deliverables, like writers, analysts and designers — accepted AI outputs uncritically with zero scrutiny.

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The erosion of self-trust

A second concern is the erosion of self-trust. Continuous engagement with AI-generated content leads workers to second-guess their instincts and over-rely on AI guidance, often without realizing it. Over time, work shifts from generating ideas to merely approving AI-generated ones. This results in the diminishing of personal judgment, creativity and original authorship.

One study found that users have a tendency to follow AI advice even when it contradicts their own judgment, resulting in a decline in confidence and autonomous decision-making. Other research shows that when AI systems provide affirming feedback — even for incorrect answers — users become more confident in their decisions, which can distort their judgment.

Workers can end up deferring to AI as an authority despite its lack of lived experience, moral reasoning or contextual understanding. Productivity may appear higher in the short term, but the quality of decisions, self-trust and ethical oversight may ultimately suffer.

Emerging evidence also points to neurological effects of over-reliance on AI use. One recent emerging study tracked professionals’ brain activity over four months and found that ChatGPT users exhibited 55 per cent less neural connectivity compared to those working unassisted. They struggled to remember the essays they just co-authored moments later, as well reduced creative engagement.

So what can leaders and managers do about it?

What leaders and managers can do

Resilience has become something of a corporate buzzword, but genuine resilience can help organizations adapt to AI.

Resilient organizations teach employees to effectively collaborate with AI without over-relying on its outputs. This requires systematic training in interpretive and critical skills to build balanced and ethical human-AI collaboration.

Organizations that value critique over passive acceptance will become better at thinking critically, adapting knowledge effectively and will build stronger ethical capacity. One way of achieving this is by shifting from a growth-oriented mindset to an adaptive one. Which, practically speaking, means workplaces should seek to do the following:

1. Train people to separate fluency from accuracy and to ask where information comes from rather than just being passive consumers of it. With better epistemic awareness, workers become active interpreters understanding what an AI tool is saying, as well as how and why it’s saying it.

2. Teach people to monitor their thinking processes and question knowledge sources. A recent study showed professionals with strong metacognitive practices, like planning, self-monitoring and prompt revision, achieved significantly higher creativity when using AI tools, while others saw no benefit. That means metacognition could be the “missing link” for productive LLM use.

3. Avoid a one-size-fits-all approach and consider levels of automation by task stages. AI tool developers should be encouraged to define clear roles for when the model drafts or analyzes, when the human leads and when verification is mandatory. Consider adding things like AI-use to responsibility and accountability charts.

4. Create workplace cultures that encourage workers to question AI outputs, track those challenges as quality signals and budget time for verification. Workplaces should publish style norms for AI-assisted writing, set confidence thresholds and evidence requirements by function, and specify who signs off at each risk level.

5. Hold quarterly “drift reviews” to spot shifts in tone, reliance or bias, before they calcify into organizational culture.

Efficiency will not decide the winners

As we are starting to see, the drive for efficiency will not decide which firms are most successful; the ability to interpret and critically assess AI outputs will.

The companies that pair speed with skepticism and protect judgment as a first-class asset will handle volatility better than those that treat AI as an autopilot. Speed may get you to the next decision, but judgment keeps you in business.

Ethical intelligence in organizations requires an ongoing investment in epistemic awareness, interpretive skill, psychological safety and active value-driven design.

Companies capable of balancing technological innovation with critical thinking and deep ethical understanding will be the ones to thrive in the AI era.

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. AI tools promise efficiency at work, but they can erode trust, creativity and agency – https://theconversation.com/ai-tools-promise-efficiency-at-work-but-they-can-erode-trust-creativity-and-agency-264865

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jason Wang, Postdoctoral Fellow, Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre, Toronto Metropolitan University

The United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform recently released a 238-page album, compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003 for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday. On Oct. 6, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Maxwell’s appeal of her 2022 conviction for sex trafficking girls with Epstein.

The release of the partially redacted album is part of a larger investigation of the federal government’s handling of Epstein and Maxwell and “possible mismanagement.”

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The album is in the spotlight due to an entry allegedly penned by U.S. President Donald Trump, though the White House has denied he wrote it. Entitled The First Fifty Years, the book overflows with handwritten letters, campy sketches and images fixated on women’s bodies.

The book was bound by Weitz & Coleman, an esteemed bookbinder in New York City since 1909, as indicated by a note within the album itself.

Its “vegetable tanned” leather covers, table of contents and sections titled “Family,” “Friends” and “Business” signal an intent to elevate casual notes into a permanent record.

As book historian D.F. McKenzie contends, a book’s physical form shapes its social role. Here, the elaborate binding and careful organization transform private, ephemeral notes into a social gesture, something shared in a legacy format.

In this sense, Epstein’s album sits alongside a tradition of bound tribute books — scrapbooks pressed into leather for golden anniversaries, glossy volumes marking a CEO’s retirement or academic festschrifts that canonize a career. What unites them is the transformation of passing moments into artifacts meant to endure.

Charm, codes, clichés

Maxwell’s prologue describes the book as a retrospective to “jog your memory of places and people and different events.”

In the birthday book, one redacted former “assistant” recalls how working for Epstein transformed her life: she went from being “a 22-year-old divorcée working as a hotel hostess” to rubbing shoulders with royalty, presidents, financiers and celebrities.

One letter from a childhood friend who recently said Maxwell instructed him to write something “raunchy” spins a sexually explicit fantasy about Epstein’s conception before drifting into nostalgic tales of their four-boy Brooklyn clique.

In one vignette, Epstein is praised for flaunting a “beautiful British babe” at his family’s home, his indifference to her feelings reframed as charm. The anecdote turns callousness toward women into a badge of confidence and belonging. The letter concludes: “That shows a lot. It really does … Yes, your charisma and persuasive ways came very early on … you’re my kid’s role model.”

Epstein’s sex life and treatment of women are recurring themes.

A note apparently from private equity investor Leon Black, who was earlier found to have paid millions in fees to Epstein, cast Epstein as Ernest Hemingway’s hero in The Old Man and the Sea, swapping fish for “Blonde, Red or Brunette” women.

Philosophers and scholars of rhetoric have long noted that ready-made clichés can replace inner reflection, forming a “code of expression” that insulates people from moral reckoning.

Laughter as defence

If language conveys loyalty, humour compounds it. Composed in 2003, as Epstein’s notoriety grew, today — amid the knowledge of Epstein’s sex crimes — the birthday book’s laughter seems knowingly defensive.

There are bawdy jokes and mocking nicknames: Epstein is dubbed “Degenerate One” and teased or taunted with “so many girls, so little time.”

As French philosopher Henri Bergson argued, laughter functions as a social corrective: a “kind of social ragging” that polices behaviour by ridiculing deviation under the guise of amusement.

One birthday book contributor quips that Epstein had “avoided the penitentiary.” The comment implies knowledge of punishable behaviour, yet also suggests Epstein is an affable rogue.

Figures of authority

The book’s inclusion of entries from public office and science figures could suggest Maxwell and Epstein sought to keep or commemorate connections with figures of authority as a form of perceived legitimacy.

The Wall Street Journal reported that former U.S. president Bill Clinton, whose name appears in the album’s “Friends” section, gave Epstein a handwritten note praising his “childlike curiosity” and drive to “make a difference.” In 2019, a spokesperson for Clinton said he severed ties with Epstein prior to his 2019 arrest and he was not aware of Epstein’s alleged crimes.

Peter Mandelson, recently forced out as the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the U.S. after the Epstein birthday book’s release, penned a note saying Epstein was an “intelligent, sharp-witted man.” Mandelson has said he felt tremendous regret over his Epstein friendship and sympathy for Epstein’s victims.

The birthday book’s “Science” section, with letters from leading scientists, shows that Epstein’s reach extended beyond business and politics into elite academic networks.

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Eroticized power and dominance

While some entries strike a mundane or playful tone, others veer into vulgarity.

The former CEO of Victoria’s Secret, Leslie Wexner, contributed a sketch resembling a woman’s breasts with the words “I wanted to get you what you want… so here it is” — framing it as a present. Wexner has said before he severed ties with Epstein in 2007 and declined to comment about the book.

The note allegedly written by Trump features a drawing of a naked woman alongside typewritten text imagining a conversation between them. It calls Epstein “a pal” and ends with the wish that “every day be another wonderful secret.”

Former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold contributed a series of African wildlife photographs, claiming they spoke more vividly than words. The images — of copulating lions and a zebra with an erect penis — foreground predatory and sexualized behaviour, and may be interpreted as reflecting a fascination with dominance and raw biological impulse.

The Seattle Times reports that a spokesperson for Myhrvold said Myhrvold knew Epstein “from TED conferences and as a donor to basic scientific research” and “regrets that he ever met him.” The representative did not address the letter.

The legacy of small gestures

While journalists have long documented that Epstein’s networks stretched from political leaders and Wall Street financiers to influential figures in science and culture, it remains to be seen how the carefully curated and gifted birthday book fits into the larger investigation.

The book’s most insidious achievement is its ordinariness. It suggests the ways that power is fortified and legitimized not only with contracts and institutions but through gestures of social life, including commemorative books.

Jason Wang 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. Epstein’s ‘birthday book’ transforms private notes into a legacy record – https://theconversation.com/epsteins-birthday-book-transforms-private-notes-into-a-legacy-record-265715

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Stephen Monteiro, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, Concordia University

The frequency and length of daily phone use continues to rise, especially among young people. It’s a global concern, driving recent decisions to ban phones in schools in Canada, the United States and elsewhere.

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Social media, gaming, streaming and interacting with AI chatbots all contribute to this pull on our attention. But we need to look at the phones themselves to get the bigger picture.

As I argue in my newly published book, Needy Media: How Tech Gets Personal, our phones — and more recently, our watches — have become animated beings in our lives. These devices can build bonds with us by recognizing our presence and reacting to our bodies.

Packed with a growing range of technical features that target our sensory and psychological soft spots, smartphones create comforting ties that keep us picking them up. The emotional cues designed into these objects and interfaces imply that they need our attention, while in actuality, the devices are soaking up our data.

A responsive presence

Face recognition, geolocation, touchscreens, vibration, sound alerts and audio and motion sensing all play their part in catching our attention and responding to our actions. Separately, these may not create a strong emotional attachment, but collectively they situate the phone as a uniquely intimate, sensitive and knowing presence in our lives.

Take facial recognition locks, for example. Convenient for quick access, a smartphone will light up and unlock with a glance when it encounters a known and trusted face. When introducing Face ID in 2017, Apple claimed: “Do it up anyway you do it, Face ID learns your face. It learns who you are.” This implies a deeper user-device connection, like the one we have with folks we know when we spot them crossing our path.

Some devices have repurposed the hand wave — a typical gesture of friendship — into a feature that triggers the camera to take a photo.

Geolocation converts networking signals into a dot on a map, and we see that dot as us — not our phone — just as we may see the dots of our friends’ phones on the map as them.

Phantom vibrations

Sensory cues play a strong role. Touchscreens allow the phone’s interface to react subtly, like edge lighting and rubberbanding, to mimic the pliability of skin.

Vibration and sound alerts make us highly sensitive to the smallest movement or sound from the device. This produces conditions like phantom vibration syndrome, where we imagine that the device requires our attention, even when it doesn’t.

Audio and motion sensing, on the other hand, allows the device to react to us almost instantly, as when it lowers its ringing on an incoming call when we grab its body.

Roots and origins

Most of these features were developed decades ago for other uses. GPS was created by the U.S. military in the early 1970s, then was adopted by hikers and sailors to both navigate and to allow others to locate them if necessary.

Vibration alerts were created for pagers in the late 1970s for professionals — from hospital staff to travelling salespeople — to notify them of an important phone call.

Sound alerts became more widespread with Tamagotchi and other 1990s digital pets. Those toys are especially significant when discussing today’s psychological dependency on portable devices.

Through their beeping cries for attention, Tamagotchi trained millions of school-age millennials to build emotional attachments to virtual handheld companions needing care and nurturing. Not surprisingly, these toys were banned in many schools for their tendency to disrupt classes and distract students.

Indiscriminate tracking

Phones have become an essential part of who we are and how we behave. But there’s also an issue of privacy around our most intimate actions and behaviours. Sensors keep sensing, measuring sounds, movements and proximity.

There is the risk that our dependency will intensify as phones learn things about us that have, until recently, been off limits.

Sleep is a good example. Audio and motion sensing allows the device to get a reasonable picture of when and how we sleep, often collecting and sharing biometric data through pre-loaded health and wellness apps.

Another example is more sophisticated facial recognition, that will not only be able to recognize a face, but also analyze expressions to determine alertness or mood.

All of this collected data may have profound consequences, making our bodily behaviour, our off-line interactions with others and our emotional fragility a regular part of the data profiles used to leverage our lives for corporate profit.

Managing dependency

Short of powering off or walking away, what can we do to manage this dependency? We can access device settings and activate only those features we truly require, adjusting them now and again as our habits and lifestyles change.

Turning on geolocation only when we need navigation support, for example, increases privacy and helps break the belief that a phone and a user are an inseparable pair. Limiting sound and haptic alerts can gain us some independence, while opting for a passcode over facial recognition locks reminds us the device is a machine and not a friend. This may also make it harder for others to access the device.

So-called “dumb phones” limit what a user can do with their devices, though that’s a tough sell when 24/7 connectivity is becoming an expectation.

Manufacturers can do their part by placing more invasive device settings in the “off” position in the factory and being more transparent about their potential uses and data liabilities. That’s not likely to happen, however, without stronger government regulation that puts users and their data first.

In the meantime, at a minimum, we should broaden our public discussions of dependency beyond social media, gaming and artificial intelligence to acknowledge how phones, in themselves, can capture our attention and cultivate our loyalty.

Stephen Monteiro 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. Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes — no wonder we’re addicted – https://theconversation.com/smartphones-manipulate-our-emotions-and-trigger-our-reflexes-no-wonder-were-addicted-265014

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Richa Shivakoti, Research Lead, Migration Governance at the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration program, Toronto Metropolitan University

The United States government recently announced a US$100,000 H-1B visa fee on new applications, which will affect highly educated workers from abroad who are seeking jobs in the U.S. This policy could have ripple effects for Canada by reducing the emigration of Canadians going to work in the U.S. — and by attracting a talented workforce to the country.

The H-1B visa program was created in 1990 for applicants with at least a bachelor’s degree or higher to work in the U.S. The current annual statutory cap is 65,000 visas, with 20,000 additional visas for professionals from abroad who graduate with a master’s or doctorate from an American institution of higher learning.

The recent announcement regarding the fee increase has astounded tech companies that have long relied on the visa to employ foreign workers in the U.S. Since 2012, about 60 per cent of H-1B workers approved each year have held a tech-related job. Tech companies have been pushing U.S. Congress to expand the visa program due to the high demand and competition for the H-1B.

Instead, this massive increase in fees will make it much more expensive for firms to hire highly educated and skilled immigrants.

The impact on Canadians

Approximately 828,000 Canadian-born immigrants lived in the U.S. as of 2023, many of whom moved to the country via employment channels. Canadians made up one per cent of the total H-1B applications in 2019, and the new H-1B visa fee could reduce the number of Canadians moving to the U.S. for work.

This is especially true in the tech sector, as noted by Prime Minister Mark Carney in his recent remarks at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York:

“We are a leading developer of AI. And our research universities are some of the biggest producers in volume of AI, computing and quantum talent in the world. Unfortunately, most of them go to the United States. I understand you’re changing your visa policy, I hear, so going to hang onto a few of those.”

But another possibility is that American businesses could shift towards using the TN visa — an American non-immigrant visa for citizens of Canada and Mexico to work in specific professional-level jobs — to hire more Canadian workers. Canadians are eligible for the work permit under the Canada-US-Mexico-trade agreement.

These companies could then bypass paying the new H-1B visa fee while still hiring Canadian talent.

Competition for global talent

Various countries, including Canada, are competing to attract and retain global talent. For many highly educated people from abroad seeking work in the U.S., especially recent international graduates of American universities, the new visa fee might result in fewer employment opportunities. As they start to look elsewhere, Canada could be an attractive destination if immigration pathways can be provided in a timely fashion.

Research has also shown that when faced with restrictions on immigration policies to hire skilled immigrants, U.S.-based multinational companies have responded by decreasing the number of jobs they offer in the U.S. and by increasing foreign affiliate employment, particularly in India, China and Canada.

So Canada should be proactive in working with these companies as they plan alternate pathways to retain their workforce.

This sudden and drastic change in the H-1B visa fee by the Donald Trump government presents a window of opportunity for Canadian policymakers to react quickly and offer pathways to recruit such foreign talent. The Canadian government seems to be paying attention. Carney told a recent news conference in London:

“Not as many of those people are going to get visas to the United States. And these are people with lots of skills that are enterprising, and they’re willing to move to work …. So it’s an opportunity for Canada, and we’re going to take that into account. And we’ll have a clear offering on that.”

Crises can create opportunities

A policy window opens when there is the right combination of recognizing a problem and providing a feasible policy solution while there is a favourable political climate. This allows policymakers to link the problem to a solution and advocate for change.

In the current environment, policy officials inside and outside of government can provide ideas on creating targeted policies and pathways to recruit talented workers to Canada.

An example of such a targeted initiative was seen in 2023, when the Canadian government, while announcing its Tech Talent Strategy, introduced a program that allowed H-1B visa holders to apply to receive an open three-year work permit in Canada.

It became clear that Canada was regarded as a popular alternative when applications closed within 24 hours after the maximum number of 10,000 applications was reached.

Richa Shivakoti receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council.

Anna Triandafyllidou receives funding for research related to high-skilled migration and its governance from the Tri-Council Agency and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, as well as Horizon Europe (Link4Skills research project).

– ref. The H-1B visa fee hike in the United States opens a policy window for Canada – https://theconversation.com/the-h-1b-visa-fee-hike-in-the-united-states-opens-a-policy-window-for-canada-266518