Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Atieh Razavi Yekta, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of British Columbia

Around 60 per cent of Canadian employees can expect their job to be transformed through artificial intelligence (AI). For many, AI will complement, rather than replace, their work. For some, it could prevent illness, injury or death.

This might look like a nurse wearing a T-shirt equipped with sensors to track her lower back posture during a hospital shift. It might be an algorithm monitoring noise levels in a steel factory, to prevent worker hearing loss. Or it could be a robotic glove that helps workers avoid repetitive strain injury on an assembly line.

High-risk sectors such as construction, oil and gas, mining and heavy manufacturing may have the most to gain. Workers experience large numbers of serious injuries in these sectors, despite decades of safety regulations. Falls, equipment accidents, repetitive strain and exposure to environmental and psycho-social hazards are risks of the job.

Globally, there at least 60,000 fatal accidents on construction sites each year. In British Columbia alone, the construction industry reported more than 15,200 serious injury claims between 2015 and 2024.

AI systems — such as machine learning and large language models — can go far beyond traditional occupational health and safety practices such as inspections, training and audits. They can adapt to changing conditions, continuously monitor risks and provide real-time decision support, helping anticipate and prevent accidents before they occur.

These technologies also bring risks — to psychological health, privacy and worker rights. Canada and other nations need to develop robust governance frameworks, to ensure worker safety and well-being.

Smart helmets, boots, wrist sensors

Among the most visible applications of AI in occupational health and safety are commercial wearables and smart personal protective equipment. These include smart helmets, boots, belts, biometric garments and wrist sensors. They collect data on posture, movement, heart rate, temperature, vibration, noise and location. Connected platforms analyze these patterns in real time.

On construction sites, wearables can detect fatigue and risk of falls. For example, companies manufacture fall-protection equipment such as smart harnesses with sensing carabiners. These can be integrated with digital monitoring platforms to track worker positioning, anchorage use and fall events. They generate immediate alerts to support on-site safety decisions.

Wearables can also monitor repetitive strain and alert workers to heat stress or toxic exposure. They can warn when workers enter hazardous zones. Continuous monitoring can allow for earlier ergonomic intervention, and may even help prevent musculoskeletal disorders. For aging workers, early detection and targeted adjustments can extend careers and reduce disability risk.

At the same time, research on the combined effects of aging and workplace technologies shows that AI, robotics and automation can increase job insecurity and the risk of job loss for older workers, particularly when retraining and upskilling opportunities are limited.

Drones and robots inspect demolition sites

Beyond wearables, AI-driven drones and robotic systems are enhancing inspection and maintenance in confined or unstable environments. They can enter tunnels, bridges, demolition sites, highway corridors, mines and nuclear sites, reducing human exposure to danger.

For example, research shows that sensory-enhanced tele-operation of compact demolition robots can improve both safety and accessibility in high-risk interior sites. Operators rely on multiple sources of feedback (vision, sound and vibration) to detect hazards such as falling debris, unstable floors and blind spots.

AI-enabled drones and robotic systems are also used in mining and nuclear plants. In mining, robots can work in tight or unstable spaces while keeping operators safely outside. In the nuclear industry, they protect workers from radiation while dismantling structures and handling waste, reducing human exposure to extreme risks.

Predictive AI can also model long-term occupational health risks. In industrial settings, neural networks have been created to predict hearing loss among workers — for example in a steel factory. In this way, AI can identify complex hazards before they cause irreversible harm.

These tools can reduce exposure to hazards and help address labour shortages in high-risk industries. They also appeal to younger, tech-savvy workers.

Emerging risks and ethics

AI systems are not risk-free. Drones, robots and sensors sometimes malfunction in dusty, high-vibration or complex environments, creating new hazards on worksites.

The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety notes that AI used for worker monitoring can affect psychological health by increasing pressure, performance monitoring or a sense of constant surveillance.

Wearables and other AI-enabled technologies also raise important questions about data and privacy, bias, reliability, data protection and regulatory oversight. For example, who owns the information generated? How is it stored? Could insights derived from this data be used for discipline rather than occupational health and safety purposes?

Research also shows that workers are far more likely to accept these technologies when they understand their purpose, trust the system and are confident that data is used solely to support safety and well-being.

A critical gap in protections

Under its G7 presidency in 2025, Canada helped lead the development of a global compendium of best practices for human-centred AI in the workplace. This reinforced Canada’s role as a driving force in shaping ethical, safe, workforce-ready AI policies worldwide.

And yet in many areas, when it comes to regulating AI, Canada lags behind. Canada is, for example, the only G7 country with no digital safety regulator and no online safety legislation of any kind. As AI quietly transforms workplaces, Canada risks leaving workers’ privacy, autonomy and dignity unprotected, with the proposed Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA) having never been enacted.

Without robust governance, even AI’s potential to enhance worker health and safety remains uncertain, exposing a critical gap in protections at a time of rapid technological change.

Safeguarding privacy, autonomy and dignity

In 2025, 12.2 per cent of Canadian businesses reported using AI to produce goods or deliver services, double that reported the year before. Adoption of AI in Canada is strongest in information, cultural and professional services, while agriculture, accommodation and food services lag.

As workplaces adopt AI, policymakers in Canada and globally must now focus on rules and practices that protect workers and uphold their rights. The path forward is neither to reject AI nor to adopt it uncritically. These technologies must be reliable, interoperable and designed ethically.

We need risk and impact assessments, worker consultation and governance frameworks that safeguard occupational health, privacy, autonomy and dignity.

Applied thoughtfully, with adequate regulatory frameworks in place, AI and commercial wearable technologies can prevent injuries, anticipate illness and place workers’ safety and well-being at the centre of workplace practices.

Christopher McLeod receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, WorkSafeBC, the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, and the British Columbia Construction Safety Alliance.

Atieh Razavi Yekta 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. Will AI drones, robots and wearable sensors revolutionize workplace safety? – https://theconversation.com/will-ai-drones-robots-and-wearable-sensors-revolutionize-workplace-safety-275412

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Maha Khawaja, PhD Student, Health and Society, McMaster University

Success is often seen as an individual journey. The ambitious woman’s dedication and hard work get her where she wants to be. But social psychologists suggest something different: behind many women’s achievements lies a powerful and often overlooked support system — their friendships with other women.

Overwhelmingly, research shows that female friendships have the capacity to greatly enhance nearly every domain of life, from mental well-being to quality of life. They even foster better physical health.

In childhood, these social bonds are vital to reinforce emotional resilience, build healthy coping mechanisms and strengthen communication skills. As time goes on, this steady support also buffers the negative impacts of life transitions such as breakups, caregiving, burnout and illness.

Female friendships are social and psychological infrastructure that shape health, resilience and achievement, not just a sentimental side story.

Getting through life together

These bonds can help encourage goal-setting, ambition and later success. Developmental psychologists use the self-in-relation theory to posit that women’s growth in particular is built through social connection and interaction with one another.

Solid friendships can boost self-esteem, growth and even empowerment. And if you think about it, it makes intuitive sense. Empowerment is cultivated within the communities women build and sustain together.

In university settings in high-pressure environments, for example, female friendships prove critical in maintaining a positive outlook and building a strong sense of self. They also ensure a much better experience when transitioning to university in the first place, and getting used to it.

When it comes to problem-solving, studies show women don’t always do it alone. In fact, processes of co-rumination, which involve audibly working through problems with one another, lead to better problem-solving abilities and a capacity to handle strife.

Female friendships can also function as a therapeutic mechanism, providing real-time cognitive reframing by “telling it like it is” and improving coping strategies and stress tolerance.

A network in times of crisis

When it comes to hardships such as cancer, menopause or chronic pain, women also support one another through emotional comfort, access to valuable knowledge and even help offset emotional and physical labour. For example, for women recovering from substance use disorders, evidence shows that friends empower one another to recover and attain access to resources they hold in high regard.

For women who are post-partum and new mothers, having a supportive network to help with domestic and emotional labour also proves to have profound impacts on sense of self and buffers poor mental health. Even in later life, menopause sisterhoods — supportive, often informal communities where women help each other navigate the changes of menopause together — are vital in protecting quality of life.

Biology reinforces the positive impacts of friendship and social supports through the release of oxytocin, otherwise known as the “love hormone,” which then improves overall health.

For those without an in-person village by their side, online spaces such as Reddit function as a way for women to connect with other like-minded women globally and find solidarity. For people seeking help regarding sex education, for example, and who may not have an in-person support network, these online forums function as spaces to share knowledge, alleviate anxiety and build confidence.

Having a sisterhood can also aid immensely in protecting mental health during the ups-and-downs of a romantic relationship. Even more so, female friendships can help during situations of domestic abuse by providing valuable resources, emotional comfort and ultimately strength.

The politics of collective solidarity

Though supportive social bonds are a major part of an individual’s foundation, movements like #MeToo illustrate how collective female solidarity can shift institutional power too.

They function as a top-down process that can reshape what is socially possible. Even some of the first feminist movements in North America were largely constructed through the connections formed between women and the reliance they had on one another to achieve their goals.

While the end of a friendship is certainly not easy, there is still much beauty in the relationships that are meant to exist for specific season and in the opportunity to build new ones across our lifespan.

If society is serious about advancing women’s success, it must recognize that success is rarely achieved alone. Female friendships are foundational to women’s progress.

Whether it’s a friend who lends a listening ear and brings joy through late-night conversations or one that sternly tells you when to get back up and fight, the importance of female friendships is something we should celebrate this International Women’s Day.

Maha Khawaja 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. Behind women’s success is a sisterhood that sustains it – https://theconversation.com/behind-womens-success-is-a-sisterhood-that-sustains-it-276838

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ali Nazemi, Associate Professor, Building, Civil, and Environmental Engineering, Concordia University

Snow is Canada’s hidden reservoir. Each winter, the precipitation it brings is stored not behind dams, but across mountains, forests and prairies as snowpack. When temperatures rise, that stored water melts and is released gradually, sustaining rivers, groundwater, ecosystems, agriculture and hydropower.

This seasonal storage underpins water security across much of the country. Prairie agriculture depends heavily on mountain snowpack for irrigation. The Great Lakes basin relies on snowmelt to sustain spring inflows that support navigation, ecosystems and freshwater withdrawals. Hydropower systems in British Columbia and Québec depend on snow accumulation and melt timing in upland watersheds.

For decades, scientists and water managers have relied on snow water equivalent (SWE) to measure this winter water reservoir. SWE estimates how much liquid water snowpack would produce if melted instantly. It is physically intuitive and remains central to seasonal water forecasting.

But climate change is altering not only how much snow falls, but where snowpack persists and how long it lasts. Warmer winters are bringing more rain instead of snow, more frequent mid-winter melt events and shorter snow-cover duration. In many regions, peak snowpack now arrives earlier. Snow cover is becoming more intermittent, particularly during early winter and spring transitions.

These changes expose a limitation in traditional SWE measurements at large spatial scales. As temperatures rise, snow may disappear across large portions of a landscape while remaining deep in isolated patches. Under such conditions, the average snow water equivalent can appear stable even though the snow-covered area has shrunk substantially.

To address this limitation, colleagues and I have introduced a complementary metric called snow water availability (SWA). Rather than averaging snow water across an entire area, SWA estimates how much water exists within the portion of the landscape that is covered with snow. The metric combines SWE with satellite measurements or climate reanalysis estimates of the fraction of snow cover over the landscape. The result is a measure particularly sensitive to patchy snow, a condition that is becoming more common in a warmer climate.

Snow water availability

Using our SWA metric, we conduct a large-scale analysis across Canada and Alaska and have found pronounced differences in how snow water is changing. In northern and eastern regions, snow water availability has increased in recent decades. In some Arctic and sub-Arctic areas, reduced sea ice and warmer air temperatures enhance atmospheric moisture, increasing snowfall in northern regions.

However, in Western Canada, especially within the Rocky Mountains, significant declines in SWA are emerging in mid-elevation mountain headwaters. These regions feed major river drainage systems, including the Saskatchewan, Fraser and Columbia river basins.

The response of mountain snowpack to warming is strongly elevation-dependent. High alpine zones, where winter temperatures remain well below freezing, can retain relatively stable snowpacks. Low elevations may already experience intermittent snow.

However, mid-elevation transitional zones, where winter temperatures frequently hover near freezing, are especially climate-sensitive. Small temperature increases can shift precipitation from snow to rain, shorten snow-cover duration and accelerate melt timing and rate.

This creates an important asymmetry. Although overall, SWA has increased across Canada and Alaska between 2000 and 2019, gains in sparsely populated northern regions do not compensate for losses in southern and western headwaters where water demand is highest.

In addition, mountain regions function as natural water towers. When snow storage declines there, the effects propagate downstream through entire river basins. Where snow disappears can matter more for water supply reliability than how much accumulates elsewhere. The geography of loss matters.

Uneven snowpack

The impacts can be amplified when declines in western headwaters coincide with widespread but less statistically pronounced decreases downstream. Combined, these patterns influence drainage basins that support a large share of Canada’s population and economic activity.

Historical events underscore this vulnerability. The 2015 Western Canada snow drought reduced streamflow originating in Rocky Mountain headwaters, stressing municipal systems, agriculture and aquatic ecosystems. During the winter of 2011-2012, reduced snowpack in southern Ontario and Québec contributed to depressed Great Lakes water levels, affecting shipping and water management.

Climate variability adds further complexity. Large-scale ocean–atmosphere patterns can amplify or temporarily offset warming effects from year to year. Some winters remain snow-rich; others are dominated by rain-on-snow and/or mid-winter melt events. But long-term warming increases the likelihood of SWA loss in patchy snow regimes across climate-sensitive elevations.

Despite its advantages, our proposed SWA is not free of uncertainty. Snow observations remain sparse in remote northern and high-elevation regions. Satellite products are affected by cloud cover, vegetation and polar nights.

Climate reanalyses rely on modelling assumptions that vary among models and products. While basin-scale trends can be detected with reasonable confidence, uncertainty increases at finer spatial scales, where slope orientation, vegetation, terrain details and microclimate greatly affect SWA.

As water management decisions increasingly require sub-basin precision, improving spatial resolution and physical realism in snow monitoring becomes essential. Future research will require improved satellite observations, enhanced land-surface modelling and expanded ground-based monitoring networks.

In a warming climate, understanding how much snow exists, where it persists, how fragmented it becomes and how quickly it disappears will be central to anticipating water supply risks.

Canada’s snowpack is not simply shrinking or growing; it is becoming more uneven. And in an uneven landscape, the location of loss can matter more than the total amount of gain.

Ali Nazemi 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. Warming winters are reshaping Canada’s snowpack – https://theconversation.com/warming-winters-are-reshaping-canadas-snowpack-275677

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Craig Anthony Johnson, Professor of Politics, University of Guelph

The United States government recently hosted a critical minerals summit aimed at reducing China’s predominant role in the global production of smartphones, weapons systems, lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles (EVs).

The meeting, which included representatives from Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, the European Union, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom, is part of a larger structural trend that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently called a “rupture” to the rules-based international order.

At first glance, the U.S. government’s weaponization of tariffs and trade indicate changing dynamics in global trade and the development of critical minerals, advanced manufacturing and emerging technologies. On closer inspection, American efforts to weaken China’s dominance over the critical minerals industry face a more complicated reality and an intricate web of public- and private-sector investment agreements tied to Chinese firms.

According to the International Energy Agency, China accounts for more than 80 per cent of global battery production. The figure jumps to 90 per cent for grid scale batteries that are used to store wind and solar power.

Global battery sales have grown sixfold since 2020, a direct result of falling prices and the competitiveness of China’s low-cost manufacturing model. Over the same period, manufacturing of grid-scale battery systems has expanded 20-fold.

Within this reality, the idea that the U.S. can strategically reduce China’s role in the production and processing of critical minerals appears highly unlikely.

Competition for critical minerals

My research focuses on environmental politics, extractive industries and the expansion of renewable energy value chains in Latin America. I am currently leading a study on the politics of lithium extraction in Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Canada and Chile.

Over the past year, the U.S. upped its efforts to reduce China’s involvement in South America, a region that accounts for more than 50 per cent of the world’s known lithium deposits.

In 2025, the U.S. government acquired a five per cent share in Lithium Americas, a Canada-based company that has a long presence in Argentina. In February, the U.S. government announced another deal to acquire a 10 per cent stake in the mining company USA Rare Earth.

In 2025, the White House used the threat of tariffs and a US$20 billion bailout package to negotiate a new trade agreement with Argentina. Meanwhile, the U.S.-dominated Inter-American Development Bank signed an agreement to provide more than US$140 million to improve critical mineral production and processing capacity in Latin America.

However, decoupling China from regional production networks raises deeper questions about whether it makes good business or strategic sense to disrupt a global production network that produces 80-90 per cent of the world’s lithium-ion batteries.

At a time when the U.S. is pursuing an “America first” policy of onshoring the production and processing of critical minerals, China has used joint ventures and public-private partnerships to secure access while offshoring the dirtier parts of critical minerals production.

The Chinese company Ganfeng Lithium has been active in Argentina for about a decade and is currently expanding its presence through joint ventures.

In August 2025, the company signed joint ventures with Canadian company Lithium Americas, expanding its operations in the salt flats of Pozuelos, Pastos Grandes and Cauchari-Olaroz. The vast majority of Ganfeng’s production goes to battery and EV assembly hubs in China and Southeast Asia.

In contrast, China’s involvement in Chile has largely been limited to a minority share in the Chilean mining company SQM since 2018. Under the left-wing government of Gabriel Boric, Chile’s National Lithium Strategy promised to restrict new licences to state-owned copper and mining companies Codelco and Enami.

However, the recent electoral victory of President-elect José Antonio Kast, a right-wing politician with close ties to Chile’s business sector, raises new questions about the future viability of the nationalist policy.

Similarly, questions have been raised about whether the Bolivian government will maintain its state-led model of resource nationalism under the newly elected right-wing government of Rodrigo Paz Pereira.

Chinese and Russian companies have a strong presence in Bolivia. In 2024, the majority state-owned lithium company, YLB, signed a US$1 billion agreement with the Chinese consortium CBC to start developing the Uyuni salt flat. But Bolivia’s lithium production has remained negligible, reflecting longstanding challenges of extracting lithium from the Uyuni salt flat and resolving domestic conflicts over the distribution of profits.

Looking ahead

In theory, the election of right-wing governments in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile should favour the U.S. This is most evident in Argentina, where libertarian president Javier Milei has already established strong ties with the White House and with U.S. President Donald Trump personally.

Compared with Argentina, Chile appears less likely to concede to American concerns about China. This reflects the Chilean state’s dominant role in the global copper market, domestic conflicts over the nationalization of Chile’s lithium sector and the enduring influence of Chinese political and diplomatic interests.

Looking ahead, major questions remain about whether American companies have the willingness and capacity to assume China’s role in the global production of lithium-ion batteries and whether they’ll align themselves with U.S. foreign policy interests. For instance, the U.S.-based Albemarle Corporation is one of the world’s largest lithium companies, but it is publicly traded and owned by multiple investors.

Outside of South America, global lithium production remains dominated by American, Chinese and Australian firms, including Rio Tinto, the Anglo-Australian mining giant that is currently consolidating lithium operations in Argentina and Chile. Almost all have joint ventures with Tianqi, Ganfeng and other Chinese companies.

The North American economy has neither the capacity nor the wage competitiveness to replace China’s role in producing and processing critical minerals for batteries, energy storage systems and EVs.

Reducing China’s dominant role in the global critical minerals industry would entail developing a robust supply chain that can out-compete China’s. Given current economic and geopolitical realities, this seems improbable in the foreseeable future.

Craig Anthony Johnson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Why the U.S. is unlikely to curtail China’s critical minerals dominance – https://theconversation.com/why-the-u-s-is-unlikely-to-curtail-chinas-critical-minerals-dominance-275416

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Michael J. Armstrong, Associate Professor, Operations Research, Brock University

The Israeli Operation Roaring Lion and the American Operation Epic Fury started early on Feb. 28 when both countries began attacking Iran. Their airstrikes killed Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while striking military targets and cities across the country. More than 700 people have reportedly been killed in the attacks so far.

Iran responded with its own Operation True Promise 4 missile and drone strikes against Israeli and American targets. But it also started bombarding nine other Middle East countries.

Iran’s allies have joined the fighting. Hezbollah forces in Lebanon and Iranian-backed militants in Iraq have launched their own rockets, while Houthi militants in Yemen have threated to enter the fray too.

Iran’s counterattacks might appear strategically reckless. But they’re sowing chaos across the region and revealing the limits of their neighbour’s defences.

Israel’s defences under strain

Israel has sophisticated missile defences and ample operational experience. Its Iron Dome short-range rocket interceptors entered service in 2011. The medium-range David’s Sling and long-range Arrow interceptors followed.

Its newest weapon is a laser system. Iron Beam saw its first combat use last year against drones and small rockets.

But interceptors aren’t foolproof, and they sometimes fail.

Iran’s newest weapons aggravate this problem. Some missiles reportedly carry dozens of small explosives instead of one big one. These little bomblets disperse while falling from the sky to complicate interception.

Israel has warning systems and bomb shelters to protect civilians from nearby explosions, but some residents lack immediate access to shelters. One woman died on Feb. 28 when a missile landed near her building before she could take cover.

Additionally, some older shelters were designed only to withstand smaller rockets. On March 1, a ballistic missile with a 500-kilogram warhead directly hit a shelter, killing nine people inside.

Spillover into Arab states

Iran’s Arab neighbours are accustomed to being bystanders during Israel-Iran conflicts. This time, however, Iran is attacking them too.

Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman have all been assaulted by Iranian weapons. Some 282 missiles and 833 drones attacked those countries over the weekend, and the barrage remains ongoing.

Even a British airbase in Cyprus, far away in the Mediterranean, has been struck.

Iran claims it’s only targeting U.S. forces stationed in those countries. However, airports, hotels, apartment buildings and oil tankers have also been hit. Oman
had recently hosted U.S.-Iran peace talks, and last week announced that peace was “within reach.”

Most of the countries have U.S.-made Patriot interceptor systems to defend against such attacks, but they lack Israel’s operational experience. The U.S. also has Patriot and THAAD interceptors in the region.

In one case, three U.S. Patriot air defence missiles failed to intercept an incoming Iranian ballistic missile warhead, which reportedly struck Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. And Kuwaiti air defences accidentally shot down three U.S. fighter jets.

Costly choices

Iran’s attacks to date have killed six U.S. soldiers, 10 civilians in Israel and about 10 more in Arab countries. Meanwhile, 787 have died in Iran from U.S.-Israeli airstrikes, including children at a girls’ school.

Economic costs are growing too. With oil and gas refineries closing, and tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz halted, global oil prices have jumped.

---

Read more:
What is the Strait of Hormuz, and why does its closure matter so much to the global economy?

---

Iran’s attacks beyond Israel have also prompted more countries to oppose it. Qatar shot down two Iranian fighter jets on March 2 and Britain has begun allowing U.S. airstrikes from British airbases. France is sending air defences to Cyprus and Ukraine is sending drone experts to Arab countries.

An uncertain future

It’s difficult to predict how long the attacks will continue. Iran is believed to have around 2,500 ballistic missiles stockpiled, including 1,000 that could strike Israel or perhaps Europe. Its drone supply is likely larger, meaning launches could continue for months.

U.S. and Israeli warplanes are actively hunting Iranian missile launchers, but past conflicts show airstrikes alone have little impact on launch rates. Those drop only if ground invasions occur.

It’s likewise unclear how long the American-Israeli bombing campaign will last. U.S. President Donald Trump has suggested four to five weeks, maybe longer.

However, the U.S. military will likely start running out of interceptor missiles in four weeks. Qatar reportedly has only enough for four days.

Trump’s warplanes will probably run out of high-priority targets even sooner.

Trump’s political end game

The greatest uncertainty right now concerns Trump and his motives, as his war goals appear to keep shifting.

He has called for the Iranian people to “seize control” of their “destiny,”. But Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has said the operation is not intended to cause regime change.

Such a regime change is unlikely. Trump’s January attack on Venezuela merely captured the country’s president and left the rest of the regime in place. He showed more interest in Venezuela’s oil than its governance.

America’s previous regime change in Iran also didn’t end well. In 1953, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency incited a coup that removed Iran’s elected government and replaced it with a military regime that was friendly to U.S. but unpopular in Iran. In 1979, a revolt ended the dictatorship and installed the current Islamic Republic.

Trump has often favoured transactional diplomatic deals in the past. Whether this conflict moves toward escalation or negotiation remains unclear, but it’s likely he’ll seek do something similar here.

What is clear is that the longer the conflict continues, the greater the human and economic costs are likely to be.

Michael J. Armstrong 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. Iran’s missile mayhem show the limits of Middle East defences – https://theconversation.com/irans-missile-mayhem-show-the-limits-of-middle-east-defences-277211

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Warren Mabee, Director, Queen’s Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy, Queen’s University, Ontario

The joint attack launched by the United States and Israel on Iran began on Feb. 27 and has sparked a fast-moving conflict that could expand across the Middle East.

Iran’s response has already included strikes on U.S. bases in surrounding countries as far away as Qatar and Oman, and has announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, going so far as threatening to set ships on fire if they enter the strait.

The Strait of Hormuz is a 55-kilometre-wide narrows between Iran and Oman, separating the Persian Gulf from the Arabian Sea. It is a particularly important piece of global real estate in terms of the energy sector and one of the busiest and most strategically significant shipping routes in the world.

The closure has disrupted oil and gas shipments from the region and rattled markets around the world. Overall maritime traffic through the strait has dropped by 70 per cent since the closure, with 18 loaded and 37 unloaded tankers remaining in the Persian Gulf.

About 13 million barrels of oil per day normally move through these waters — about 31 per cent of global oil shipments. Blocking passage through the strait will certainly affect world oil prices.

Even a short-lived closure of parts of the strait in February 2025 led to a six per cent jump in the price of oil.

Why the Strait of Hormuz matters

Closure of the strait affects major ports belonging to Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Iran itself. For several of these countries, the strait is the primary route through which oil reaches global markets.

On March 2, Brent Crude — the global benchmark — reached about US$79 per barrel before declining slightly, about eight per cent higher than last week’s prices. West Texas Intermediate, the North American benchmark, reached US$71 per barrel — a six per cent increase.

Those price movements are already being felt at the pump. Gasoline prices in both Canada and the U.S. have begun to rise, although not as dramatically as commodity prices.

Increases could persist as long as the conflict continues to disrupt tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

Throughout the last 50 years, oil price increases have often presaged an upcoming economic downturn. Some events, such as the first and second oil crises in the 1970s and early ‘80s, led to structural changes in global economies.

Could this happen again today?

Lessons from the first oil crisis

The first oil crisis began in October 1973 when the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC, later OPEC) put an embargo on oil exports to the United States as a response to U.S. support of Israel.

This resulted in a quadrupling of oil prices within two months, causing a stock market crash and a recession in the U.S. At the time, the OPEC nations were well co-ordinated and the U.S. did not have sufficient domestic oil production capacity to meet its own needs.

While the U.S. had the economic wherewithal to be able to import oil from other sources, this action kept global prices high and many other countries suffered from elevated costs. The fallout from the first oil crisis affected the auto sector, the energy sector and energy policy across the U.S.

Today, OPEC nations are not working in close alignment with Iran. Instead, many of these nations — along with Russia and other oil-producing nations — have agreed to boost production by about 206,000 barrels per day in an effort to stabilize markets.

Parallels with the second oil crisis

Today’s conflict in Iran may have more parallels with the second oil crisis. In 1979, the Iranian Revolution led to a drop in global oil production of about seven per cent.

Although this drop was small, the price of crude oil doubled into the early months of 1980, which led to fuel shortages and economic downturns in many countries, including Canada. Today, however, Iran plays a smaller role in the global oil market, producing about four per cent of total annual output.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, the largest energy producers are the U.S. (22 per cent), Saudi Arabia (11 per cent) and Russia (11 per cent), followed by Canada (six per cent) and China (five per cent).

Iran’s ability to influence the global market has been reduced while the U.S. role has dramatically increased. The market is therefore less likely to respond with major price increases in the face of the current conflict.

The wildcard in the current situation is the Strait of Hormuz. The largest port for Saudi exports of oil is Ras Tanura on the Persian Gulf, where the local refinery was recently hit in a drone attack.

A total closure of the strait would mean potential loss of at least five million barrels per day in shipments from Ras Tanura, which are unlikely to be taken up quickly by the port at Yanbu on the Red Sea, especially with refining capacity now impacted by the conflict.

Implications for Canada

For Canada, the conflict is likely to lead to higher prices for gasoline and diesel, as well as increased prices for imported goods. Although Canada is a net oil exporter, domestic fuel prices are tied to global benchmarks and reflect international volatility.

At the same time, the Canadian oilpatch often benefits from higher global prices. Elevated prices can boost revenues and investment in the sector, even as consumers face higher costs at the pump.

While debate persists about the long-term future of Canada’s oil and gas industry, the Iran crisis creates an opportunity for Canada to make better use of our existing infrastructure, driving growth in the oil sector and strengthening Canada’s role in the global market.

Expanded connectivity to the West Coast via increased capacity on the Trans Mountain pipeline could allow Canadian producers to supply Asian markets that depend heavily on shipments from the Persian Gulf. However, taking advantage of the opportunity means moving quickly, as other oil-producing nations will also move to fill this gap.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said that conflict will last at least four to five weeks, but potentially much longer. Ultimately, Canada could play a role in helping the world to respond to the crisis.

Whether the present crisis is a short-term shock, or whether it is the beginning of a larger geopolitical event, will depend largely on developments in and around the Strait of Hormuz in the days and weeks ahead.

Warren Mabee receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

– ref. What is the Strait of Hormuz, and why does its closure matter so much to the global economy? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-strait-of-hormuz-and-why-does-its-closure-matter-so-much-to-the-global-economy-277364

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Craig Anthony Johnson, Professor of Politics, University of Guelph

The United States government recently hosted a critical minerals summit aimed at reducing China’s predominant role in the global production of smartphones, weapons systems, lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles (EVs).

The meeting, which included representatives from Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, the European Union, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom, is part of a larger structural trend that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently called a “rupture” to the rules-based international order.

At first glance, the U.S. government’s weaponization of tariffs and trade indicate changing dynamics in global trade and the development of critical minerals, advanced manufacturing and emerging technologies. On closer inspection, American efforts to weaken China’s dominance over the critical minerals industry face a more complicated reality and an intricate web of public- and private-sector investment agreements tied to Chinese firms.

According to the International Energy Agency, China accounts for more than 80 per cent of global battery production. The figure jumps to 90 per cent for grid scale batteries that are used to store wind and solar power.

Global battery sales have grown sixfold since 2020, a direct result of falling prices and the competitiveness of China’s low-cost manufacturing model. Over the same period, manufacturing of grid-scale battery systems has expanded 20-fold.

Within this reality, the idea that the U.S. can strategically reduce China’s role in the production and processing of critical minerals appears highly unlikely.

Competition for critical minerals

My research focuses on environmental politics, extractive industries and the expansion of renewable energy value chains in Latin America. I am currently leading a study on the politics of lithium extraction in Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Canada and Chile.

Over the past year, the U.S. upped its efforts to reduce China’s involvement in South America, a region that accounts for more than 50 per cent of the world’s known lithium deposits.

In 2025, the U.S. government acquired a five per cent share in Lithium Americas, a Canada-based company that has a long presence in Argentina. In February, the U.S. government announced another deal to acquire a 10 per cent stake in the mining company USA Rare Earth.

In 2025, the White House used the threat of tariffs and a US$20 billion bailout package to negotiate a new trade agreement with Argentina. Meanwhile, the U.S.-dominated Inter-American Development Bank signed an agreement to provide more than US$140 million to improve critical mineral production and processing capacity in Latin America.

However, decoupling China from regional production networks raises deeper questions about whether it makes good business or strategic sense to disrupt a global production network that produces 80-90 per cent of the world’s lithium-ion batteries.

At a time when the U.S. is pursuing an “America first” policy of onshoring the production and processing of critical minerals, China has used joint ventures and public-private partnerships to secure access while offshoring the dirtier parts of critical minerals production.

The Chinese company Ganfeng Lithium has been active in Argentina for about a decade and is currently expanding its presence through joint ventures.

In August 2025, the company signed joint ventures with Canadian company Lithium Americas, expanding its operations in the salt flats of Pozuelos, Pastos Grandes and Cauchari-Olaroz. The vast majority of Ganfeng’s production goes to battery and EV assembly hubs in China and Southeast Asia.

In contrast, China’s involvement in Chile has largely been limited to a minority share in the Chilean mining company SQM since 2018. Under the left-wing government of Gabriel Boric, Chile’s National Lithium Strategy promised to restrict new licences to state-owned copper and mining companies Codelco and Enami.

However, the recent electoral victory of President-elect José Antonio Kast, a right-wing politician with close ties to Chile’s business sector, raises new questions about the future viability of the nationalist policy.

Similarly, questions have been raised about whether the Bolivian government will maintain its state-led model of resource nationalism under the newly elected right-wing government of Rodrigo Paz Pereira.

Chinese and Russian companies have a strong presence in Bolivia. In 2024, the majority state-owned lithium company, YLB, signed a US$1 billion agreement with the Chinese consortium CBC to start developing the Uyuni salt flat. But Bolivia’s lithium production has remained negligible, reflecting longstanding challenges of extracting lithium from the Uyuni salt flat and resolving domestic conflicts over the distribution of profits.

Looking ahead

In theory, the election of right-wing governments in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile should favour the U.S. This is most evident in Argentina, where libertarian president Javier Milei has already established strong ties with the White House and with U.S. President Donald Trump personally.

Compared with Argentina, Chile appears less likely to concede to American concerns about China. This reflects the Chilean state’s dominant role in the global copper market, domestic conflicts over the nationalization of Chile’s lithium sector and the enduring influence of Chinese political and diplomatic interests.

Looking ahead, major questions remain about whether American companies have the willingness and capacity to assume China’s role in the global production of lithium-ion batteries and whether they’ll align themselves with U.S. foreign policy interests. For instance, the U.S.-based Albemarle Corporation is one of the world’s largest lithium companies, but it is publicly traded and owned by multiple investors.

Outside of South America, global lithium production remains dominated by American, Chinese and Australian firms, including Rio Tinto, the Anglo-Australian mining giant that is currently consolidating lithium operations in Argentina and Chile. Almost all have joint ventures with Tianqi, Ganfeng and other Chinese companies.

The North American economy has neither the capacity nor the wage competitiveness to replace China’s role in producing and processing critical minerals for batteries, energy storage systems and EVs.

Reducing China’s dominant role in the global critical minerals industry would entail developing a robust supply chain that can out-compete China’s. Given current economic and geopolitical realities, this seems improbable in the foreseeable future.

Craig Anthony Johnson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Why the U.S. is unlikely to curtail China’s dominance over critical minerals – https://theconversation.com/why-the-u-s-is-unlikely-to-curtail-chinas-dominance-over-critical-minerals-275416

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Emmanuelle Vaast, Professor of Information Systems, McGill University

Anthropic, a leading AI company, recently refused to sign a Pentagon contract that would allow the United States military “unrestricted access” to its technology for “all lawful purposes.” To sign, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei required two clear exceptions: no mass surveillance of Americans and no fully autonomous weapons without human oversight.

The very next day, the U.S. and Israel launched a large-scale offensive against Iran.

This leaves many wondering: how different would a war with fully autonomous weapons look? How important an ethical decision was it, when Amodei referred to fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance as AI “red lines” that his company would not cross? What do these red lines mean for other nations?

The decision cost Anthropic immensely. U.S. President Donald Trump ordered all American agencies to stop using Anthropic’s AI family of advanced large language models (LLMs) and conversational chatbots, Claude. Pete Hegseth, U.S. defence secretary, designated Anthropic as a “supply chain risk,” which could impact other contract possibilities for the company. And rival company OpenAI swiftly struck a deal with the Pentagon instead.

The risks of fully autonomous weapons

AI chatbots are typically not weapons on their own, but they can become part of weapons systems. They do not fire missiles or control drones, but they can be plugged into the larger military systems.

They can quickly summarize intelligence, generate target shortlists, rank high-priority threats and recommend strikes. A key risk is that of a process going from sensor data to AI interpretation, target selection and weapon activation with minimal to no human control or even awareness.

Fully autonomous weapons are military platforms that, once activated, independently conduct military operations without human intervention. They rely on sensors such as cameras, radars and AI algorithms to analyze the environment, search for, select and engage targets.

Advanced helicopters, for instance, already operate with no human intervention. With fully autonomous weapons, human control and oversight disappear and AI makes final attack and battlefield decisions.

This is concerning, given recent research in which advanced AI models opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases.

The risks of mass surveillance

Frontier AI models can promptly summarize huge data sets and auto-generate patterns to look for signals of suspicious people and activity through even weak associations. In his statement on Anthropic’s discussions with the Department of War, Amodei argued that “AI-driven mass surveillance presents serious, novel risks to our fundamental liberties.”

They can analyze records, communications and metadata to scan across populations. They can produce briefings and lists of people that flag automatically who gets questioned, denied entry into a country, refused a job, etc. These systems create risks to privacy because they can analyze data from multiple sources, such as social media accounts, and combine these with cameras and facial recognition to track people in real time.

AI models can also make mistakes. Even a small erroneous association can scale up dangerously if the system is run over millions of people.

AI models are also opaque: how they analyze data and reach their conclusions cannot be fully comprehended, which adds to the difficulty of challenging the output.

‘All lawful purposes’

The label “all lawful purposes” sounds like a safety limit. Yet, this language means that the government can use AI for all purposes that it deems legal, with few limits in the contract.

This matters because legality is a moving target, laws can change and are often ill-equipped to deal in real time with fast changing innovations, and interpretations can shift.

This is what made Anthropic, a company that was founded by former OpenAI employees with an explicit focus on AI safety and ethics, argue that AI-enabled mass surveillance was a novel risk and that lawful purposes could not provide stable guardrails.

Anthropic has famously developed an internal lab to understand how Claude works, interprets queries and makes autonomous decisions. Given the opacity of LLMs as well as the speed with which their capacities develop, such efforts matter.

Project Maven with higher stakes?

In some ways, this story is familiar. Technology companies have long been at the forefront of innovation, with great promises of progress but also risks of misuse and negative consequences. The closest historical comparison is Google’s Project Maven in 2018.

Google had a contract with the Pentagon for the company to help analyze drone surveillance footage. Four thousand Google employees protested the project, arguing that surveillance should not be part of the company’s mission. Google announced it would not renew Maven and later issued AI principles that included commitments around weapons and surveillance.

The situation became a landmark case in the power of employee activism and public pressure.

The Project Maven example, however, also reminds us that company ethics and AI safety are fluctuating matters. In early 2025, Google discreetly dropped its pledge not to use AI for weapons and surveillance in an attempt to gain new lucrative defence contracts.

Anthropic’s current situation is in some respects similar to Google’s Project Maven one: it shows a company and its leaders trying to place limits on military uses of AI. It illustrates tensions that emerge when espoused corporate values collide with governments and national security demands.

The Anthropic case is also distinct because generative AI in 2026 is much more powerful than it was just a few years ago. Project Maven was only about analyzing drone footage. Today’s models can be used for many tasks, so the spillover risk is larger.

LLMs like Claude can self-improve by learning from user corrections and refining actions through iterative feedback loops. What an unrestricted Claude and its client, the Pentagon, could have done is therefore worrisome.

Who sets the limits?

These events are neither about Anthropic being uniquely principled nor about the Pentagon being uniquely demanding. They are about a critical issue that will keep coming back as AI becomes more powerful: who sets the limits regarding AI use when national security is involved?

If “all lawful purposes” become the default, the guardrails will depend on politics and legal interpretation. For Canada and other nations, the safeguards matter. Ethics cannot be left to contract negotiations and corporate conscience.

These events illustrate the complexities of engaging in AI ethics in practice. AI ethics principles and declarations are important and abound. At the same time, in practice, AI ethics are set through contracts, procurement rules, various parties’ actual behaviour and oversight.

Canada’s defence and public sectors are building AI capacity and Canada operates closely with the U.S. defence and intelligence. This means that procurement language and standards can travel. If “all lawful purposes” becomes the standard language in the U.S. national security market, this could put pressure on Canada and other nations to adopt similar terms.

The reassuring news is that Canada has governance tools in place it can strengthen and extend. The Directive on Automated Decision-Making is designed to ensure that systems are transparent, accountable and fair. It requires impact assessment and public reporting.

The Algorithmic Impact Assessment is a mandatory risk-assessment tool tied to the directive.

But Canadians should be mindful of ongoing developments to check that procurement standards name prohibited uses, to call for audits and for independent oversight so that safeguards do not depend only on particular governments and companies at the top.

Emmanuelle Vaast 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. From Anthropic to Iran: Who sets the limits on AI’s use in war and surveillance? – https://theconversation.com/from-anthropic-to-iran-who-sets-the-limits-on-ais-use-in-war-and-surveillance-277334

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Martin Hébert, Full Professor, Département d’anthropologie, Université Laval

The Doomsday Clock — a symbolic device to signal an array of existential threats to the world since 1947 — was recently moved to 85 seconds before midnight, the closest it has ever been to midnight. And that was before all-out war broke out in Iran.

Created by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the Doomsday Clock first represented a slow descent into nuclear vulnerability, with midnight standing as the nuclear apocalypse. Nowadays, the clock includes other existential threats to humanity, including global warming, disruptive technologies or the erosion of the rules-based international order.

---

Read more:
Venezuela attack, Greenland threats and Gaza assault mark the collapse of international legal order

---

Mobilizing fear

Since its very beginning, the clock’s purpose was a call to action meant to shake world leaders — and the broader public by extension — awake from their complacency and indifference.

The aim of the Doomsday Clock was never to instil paralyzing anxiety. Quite the contrary, it sought to mobilize fear in a constructive way. It signals, implicitly, the hope that existential threats can be eradicated and the possibility that peril can be overcome, even if the odds are slim.

But over the years,, the Doomsday Clock has crept ever closer to midnight — first by minutes, then by seconds — heightening the sense of urgency while stopping short of the clock’s symbolic apocalypse.

Being mere seconds from catastrophe dramatically underscores the urgency of action, even as the shrinking margin to midnight heightens public anxiety.

We contend that this is the point where the narrative of imminent catastrophe becomes counter-productive: constant apocalyptic scenarios may dull perceptions of risk or be exploited to justify politics driven by urgency and fear.

Doomsday Clock flaws

The clock has long been subject to critics. Some have questioned its precision and called it showmanship. Others have described it as shaped by ideology.

But the first question we should ask of the Doomsday Clock is whether it fulfils its stated purpose: prompting transformative action to confront what are widely recognized as existential risks. It’s been argued that putting humanity on a permanent, blanket high alert isn’t helpful when it comes to formulating policy or driving science.

The narratives of nuclear war and impending apocalypse that underpin the Doomsday Clock have historically been used to project authority and justify dangerous politics of secrecy — legacies that have often come at the expense of public health and well-being.

For instance, during the Cold War, the U.S. strategically stoked a sense of urgency within its population against the potential threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

During that time, education often blended with propaganda as schoolchildren were told to prepare themselves against potential nuclear attacks, learning from Bert the Turtle to “duck and cover.”

Worried citizens built bunkers in their homes as billions of dollars were pumped into the military industrial complex.

Those who criticized such preparedness measures faced accusation of anti-patriotism or of being communists underMcCarthyism and the Red Scare.

In the end, the sense of a looming apocalypse sacrificed the social and national security of Americans for a threat that never materialized. Ironically, in being fearful of being bombed, Americans exposed their own population to dangerous radioactive fallouts and material via nuclear tests and arsenal production.

How we define disaster

Obviously, complacency about the serious challenges the world is facing is not an option. But the idea that we are almost at the point of no return via the Doomsday Clock is no longer useful or helpful.

This is especially the case since the doom symbolized by the clock has become more abstract with time. Since it’s broadened beyond nuclear war, the clock struck midnight a long time ago for many people on the planet.

Recognizing the difference in experiences among privileged groups, for whom catastrophe remains a future prospect, and marginalized groups, who live in what has been described as a world of salvage, should prompt us to rethink how we measure and define impending disaster.

By calibrating the Doomsday Clock in ever-narrowing seconds, we construct an imaginative framework in which meaningful change is equated with turning the clock back. It may be more honest — and more useful — to acknowledge that we’re already living at the brink.

---

Read more:
How the Doomsday Clock could help trigger the armageddon it warns of

---

As militarism and fascism surged in 1935, Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga could have said Europe stood seconds from catastrophe. Instead, he took a different view: “We all know that there is no way back, that we have to fight our way through.”

The uncertainty and anxiety produced by being “seconds to midnight” via the Doomsday Clock can upset the balance between fear and hope. It risks normalizing the violence long endured by racialized and marginalized communities, while creating fertile ground for either opportunistic politics or irrational faith that events will simply resolve themselves.

At this point, action is stalled by the stubborn conviction that this cannot really be happening to us. Perhaps this is when the clock should strike 12 — not as an endpoint, but as a signal that the focus must shift from prevention to another mode of response. In many areas of life, acknowledging that a crisis has arrived is the first step toward recovery.

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. Why the Doomsday Clock has outlived its usefulness – https://theconversation.com/why-the-doomsday-clock-has-outlived-its-usefulness-275409

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jamaica Cass, Director, Queen’s-Weeneebayko Health Education Partnership, Queen’s University, Ontario

When 200 people evacuated from Kashechewan First Nation arrived in Kingston, Ont. on a Sunday afternoon in January 2026 — many Elders, children and medically complex family members — the urgency was immediately clear. By the next afternoon, my colleagues from the Indigenous Interprofessional Primary Care Team and I had brought our mobile clinic to the evacuees’ hotel and were seeing patients who had been abruptly displaced by yet another failure of their community’s drinking water system.

At the same time, Kingston’s Indigenous friendship centre was organizing volunteers to lead cultural programming and create supports to help families maintain connection and dignity during displacement.

This matters because Kashechewan is not an exception. Research across Canada shows that unsafe drinking water continues to drive preventable illness, mental distress and evacuations in First Nations communities.

These events are often described as isolated emergencies or technical breakdowns. But decades of public health, engineering and Indigenous-led scholarship demonstrate that they are the predictable outcome of how water systems for First Nations have been governed, funded and maintained.

I am an Indigenous primary care physician who works with Indigenous communities, including those affected by long-standing water insecurity. What I see in Kingston closely reflects patterns documented in Canadian research.

A widespread problem in a water-rich country

Canada has one of the largest supplies of fresh water in the world, yet many First Nations communities have lived under “boil-water” or “do-not-consume” advisories for years — some for more than a decade. National analyses and community-based studies show that Indigenous households are far more likely than non-Indigenous households to lack reliable running water, particularly in remote or northern communities.

In many of these settings, water is delivered by truck and stored in household cisterns, drums or buckets. Studies led by Canadian researchers, including work in Manitoba First Nations, have shown that these systems are difficult to disinfect consistently and are far more vulnerable to bacterial contamination than piped, continuously supplied systems.

In plain terms, the way water is delivered and stored in many homes increases the risk that it becomes unsafe before it’s ever used.

What unsafe water looks like in the clinic

The health impacts of water insecurity are well documented. Reviews of Canadian studies consistently identify gastrointestinal illness — such as diarrhea and vomiting — as the most frequently reported outcome in communities with unsafe drinking water. Skin infections are also common when regular bathing and hand-washing are limited.

Research from First Nations communities in Manitoba has found that people living in homes without indoor plumbing are significantly more likely to report illness overall. That same body of work shows strong associations between indoor water access and mental health: households with reliable in-home water and sanitation report lower rates of depression and stress-related symptoms.

Mental health effects are increasingly recognized in the literature. Researchers describe “water anxiety” — the chronic stress of worrying about whether water is safe to drink, cook with or bathe in.

Qualitative and survey-based studies show this burden falls disproportionately on women, who are more likely to manage household water and caregiving responsibilities. Carrying water, hauling heavy bottles and cleaning storage containers have also been linked to back and shoulder injuries.

Among the evacuees I see in Kingston, these physical and mental health burdens are compounded by displacement itself: being far from home, separated from land and trying to manage chronic illness, educate their children and maintain professional responsibilities in crowded conditions in an unfamiliar environment.

Why these failures persist

If unsafe drinking water in First Nations communities has been so thoroughly studied, why does it continue?

One reason, consistently identified in Canadian policy and academic literature, is that water problems are framed primarily as technical failures rather than as governance failures. Responsibility for drinking water on reserves is fragmented across federal departments, leading to regulatory gaps, unclear accountability and slow responses.

Infrastructure design is another factor. Studies show that water systems in First Nations are often modelled on urban technologies that are poorly suited to remote or low-capacity settings. Even when new systems are built, chronic underfunding of operations, maintenance and operator training leaves communities vulnerable to repeated breakdowns.

Housing plays a critical role as well. Research clearly demonstrates that the absence of indoor plumbing — not just treatment plant performance — is strongly associated with illness. Yet housing and water infrastructure are frequently planned and funded separately, despite their intertwined health impacts.

Evacuation as a recurring health risk

When water systems fail, evacuation becomes the default response. For remote communities, this can involve flying hundreds of people to southern cities on short notice.

Canadian studies show that these disruptions affect schooling, employment, access to cultural practices, and family cohesion.

From a health perspective, evacuation trades one risk for another. While it may reduce immediate exposure to contaminated water, it introduces stress, disrupts continuity of care and worsens mental health outcomes, particularly for Elders, children and people with chronic disease.

What the evidence points to

Across disciplines, Canadian research converges on several findings. Long-term water safety improves when First Nations have meaningful authority over water governance and source-water protection.

Infrastructure is more reliable when systems are designed for local conditions and paired with stable funding for maintenance, training and housing upgrades, not just construction.

Importantly, Indigenous-led approaches that integrate community knowledge with engineering and public-health expertise have been shown to strengthen environmental protection and improve trust in water systems.

Back to that hotel clinic

The patients I see in Kingston are living with the downstream effects of problems that Canadian researchers and Indigenous leaders have been documenting for decades. Their illnesses were not random. They were shaped by unsafe distribution systems, chronic under-investment and governance structures that leave communities reacting to crises rather than preventing them.

Canada’s drinking water crisis reflects systemic design and governance failures, not a lack of fresh water. In a country with the capacity to ensure safe water for all, persistent water insecurity in Indigenous communities represents a preventable policy failure.

The evidence is clear: Chronic water insecurity is a manufactured driver of illness and displacement. Treating its consequences in a makeshift hotel clinic should not be routine. Ensuring safe, reliable, Indigenous-governed water should be.

Jamaica Cass works for Queen’s University. She receives funding from the National Circle on Indigenous Medical Education, the CPFC and the CMA. She is a board member of the Indigenous Physicians’ Association of Canada and the Medical Council of Canada.

– ref. What treating Kashechewan evacuees reveals about Canada’s drinking water crisis: Policy failure is an Indigenous health issue – https://theconversation.com/what-treating-kashechewan-evacuees-reveals-about-canadas-drinking-water-crisis-policy-failure-is-an-indigenous-health-issue-274402