Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Martin Danahay, Professor, English Language and Literature, Brock University

The United States military under the Donald Trump administration has sunk three Venezuelan boats that were allegedly ferrying drugs. American officials branded the people on the boats “narcoterrorists.”

The term “narcoterrorist” conflates the U.S. internal “war on drugs” and external “war on terror” and suggests drug smuggling is punishable by death without trial.

Canada, incidentally, has followed the lead of the U.S. by designating a list of drug cartels as terrorist organizations. This means Canada is now involved in the expansion of violence against people associated with drug smuggling or drug use when they’re labelled terrorists. It also aligns Canada with the American “war on drugs.”

The problem with the language of war

The problem with both terms — the “war on drugs” and the “war on terror” — lies in how they serve to justify killing people. Violence is portrayed as an appropriate response to a threat from an “enemy” rather than an attack on people who may or may not be linked to drugs or terrorism.

The attacks are carried out without the submission of evidence, and it’s almost impossible to verify claims of guilt after the fact.

A brief look at the origins of the U.S. war on drugs shows how the term “war” can be used to normalize acts of oppression or violence.

It began in June 1971 when President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse “public enemy No. 1” and announced a co-ordinated federal campaign against narcotics as part of a “law-and-order” campaign. His emphasis on fighting crime played upon his belief that “people react to fear, not love.”

Drugs and politics

While fear of drug use predated his presidency, Nixon made the issue a central part of his domestic policy. He framed his efforts as a fight to protect public health and safety as the justification for increasing the scope of police actions against drug sellers and users.

The Shafer Commission, appointed by Nixon, recommended decriminalizing marijuana in 1972, but he ignored its findings and instead enacted more punitive anti-drug legislation.

Portraying drugs and drug users as a threat was a central part of Nixon’s law-and-order campaign. Privately, however, aides later revealed that his drug policy was also used to target political opponents, particularly anti-Vietnam War activists and Black communities — by associating them with drugs and justifying an increase in policing.

Nixon continued drug enforcement in the U.S. as well as through international policies aimed at curbing drug production. His administration’s war on drugs was not just a social order initiative, but a political strategy that weaponized drug policy to consolidate power and marginalize opponents.

Nixon aide John Ehrlichman later revealed the explicitly political nature of this campaign. By linking heroin to Black communities and marijuana to anti-war activists, the administration could discredit those groups and justify heavy policing and incarceration.

The “war on drugs” therefore relied on racist attitudes to justify its heavy enforcement of Black communities.

People, not enemies

By branding the initiative a war on drugs, Nixon turned people addicted to drugs into enemies and implicitly made acceptable levels of oppression that would not be tolerated under normal circumstances.

But drugs are not a force that an army can defeat. The war on drugs has been a failure and become the longest “war” in U.S. history.

The idea of a war on drugs erases people from the equation and dehumanizes them. Similarly, the war on terror emphasized an emotion, namely terror, and used that emotion to justify U.S. military actions abroad, including the ill-fated Iraq War.

The recent attacks on Venezuelan boats alleged to be transporting drugs follow this pattern of justifying acts of violence in the name of combating drugs. Both exploit an understandable fear of drug addiction or of a terrorist attack, and use that emotion to silence criticism of acts of violence as illegal and inhumane.

Decades later, Nixon’s campaign to demonize drugs has now coalesced with the war on terror, even though the term “war” seems inappropriate in both cases.

Invoking war hastens decisions and short-circuits debate, because in a military conflict, decisiveness is crucial to avoid defeat. While initially declaring a war on drugs or terrorists may rally people in the short term, in the long term, it damages both domestic social policy as well as international relations.

Due process

In the recent strikes against Venezuelan ships, the U.S. could have apprehended the boats in international waters and brought the people on board to trial.

This was the procedure during the recent Operation Pacific Viper in the east Pacific, when the U.S. Coast Guard boarded vessels and detained people accused of smuggling cocaine.

The U.S. could have followed the same procedure with the boats from Venezuela, but calling the people on board “narcoterrorists” implicitly justified characterizing them as enemy combatants in the war on drugs.

They were civilian vessels, not part of the Venezuelan military. There may or may not have been drugs on board, and the people may not have been drug smugglers, but the world will never know for certain because the U.S. military killed them and sank their boats.

The language of war in such cases justifies actions made for political motives and undermines the rule of law. Overall it is part of a wider use of the term war by Trump, who recently also seemed to declare war on the city of Chicago.

It’s all of an ongoing weaponization of the term “war” to assert dominance and justify violence, whether internally against American cities or externally against people the government calls “narcoterrorists.”

Martin Danahay 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. Not enemies, but people: Why the world needs to rethink the language of war – https://theconversation.com/not-enemies-but-people-why-the-world-needs-to-rethink-the-language-of-war-265466

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Liv Yoon, Assistant Professor, School of Kinesiology, University of British Columbia

In June 2021, British Columbia experienced an extreme climate event. A heat dome trapped hot air over the province, pushing temperatures to record highs for several days, killing more than 600 people.

A closer look at the numbers revealed something even more startling: people with schizophrenia — just one per cent of the population — made up 15.7 per cent of the deaths. This statistic underscores a troubling truth: climate change does not affect everyone equally.

Research by the BC Centre for Disease Control found that during the heat dome, people with schizophrenia had roughly three times the risk of dying compared to those without schizophrenia, more than any other chronic condition. Even before introducing housing or other critical social determinants of health, this diagnosis alone carried a much higher mortality risk.

Without targeted action, the most marginalized will continue to face the greatest risks. The heat dome revealed how schizophrenia combined with poverty, precarious and poor-quality housing, medication effects, stigma and social isolation led to a uniquely lethal risk.

As heatwaves grow more frequent and intense with climate change, public health and housing policy must shift from expecting people to cope on their own toward ensuring people are able to stay cool enough.

How schizophrenia increases heat risks

In a recent study, we interviewed 35 people with schizophrenia who lived through the 2021 heat dome for a more granular look at what it took to survive. Participants described suffering the physical effects (fainting, heat rash, exhaustion) and worsening symptoms like hallucinations, disrupted sleep and emotional distress.

Symptoms such as paranoia caused many to avoid news coverage, government warnings or even caretakers. This means many never received — or trusted — urgent alerts issued during the heat dome, and knowledge gaps were common.

For many, public cooling centres felt unsafe or unwelcoming due to previous experiences being stigmatized and feared because of their schizophrenia diagnosis. The stigma around schizophrenia also discouraged many individuals from seeking medical care or other public supports.

Homelessness or poor housing quality was another significant factor that compounded vulnerability. Many interviewees lived in older apartments without air conditioning. Others were unhoused and had to cope without shade, water or safe places to rest. For these reasons, staying cool indoors was not an option for many.

The result was a tragic overlap: people with the fewest resources to cope with extreme heat were also the least able to access help.

Why individual advice isn’t enough

Public health advice for heatwaves often focuses on individual actions: seek shade, buy a fan or check in on neighbours. While important, these messages assume equal access to information and resources — but evidence shows that many people with schizophrenia experience significant barriers to accessing them.

This way of thinking reflects a broader societal tendency to treat health as a matter of personal responsibility: that in the heat, each of us is on our own to prepare. But the disproportionate number of deaths among people with schizophrenia illustrates the flaw in this approach.

Our interviews revealed that many indeed internalized their struggles during the heat dome as personal shortcomings, when in reality, the problem was systemic: inadequate housing, limited access to care, widespread and debilitating social stigma and the lack of tailored public health strategies.

A different approach

To prevent the tragedies of 2021 from happening again, policymakers and experts need to view access to cool, safe spaces as a basic right. This means moving beyond a one-size-fits-all approach for advice, to one addressing the realities faced by those most at risk.

To be clear, this rights-based approach does not mean abandoning practical individual measures that save lives, such as opening public cooling centres or reminding people to drink water. These remain essential in the short term. But on their own, they are not enough.

To truly protect people with schizophrenia and others at high risk, these responses must unfold within a broader vision that treats access to safe temperatures as a basic right.

That means investing in affordable, climate-resilient housing and ensuring cooling centres are welcoming and accessible for all. It also means addressing stigma around mental health challenges, tailoring health advice to account for anti-psychotic medications and supporting outreach through trusted community networks.

We need both immediate interventions that provide relief during a heatwave and structural changes that address the root causes of vulnerability. Without this dual approach, responses to heatwaves will leave the same people exposed when the next extreme event arrives. Our goal should not be fewer deaths; we should aim for no deaths.

Structural solutions needed

The 2021 heat dome was tragic — more so because deaths were not inevitable. They were the result of overlapping vulnerabilities that our current housing and welfare systems fail to address. People with schizophrenia are not inherently more vulnerable to heat; they are made more vulnerable by the obstacles that shape their lives.

This means that solutions must also be structural. We need to change how we think about extreme heat; it is not just a natural hazard. It is a reflection of how social systems are failing people, especially those on the sharp edges of inequality.

Viewing cooling as a right means investing in societies that are more resilient to heat. This means governments investing in safer and more accessible housing for all, building welcoming public spaces, fostering a society where neighbours know and care for each other and allowing people with lived experience to play a central role in shaping future heat-health planning.

Liv Yoon received funding from Health Canada’s Climate Change and Health Office for the study that informs this article.

Samantha Mew 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. People with schizophrenia were hit hard by B.C.’s deadly 2021 heat dome – https://theconversation.com/people-with-schizophrenia-were-hit-hard-by-b-c-s-deadly-2021-heat-dome-265173

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Rylan Graham, Assistant Professor, University of Northern British Columbia

Canada’s mid-sized cities — those with populations between 50,000 to 500,000 — have long been characterized as low-density, dispersed and decentralized. In these cities, cars dominate, public transit is limited and residents prefer the space and privacy of suburban neighbourhoods.

Several mounting issues, ranging from climate change and the housing affordability crisis to the growing infrastructure deficit, are challenging municipalities to rethink this approach.

Cities are adopting growth management strategies that promote density and seek to curtail, rather than encourage, urban sprawl. Key to this is intensification, a strategy that prioritizes adding new housing in existing and mature neighbourhoods instead of outward expansion along the city’s edge.

City centres are often central to intensification strategies, given the abundance of vacant or underused land. Adding more residents supports downtown revitalization efforts, while simultaneously curbing urban sprawl.

Challenges of intensification

Despite the adoption of bold policies, our research shows that implementation remains a challenge. In 2013, Regina set an intensification target requiring that 30 per cent of the housing built each year would be located within the city’s mature and established neighbourhoods. But between 2014 and 2021, the target was missed each year, and almost all growth occurred at the edge of the city in the form of new suburban development.

This disconnect is not particularly unique and is often referred to as the “say-do gap,” where development outcomes differ from intentions. This presents real challenges for cities trying to shift away from low-density suburban growth towards higher-density development.

Because Canada is a suburban nation, dense and compact mid-sized cities are atypical. A series of barriers further entrench this, including low demand for high-density urban living, difficulties in assembling land, aging infrastructure and overly rigid planning rules and processes that stifle innovation.

The failure to implement higher-density development raises the question: is intensification in mid-sized cities more aspirational than viable?

Success stories

Several mid-sized cities have experienced recent success with intensification. This has been marked by a flurry of downtown development activity, including new condos and rental towers.

Between 2016 and 2021, the number of downtown residents in Canadian cities increased by 11 per cent, exceeding the previous five-year period of 4.6 per cent.

Among the success stories is Halifax, which had a 25 per cent increase — the fastest downtown growth in Canada. Kelowna was not far behind, with a 23 per cent increase in its downtown residential population.

Other mid-sized cities, including Kingston, Victoria, London, Abbotsford, Kamloops and Moncton, also experienced above-average growth over this period.

Evolving downtowns

This growth can be attributed to several factors, one of the most important being downtown livability: the presence of amenities and services that meet the needs of residents. Many downtowns have evolved to cater primarily to the needs of daytime office workers at the expense of residents, who live — or might like to live — downtown.

Kelowna, however, offers an alternative experience shaped by intentional efforts to make the downtown friendly to residents. Restaurants and cafes line the streets, mixed among services including medical offices, fitness studios and even a full-service grocery store, a rare find in a mid-sized city as many downtowns have become food deserts.

Cultural and civic amenities, including the central library, city hall, museums, galleries and entertainment venues — including a 7,000-seat arena — are downtown. The downtown also borders Okanagan Lake, offering access to recreational and natural amenities. Beyond convenience, the mix of amenities and services in Kelowna makes for a vibrant downtown, which is key to increasing the appeal for downtown living.

Other cities can take inspiration from Kelowna by re-imagining and reshaping the downtown as a vibrant urban neighbourhood — and not solely as a place where people come to work. Municipalities can complement these efforts by reforming overly complex and rigid regulations that impede intensification — not just downtown, but in other neighbourhoods too.

Reforming and clarifying regulations

Our research shows that while many developers support intensification in principle, they often favour low-density suburban development because it provides more predictable returns and approvals processes than downtown mixed-use developments. Many developers also lack the expertise to take on these more complex and riskier projects.

Unsurprisingly, developers in mid-sized cities want the same things as those in larger cities: clearer rules, faster approvals and financial incentives to build denser development in the locations planners are calling for, like downtowns. While developers have long advocated for these changes, governments are now responding with greater urgency.

The housing accelerator fund, introduced by the federal government in 2023, provides municipalities with millions in funding to support housing construction. In exchange, municipalities have reformed zoning regulations, introduced fiscal incentives and expedited the approval process.

In British Columbia, provincial legislation was introduced to permit up to four housing units on parcels that previously only allowed detached or semi-detached dwellings, and up to six units of housing on larger lots in residential zones near transit. The requirement for site-by-site public hearings has also been removed.

In B.C.’s larger cities, legislation was introduced to remove parking minimums and permit taller buildings and increased housing densities around transit hubs.

Regulatory reforms and improved approval processes aim to streamline development. While these are important changes in making mid-sized cities denser and more compact, the gap between planning ideals and market realities remains wide.

A major factor is opposition from residents and councillors, who frequently resist dense development because of perceptions and concerns about increased noise and traffic and lowered property values. This suggests there is work to be done beyond downtown investments, and regulatory and approval reforms to further facilitate intensification.

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Read more:
From NIMBY to YIMBY: How localized real estate investment trusts can help address Canada’s housing crisis

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Changing cities

Nonetheless, the surge of recent development activity and downtown population growth — in Halifax, Kelowna and elsewhere — reflect important milestones in the evolution of mid-sized cities.

This signals a notable departure from the longstanding narrative that frames these cities as low-density with depleted downtowns.

Recent developments give reason to be cautiously optimistic about a future where Canada’s mid-sized cities become denser and more compact, and with vibrant and liveable downtown cores.

Rylan Graham receives funding from SSHRC and the British Columbia Real Estate Foundation.

Jeffrey Biggar receives funding from SSHRC, MITACS, and the Province of Nova Scotia

– ref. Dense, compact urban growth is favoured by mid-sized Canadian cities – https://theconversation.com/dense-compact-urban-growth-is-favoured-by-mid-sized-canadian-cities-262848

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sophia Melanson Ricciardone, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University

Have you ever felt fired up with moral indignation after reading a controversial tweet, or after watching a YouTube video about a political topic?

Not only are you not alone, but these experiences online are likely by design. Our emotional landscapes have increasingly become the battleground where politicians compete for votes and power.

When political parties hire big data companies to help their candidates develop digital campaign strategies, like geofencing or programming social bots to inject key messaging into online political discussions, they could be treading on our universal rights and freedoms.

With our digital footprints — information about who we are — big data companies can group our likes, shares, retweets and purchases into virtual personality profiles and create content to match them.

This helps make what you read or watch seem personal and familiar, prompting the social parts of our brains to feel really good. And this, in turn, can cause us to lower our guard and trust information posted by social bots without even knowing it’s happening.

Social strengths make us vulnerable online

Historically, our social nature prepared us for the kind of large-scale co-operation that makes political institutions work. It enabled us to create the complex, modern societies we live in today. Understanding and sharing intentions were central to this evolution.

But there’s a catch: the very social strengths that make us successful as a species can now make us vulnerable online. With the use of AI technologies, our social connections can be simulated in highly realistic ways, manipulating our perceptions in the process.

AI-generated photos, videos and texts are being used for political advertising informed by augmented analytics, which create political ads personalized to our individual traits. This strategy is called microtargeting.

The situation gets more complicated when the content we see on social media isn’t created by humans but by social bots.

These are automated social media accounts designed to imitate us. By slipping naturally into our conversations, social bots make it nearly impossible to tell them apart from real human beings.

Bots increase exposure to negative and inflammatory content in online social systems. They also affect how we feel about the other side of the proverbial political divide. They can also give us the impression that our way of thinking is aligned with the consensus.

What Bill C-4 has to do with online data

In Canada, political parties use third-party firms that can program bots to post this kind of content on social media during elections. For instance, political parties can use bots to dampen or suppress some messages while amplifying others, and this remains a legal practice in Canada.

In June 2025, the federal government introduced a bill on affordability — Bill C-4, the Making Life More Affordable for Canadians Act — that also touched on political parties’ use of personal data.

The bill requires each party to develop a privacy policy, but it doesn’t set clear guidelines for how our data can be used. This means parties can still collect and use traces of our digital behaviour to inform how they use AI to strategically communicate with us online, as long as they follow the policies they create and self-regulate.

Though part of the bill proposes changes to the Canada Elections Act, focusing on how parties can use our personal information, it takes only a small step to protect privacy. While political parties will be obligated to create a policy about the use of citizens’ private data, they will not be required to stop collecting our online data or using it to making predictions about our voting behaviour.

It also fails to provide Elections Canada or the federal privacy commissioner the power to enforce meaningful limitations on the use of our online engagement for such purposes. Even if parties publish their privacy policies publicly, any third-party consultancies they hire are likely to remain beyond enforcement, creating significant gaps in accountability.

Why does this matter? Misused data could harm our rights to privacy and to participate in democratic elections free from manipulation.

Why political parties need universal guardrails

While Bill C-4 does force political parties to create privacy policies and assign someone to oversee them, the way those policies are handled is left up to the parties themselves.

Without clear and universal guardrails for how parties are allowed to collect and use our online data, Canadians remain at the mercy of whatever political parties decide to do.

Instead, Canada could follow the European Union’s example by prohibiting the use of data for online microtargeting purposes. We could also adopt a framework for the ethical use of citizens’ online data like the one currently being implemented in the United Kingdom, which would require political parties to obtain voters’ consent before using their data for campaign purposes.

Allowing parties to define their own rules and decide who enforces them leaves far too much open to interpretation and even potential abuse. And under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadians should be free to form political thoughts and opinions without interference from those who wield political power.

If we are not able to do so as voting citizens, can we genuinely say that our elections are free and fair? What, then, does this mean for democracy in Canada?

Sophia Melanson Ricciardone 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. Bill C-4 privacy enhancements are modest and fail to regulate politicians’ use of social bots – https://theconversation.com/bill-c-4-privacy-enhancements-are-modest-and-fail-to-regulate-politicians-use-of-social-bots-264758

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sean Carleton, Associate Professor, Departments of History and Indigenous Studies, University of Manitoba

In May 2021, when the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Nation announced preliminary results of their search for unmarked burials of children at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School (IRS), Canada was forced to reckon with a truth that Survivors had always carried: children were taken, and many never came home.

This difficult truth was already established years earlier, in 2015, by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada’s final report, which confirmed more than 3,200 deaths of children as a result of the IRS system, including 51 at Kamloops.

The Kamloops announcement shook many Canadians and revealed that more children likely died at residential schools in Canada than the TRC reported. This was something the commission anticipated would happen with new research, and additional deaths have now been confirmed by First Nations and police as they have undertaken their own subsequent investigations.

Vigils sprang up across the country. Shoes, toys and teddy bears were placed on the steps of legislatures and churches to remember the children who died at residential schools. For a brief moment, Canada mourned with Indigenous Peoples; the truth of Survivors was acknowledged.

But four years later, residential school denialism — the downplaying and minimizing of residential school facts and the disavowal of the system’s abuse and harm — is on the rise.

As community initiatives and research related to missing children and unmarked burials have persevered and expanded, so too have efforts to diminish and disavow this very work.

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Read more:
Residential school deaths are significantly higher than previously reported

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Residential school denialism, as historian Crystal Gail Fraser has outlined, is an attack on truth. It seeks to dismiss the validity of ground searches and recast residential schools as humanitarian and benevolent.

Residential school denialism is not simply an alternate perspective. It is a form of harm that retraumatizes Survivors, undermines truth and perpetuates colonial ideas that jeopardize Canada’s ability to work with Indigenous Peoples to create a stronger future.

Confronting denialism is an ethical and shared responsibility.

The denialist playbook

Residential school denialism follows a pattern familiar from other forms of atrocity denialism. Holocaust denialism, genocide denialism and similar movements employ similar strategies: demand impossible “proof,” discredit Survivor and expert testimony and attack the reputations of researchers.

This can include denialists turning their attention toward those who dare to speak openly: Survivors, Indigenous communities and the experts who support them. What is often framed as “debate” seems more like a campaign of intimidation.

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Read more:
We fact-checked residential school denialists and debunked their ‘mass grave hoax’ theory

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Residential school denialism, then, is not just an attack on truth. It also increasingly has many of the hallmarks of an attack on truth-tellers and anyone who is listening.

Denialists often present themselves as “skeptics” or “truth seekers,” cloaking harmful narratives in the language of free speech and rational inquiry. They cast Survivor testimony as unreliable, “emotional” or politically or financially motivated.

In doing so, they promote an alluring colonial narrative that absolves Canada of responsibility. The reach extends beyond Canada: denying the harms and facts of residential schooling is increasingly being used globally to shape international opinion related to the legacies of the British Empire.

At its heart, denialism is not about evidence. It is about power — who gets to tell the story of residential schooling and whose voices are considered trustworthy — and it causes harm along the way.

The human cost

The damage caused by denialism is immediate and personal. Survivors who bravely share their experiences are accused of fabrication.

Kimberly Murray, who serves as special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves and burial sites associated with Indian Residential Schools, received abuse, threats and hate mail.

Via social media and online commentary, people advocating denialist claims have targeted individual university employees.

Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, including ourselves, have seen their names dragged into online forums, their work misrepresented, their credibility attacked.

Cumulatively, efforts that discredit and delegitimize prominent truth-tellers contribute to backlash by creating space — for example, in comment sections or via re-circulating media — for people to voice ignorant views about Indigenous Peoples and perpetuate anti-Indigenous racism.

The cost is not limited to reputation; it is emotional and psychological. It has also resulted in disrespectful physical presence at former IRS sites: Murray reported that at the former Kamloops IRS:

“Denialists entered the site without permission. Some came in the middle of the night, carrying shovels; they said they wanted to ‘see for themselves’ if children are buried there.”

Survivors and Elders, those who should be most honoured, are retraumatized by these attacks on their integrity.

We, among other scholars, calculate the risks of speaking publicly, knowing it may bring harassment. And we know some community leaders for whom it is the same.

Denialism thrives on fear and hate

Residential school denialism has flourished in today’s political and digital climate. The rise of far-right populism, entrenched anti-Indigenous racism and the ecosystem of social media provide fertile ground for dedicated people to flood online spaces with disinformation.

Denialists exploit the deliberate, careful pace of ground searches and archeological work. They portray the absence of immediate excavation results as evidence that nothing is there, and ignore the confirmed deaths from exhumation when they are announced.

Proper archaeological and community-led work takes time. It requires ceremony, consent and cultural respect as multiple Nations work collaboratively to figure out how to honour children who attended schools from various communities. Excavation is not always possible, or even desired. Denialists twist these hard realities into narratives of doubt.

Gaps in education, inconsistent coverage

This manipulation is made easier by gaps in public education, inconsistent media coverage and government hesitancy. Too often, denialist claims circulate unchallenged. In these silences, mis- and disinformation thrives.

Denialism is not an Indigenous problem; confronting it is a Canadian responsibility.

Non-Indigenous Canadians must take an active role: learning the history, correcting misinformation and standing with Survivors and communities as they confront the truth about residential schooling.

Journalists and scholars also have a responsibility to report with care, refusing to legitimize denialist rhetoric under the guise of “balance” and disingenuous “debate.”

Truth and reconciliation cannot survive if the truth is minimized, downplayed or disavowed.

Shared responsibility

Despite these challenges, Indigenous communities continue the work of truth-telling. Survivors share their stories with courage: for example, one has launched a defamation lawsuit.

Communities organize and lead ground searches. Journalists fight to reveal hidden truths about residential school crimes.

Writers and scholars contribute expertise to raise awareness and meet community needs. Each act of testimony, ceremony and research is also an act of resistance against erasure and disavowal.

The children we are searching for, and remembering, deserve nothing less than our courage to confront the truth in an effort to create a better future. This is our shared responsibility.

Sean Carleton receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Benjamin Kucher 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. Confronting residential schools denialism is an ethical and shared Canadian responsibility – https://theconversation.com/confronting-residential-schools-denialism-is-an-ethical-and-shared-canadian-responsibility-265127

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sophie M Phillips, Post-Doctoral Associate, School of Occupational Therapy, Western University

Healthy movement behaviours support young children’s physical, mental and social development, and shape lifelong habits. These habits include engaging in physical activity, reducing sedentary screen time and obtaining sufficient sleep, including naps.

National 24-hour movement guidelines for children exist in Canada, with recommendations on physical activity, sedentary and screen time and sleep.

Nevertheless, only 13 percent of young children in Canada are meeting these guidelines.

Over one million young children (aged birth to five years) in Canada attend child care, spending most of their weekday waking hours in these settings. The number of children enrolled in child care is projected to rise with the rollout of the national Early Learning and Child-Care Plan, which comes with reduced fees for parents.

Child-care settings play an influential role in healthy movement behaviours and early childhood development, offering a unique and primary environment for supporting these behaviours — and a prime location to enact movement guidelines. Despite this, discrepancies remain in the quality of child care across Canada, and only the Northwest Territories and British Columbia specify a duration of required physical activity in their regulations.

We are researchers in the Child Health and Physical Activity Lab at Western University. Our work is concerned with supporting child-care educators in providing healthy movement behaviour environments for the children in their care.

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Read more:
Kids’ physical activity before age 5 matters so much because of the developing brain

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Movement guidelines

Guidelines help to establish clear expectations for the operation of child-care centres, promoting consistent and high-quality care. They also provide direction and objectives for educators, supporting their understanding of responsibilities and effective practices. Research shows that children in centres with formal physical activity guidelines are more active, demonstrating the value of guidelines in promoting healthy behaviours in child-care settings.

Using the best available evidence and expert consensus, with partners, we have created the first ever Canadian Best Practice Guidelines for Healthy Movement Behaviour in Childcare.

Partners including national child-care organizations (Canadian Child Care Federation, Childcare Resource and Research Unit, Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario); public health agencies (City of Hamilton Public Health, Grey Bruce Public Health, Ottawa Public Health); ParticipACTION; Métis Nation of Ontario Early Learning and Child Care; as well as other research experts and child-care educators.

The guidelines were developed using a rigorous and inclusive approach. Key steps in the development process included:

• Hosting a national consensus meeting with child-care organizations, public health agencies, research experts and child-care educators to collaboratively determine direction, content and priorities;

• Drafting guidelines based on the consensus meeting discussions, along with key national and international documents in this area: the World Health Organization’s standards for healthy eating, physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep in early childhood education and care settings; British Columbia’s active play standard; a similar Australian active play standard and our lab’s previously developed PLAY policy.

• Distributing a survey among attendees of the consensus meeting, as well as broader experts and advocates in the field, to gather feedback and assess agreement on the draft guidelines; and,

• Finalizing the guidelines based on expert feedback via the survey responses.

The resulting guidelines serve as a series of best practices for educators, program directors and child-care centres to promote healthy movement behaviours.

From guidelines to practice

While guidelines are important, simply introducing new guidelines may not be enough to effectively improve healthy movement behaviours in child care.

Rather, combining guidelines with professional development designed to enhance educators’ skills and confidence to provide movement opportunities may help effectively put guidelines into practice.

However, importantly, few educators across Canada receive training relating to healthy movement; many also report limited knowledge and confidence in their ability to lead physical activity in their roles.

To address this issue, our lab created the TEACH e-Learning course, focused on promoting physical activity, limiting sedentary screen time and supporting the development of children’s fundamental movement skills within child-care centres.

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Read more:
Kids’ physical activity in child care is essential — how an online course equips educators to lead the way

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The course, developed with educators and movement experts, has been tested across Canada. It’s led to significant improvements in educators’ knowledge, confidence, sense of control and intentions related to movement behaviour practices with the young children in their care.

The course, alongside the guidelines, may better equip educators to confidently implement movement opportunities for children.

Guidelines in action

The next steps for the best practice guidelines will involve testing them, with the TEACH e-Learning course, in participating child-care centres across Ontario.

Piloting and testing is required to assess the guidelines’ acceptability and feasibility, which could lead to modifications. This will also help to determine whether this approach leads to changes in child-care environments, educator practices and children’s movement.

Once the final stages of testing and evaluating the guidelines are completed, they will be made publicly available and freely accessible on our lab’s website. Our vision is that Canada-wide child-care centres can benefit from this resource.

Child care in Canada is at a pivotal point with implementation of the 2021 Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Plan. This draws on the earlier (2017) Multilateral Early Learning and Child Care Framework’s principles: affordability, accessibility, quality and inclusivity. This government initiative works towards ensuring all children have access to high-quality early learning and child care that supports their development and lifelong well-being.

The best-practice guidelines support this vision as a critical aspect of creating more active and health-promoting child-care centres to best support the health and development of young children across the country.

This article was co-authored with Emily Sussex, an undergraduate summer research intern in the Child Health and Physical Activity Lab.

Sophie M Phillips is supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

Trish Tucker receives funding from the Canada Foundation of Innovation, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Children’s Health Research Institute.

– ref. Kids in child care need healthy movement — and guidelines can improve their health – https://theconversation.com/kids-in-child-care-need-healthy-movement-and-guidelines-can-improve-their-health-264826

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Luna Vives, Associate Professor of Geography and Migration, Université de Montréal

Over the last decade, European governments have invested heavily to militarize their sea borders and outsource control responsibilities to partners in Africa and the Middle East.

But despite exponentially growing border budgets, people continue to take to the sea to reach EU territory, encountering violence and death. It’s time to admit that this repressive strategy has failed and to ask what should come next.

In late 2013, shortly after the Lampedusa shipwrecks off the coast of Italy that claimed more than 400 lives, the Italian government deployed Operation Mare Nostrum in the central Mediterranean. More than 150,000 people were rescued in the following 12 months.

But with a monthly cost of nine million euros, the operation was deemed economically unsustainable.

A year later, in November 2015, Frontex (the EU’s Border and Coast Guard) deployed Operation Triton to replace Mare Nostrum. The shift in names reflected a parallel shift in logic. Mare Nostrum (“our sea” in Latin, a nod to its role in sustaining life and bringing people together) was designed as a search-and-rescue mission. Meanwhile, Operation Triton (named after the mighty Greek god) focused on dismantling smuggling networks.

Turning point

The operation marked a turning point in the EU’s approach to migration control at sea. Frontex’s legitimacy, mandate and resources expanded dramatically post-2015. At the same time, European governments ramped up militarization and accelerated the delegation of border control to countries of departure.

In the central Mediterranean, Italy transferred 270 million euros to Libya’s ruling elites by 2021, mainly to bolster the country’s capacity to intercept migrant boats — often detected by Frontex drones surveilling the disputed Libyan rescue zone.

Meanwhile, the EU allocated 465 million euros from its Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (also created in 2015) to bolster migration and border control efforts by the Libyan government.

To this day, those “rescued” by Libyan forces are put in EU-funded detention centres where abuses are well documented and African migrants are allegedly sold as slaves.

Leaving migrants adrift

To the east, the EU agreed to pay Turkey nine billion euros between 2016 and 2023 to prevent people from Syria, Afghanistan and other war-torn countries from crossing into Greece in search of safety.

Boats crowded with entire families were — and are, to this day — pushed back to Turkey or left adrift under the very eyes of Frontex.

The same tactics soon spread westward. In 2019, Spain and the EU transferred more than 460 million euros to Morocco, plus additional funds for training and assets. Much of these transfers were, again, earmarked to develop the country’s capacity to patrol the seas and intercept migrant boats. More recently, the EU and Spain reached similar agreements with Mauritania worth over 500 million euros.

Drastic cuts to public spending have become mainstream in the EU, yet governments do not hesitate to foot hefty bills for border enforcement. Frontex’s projected budget for the 2021-2027 period is a whopping 11 billion euros. Additionally, an unknown amount is allocated to contracts with private companies that provide border technology.

The European Commission has proposed tripling this level of investment for its 2028-2034 Migration, Borders and Security initiative for a total investment of 81 billion euros.

Deaths at sea on the rise

All evidence suggests that these investments over the course of the last decade have failed to result in a safer sea or a more secure border.

The main objective of post-2015 maritime border policy was to dismantle criminal networks and prevent drownings. Instead, it has pushed people into the hands of professional smugglers, who have seen their profits soar as they exploit the lives of people on the move. Death has increased as a direct result of externalization.

The EU’s efforts to manage maritime migration also sought to stop illegal border crossings. Yet safe and legal pathways to the EU remain extremely scarce. People fleeing persecution who have the right to seek international protection and workers responding to the labour demands of an aging Europe continue to leave their communities in search of a hope only the sea offers.

Deaths at sea, violence against migrants and government investment are increasing simultaneously along the EU’s external maritime border. Over the last decade, the Mediterranean has become not only a graveyard, but also a bottomless money pit.

Looking ahead

What are the options? The most obvious is to create a functioning system for the selection and recruitment of workers and refugees at origin.

There is also room for more ambitious programs: a recent study found that most people in the EU would favour large-scale regularization for people without status already in the territory.

The United Nations-endorsed Global Compact for Migration designed to improve co-operation on global migration issues offers an even more daring road map for a strategy that taps into the potential of government-managed mobility.

There are many possibilities. Whatever the choice, once thing is clear: militarization and delegation of border control are not only expensive but also ineffective.

Luna Vives receives funding from SSHRC.

– ref. The Mediterranean: Both a graveyard and a bottomless money pit due to EU border policies – https://theconversation.com/the-mediterranean-both-a-graveyard-and-a-bottomless-money-pit-due-to-eu-border-policies-264756

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Daniel Romm, PhD Candidate, Geography, McGill University

Montréal is often hailed as the most “biking-friendly” city in North America. But our research has found that only 2.3 per cent of the city’s roadways are allocated to bike infrastructure, with car infrastructure occupying the remaining 97.7 per cent of road space.

We measured the street space allocated to transport infrastructures across Montréal, and contrasted it with traveller counts by travel mode. We found a wide discrepancy: comparing bike travellers with car travellers, bikes represent 4.9 per cent of trips to 95.1 per cent for cars.

Proposals for new or expanded bike lanes are often met with fierce backlash, in a phenomenon dubbed “bikelash,” with car drivers reluctant to lose any street space.

Yet our study finds that the current imbalance of spatial allocation is so overwhelmingly in favour of cars that it’s possible to make substantial improvements to bike infrastructure without significantly decreasing the space allocated per driver.

After all, a key advantage of bicycles is their incredible space-efficiency. Even if all the bike infrastructure space in the city were to double, the proportion of roadway given to cars would not fall below 90 per cent in any borough.

Sharing space

Our research, with a focus on improving communication about street space use, presents several measures of spatial allocation. The first, and simplest measure, is the space allocated to a specific transport infrastructure.

We found that 97.7 per cent of road space was dedicated to cars, and 2.3 per cent to bicycles. When we included sidewalks, 79.6 per cent of space was taken up by cars, 18.8 per cent to sidewalks and just 1.6 per cent for bikes.

Boroughs typically associated with cycling tended to have the greatest proportion of space given to bike infrastructure. In Montréal, Le Plateau-Mont-Royal, a neighbourhood viewed as trendy and bike-friendly, leads with 4.7 per cent.

Proportions allocated

The second measure we used in our research is space per traveller per mode of travel.

In Le Plateau Mont-Royal, where 21.9 per cent of trips started in that borough are by bicycle, we find that drivers are given 3.4 square metres per traveller, while bike travellers are allocated 1.5 square metres per traveller. This measure can be used to understand the relationship between infrastructure space and traveller counts.

We can also present this as the difference between the space allocated to bike infrastructure and the percentage of cyclists, which shows the discrepancy between space and travel across the city.

We developed the Equal Infrastructure Allocation (EIA) score to understand how the space per traveller for one mode compares to that for another. We used the EIA to compare the bike space per traveller to the space per traveller for those in cars: when the EIA is zero, car and bike travellers are allocated the same amount of space per traveller. When the EIA falls below zero, space is biased in favour of the automobile.

Using the EIA, we found that nine of Montréal’s 19 boroughs present spatial inequality in favour of cars; Le Plateau had the worst score at -0.55.

Doubling lanes

These measures can also be modelled for prospective changes to infrastructure, such as installing a new series of bike lanes, to better communicate about how such projects would affect the space.

In April 2024, Montréal’s BIXI bikeshare system had more than 11,000 bikes at over 900 stations. That’s a lot of bikes, but because they’re so space-efficient, the total space used by BIXI in Montréal is just 0.021 square kilometres. If BIXI were to double the number of bikes and stations, the amount of car space per traveller would decrease by 0.003 square metres.

We modelled what would happen if we were to double all the bike infrastructure in Montréal. We found that space would increase for bikes by 4.4 square metres per traveller; meanwhile, the space for someone travelling by car would decrease by 0.2 square metres.

In Le Plateau, drivers would lose just 0.15 square metres per traveller, and across the city, all but two boroughs would have positive EIA scores.

The current imbalance of space per traveller is so far in favour of cars that bike infrastructure projects improve the spatial picture for cyclists to a far greater extent than they worsen spatial allocation for drivers.

There are many well-established reasons for improving bike infrastructure and encouraging sustainable travel modes, including reducing reducing car fatalities.

Our findings corroborate this, finding a strong correlation between more bike infrastructure with decreased collision rates of cars with bikes.

Addressing opposition

Bike infrastructure projects often face intense, entrenched opposition. Our research provides tools for planners, policymakers, advocates and researchers to evaluate the current spatial picture, and to illustrate what the effects of alternative infrastructure would look like.

In our study of Montréal’s streets, we found that even with bike infrastructure improvements at a scale dramatically larger than anything proposed today, street space still remains biased in favour of cars.

Daniel Romm receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

– ref. Montréal’s bike infrastructure hardly takes up any space from cars on city roads – https://theconversation.com/montreals-bike-infrastructure-hardly-takes-up-any-space-from-cars-on-city-roads-264675

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Daniel Skerritt, Affiliated Researcher, Fisheries Economics Research Unit, University of British Columbia

After nearly 25 years of negotiations, the World Trade Organization (WTO) finally has its first legally binding agreement to tackle government fisheries subsidies. After two-thirds of WTO members ratified the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, the deal has entered into force. It marks a long-overdue step toward addressing the role harmful fisheries subsidies play in overfishing.

Fisheries subsidies can cause harm by distorting markets and creating unequal competition — so-called “trade injuries.” In addition, they can cause ecological harm by increasing the capacity of fishing vessels and fleets. The result is overcapacity: too many boats chasing too few fish, which often leads to overfishing.

When WTO talks on fisheries subsidies began in 2001, fish populations were already in decline. Today, 38 per cent of fish stocks are overfished, and a further 50 per cent are fully exploited. That means most of the world’s fisheries are being fished at or beyond their biological limits.

For decades, government subsidies have helped industrial fishing fleets expand, often with little regard for sustainability. These subsidies have distorted access to fish and seafood, fuelled overfishing and harmed coastal communities — especially in low-income countries where fish are critical to food security and livelihoods.

This agreement is a major milestone, but it’s only the beginning. Here’s what the agreement covers, why it matters and what needs to happen next to protect ocean health and ensure an equitable ocean economy for coastal communities.

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Read more:
We have a deal. Can we now talk about some not-so-harmful fisheries subsidies?

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What the agreement covers and why it matters

WTO members first raised the issue of harmful fisheries subsidies at the Fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha in 2001. For years, talks made little headway — until the adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015.

Target 14.6 of the SDGs explicitly called on the WTO to:

“Prohibit certain forms of fisheries subsidies which contribute to overcapacity and overfishing, eliminate subsidies that contribute to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and refrain from introducing new such subsidies.”

This helped re-energize negotiations, culminating in the adoption of the subsidies agreement at the WTO’s 12th Ministerial Conference in 2022.

The agreement includes three key prohibitions targeting the worst kinds of subsidies. First, ratifying WTO members must stop subsidizing illegal,
unreported and unregulated fishing (Article 3).

Second, they must end subsidies for vessels targeting overfished stocks unless they can demonstrate that effective management measures are in place to rebuild those stocks (Article 4). Third, subsidies for fishing on the unregulated high seas are banned (Article 5).

While these measures don’t address all subsidies that contribute to overcapacity, they target some of the most egregious forms of financial support.

Another critical part of the agreement is Article 8, which strengthens transparency and accountability. Members must now provide detailed information annually, including information on fish stocks, conservation and management measures, fleet capacity and the names of subsidized vessels.

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Read more:
Illuminating dark seas: Why fisheries management must be more transparent

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Historically, fisheries subsidies data has been patchy and incomplete. Better data will help identify who benefits from public financial support and whether it aligns with sustainability goals.

The agreement also introduces more equitable expectations for developing and least developed countries. These members are granted an extra two years before they must implement subsidy prohibitions and, crucially, can access the WTO Fish Fund — a funding mechanism that helps countries implement the agreement through technical assistance and partnerships.

While the agreement does not fully level the playing field, it establishes that major subsidizers must carry the greatest burden.

Challenges, Gaps and Next Steps

Despite its strengths on paper, the agreement only covers a fraction of the estimated $22 billion in harmful fisheries subsidies provided by governments each year. The most prevalent of all the harmful subsidies, fuel subsidies, remain largely untouched.

Another major limitation is that it only applies to countries that have ratified the agreement. As of now, some major subsidizers — including Indonesia and Thailand, two of the world’s top 10 subsidy providers — have yet to ratify.

In a 2021 report we wrote for ocean conservation group Oceana, we found that just 10 countries are responsible for 64 per cent of global harmful subsidies. Even with this agreement in force, without their participation, large gaps will remain.

Another challenge is ensuring transparency and data disclosure. While the agreement includes stronger notification requirements, it lacks detailed reporting guidelines. Much of the implementation will depend on self-reporting and peer accountability between members.

Without clear standards or enforcement mechanisms, many subsidy programs could remain opaque or under-reported. To have real impact, the WTO must develop robust and standardized reporting frameworks.

Whether this agreement will save fish, or merely save face, will come down to how it’s implemented. Success will hinge on whether WTO members hold each other accountable and whether industry, civil society and researchers can push their governments toward genuine compliance.

Importantly, the subsidies agreement was never meant to be the end of the conversation. Its entry into force triggers a four-year countdown to negotiate the next phase.

They must address the most damaging subsidies of all, those that fund fishing by rich foreign fleets in the waters of other nations, and those that drive overcapacity, to achieve a comprehensive agreement. These policies have the greatest potential ecological and equity impact but are the hardest to reach consensus on.

Fortunately, we’re now closer to that goal. The entry into force of this agreement provides the ideal platform from which SDG Target 14.6 can be fully achieved. Putting an end to billions in fishing subsidies would restore fish stocks, support coastal communities, and improve ocean health for all. The job is not yet done.

Daniel Skerritt is Senior Manager of Oceana’s Transparent Oceans Initiative, affiliated with the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at the University of British Columbia, School of Natural & Environmental Sciences at Newcastle University, and an International Board Member of the Fisheries Transparency Initiative.

Rashid Sumaila receives funding from SSHRC, NSERC and the World Bank. He is affiliated with Oceana, Stockholm University, the University of Cape Coast, Pew Charitable Trusts, Tyler Prize Foundation as a board member.

– ref. What the WTO’s deal to curb fisheries subsidies means and what it could achieve – https://theconversation.com/what-the-wtos-deal-to-curb-fisheries-subsidies-means-and-what-it-could-achieve-265185

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ronald W. Pruessen, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Toronto

Explaining his move to rename the United States Department of Defense the Department of War, as it was known prior to 1949, President Donald Trump explained it had “a stronger sound.”

It offered better messaging too. “Defense is too defensive; we want to be offensive too,” he said.

The once and future Department of War would revive the spirit of the years when “we won everything.”

Trump’s language — and the logic behind it — demonstrates how little America’s current leaders have learned from the clear failures of their predecessors across 70 years.

American policies after the Second World War achieved great things: substantially aiding the reconstruction of devastated Europe and Japan, for instance, while spearheading the building of an integrated global economy that fostered unparalleled growth.

There were also grave flaws in American designs and actions, of course, though they rarely if ever stemmed from a lack of aggressive assertiveness and an appetite for winning. Trump’s failure to diagnose the real roots of real problems portends a worsening of already terrible costs and consequences.

Perpetual preparedness

A key source of Trump’s weaknesses is his shallow or distorted grasp of history. His failure here is understanding that the Department of Defense saw “offence” thoroughly embedded into its conception of defence.

Think “the best defence is a good offence” on steroids. George Kennan’s famous “containment policy,” for example, included calls for “unceasing pressure for penetration.”

The American military establishment created in the 1940s turbocharged earlier approaches to national security, moving limited spending and retrenchment between conflicts to proactive and perpetual preparedness. Because the world continued to be seen as a dangerous place even after 1945’s victories, expanding military power was prescribed to deter aggressors or to prevail over them if push came to war.

Emphasis on “the world” helps to explain the scale of power. Air power and other technological advances (in communications, for example) created the integrated international arena in which American leaders acted after the defeat of the Axis powers in the Second World War.

There was a rapid and dramatic growth in the policy agenda. For the new Department of Defense, this meant unparalleled budgets: US$997 billion by 2024 compared to China’s US$314 billion (greater than any other countries in the 1940s and ever since).

It also produced global reach greater than any empire in history: there are almost three million members of the U.S. armed forces today, based in 70 countries.

American power

Trump fails to grasp (or chooses to ignore) the fact that this vast power was used regularly and aggressively:

• There were large-scale interventions from Korea and Indochina to Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.

• There were massive transfusions of equipment, training and personnel into NATO and other countries on every continent, including Israel, Pakistan, Brazil and Australia.

• There was Pentagon co-operation with other agencies engaged in all-of-government efforts — overt and covert operations that ranged from intelligence gathering (including espionage), destabilization and coups (for example in Iran, Guatemala, Chile) and assassinations (including repeated attempts on Cuban leader Fidel Castro and the frequently assumed association with the deaths of Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba, Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo and South Vietnam’s Ngô Đình Diệm.

“Defence” served both as the foundation and the justification for the evolution of many elements of this repertoire over the decades.

Failures

A cost accounting of aggressive/offensive defence in the past is disturbing. The tabulation of a 75-year record has filled countless volumes, but two striking examples attest to some major failures:

• A lack of “winning” in large-scale military operations: A “truce” in the Korean peninsula in 1953, giving way to failures in Indochina, Iraq and Afghanistan. (Success in Kuwait in 1990-91 does not significantly alter this problematic balance.)

• Continued independence and resistance from states once thought weak enough to be managed, in particular Cuba and Iran.

Dubious results also had staggering price tags. There were 36,000 American deaths in Korea; 58,000 in Vietnam; 7,000 deaths and 53,000 wounded military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trillions of dollars were devoted to defence spending at the expense of economic and social programs on the home front.

Trump seems to believe that, with the Department of War, he’s replacing post-1945 defence policies rather than doubling down on them, meaning he is intensifying the offensive/aggressive approaches without grappling with their flaws. In particular, he has no apparent grasp of what bedevilled the post-1945 American drive for global domination.

American arrogance

Democratic Sen. J. William Fulbright famously critiqued the “arrogance of power” in the 1960s, countering the U.S. presumption of a right to impose values on distant corners of the world like Southeast Asia.

Other critics of the Vietnam War further questioned whether the U.S. had sufficient manpower and intellectual or economic resources to achieve its goals. Wasn’t the world too large and complex, with too many rival players and independent allies, and too many ever-evolving challenges, for one country to imagine holding global management capacities in its hands?

In recent years, former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden began to apply a pragmatic calculus to conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, even if their core vision continued to exhibit historic “Manifest Destiny” concepts. One example is Obama’s attempt to determine an effective troop level in Iraq while simultaneously retaining his faith in American “exceptionalism.”

Trump’s determination to go on the offensive threatens to reverse even tentative adjustments to American aspirations of global domination. He is reviving attitudes like those of former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice early in the Afghanistan war, when she chided cautious generals by saying “I’m an American. Nothing is impossible.”

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Read more:
Out of Afghanistan: Joe Biden and the future of America’s foreign policy

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Trump’s threats

The magnitude of Trump’s ego (his “I alone” mentality) risks intensifying such a revival — with potentially serious consequences.

Attacks on Venezuelan boats said to be carrying drugs, a failure to rein in Israel’s expanding campaigns in Gaza and the deployment of National Guard forces to Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Memphis are strong hints of what may be coming.

Recalling Trump’s speculations about military operations against Greenland and Canada just months ago makes it impossible to dismiss anxiety about his intentions.

Ronald W. Pruessen has received past research grants from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. ‘We want to be offensive too’ — Trump’s Department of War move shows his flimsy grasp of history – https://theconversation.com/we-want-to-be-offensive-too-trumps-department-of-war-move-shows-his-flimsy-grasp-of-history-265334