Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Daniel Foster, Policy Researcher, Atkinson Centre for Society and Child Development, University of Toronto

As backpacks come off the shelves and parents fuss over what to put in lunch boxes, many families face a more stressful back-to-school dilemma: who’s going to watch the kids when school’s out? For too many Canadian households, September means resuming the annual hunt for affordable, reliable child care.

Just in time, an old idea is being repackaged as a potential solution. In response to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s call to cabinet members for ideas to cut public spending, some private child-care providers are pushing for child-care vouchers, where public dollars are directed to parents instead of being invested in actual child care.

The Association of Childcare Entrepreneurs, a group representing Canadian for-profit providers, claims in a blog post that giving cash directly to families would cut government red tape and save billions by reducing the need for “complex audit procedures” and “federal oversight structures.”

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Read more:
Why doesn’t Canada let schools provide child care?

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The voucher program suggested by the association is a demand-side funding model, with public money tied to individual families and their purchasing choices rather than supporting child-care services for the entire community.

But bureaucratic red tape is the backbone of a functioning system: it provides safety standards, fair staff wages, oversight of public dollars and intentional planning to ensure every community has access to care.

When public support shifts from building services to subsidizing consumption, the system unravels. We’ve seen it happen before.

Just ask Australia

Australia offers one of the clearest cautionary tales. Its Child Care Subsidy program is structured around a parental choice model, whereby public funds are allocated to families based on income and employment status.

The Australian government spends A$13.6 billion annually on its child-care subsidy program, yet child-care fees continue to rise. Many families still struggle to afford them, and there are reports of serious — even criminal — infractions within the sector.

This system allows operators to set their own prices and doesn’t require them to justify how public dollars are spent. Rather than reducing costs for families or improving service quality, subsidies are mismanaged in ways that lead to their absorption into private profits or their use for expansion into wealthier markets.

It’s no small wonder this model appeals to commercial interests.

Between 2013 and 2024, 78 per cent of new child-care spaces in Australia were created by for-profit providers, mostly in high-income urban areas where parents can afford to pay. Meanwhile, lower-income and rural communities were largely left behind.

This is a model that expands care where it’s profitable, not where it’s needed.

Shifting the burden to families

Voucher systems like Australia’s place the burden of navigation on parents. Instead of empowering families, they often exclude those who face language barriers, housing instability or non-standard work schedules.

Even affluent parents find it difficult to locate care and evaluate its quality. Research shows that for-profit providers often deliver lower-quality care, yet dominate in areas with more disposable income.

Canada is already seeing signs of what happens when for-profit child care expands without strong oversight.

Red flags at home

The 2024 report from Québec’s Auditor General warned that for-profit growth, fuelled by generous fee rebates to parents, had caused the child-care system to deteriorate.

The report found many commercial operators failed quality assessments, committed serious safety violations such as poor sanitation and improper medication practices, employed unqualified staff and neglected to conduct mandatory background checks.

In 2022, the former provincial minister for families called government support for private daycare the “biggest mistake the Québec government committed in the last 25 years.”

The problem isn’t limited to Québec. In Alberta, a recent review by the provincial Auditor General found more than half the audited child-care operators that received public grants had discrepancies in their claims. Some billed for hours never worked. Others didn’t pass on wage top-ups to staff or fee reductions to families. One month, a provider was overpaid by $26,000 due to a bogus claim.

These are symptoms of a model built on self-reporting without oversight. When oversight is weak, public dollars can vanish without delivering a public good.

A better way forward

When governments directly fund providers, they can correct for system weaknesses and withhold funds from those who don’t meet financial, safety or quality regulations.

That’s the real choice before us: do we want a child-care system built on profit and personal risk or one grounded in public responsibility and equitable access?

The demand for child care is outpacing supply in Canada. Parents are justifiably frustrated, and quick fixes like vouchers can seem appealing.

But these vouchers come at the cost of deregulation. Governments have the tools to expand child care quickly and responsibly by enforcing clear standards, supporting a qualified workforce and prioritizing communities that need it most.

Vouchers strip away those tools and shift responsibility from public systems to individual families, leaving access to child care shaped by geography, income and luck.

What families need isn’t a market gamble, but a guarantee that no matter where they live or how much they earn, their children can count on safe, high-quality care. That’s the promise of a public system, and it’s something a voucher can’t deliver.

Daniel Foster works for the Atkinson Centre, which receives funding from the Atkinson Foundation, the Lawson Foundation, the Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation, and The Waltons Trust.

Kerry McCuaig works for the Atkinson Centre, which receives funding from the Atkinson Foundation, the Lawson Foundation, the Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation, and The Waltons Trust.

– ref. Why child-care vouchers aren’t the answer for working families this fall – https://theconversation.com/why-child-care-vouchers-arent-the-answer-for-working-families-this-fall-261828

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jul Parke, PhD Candidate in Media, Technology & Culture, University of Toronto

The most controversial AI platform is arguably the one founded by Elon Musk. The chatbot Grok has spewed racist and antisemitic comments and called itself “MechaHitler,” referring to a character from a video game.

“Mecha” is generally a term for giant robots, usually inhabited for warfare, and is prominent in Japanese science-fiction comics.

Grok originally referred to Musk when asked for its opinions, and burst into unprompted racist historical revisionism, like the false concept of “white genocide” in South Africa. Its confounding and contradictory politicism continues to develop.

These are all alarming aspects of Grok. Another concerning element to Grok 4 is a new feature of social interactions with “virtual friends” on its premium version.

The realm of human loneliness, with its increasing reliance on large language models (LLMs) to replace social interaction, has made room for Grok 4 with AI companions, an upgrade available to paid subscribers.

Specifically, Grok subscribers can now access the functionality of generative AI intertwined with patriarchal notions of pleasure — what I call “pornographic productivity.”

Grok and Japanese anime

Ani, Grok 4’s most-discussed AI companion, represents a convergence of Japanese anime and internet culture. Ani bears a striking resemblance to Misa Amane from the iconic Japanese anime Death Note.

Misa Amane is a pop star who consistently demonstrates self-harming and illogical behaviour in pursuit of the male protagonist, a brilliant young man engaged in a battle of wits with his rival. Musk referenced the anime as a favourite in a tweet in 2021.

While anime is a vast art form with numerous tropes, genres and fandoms, research has shown that online anime fandoms are rife with misogyny and women-exclusionary discourse. Even the most mainstream shows have been criticized for sexualizing prepubescent characters and offering unnecessary “fan service” in hypersexualized character design and nonconsensual plot points.

Death Note‘s creator, Tsugumi Ohba, has consistently been critiqued by fans for anti-feminist character design.

Journalists have pointed out Ani’s swift eagerness to engage in romantic and sexually charged conversations. Ani is depicted with a voluptuous figure, blonde pigtails and a lacy black dress, which she frequently describes in user interactions.

The problem with pornographic productivity

I use the term “pornographic productivity,” inspired by critiques of Grok as “pornified,” to describe a troubling trend where tools initially designed for work evolve into parasocial relationships catering to emotional and psychological needs, including gendered interactions.

Grok’s AI companions feature exemplifies this phenomenon, blurring critical boundaries.

The appeal is clear. Users can theoretically exist in “double time,” relaxing while their AI avatars manage tasks, and this is already a reality within AI models. But this seductive promise masks serious risks: dependency, invasive data extraction and the deterioration of real human relational skills.

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Read more:
From chatbot to sexbot: What lawmakers can learn from South Korea’s AI hate-speech disaster

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When such companions, already created for minimizing caution and building trust, come with sexual objectification and embedded cultural references to docile femininity, the risks enter another realm of concern.

Grok 4 users have remarked that the addition of sexualized characters with emotionally validating language is quite unusual for mainstream large language models. This is because these tools, like ChatGPT and Claude, are often used by all ages.

While we are in the early stages of seeing the true impact of advanced chatbots on minors, particularly teenagers with mental health struggles, the case studies we do have are grimly dire.

‘Wife drought’

Drawing from feminist scholars Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy’s concept of the “smart wife,” Grok’s AI companions appear to respond to what they term a “wife drought” in contemporary society.

These technologies step in to perform historically feminized labour as women increasingly assert their right to refuse exploitative dynamics. In fact, online users have already deemed Ani a “waifu” character, which is a play on the Japanese pronunciation of wife.

AI companions are appealing partly because they cannot refuse or set boundaries. They perform undesirable labour under the illusion of choice and consent. Where real relationships require negotiation and mutual respect, AI companions offer a fantasy of unconditional availability and compliance.

Data extraction through intimacy

In the meantime, as tech journalist Karen Hao noted, the data and privacy implications of LLMs are already staggering. When rebranded in the form of personified characters, they are more likely to capture intimate details about users’ emotional states, preferences and vulnerabilities. This information can be exploited for targeted advertising, behavioural prediction or manipulation.

This marks a fundamental shift in data collection. Rather than relying on surveillance or explicit prompts, AI companions encourage users to divulge intimate details through seemingly organic conversation.

South Korea’s Iruda chatbot illustrates how these systems can become vessels for harassment and abuse when poorly regulated. Seemingly benign applications can quickly move into problematic territory when companies fail to implement proper safeguards.

---

Read more:
Fake models for fast fashion? What AI clones mean for our jobs — and our identities

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Previous cases also show that AI companions designed with feminized characteristics often become targets for corruption and abuse, mirroring broader societal inequalities in digital environments.

Grok’s companions aren’t simply another controversial tech product. It’s plausible to expect that other LLM platforms and big tech companies will soon experiment with their own characters in the near future. The collapse of the boundaries between productivity, companionship and exploitation demands urgent attention.

The age of AI and government partnerships

Despite Grok’s troubling history, Musk’s AI company xAI recently secured major government contracts in the United States.

This new era of America’s AI Action Plan, unveiled in July 2025, had this to say about biased AI:

“[The White House will update] federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.”

Given the overwhelming instances of Grok’s race-based hatred and its potential for replicating sexism in our society, its new government contract serves a symbolic purpose in an era of doublethink around bias.

As Grok continues to push the envelope of “pornographic productivity,” nudging users into increasingly intimate relationships with machines, we face urgent decisions that veer into our personal lives. We are beyond questioning whether AI is bad or good. Our focus should be on preserving what remains human about us.

Jul Parke receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.

– ref. Grok 4’s new AI companion offers up ‘pornographic productivity’ – https://theconversation.com/grok-4s-new-ai-companion-offers-up-pornographic-productivity-260992

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jul Parke, PhD Candidate in Media, Technology & Culture, University of Toronto

The most controversial AI platform is arguably the one founded by Elon Musk. The chatbot Grok has spewed racist and antisemitic comments and called itself “MechaHitler,” referring to a character from a video game.

“Mecha” is generally a term for giant robots, usually inhabited for warfare, and is prominent in Japanese science-fiction comics.

Grok originally referred to Musk when asked for its opinions, and burst into unprompted racist historical revisionism, like the false concept of “white genocide” in South Africa. Its confounding and contradictory politicism continues to develop.

These are all alarming aspects of Grok. Another concerning element to Grok 4 is a new feature of social interactions with “virtual friends” on its premium version.

The realm of human loneliness, with its increasing reliance on large language models (LLMs) to replace social interaction, has made room for Grok 4 with AI companions, an upgrade available to paid subscribers.

Specifically, Grok subscribers can now access the functionality of generative AI intertwined with patriarchal notions of pleasure — what I call “pornographic productivity.”

Grok and Japanese anime

Ani, Grok 4’s most-discussed AI companion, represents a convergence of Japanese anime and internet culture. Ani bears a striking resemblance to Misa Amane from the iconic Japanese anime Death Note.

Misa Amane is a pop star who consistently demonstrates self-harming and illogical behaviour in pursuit of the male protagonist, a brilliant young man engaged in a battle of wits with his rival. Musk referenced the anime as a favourite in a tweet in 2021.

While anime is a vast art form with numerous tropes, genres and fandoms, research has shown that online anime fandoms are rife with misogyny and women-exclusionary discourse. Even the most mainstream shows have been criticized for sexualizing prepubescent characters and offering unnecessary “fan service” in hypersexualized character design and nonconsensual plot points.

Death Note‘s creator, Tsugumi Ohba, has consistently been critiqued by fans for anti-feminist character design.

Journalists have pointed out Ani’s swift eagerness to engage in romantic and sexually charged conversations. Ani is depicted with a voluptuous figure, blonde pigtails and a lacy black dress, which she frequently describes in user interactions.

The problem with pornographic productivity

I use the term “pornographic productivity,” inspired by critiques of Grok as “pornified,” to describe a troubling trend where tools initially designed for work evolve into parasocial relationships catering to emotional and psychological needs, including gendered interactions.

Grok’s AI companions feature exemplifies this phenomenon, blurring critical boundaries.

The appeal is clear. Users can theoretically exist in “double time,” relaxing while their AI avatars manage tasks, and this is already a reality within AI models. But this seductive promise masks serious risks: dependency, invasive data extraction and the deterioration of real human relational skills.

---

Read more:
From chatbot to sexbot: What lawmakers can learn from South Korea’s AI hate-speech disaster

---

When such companions, already created for minimizing caution and building trust, come with sexual objectification and embedded cultural references to docile femininity, the risks enter another realm of concern.

Grok 4 users have remarked that the addition of sexualized characters with emotionally validating language is quite unusual for mainstream large language models. This is because these tools, like ChatGPT and Claude, are often used by all ages.

While we are in the early stages of seeing the true impact of advanced chatbots on minors, particularly teenagers with mental health struggles, the case studies we do have are grimly dire.

‘Wife drought’

Drawing from feminist scholars Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy’s concept of the “smart wife,” Grok’s AI companions appear to respond to what they term a “wife drought” in contemporary society.

These technologies step in to perform historically feminized labour as women increasingly assert their right to refuse exploitative dynamics. In fact, online users have already deemed Ani a “waifu” character, which is a play on the Japanese pronunciation of wife.

AI companions are appealing partly because they cannot refuse or set boundaries. They perform undesirable labour under the illusion of choice and consent. Where real relationships require negotiation and mutual respect, AI companions offer a fantasy of unconditional availability and compliance.

Data extraction through intimacy

In the meantime, as tech journalist Karen Hao noted, the data and privacy implications of LLMs are already staggering. When rebranded in the form of personified characters, they are more likely to capture intimate details about users’ emotional states, preferences and vulnerabilities. This information can be exploited for targeted advertising, behavioural prediction or manipulation.

This marks a fundamental shift in data collection. Rather than relying on surveillance or explicit prompts, AI companions encourage users to divulge intimate details through seemingly organic conversation.

South Korea’s Iruda chatbot illustrates how these systems can become vessels for harassment and abuse when poorly regulated. Seemingly benign applications can quickly move into problematic territory when companies fail to implement proper safeguards.

---

Read more:
Fake models for fast fashion? What AI clones mean for our jobs — and our identities

---

Previous cases also show that AI companions designed with feminized characteristics often become targets for corruption and abuse, mirroring broader societal inequalities in digital environments.

Grok’s companions aren’t simply another controversial tech product. It’s plausible to expect that other LLM platforms and big tech companies will soon experiment with their own characters in the near future. The collapse of the boundaries between productivity, companionship and exploitation demands urgent attention.

The age of AI and government partnerships

Despite Grok’s troubling history, Musk’s AI company xAI recently secured major government contracts in the United States.

This new era of America’s AI Action Plan, unveiled in July 2025, had this to say about biased AI:

“[The White House will update] federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.”

Given the overwhelming instances of Grok’s race-based hatred and its potential for replicating sexism in our society, its new government contract serves a symbolic purpose in an era of doublethink around bias.

As Grok continues to push the envelope of “pornographic productivity,” nudging users into increasingly intimate relationships with machines, we face urgent decisions that veer into our personal lives. We are beyond questioning whether AI is bad or good. Our focus should be on preserving what remains human about us.

Jul Parke receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.

– ref. Grok 4’s new AI companions offer ‘pornographic productivity’ for a price – https://theconversation.com/grok-4s-new-ai-companions-offer-pornographic-productivity-for-a-price-260992

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Lara B Aknin, Distinguished Professor of Social Psychology, Simon Fraser University

Gratitude statements like “Thanks! You are so kind!” and “Thank you! What you did was really helpful,” are common when someone receives assistance from another person. Such expressions of gratitude and appreciation have long been thought to encourage the helper to do kind things again in the future. But do they?

In contrast to past research, our new findings published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology suggest that gratitude does not always promote future helping.

Our research was conducted using a new approach called a Registered Report. It required that the design of our experiment, along with our hypotheses and analytic plans, were vetted by experts before we started. This new best practice in science increases rigour and transparency.

Expressions of gratitude

We conducted two large pre-registered experiments and found mixed results. In the first experiment, more than 600 university students recorded a short video to welcome a new student (played by a member of our research team) to campus.

In response to this kind act, we sent participants one of three randomly assigned pre-recorded videos. Some participants received a video in which the new student expressed gratitude for the participant’s kind act: “Thank you! What you did was very kind.”

Other participants received a video in which the new student expressed gratitude for the participant’s kind character: “Thank you! You are very kind.”

Finally, some participants in a control condition received a video of the new student acknowledging that they had received the recording, but with no expression of gratitude at all.

Afterwards, all participants were invited to write up to five brief notes to welcome other new students to university, which we treated as a measure of future helping behaviour.

Reception and kindness

By sending participants one of the three video replies, we were able to test two important questions about gratitude. Does receiving an expression of gratitude, regardless of whether it mentions your kind act or kind character, lead to more helping in the future compared to not receiving gratitude? Also, does the content of the gratitude matter — in other words, do some gratitude notes lead to more helping in the future than others?

To find out, we compared how many welcome notes participants wrote across the three video conditions provided. We found no differences across conditions, which suggests that receiving a gratitude expression and its contents may not impact future helping.

These results were in contrast to our predictions and past work by others.

Written expressions

Welcoming new students is one way to be kind, but there are many other ways to help. So, we conducted another experiment to test the same key questions. Does receiving a gratitude expression increase future helping behaviour? And does the content of the gratitude message matter?

This time, however, we used written thank-you messages instead of videos and measured helping in the form of donations.

Over 800 adults recruited online completed an innocuous survey that provided an opportunity to complete an initial kind act of donating to charity. Two days later, participants were invited back to complete a second survey that began with what we told participants was a thank-you letter from the charity they supported — participants received one of three letters we had created for the purposes of our study.

As in the first study, some participants were thanked for their kind act: “Thank you! Your generous donation was very kind.” Other participants were thanked for their kind character: “Thank you! You are very kind and generous.”

Once again, some participants did not receive a message of thanks, but were informed that their donation had been received. Participants completed a few other questions and were then given the opportunity to help again by deciding how much, if any, of an additional one-dollar bonus they would like to donate to a new charity.

We compared donations across the three conditions and found that people who received a thank-you note gave more money than people who received a simple message that their donation was received. Donation levels did not differ between the two types of gratitude expressions. People thanked for their kind act gave roughly as much (42 cents) as people who were thanked for their kind character (42 cents), which was higher than the 34 cents given by people in the control condition.

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Read more:
When you’re grateful, your brain becomes more charitable

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Everyday importance

While we did not see significant differences in help provided by people who were thanked for their kind action or character, this does not mean that people should stop saying thanks. Expressing gratitude can make the person expressing appreciation feel good and strengthen social relationships.

There may be less reason to stress over how exactly you express your appreciation to others. Past research has shown that many people are uncertain about how to properly and eloquently relay their gratitude.

Unfortunately, these worries can reduce the likelihood of someone sharing a simple but heartfelt statement of appreciation and our work reinforces this same underlying idea.

Exactly what is said when expressing thanks may be less important than communicating appreciation.

Kelton Travis, an honours undergraduate student in psychology at Simon Fraser University, co-authored this article.

Lara B Aknin receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Anurada Amarasekera, Kristina Castaneto, and Tiara A Cash 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. Expressing gratitude isn’t necessary, but a little appreciation may still go a long way – https://theconversation.com/expressing-gratitude-isnt-necessary-but-a-little-appreciation-may-still-go-a-long-way-262779

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Giancarlo Di Giuseppe, PhD Candidate, Division of Epidemiology, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto

Imagine being 25, fresh out of post-secondary education and full of optimism about starting your career, and then you hear the words: “You have cancer.”

You are suddenly faced with an unexpected health shock that not only threatens your physical health, but also your financial future. Most of your time is now spent feeling unwell and travelling to and from the hospital for treatment, while your friends and colleagues continue to build their careers.

This is the reality for nearly 1.2 million adolescents and young adults diagnosed with cancer each year worldwide, a number that is projected to rise. Just over 9,000 Canadian adolescents and young adults are diagnosed with cancer annually, and 85 per cent of them will survive their illness.

And while survival is the primary goal, many don’t realize that it comes with a hidden price that extends far beyond immediate medical costs.

It is estimated that the average Canadian affected by cancer faces $33,000 in lifetime costs related to their illness, totalling $7.5 billion each year for patients and their families.

But we have recently discovered the true economic impact on adolescents and young adults with cancer is often far greater than the previous numbers show and lasts much longer than previously recognized.

The financial penalty of survival

We compared 93,325 Canadian adolescents and young adults diagnosed with cancer and 765,240 similar individuals who did not experience cancer, and found that surviving cancer leads to long-term reduced income, which may last a lifetime.

On average, a cancer diagnosis results in a greater than five per cent reduction in earnings over a 10-year period after diagnosis.

As expected, income loss is more pronounced right after diagnosis, with survivors earning 10 to 15 per cent less in the first five years.

However, these hidden survival costs are not the same for everyone, and the financial toll varies greatly depending on the type of cancer. For instance, survivors of brain cancer see their average annual income drop by more than 25 per cent. This is a devastating financial burden — and one that endures.

The true lifetime effects are unknown, but it is not difficult to imagine how a financial setback like this can completely derail a young person’s financial future.

Why cancer costs young survivors more

Adolescents and young adults who are survivors of cancer experience “financial toxicity,” which refers to the direct costs of cancer, such as treatment or medication costs, and indirect costs like reduced work ability, extended sick leave and job loss.

Over one-third of young cancer patients report financial toxicity.

Many cancer survivors experience lasting adverse physical and cognitive effects that limit everyday functioning.

Even in the Canadian universal health-care system, which does not require payment for cancer treatment, many younger Canadians are unable to work and need to rely on family members for financial support.

The impact on work capacity is significant for adolescents and young adults who are just beginning their careers, causing them to miss critical years of career development during treatment and recovery that can have cascading economic effects.

These challenges can ultimately lead to financial instability and hardship.

Paying the price

Beyond the individual hardships, the issue of financial instability among young cancer survivors is becoming a broader societal challenge.

In 2025, young Canadian cancer survivors are entering an economy with an unfavourable job market and rising youth unemployment, as well as a widening gap between wages and housing affordability.
Rising inflation and general unaffordability are also compounding financial difficulties young Canadian cancer survivors face, ultimately making financial recovery more challenging.

Income is a fundamental social determinant of health, and financial inequities can perpetuate health disparities in cancer survivors after treatment.

Patients are forced into making devastating financial choices like depleting their savings and incurring debt.

Policy

A Canadian Cancer Society 2024 report highlights the urgency for support systems to address financial well-being after cancer.

Based on our research, which assesses the financial life of adolescent and young adult survivors of cancer, we have some recommendations for Canadian policymakers, businesses and primary care providers.

Policymakers should:

• Make employment insurance benefits that better support survivors post-treatment.
• Provide tax credits for groups of cancer survivors disproportionately affected by financial toxicity, such as those with brain cancer.

Primary care providers should:

• Incorporate financial navigation counselling into their cancer care.
• Provide resources for navigating insurance and financial assistance programs.
• Routinely screen for financial toxicity as part of survivorship care.

Employers should:

• Create a supportive work environment that accommodates the unique needs of cancer survivors.
• Recognize the physical and mental challenges faced by young survivors and provide flexible work arrangements.

Young cancer survivors have already faced one of life’s most difficult challenges. They shouldn’t have to struggle with financial insecurity.

By recognizing that survivorship starts at cancer diagnosis, we must broaden the conversation about cancer care beyond the clinical to the economic.

Jason D. Pole 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 appointments.

Giancarlo Di Giuseppe 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. The hidden costs of cancer for young survivors is derailing their financial futures – https://theconversation.com/the-hidden-costs-of-cancer-for-young-survivors-is-derailing-their-financial-futures-256420

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Marie Trotter, PhD Candidate, Department of English, McGill University

Are you addicted to endless scrolling? Trapped by the algorithms on your smartphone? Theatre might just be the antidote.

“Denmark’s a prison,” says Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in one of Shakespeare’s most famous dramas. In this scene, he is speaking to his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who have been recruited to spy on him by his mother and uncle.

Hamlet isn’t literally imprisoned, but he does feel trapped by his circumstances. He comes to realize that his uncle murdered his father, married his mother and then seized the kingship. He is being watched. He wants to escape the surveillance of the Danish court.

More than 400 years after Hamlet’s first performance, experts have warned that we are trapped and manipulated by the surveillance of our smartphones. Our online behaviour has transformed us into marketable data, and addictive algorithms have bound us to an endless recycling of what we have “liked.”

Digital tribalism threatens democracy

This digital herding also affects who we interact with online. We often find ourselves gathering with others who like the same people and share the same politics, seeking both protection and alleviation from loneliness.

This new form of digital entrapment has given birth to a kind of tribalism — a strong sense of loyalty to a group or community — that political and social researchers warn may threaten a foundational practice of democracy: the possibility of authentic conversation among people.

The technologies of surveillance have drastically changed since Shakespeare’s time. Today, our habits are transformed into data by a virtual panopticon of devices.

The loneliness that many of us, especially young people, are suffering echoes Hamlet’s sense of isolation and inability to voice his true feelings.

While our culture is very different from Shakespeare’s London, his plays — and those by others — still have the potential to bring people together and help us think deeply about our shared experience.

Shakespeare’s playhouse conversations

In Hamlet, the prince knows something is rotten in Denmark, but he finds that he cannot speak publicly about it. All alone on stage, he says: “But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”

Today, it seems, he could just as easily be speaking about how we curate ourselves online in our unquenchable desire to be seen and heard by others. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Consider Shakespeare’s playhouse, an extraordinary gathering place for thousands of people. It was a space where all kinds of people could have conversations with the actors and each other about all kinds of themes, like the justice of “taming” an unruly woman (The Taming of the Shrew), how to push back against the power of a tyrant (Richard III) or how Christians might think differently about Jews (The Merchant of Venice).

Shakespeare opened established ways of thinking to questioning, inviting audiences to see the world and each other in new ways.

And audiences in Shakespeare’s time didn’t just sit quietly and listen. They interacted actively and loudly with the actors and the stories they saw on stage.

Historical research suggests theatre helped change early modern society by making it possible for commoners to have a public voice. In this way, Shakespeare contributed to the emergence of modern democratic culture.

Conversation pieces

Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s most frequently performed tragedies, and his anguish under a surveillance state speaks to our own struggles for freedom and belonging.

In his soliloquies, he questions his own indecisiveness, but he prompts the audience, too, searching for their support: “Am I a coward?” he asks. His questions break the fourth wall, looking for answers in the audience.

Sometimes they talk back: from an intoxicated spectator at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s who shouted “yes!” to a teenager at the Stratford Festival in 2022 who whispered “no,” audiences want to speak with Hamlet, responding to his self-doubt with their own perspectives.

Hamlet knew about the theatre’s liberating power, too. In his search for a public voice, he chose to stage a play to expose corruption in Denmark. “The play’s the thing,” he said, “wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”

Psychology researchers agree. Attending a play is proven to provoke the awakening of conscience, helping audiences empathize with political views that differ from their own. This understanding leads to pro-social behaviour outside the theatre.

Empathy, insight and social engagement

After watching a play by American playwright Dominique Morisseau about the impacts of the 2008 auto plant closures in Detroit, audiences were more likely to donate to and volunteer with charities supporting the homeless.

Seeing the vulnerability of fellow human beings onstage helps audience members become more empathetic towards each others’ experiences.

Theatre also helps the artists who make it rediscover their humanity. In the 2013 book Shakespeare Saved My Life, English professor Laura Bates writes about her experience teaching “the bard” to men in solitary confinement who could only speak to each other through slots in their cell doors.

One incarcerated person found a kindred spirit in Richard II, who is imprisoned at the end of his play. Reading Macbeth helped him understand the mistakes he made in his search for power.

A woman in a similar program in Michigan saw herself in Lady Anne’s grief in Richard III. Beyond empathizing with the characters, prisoners also felt empowered to confront the roles they had played in their past and to imagine new roles for the future.

Building community

The path towards empowerment or freedom through theatre is not limited to incarcerated spaces or grand professional stages.

Liberating theatre can take place wherever people gather: in living rooms and community centres; in parks and church basements; in a drama classroom or even on Zoom, where people can read plays aloud, improvise scenes from their own lives and create new stories together.

These modest theatrical gatherings offer something our devices cannot: the experience of being present with others in shared creative work.

When we step into the roles of characters, we step outside the algorithmic predictions that have come to direct or define us online.

When we collaborate to tell a story, we build the kind of community that allows us to bear witness for each other. Hamlet ends with the Danish prince asking his friend, Horatio, to tell the truth about what has happened: “In this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story.”

The theatre’s liberating power belongs to anyone willing to gather with others, turn off their phones and tell stories.

Each small theatrical gathering becomes an act of resistance — a reclaiming of our capacity for connection and conversation.

Marie Trotter receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Paul Yachnin receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. How Shakespeare can help us overcome loneliness in the digital age – https://theconversation.com/how-shakespeare-can-help-us-overcome-loneliness-in-the-digital-age-259628

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jean Ketterling, Assistant Professor, Political Studies – Women’s and Gender Studies Program, University of Saskatchewan

Following a campaign by Australian anti-porn organization Collective Shout, the video game distribution platforms Steam and itch.io recently made changes to their policies about hosting games with adult themes.

While Steam removed many games, the campaign has had a particularly strong effect on itch.io because it is a smaller company with low barriers for creators who want to publish their games. The changes meant all content deemed adult NSFW (not suitable for work) on itch.io was unsearchable.

The campaign has also involved pressuring payment processing companies to “cease processing payments” to platforms hosting games that Collective Shout views as objectionable.

Itch.io has since announced it will be re-indexing free adult NSFW content, making it searchable again, and is “actively reaching out to other payment processors that are more willing to work with this kind of content.”

The battle over NSFW content is provoking concern about censorship and threatening game makers’ livelihoods. As game studies scholars who focus on sex, sexuality, gender and sexual violence, we are concerned about censorship campaigns that target pornography, and the knock-on effects on queer creators and sexual education content.

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Read more:
Thousands of games have been censored from major platforms, with LGBTQIA+ creators caught in the crossfire

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What happened to NSFW content on itch.io and Steam?

According to a timeline published by Collective Shout, the campaign began in March 2025 as an effort to have the controversial game No Mercy removed from Steam. While the developer removed the game in April, Collective Shout then called on payment processors to stop processing payments for similar content.

The campaign is less interested in the content or context of these games than achieving the organization’s broader anti-pornography goals.

As journalist Emanuel Maiberg writes, while No Mercy may aim to shock, it retreads many commonplace pornographic tropes, and Steam offers users tools to filter out adult content.

Nonetheless, bringing such games to payment processors’ attention set off a chain reaction and provoked heightened scrutiny on a wide range of sexual content.

On July 16, the third-party data website Steam DB posted that Steam had updated its content policy and removed many games that appeared to have incest themes.

On July 24, itch.io released a statement explaining that it had de-indexed all adult NSFW content while it conducted a “comprehensive audit of content” to ensure that the platform “can meet the requirements of our payment processors.”

De-indexing content makes it impossible to find via a browser search (although it remains available through a direct link), provoking concern about censorship and loss of livelihood.

A counter-campaign to protest censorship also emerged and various industry groups responded.

Platform policies and pornography

Feminist movements have a long history of debating pornography, and nuanced research is readily available that carefully analyzes pornography, including in a dedicated academic journal. Similarly, there is a growing body of research on sex and sexuality in video games.

Anti-pornography movements, however, do not seem to be informed by these discussions and debates. Rather, campaigns like Collective Shout’s rely on feelings of discomfort, disgust and shock to bring about broad censorship.

This can undermine the diversity of sexual expression, punishes non-normative and kinky content and disproportionately affects LGBTQ+ creators.

Steam’s updated policy states that developers should not use their platform to publish content that violates payment processor or card network policy, “in particular, certain kinds of adult only content.”

Itch.io clarified its existing policy by providing a list of content prohibited by payment processors, including real or implied non-consensual content, underage or “barely legal” themes, incest or pseudo-incest content, bestiality or animal-related content and fetish content involving bodily waste or extreme harm, among others.

Such prohibitions may feel like common sense. However, there is a danger these provisions could be used to de-platform broad swaths of content. This could include games made by survivors of sexual violence or child abuse reflecting on their experiences, or consent education games such as Hurt Me Plenty.

Research has shown similar policies on porn platforms are interpreted so broadly that they de-platform otherwise legal content. When implemented, these policies impact creators’ abilities to earn a living.

De-platforming sex in games

Video game censorship is not new. American game developer Brenda Romero describes the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) in 1994 as the industry’s attempt to self-regulate after several controversies regarding violent and sexual content.

The ESRB was created by the Entertainment Software Association to assign age ratings to games in North America. While creating the ESRB helped stave off governmental regulation, it did so by curtailing the space for sexual expression in games.

Video games with explicit sexual content are likely to receive an adults only rating and large box chain retailers may refuse to stock them.

To be economically viable, game developers are forced to remove references to sexual activity from their games, as was the case with the infamous “hot coffee” modification in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

This type of self-censorship is a problem that extends beyond games. According to feminist media scholar Susanna Paasonen, platforms often conceptualize sex as risky, objectionable and lacking expressive value, imposing their subjective understanding of obscenity and risk on culturally diverse audiences.

Many arguments for censorship rely on an assumption that games predominately have an audience of children. However, the average American gamer is 36 years old, and removing access to diverse sexual content for adults is to deny an entire realm of human experience.

Thus, the “de-sexing” of platforms is a problem in and of itself.

Payment processors dictating content

Collective Shout’s appeal to payment processors is a strategy that exploits the power these companies have, because payment processors and credit card networks have significant influence on the sex industry. By refusing to process payments for certain products or services, they have the power to effectively censor anything they deem unnacceptable.

The process leaves little room for transparency around what qualifies as unacceptable, and can leave those impacted by such bans with limited ability to challenge them.

Given that payment processors focus more on protecting their brand reputation than promoting a diversity of sexual expression, they are vulnerable to the agendas of outspoken organizations that use them as a backdoor to police sexual expression.

As researchers, we are equally concerned with the ways these policies threaten the preservation of video games. Despite their long history, sex and pornography games are a neglected archive.

It is imperative to build and sustain public game archives that can withstand such targeted attacks and preserve the record of human desire from multiple perspectives.

Jean Ketterling is the principal investigator of The Pornography, Platforms & Play Project, which is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She is the vice-president of the Canadian Game Studies Association.

Ashley ML Guajardo is president of the Digital Games Research Association.

Carl Therrien and Kenzie Gordon 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. Censoring video games with sexual content suppresses the diversity of human desire – https://theconversation.com/censoring-video-games-with-sexual-content-suppresses-the-diversity-of-human-desire-262436

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jessica M. Theodor, Professor of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary

Last year, a Stegosaurus nicknamed “Apex” sold at auction for US$40.5 million. A juvenile Ceratosaurus fetched US$30.5 million just last month.

Supporters of these sales argue that they’re harmless, or even good for science. Others compare fossils to art objects, praising their beauty or historical charm.

As paleontologists, we say plainly: these views could not be more misguided.

Fossils are neither art objects nor trophies. They are scientific data that provide a tangible record of Earth’s deep history. Fossils are essential tools for understanding evolution, extinction, climate change and the origins and disappearances of ecosystems.

Their true value lies not in their price tags, but in what they teach. Of course, some fossils are beautiful. So are endangered white rhinoceros, but no one argues that rhinos should be auctioned off to the highest bidder. A fossil’s worth isn’t defined by it’s beauty, but by its permanent scientific accessibility.

Science versus ownership

Paleontologists are historians of deep time, studying life through millions of years. Our field is a science built upon the same fundamental principles as any other scientific disciplines. Data must be transparent, accessible, replicable and verifiable. For that to happen in paleontology, fossil specimens must be housed in public institutions with permanent collections.

Paleontological research is only scientific if the specimens under study are catalogued in public institutions that ensure access in perpetuity, so that other researchers can examine and continually assess and reassess the data fossils preserve.

That’s what makes the 1997 auction of the Tyrannosaurus rex specimen known as Sue different from today’s fossil auctions. Though it was a private sale, Sue was purchased by a public-private consortium, which included the Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH) in Chicago, the Walt Disney Company, McDonald’s Corporation and private donors. Sue’s skeleton was immediately placed in the public trust at the FMNH, an accredited museum, and formally catalogued.

Sue didn’t vanish into the private collection of an anonymous buyer. Instead, the T. rex became an accessible scientific resource for scientists and the public. This is exactly what should happen with all scientifically significant fossils.

Increasingly, some of the most remarkable fossils unearthed have gone into the vaults of private collectors. Even when buyers temporarily loan specimens to museums, as with Apex the Stegosaurus, these fossils remain off limits to meaningful scientific study.

Perpetual access

Leading scientific journals won’t publish research based on them for a simple reason: science demands permanent access.

Paleontological science depends on transparency, reproducibility and data reproducibility. A privately held fossil, no matter how spectacular, can disappear at any time on the whim of an owner. That uncertainty makes it impossible to guarantee that we can verify findings, repeat analyses, or use new technologies or methods on original material in the future.

Contrast that with fossils that are held in the public trust, like Sue the T. rex. Sue’s skeleton has been on display for nearly 20 years, and has been studied again and again. And as technology evolves, we address new scientific questions about ancient remains and deepen our understanding of the distant past, one study at a time.

Professional standards matter

It may be tempting to justify the commercial fossil trade by pointing to dinosaur-themed movies and toys, as if pop culture is a stand-in for real science. That is akin to arguing that paint-by-numbers kits are a good substitute for the art held in the Louvre. High-profile sales mislead the public by promoting the idea that completeness or large size are the only things that make a fossil significant.

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, the world’s largest organization of professional paleontologists, has created ethical guidelines to reflect professional research standards. Critics have called them too strict, saying the rules should be “loosened.” But loosening our ethical standards would mean abandoning the very core of the scientific method in favour of convenience and profit.

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It is unethical to sell human fossils or cultural artifacts to private collectors. The same standard should apply to dinosaurs and other fossil vertebrates. Fossils, whether common or spectacular and rare, are an irreplaceable record of our planet’s history.

Funding the future

Science should not be for sale. We suggest that fossil-loving millionaires and billionaires put their money where it can make a transformative difference. Instead of buying one skeleton, we encourage these fans to support the research, museums, students and scientific societies that breathe new life into ancient bones.

One single fossil’s price tag could fund years of groundbreaking discoveries, education and exhibitions. That’s a legacy worth leaving, especially at a time when funding for science is dwindling.

Jessica M. Theodor receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. She is a former president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Kenshu Shimada is chair of Society of Vertebrate Paleontology’s Government Affairs Committee.

Kristi Curry Rogers is Vice President of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Stuart Sumida is president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology

– ref. Fossils are scientific evidence, and shouldn’t be auctioned for millions to private buyers – https://theconversation.com/fossils-are-scientific-evidence-and-shouldnt-be-auctioned-for-millions-to-private-buyers-262777

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kent Mundle, Senior Researcher, Lecturer in Architecture, University of Hong Kong

This summer, wildfires have caused evacuations across Canada and recently forced thousands of people to flee their homes in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Some of the biggest impacts are being felt in the Prairies. In Manitoba, authorities recently issued evacuation orders for 15,000 people, mostly in the province’s north. Many evacuees are brought to larger cities like Winnipeg, overwhelming hotels and emergency housing.

In Canada, climate-driven migration is often imagined as a distant threat that affects others in the world. But these evacuations foreshadow a future where internal displacement becomes a regular feature of Canadian life — and where cities must rethink how they plan for disruption.

Events like the 88,000-person evacuation from Fort McMurray, Alta. in 2016 and the destruction of Lytton, B.C. in 2021 show how fast rural populations can be displaced.

Manitoba’s evacuations are among largest in recent memory, and many evacuated communities are remote and poorly connected to infrastructure. For them, evacuation may soon become an annual reality.

At the University of Hong Kong’s District Development Unit research lab (DDU), we develop architectural and urban strategies for rapidly urbanising regions in the Global South, where settlements are already experiencing the impacts of climate change. We’ve seen how post-disaster migration reshapes cities. These shifts are predictable in places where infrastructure and governance haven’t kept pace with climate volatility.

Rural-to-urban climate migration

Across Canada, services and infrastructure are already under stress. Housing is increasingly unaffordable, including in rural areas. Many rural regions, especially those with large Indigenous populations, struggle to access basic services.

Though these areas are home to 18 per cent of the population, they are served by only eight per cent of Canada’s physicians. More than one quarter of rural school districts report closures or consolidations due to underfunding. These structural weaknesses form the backdrop to a slow-moving crisis — one that climate events are accelerating.

Elsewhere in the world, disasters regularly drive rural-to-urban migration and permanent urban change. In countries like Nepal and the Philippines — where our lab works — these movements are often rapid, informal and far beyond the scope of traditional planning.

In Kathmandu, the 2015 earthquake struck a city already marked by informal housing and fragile services. It accelerated a haphazard urban transformation characterized by uncontrolled sprawl, unsafe informal construction and overstretched infrastructure.

In the Philippines, typhoon recovery is often driven by necessity, with residents rebuilding informally. This results in growing slums and increasing vulnerability to future disasters.

These dynamics create new urban landscapes. In some cases, local governments are taking the lead, for example, by establishing local evacuation centres in the Philippines.

Elsewhere, informal encampments, home extensions and land occupations take hold. These are responses that reflect not only survival, but governance: provisional infrastructures are built through necessity, negotiation and collective care.

Canada’s climate urbanism

Canada is not exempt from these dynamics. When disaster strikes, evacuees often seek refuge in cities, where better public infrastructure offers some stability. As climate change fuels ever-larger wildfires, this trend will grow, with smaller urban centres absorbing more people fleeing climate-stressed regions.

Yet policy remains far behind. There is no national framework for climate-induced displacement. Canada’s immigration and housing policies have no category for internal climate migration. Disaster response remains reactive, coordinated mainly by municipalities and provinces through short-term tools like 211 or temporary shelters.

Interjurisdictional planning is minimal. Municipal climate plans rarely anticipate population surges or extended pressure on housing. Displacement is still treated as an occasional event, not as an enduring part of Canadian urban life.

Canada must begin to learn from places already living this future.

In Taiwan, civic centres double as emergency shelters, equipped with backup power, water tanks and seismic isolation systems. In Japan, disaster-prevention parks embed solar lighting, cooking stations and toilets into public green spaces.

And in Mongolia, our lab has developed incremental urban strategies for Ulaanbaatar’s ger districts — clustering growth, infrastructure and housing to adapt to rapid, uncertain settlement patterns.

These examples reflect a model of urbanism in which emergency response and long-term development are not separate, but part of a continuous, negotiated process.

What Canada can do

Canada’s geography, governance and urban forms demand their own set of protocols and prototypes. While lessons from elsewhere can guide us, they cannot be copied wholesale.

This means it is vital to develop a national framework for internal climate migration that integrates climate displacement into the National Housing Strategy.

All orders of governments should focus of developing multi-use resilience infrastructure, such as community centres and schools equipped for emergency response, and advancing adaptive housing policies that can expand or contract with demand.

Canada once helped shape global thinking on the transformation of urban areas. The 1976 United Nations Habitat Conference in Vancouver, catalyzed by the efforts of architects and planners, called for new models of settlement and development grounded in equity, participation and awareness of our planet’s limits.

Nearly 50 years later, that unfinished legacy has a new urgency.

Today, climate displacement calls for a shift in how architects engage with the built environment — moving toward coordinated action with communities, policymakers and allied fields, and embracing models of practice that move beyond the traditional role of service provider — to actively initiate change.

Architects must engage not only with buildings, but with the frameworks that govern land, infrastructure and migration itself. This means challenging the professional neutrality that too often aligns design with extractive systems, and instead welcoming practices capable of working across institutions, jurisdictions and communities.

A national summit could mark the beginning of this shift by creating a forum to discuss climate migration and design the tools, policies and partnerships that will shape its outcomes.

The question is not whether climate movement will occur, but whether we will be prepared to meet it with intention, care and foresight.

Any proceeds from the DDU are reinvested in the research lab based at the University of Hong Kong.

– ref. Canadian cities are unprepared for climate-driven migration — here’s what they can do – https://theconversation.com/canadian-cities-are-unprepared-for-climate-driven-migration-heres-what-they-can-do-262490

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Catherine Frost, Professor of Political Science, McMaster University

Canada and the United Kingdom have said they will recognize Palestinian statehood during the United Nations General Assembly in September, provided certain conditions are met.

Canada’s position is premised on seeing political and military reform from the Palestinian Authority, the governing body responsible for the autonomous Palestinian territories.

The U.K., responding to a severe food crisis in Gaza, said it would extend recognition unless the Israeli government agrees to a ceasefire, takes steps to “end the appalling situation in Gaza” and commits to a “long-term, sustainable peace.”

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Why UK recognition of a Palestinian state should not be conditional on Israel’s actions

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These cautious, conditional endorsements reflect the workings of a dated international system that governs the birth of states. France, by contrast, has opted to recognize Palestine without conditions. What explains these different approaches?

Officially, state recognition is governed by international law. In practice, it is subject to a complex mix of national, global and moral considerations.

This process grants existing states significant discretion in recognizing new ones, with the expectation that such decisions serve international peace. But this can result in an uneven statehood process for aspiring nations.

How states are born

The 1933 Montevideo Convention outlines the core criteria for statehood recognition: a permanent population, control over a defined territory, a functioning government and the capacity to open relations with other states.

When recognition is given on this basis, it is essentially acknowledging that these qualities are already in place. Yet these requirements are not iron clad, and some experts have argued that recognition can also be extended on humanitarian or moral grounds, such as in response to human rights violations.

In such cases, recognition becomes more of a statement that a state should have the opportunity to exist, rather than a confirmation that it already does. The classic case would be a group facing colonial domination. The American colonies appealed to this principle in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, for example.

Because individual states decide when such exceptions apply, these measures provide uncertain relief for aspiring nations.

As a final step, new states can apply for membership in the UN. This application is first considered by the UN Security Council. If nine states agree, and none of the council’s permanent members object, the application continues to the UN General Assembly for approval.

But a single veto from any of the five permanent members — China, France, Russia, the U.K. and the United States — can paralyze statehood at the start. In 2024, for example, the U.S. vetoed Palestine’s request for full UN membership.

Statehood in waiting

To date, 147 of 193 states in the United Nations recognize Palestinian statehood. Palestine has also had special observer status at the UN since 2012, and before that it had limited standing before international courts typically reserved for states.

But Palestine is not the only instance where the international system has struggled to address atypical or contested statehood.

After a wave of recognitions in post-colonial Africa and post-Second World War Europe, the recognition of new states slowed to a crawl toward the end of the 20th century. This trend suggests there is a conservative quality to the recognition system.

Wary of rewarding violent separatism, international bodies have traditionally favoured negotiated solutions for state birth, including upholding a parent-state veto over any independence efforts.

This principle was most clearly articulated by the Canadian Supreme Court in a 1998 advisory opinion. It warned that an independent Québec, without first agreeing on terms of exit with the rest of Canada, was unlikely to gain international recognition.

There is wisdom to this approach, but such rules cannot prevent political breakdown in every case. A growing number of unrecognized states have left millions stranded in political limbo.

This includes Somaliland, which split from Somalia in 1991 and has been operating as a de facto state ever since without receiving formal recognition from any other country.

Palestine is not an instance of state breakup, but rather an unresolved case of colonization and occupation. Decades of negotiations with Israel, the occupying power, have failed. Yet formal statehood has still proven elusive. A cumbersome recognition system may be helping to keep the problem alive.

Cracks in the system

Even when recognition occurs, the results can be disappointing.

South Sudan, the UN’s newest member, was universally recognized in 2011 under close UN supervision and with the consent of its parent state, Sudan. Yet it quickly descended into civil war — a conflict it has yet to fully emerged from.

Kosovo was recognized by states like the U.S. and Canada when it declared independence in 2008 following the breakup of Yugoslavia, but it still has fewer recognitions than Palestine.

A handful of states like Togo and Sierra Leone even began de-recognizing it under pressure from Kosovo’s one-time parent state, Serbia, although there is a broadly accepted principle that once a state is recognized, barring any complete disaster, it should remain recognized.

Meanwhile, rising sea levels threaten to leave some island states like Tuvalu without the territorial requirements for normal statehood. The International Court of Justice has signalled the statehood of such nations should survive, but has not said how.

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These examples suggest the current state recognition system is ill equipped to face today’s changing world.

Allowing established states to set the rules for who qualifies is unlikely to solve these current problems. While setting special terms for new entrants may have value in the short term, the longer term need is for a more fair and transparent system.

Experts are working on ways to make the system more inclusive for aspiring states and unrepresented peoples, including by opening up access to diplomatic venues. If successful, these measures could change the way future states are born.

Catherine Frost receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Canada and the U.K.’s conditional recognition of Palestine reveal the uneven rules of statehood – https://theconversation.com/canada-and-the-u-k-s-conditional-recognition-of-palestine-reveal-the-uneven-rules-of-statehood-262418