The Conversation – Canada – Page 9

April 21, 2026

The way primates parent their young shows how strict labels like parenting styles miss the mark

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Libby Ware, PhD, Biological Anthropology, Université de Montréal

Whether you’ve sought them out or not, you’ve probably encountered parenting content creators on social media at some point in the last two decades.

In the comments section, you’ve undoubtedly seen parents being celebrated for their child-rearing methods. And you’ve probably also seen a lot of disagreements, “mom-shaming” or criticism of parenting styles.

“Gentle parenting” — an empathy-based approach focused on raising confident children through understanding and respect — has experienced a rise in popularity, for example. And then, predictably, it has been followed by sharp critiques.

More often than not, parenting is framed as a choice between fixed styles, but evidence from primate research suggests effective parenting is flexible and responsive to context.

Parenting is more complex than categories

According to Diana Baumrind, an influential American clinical and developmental psychologist, there are three parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian and permissive.

The authoritative approach has high parental warmth and discipline, the authoritarian one has low parental warmth and high discipline and permissive parenting has high parental warmth and low discipline.

Humans, however, are far from the only animal to parent. Non-human primates have a variety of parenting approaches, and researchers have looked to our closest relatives to understand how caregiving adapts across environments.

Maternal primate care strategies vary from permissive to protective, much like human parenting styles.

Primate mothers invest more energy and time into feeding, being with and generally caring for their offspring, from infancy to independence, than males do. This mirrors traditional family roles under patriarchal standards in humans.

Similarities also appear in how human and non-human primate mothers sometimes adapt their parenting to best fit their offspring’s needs and environment.

Evolution supports responsive parenting

In a recent study by psychologists and primatologists comparing humans and captive bonobos, gibbons and siamangs, researchers found that, across all study species, mothers adjusted their behaviour to the potential risks facing their offspring.

They also changed their approaches based on age, typically decreasing protective behaviours and increasing some permissive ones as infants grew older. For example, imagine this scenario: your child becomes a teenager and has a later curfew (increased permissiveness) and is allowed sleepovers (decreased protectiveness). This would fit the authoritative approach.

Interestingly, protective care was higher in both humans and bonobos. This similarity may be explained by our shared genetics (about 99 per cent). There may be more risk in permissiveness, depending on the environment.

The flexibility in maternal care across primate species suggests that parenting is not be as simple as choosing one style or approach. Adjusting across the axes of permissiveness and protection, as well as levels of warmth and involvement, seems to be key to effective parenting with the best outcomes.

What works better appears to be the ability to shift based on context. This flexibility extends across caregivers as well, including fathers, whose role has often been underestimated.

What research says about fathers

Paternal care is present in primates but rare in other mammals. This is another reason non-human primates and humans are a more comparable model for parental care than other animals.

Fathers are important to the survival of offspring in marmosets, tamarins, titis and owl monkeys, as well as some lemurs and siamangs. This is often in the form of grooming, support during confrontations and protection from infanticide.

It is common for adults, specifically males, to be aggressive towards young members of the group. In many species, this is a form of socialization, teaching the juveniles their place within the social hierarchy. This is more common in stricter social hierarchies like chimpanzees and may shift male roles toward the authoritarian category.

It’s well documented that parenting styles and involvement have an influence on the social and health outcomes of children. While many mammal studies focus on the influence of the mother, a study on marmosets found that during the first 30 weeks of life, a present father can improve both survival and growth trajectories of offspring.

These results are also consistent for fathers with multiple offspring, and is among the first piece of evidence demonstrating this in wild marmosets. They form long-term pair bonds and are largely monogamous, making their social model additionally comparable to ours.

These results are consistent with studies in humans showing the value of fatherhood in child health outcomes. This is a parallel between primate care and human parenting styles that encourage paternal involvement, which has historically been overlooked.

Male involvement in rearing challenges assumptions about the importance of fathers in non-human animals. Fathers clearly have a role in the success of their offspring through adulthood.

So if parenting is fundamentally adaptive, then debates over what style is right may be less useful than we think. This has implications for parenting advice culture and how we design support systems.

Libby Ware 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 way primates parent their young shows how strict labels like parenting styles miss the mark – https://theconversation.com/the-way-primates-parent-their-young-shows-how-strict-labels-like-parenting-styles-miss-the-mark-276516

April 21, 2026

Mark Carney’s new majority government should spark renewed calls for electoral reform

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Julie Simmons, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Guelph

Canadians have never before seen a minority government become a majority government through a combination of floor crossing and byelections.

A small increase in the number of Liberal caucus members has given the government sweeping power, all without voters having a say in a general election.

Current conversations about the appropriateness of floor crossings are an opportunity for a broader discussion about electoral reform. If Canada used some form of proportional representation where the percentage of votes for each party reflected their percentage of seats in the House of Commons, floor crossings would be unnecessary.

Forcing a byelection

Official opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, has argued that floor crossing amounts to winning majority status through “dirty backroom deals.”

He advocates for recall, or the ability of constituents to sign a petition to force a byelection, “to put people back in charge of our democracy” — even though the Conservative party itself argued against such measures in 2011.

NDP leader Avi Lewis has also argued that getting a Liberal majority largely through floor crossings “just feels wrong.”

Canadians seem to agree; just one in four surveyed in a recent public opinion poll said floor crossers should be able to complete their term with their new party.

But achieving a majority through a general election — or via byelections in the electoral districts of floor crossers — does not address a more fundamental shortcoming of how democracy is practised in Canada.

The current system

Even in general elections, Canada’s single-member plurality electoral system almost never produces a majority government that’s also supported by a majority of voters.

The last one was in 1984, when Brian Mulroney won a landslide 74.8 per cent of seats and 50.03 per cent of the popular vote. While there have been five majority governments elected since 1984, each of them has been supported by less than 50 per cent of voters.

With single-member plurality, the local candidate with the most votes (a plurality) wins each electoral district. Each MP represents all constituents in the electoral district, even if that MP is supported by fewer than 50 per cent of the voters in their riding.

As a result, in most elections, more Canadians vote for parties that do not form the majority. Does this really resolve the perceived democratic legitimacy gap left by floor-crossing?

Floor crossing: Symptom of a bigger problem

A cynic might say floor crossers are opportunistic. MPs choose to ride the coattails of a popular government into the next election, seeking rewards for their electoral districts or personally benefiting from “carrots” in the form of future committee appointments or other perks.

But floor crossing is also a symptom of the difficulty of working collaboratively in Canada’s version of parliamentary government, characterized by incredibly strict party discipline.

A 2020 report by the Samara Centre for Democracy found that Canadian MPs voted with their party 99.6 per cent of the time between 2015 and 2019.

When toeing the party line trumps constructive debate, floor-crossing can serve as one of the few available ways to express defiance when MPs are unhappy with the party’s direction or leader and feel neither are serving their constituencies.

Alternative solution

Proportional representation, an electoral system where the percentage of seats a party has in the legislature closely mirrors the percentage of people who voted for that party, is the most popular electoral system in the world, employed by 130 countries.

Because proportional representation more accurately reflects how people voted in an election, it overcomes the single-member plurality system’s tendency to create majority governments supported by a minority of voters.

It also promotes cross-partisan collaboration and deliberation. Unlike with single-member plurality, strategic voting by constituents is not commonplace.

Proportional representation is not a “winner take all” system. Voters will no longer feel the need to choose the more palatable of the two leading candidates in tight races, even if neither is their preferred candidate.

In the absence of strategic voting, a greater number of political parties have smaller portions of seats, and must negotiate among themselves to form a coalition majority government or support a minority government on a case-by-case basis. Political authority remains tethered to voters’ choices, but parties must work with each other to solve policy problems.

With this culture of collaboration built into the system, MPs would not have to resort to floor crossing to work with others outside their parties.

Parties in charge have the most to lose

In Canada, the provinces of British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, Ontario, New Brunswick and Québec have all considered moving away from single-member plurality towards some form of proportional representation.

Electoral reform was part of Justin Trudeau’s campaign platform in the 2015 election. But his Liberal government rejected a House of Commons committee’s recommendation that Canadians chose between proportional representation and single-member plurality in a referendum.

Unfortunately, the parties that have formed governments under single-member plurality have the most to lose if Canada adopts some form of proportional representation.

Because of strong party discipline and floor crossings, Mark Carney’s Liberal government is now assured to pass its policy agenda through the House of Commons.

But Canadians should push for more than immediate byelections after floor crossings to strengthen the country’s democracy — they should turn their attention once again to broader electoral reform.

Julie Simmons 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. Mark Carney’s new majority government should spark renewed calls for electoral reform – https://theconversation.com/mark-carneys-new-majority-government-should-spark-renewed-calls-for-electoral-reform-280499

April 20, 2026

Slanguage: Why AI’s stylistic negation — ‘it’s not X, it’s Y’ — is both annoying and doesn’t work

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Joshua Gonzales, PhD, Management, Lang School of Business and Economics, University of Guelph

If you spend any amount of time on LinkedIn, you’ll have certainly come across this type of phrasing: “This isn’t a job, it’s a calling” or “This isn’t marketing, it’s a movement” or “This isn’t a tool, it’s a paradigm shift.”

This sentence structure is saturating posts on the platform. It’s become one of the most recognizable patterns of AI-generated text: “It’s not X, it’s Y.”

If you’re like me, you find it annoying and scroll past as soon as you read it. Your exasperation is warranted. Negation can be a powerful literary device when used thoughtfully, but when unearned, it feels hollow.

That’s what AI slop — low-quality digital content generated by artificial intelligence, often with little or no human oversight — does: it turns previously useful markers into gobbledygook.

For most AI tropes currently in circulation, it’s enough to just ignore them. The negation form of AI slop, however, isn’t just annoying, it distorts how people process and remember information. Before you get the chance to absorb something meaningful, your attention is already anchored to what is not.

Learning a language is hard, but even native speakers get confused by pronunciation, connotations, definitions and etymology. The lexicon is constantly evolving, especially in the social media era, where new memes, catchphrases, slang, jargon and idioms are introduced at a rapid clip.
The Conversation Canada’s series Slanguage dives into how language shapes the way we see the world and what it reveals about culture, power and belonging. Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of linguistics.

How the brain processes negation

There’s a reason this structure feels off. Cognitive psychologists have known for decades that negation doesn’t work the way speakers intend it to. When someone tells you what something isn’t, your brain doesn’t skip to the alternative. It processes the negated concept first.

This was demonstrated in a 2003 study. After reading negated information, readers’ mental models still retained the negated concept at short processing intervals. Negation didn’t function as an eraser. The concept entered the reader’s mind, and only with additional processing time and contextual support could the reader move past it.

Every time you read “This isn’t marketing,” for example, you process marketing before you can get to whatever the writer claims it actually is.

That would be manageable if it happened once, but that cognitive load compounds with repetition.

‘Don’t think about the white bear’

In a classic 1987 experiment, psychologist Daniel Wegner asked participants not to think about a white bear. They couldn’t.

Those told to suppress the idea mentioned it more than once per minute. Worse, participants who had first tried to suppress the thought later showed a rebound effect, thinking about white bears significantly more than participants who had been free to think about them from the start.

The effort of pushing a concept away made it stick even harder.

When your LinkedIn feed delivers dozens of posts built on the same negation-reframe structure, each one is a new instruction not to think about the thing the writer wanted you to forget.

The consequences go beyond annoyance. In a 2004 social psychology study examining how people encode negated information, researchers explained why some negations fail more than others.

When a negated phrase has an obvious, commonly inferred alternative, readers mentally replace it. For example, they can substitute “not guilty” for “innocent” or “not cold” for “warm.” Without the alternative, the original concept remains active with a negation tag attached, like a mental sticky note reading “not this.”

That sticky note can fall off quite easily. In the study, participants lost it more than a third of the time for concepts without clear alternatives, remembering the affirmed version instead.

Consider what that means for “This isn’t marketing, it’s a movement.” Marketing has no ready-made substitute for our mind to consider. What readers store is “marketing” with a tag that may or may not survive their scroll to the next post.

Scaling a cognitive problem

The problem is scale. A 2024 study on generative AI by economics and strategy researchers found that when people write with AI assistance, their outputs converge. Individual pieces may be more polished, but the collective pool of writing becomes more similar. AI-assisted texts were found to be roughly 10 per cent more alike than those written by humans alone.

Their study examined creative fiction, but the results have obvious implications for other forms of writing. When a rhetorical formula saturates an entire platform, it stops being one person’s stylistic habit and becomes a default frame through which ideas enter public conversation.

Right now, that frame often starts from a deficit. It emphasizes what something fails to be rather than what it offers.

The alternative is straightforward. Say what it is. Say what you built, what you believe, what you offer. It’s a better cognitive strategy.

Readers who encounter “I am a movement builder” store “movement builder.” Readers who encounter “This isn’t marketing” store “marketing” with a sticky note that’s already peeling off.

One formulation gives people something to remember. The other gives them something to forget, and psychology suggests it won’t work.

Joshua Gonzales 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. Slanguage: Why AI’s stylistic negation — ‘it’s not X, it’s Y’ — is both annoying and doesn’t work – https://theconversation.com/slanguage-why-ais-stylistic-negation-its-not-x-its-y-is-both-annoying-and-doesnt-work-278967

April 20, 2026

Public grocery stores won’t fix Canada’s food affordability crisis

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Michael von Massow, Professor, Food Economics, University of Guelph

Does Canada need public grocery stores? The debate has moved into the mainstream since Avi Lewis became the new leader of the NDP after campaigning on a plan for government-run grocery stores.

The premise is relatively straightforward: governments would build and run grocery stores that offer pricing at levels well below those of traditional stores.

Similar ideas are gaining traction at the municipal level. Toronto city council has advanced a pilot project for four city-run grocery stores, and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has announced plans for five municipal grocery stores.

With food prices still elevated, the proposal for public grocery stores sounds appealing. Lewis and his advisers have suggested that government-run store prices would be 35 to 40 per cent lower than those Canadians are currently paying.

The real question is whether public grocery stores are feasible and, if so, whether they’re the most effective way to deliver relief to consumers. The evidence suggests otherwise.

Scale is everything in grocery retail

Successful food retailing requires significant distribution infrastructure to efficiently bring products to the retail location. Loblaws, Canada’s largest food retailer, has more than 2,400 stores. Empire Group, which includes brands such as Sobeys, has more than 1,600 stores. This scale allows them to achieve significant purchase volumes while lowering distribution costs.

This is also why larger retailers have been purchasing regional grocers such as Longo’s and Farm Boy. It allows the smaller chains to benefit from the purchasing and logistical infrastructure of the purchaser.

Even with those advantages, large retailers achieve relatively low margins. Operating income (revenue minus direct costs and excluding things like taxes and depreciation) generally represents between four and six per cent of total revenue.

A new government-run chain operating without that infrastructure would be starting from behind, and would require substantial subsidies to achieve the promised price reductions.

Some proposals suggest public stores could only carry staples, which would reduce the cost of inventory. While that’s true, this overlooks how grocers cover overhead: by the size of the “basket” of each customer. Basket size is the total value of everything each customer buys.

Basket size is a key metric for grocers, who often price select staples below cost to draw customers into the store. Margins on those staples are already thin, meaning government stores would require greater subsidies to achieve discounts without the benefit of higher-margin secondary products.

Examples come with trade-offs

Supporters of public grocery stores point to examples in Mexico, the United States and Canadian provinces. Upon closer examination, however, these examples highlight the challenges and costs that suggest that this path is not feasible.

Mexico has operated government-run grocery stores for years. The number of stores has declined significantly in the past decade, with only approximately 50 remaining, located predominantly in the Mexico City area.

Price tracking by Profeco, the country’s federal consumer protection office, shows these stores are less than two per cent cheaper than Walmart (the dominant Mexican food retailer) and some private grocers are cheaper still. A significant informal food sector of market stalls offers additional competition. This is nowhere near the 35 to 40 per cent savings being promised in Canada.

The U.S. military commissaries offer groceries that are almost 25 per cent cheaper on average for active service members and veterans. But federal appropriations pay for labour, rent/real estate, distribution costs and other overheads.

The annual subsidy represents approximately 25 to 30 per cent of sales, meaning the U.S. government spends more than consumers actually save, with an ongoing backlog of maintenance also increasing the deficit.

There is some suggestion that the commissaries should be privatized to achieve the efficiencies of larger chains while still providing cheaper options for soldiers’ families and veterans living close to the bases.

Provincial control of alcohol and cannabis retail in Canada is sometimes raised as a parallel. However, these models are not designed to lower prices. Instead, they are designed to collect taxes and control prices. The policy direction runs opposite to what public grocery advocates are proposing, so this comparison is invalid.

What governments are already doing

Food prices are rising for reasons largely out of the control of Canadian governments, including geopolitical events (such as the wars in Ukraine and Iran) and the climate crisis. What governments can do is cushion the impact for those hit hardest.

Canada’s GST/HST rebate program already does some of this, offsetting taxes paid on goods and services to eligible households. Beginning in July, the new Groceries and Essentials Benefit will replace the GST/HST credit. The structure and eligibility rules will remain the same, but payments will increase by 25 per cent for five years.

The program is not in the range of 35 to 40 per cent, but it’s intended to offset much of the increases Canadians have experienced over the past few years. This program provides direct and targeted benefits for those feeling the most pressure from rising food prices.

There is also a federal program in place aimed at reducing the cost of staple items in remote northern communities. Nutrition North subsidizes retailers in places that experience high levels of food insecurity and alongside high transportation costs. Research suggests that the subsidy is, on average, fully passed through to consumers.

Unlike a tax rebate, the program cannot target specific consumers, but it can target certain categories of food. Milk and bread are cheaper for shoppers, for example, but frozen pizzas are not.

The most effective path forward

Building a national chain of public grocery stores would immediately raise a question of equity: how would governments decide which communities get a store and which don’t?

The cost of building thousands of stores would be prohibitive; a few dozen would leave most Canadians without access while costing governments more per transaction that consumers would save. And, because anyone could shop there, it would dilute the benefit for those who need it most.

The money would be much better spent directly supporting the Canadians who need it most. Direct payments remain the most efficient use of taxpayer money. They can be targeted to low-income households and deployed quickly.

Nutrition North-style subsidies work well in specific areas but can’t target individual households. A card or voucher system could combine both approaches by targeting and selecting eligible food products, though the administrative costs would either dilute the benefit to recipients or raise the overall price of the program.

Even so, a well-designed voucher program would almost certainly deliver more value per dollar spent than building and operating retail infrastructure from scratch.

There are ways to make food more affordable for Canadians. Government grocery stores just aren’t one of them.

Michael von Massow 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. Public grocery stores won’t fix Canada’s food affordability crisis – https://theconversation.com/public-grocery-stores-wont-fix-canadas-food-affordability-crisis-279932

April 20, 2026

A historian of Black Canada gives a report card on Ontario’s new mandated Black history education

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Natasha Henry-Dixon, Assistant Professor of African Canadian History, York University, Canada

During Black History Month more than two years ago, in February 2024, the Ontario Conservative government announced it would introduce mandatory curriculum expectations focused on the history of Black Canadians for Grades 7, 8 and 10, with new learning to start in September 2025.

The government then postponed this and other curricular changes.

In February 2026 (during Black History Month), the Ministry of Education released the new curriculum expectations, now to come into effect this coming September.

Decades of advocacy

Despite decades of advocacy, there has never been a singular historical fact that all students in Ontario have had to learn about Black Canadians’ 400-year presence in what is now Canada.

To date, inclusion of Black history has been based on the voluntary efforts of individual educators or some school board equity initiatives.

As highlighted in the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s Dreams Delayed report, the Black community has long criticized the over-emphasis on Black American history and the exclusion of the rich and diverse histories and contributions of Black Canadians.

I have been waiting with bated breath.

I am a historian of Black Canada, an assistant professor and a curriculum consultant specializing in Black Canadian history. I have taught Black Canadian history at the elementary and secondary levels and facilitated professional development for educators on the same subject for more than 20 years.

I’ve also studied the Ontario curriculum pertaining to Black Canadian history since 1999. During the early stages of the development of the new expectations, I was invited to review only initial drafts.

According to the Ontario Ministry of Education, “the 2026 revisions to the Grades 7 and 8 history curriculum were made in collaboration with Black history organizations, academic scholars, subject matter experts, subject division experts, parent and education organizations, and francophone partners,” but only generalized detail is provided about the process.

Questions have been raised about this because of the final output. I’ve examined the released revised history curriculum and present here an assessment.

New expectations

The new mandated expectations pertaining to Black Canadian history were included in a revision of the Grades 7, 8 and 10 history curriculum. These are the grades where students learn Canadian history. The number of expectations regarding Black history is reasonable because there is a lot to cover in the history curriculum overall.

Chart showing 'new curriculum expectations' for grades 7, 8 and 10. — Chart created by author Natasha Henry-Dixon showing new mandated Grades 7, 8 and 10 curriculum expectations on Black Canadian history.
(Natasha Henry-Dixon)

However, unlike all of the other specific expectations in the history curriculum, the “Black-specific expectations” are the only ones that don’t have any supporting topic suggestions or optional topics.

While specific curriculum expectations for Grades 7 and 8 don’t have any framing questions like other ones do, the Grade 10 expectations have two framing questions: “In what ways did the actions of various Black individuals, communities and organizations during this period help shape strategies and initiatives combating anti-Black racism today?” and “How did Black communities contribute to Canada’s identity and heritage during this period?”

The ministry could argue that such open expectations give teachers room to teach what they’d like. But teachers should receive as much informed guidance as possible, particularly because most have not taught any Black history content before.

Black Canadian history topic suggestions

There are Black Canadian historical subjects included as topic suggestions in other specific expectations throughout the history curriculum.

The ministry has maintained all of the topic suggestions from the current (soon-to-be-retired) version. I compared these using my 2016 master’s study, Lend Me Your Ear, where I evaluated the 2013 social studies, history and geography curriculum.

There are also very broad topics in the history curriculum — such as immigration and analyzing the social and political values and significant aspects of life for some different groups and communities. Black Canadian experiences could be included, if a teacher chooses to do so.

Some information excluded

In the revised history curriculum, two topics have been cut from Grade 10. The No. 2 Construction Battalion, the all-Black segregated military unit in the First World War, was removed.

Black and white photo of lines of a posed group of Black soldiers in uniform. — Members of the No. 2 Construction Battalion in Essex County, Ont., in 1918.
(F 2076 Alvin D. McCurdy fonds/Archives of Ontario/Wikimedia)

These soldiers and their descendants received an apology from the federal government in 2022 for the appalling mistreatment they endured in their service to Canada.

Black History Month was suggested as a Canadian commemoration in the soon-to-be former version, but was the second topic cut from the new version.

Portait image of a Black woman in 19th century dress. — Mary Ann Shadd Cary, educator, publisher, lawyer and abolitionist is a topic, but her last name ‘Cary’ isn’t used in Grade 8 expectations.
(National Archives of Canada/C-029977/Wikimedia)

2026 marks 100 years that Black people have commemorated Black history in the month of February and the 30th anniversary since Black History Month has been recognized at the federal level in Canada. Ironically, this elimination was made public during Black History Month.

For some of the topics, their inclusion left out some information. In Grade 7, Black Loyalists in Ontario were not recognized. Mary Ann Shadd Cary’s last name “Cary” was not used in Grade 8. She married Thomas Cary in 1856 and used that last name throughout her life.

The inclusion of the Black Cross Nurses in Grade 10 excludes the main organization they were an auxiliary of: the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

More was possible

The ministry missed the opportunity to include a range of new topics to demonstrate more meaningful integration of Black Canadian history.

New topics would provide more explicit examples of the contributions of diverse Black individuals to Canada’s foundation, the obstacles they faced in the pursuit of full citizenship and equality and the many ways they resisted that helped build a more inclusive and prosperous country.

A major omission is the longstanding cultural tradition of Emancipation Day (Aug. 1), which commemorates the abolition of British slavery.

The occasion has been marked for 192 years and was recognized federally in 2021. This treatment maintains the relegation of Black Canadian history to the periphery.

My grade

I give the new expectations a “D,” a marginal pass, only because they were actually implemented.

The revisions instituted two expectations per grade on Black Canadian history that is now part of the official curriculum policy. In this respect, the changes advance the cause long lobbied for by the Black community.

However, the new expectations miss the mark.

They lack substance and leave gaps that can further perpetuate the nonexistent and inconsistent teaching of Black Canadian history.

Given the nature of the content, and because this is the ministry’s first foray into mandating Black history in Canada, the regularly opaque revision process should have been more transparent. One wonders if issues and questions raised could have been avoided if the process was more collaborative. Questions include:

• Was feedback gathered from collaborators really considered or was checking the box that they met with them the total sum of the “collaboration?”

• Who was involved internally and externally? What are their expertise and credentials? Were they involved from beginning to end?

• What feedback was provided and implemented or not? Why?

• What kind of professional development will be provided? Who will deliver it?

• What instructional resources will be provided and who will develop them?

• How will accountability and the impact of the curriculum expectations be measured?

The new expectations establish a standard that needs to be greatly improved upon in the next cycle of revisions. Hopefully this happens in my lifetime and more valuable time isn’t lost. I’ll continue to hold my breath until then.

Natasha Henry-Dixon reviewed early drafts of the curriculum revision.

– ref. A historian of Black Canada gives a report card on Ontario’s new mandated Black history education – https://theconversation.com/a-historian-of-black-canada-gives-a-report-card-on-ontarios-new-mandated-black-history-education-279144

April 20, 2026

Paris has successfully cut noise pollution, but urban birds still can’t sing at their natural pitch

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Dan Mennill, Professor and Associate Dean of Science, University of Windsor

The sounds of cars, airplanes, boats and industrial activities in urban areas produce a steady roar that impacts birds, such as this great tit. (Wikimedia Commons), CC BY-SA

When Rachel Carson wrote the environmental classic Silent Spring in 1962, she warned that unchecked human impacts might create a silent future.

Forty years later, biologists uncovered a striking effect of noise pollution on songbirds. They found that low-pitched traffic noise in European cities forced birds to sing at higher pitches. Songbirds in a noisy park beneath the Eiffel Tower sang at a pitch of 400 Hz higher than those in quiet forests outside Paris.

My new research, published in the scientific journal Ornithological Applications with colleague Hans Slabbekoorn from the University of Leiden, shows that Paris is a success story in the battle to reduce noise pollution.

Yet even as Paris has grown quieter, birds have not returned to their natural song frequencies. Our research shows that great tits in Paris continue to sing at higher pitches than birds in wilderness areas outside the city.

Further noise-reduction efforts are vital, in urban areas throughout the world, to allow wild birds to communicate at their natural sound frequencies.

The devastating impact of noise

Human activity fills the world with noise. The sounds of cars, airplanes, boats and industrial activities produce a steady roar that impacts wild animals, birds and insects. We often overlook noise pollution as a conservation problem, yet it may have devastating effects on wildlife during an era of increasing urbanization.

Road noise interferes with the ability of birds and frogs to attract mates. Boat noise leads to decreased vocal communication in whales. And traffic noise influences predator-prey interactions between moths and bats.

Since the discovery that low-pitched traffic noise in European cities forced birds to sing at higher pitches, this pattern has been demonstrated in diverse bird populations around the world.

Savannah sparrows sing higher-pitched songs near noisy oil pumps on the Canadian Prairies. European robins sing higher-pitched songs in the presence of wind turbine noise. And Australian silvereyes sing higher-pitched songs and calls in loud urban areas compared with rural areas.

These changes diminish birds’ ability to defend breeding territories and attract mates.

Fighting for a quieter city

Paris is one of the largest and most densely populated cities in Europe, yet Parisians have developed novel strategies to fight noise pollution.

The city has converted many roadways into bicycle lanes and installed anti-noise coatings on major roadways.

A black box attached to a lampost, with a picture of a bird on it. Traffic blurred in the background. — An automated digital recorder in the city of Paris.
(Dan Mennill)

Automated noise cameras issue fines to excessively loud vehicles. A regional observatory called Bruitparif now monitors noise throughout the city and oversees noise-reduction efforts.

These noise-reduction efforts in Paris stand to make the city quieter for both people and wildlife. The city’s campaign in the war against noise prompts the question: can we turn down the volume on noise pollution to minimize its impact on birdsong?

Turning down the racket

In 2023, I travelled to Paris to record the songs of the great tit, a familiar European backyard bird closely related to the chickadee.

I used microphones and digital recorders to record birds in the streets, squares and parks throughout the city. I retraced the footsteps of my collaborator, Hans Slabbekoorn, the original biologist who recorded great tits in Paris in 2003.

The researcher stands holding out a large black microphone, with the Eiffel Tower behind him. — Dan Mennill uses a microphone to capture birdsong close to the Eiffel Tower.
(Dan Mennill)

When we compared background noise with bird songs, we found that great tits sing higher-pitched songs in noisier environments. By singing at a higher pitch, great tits avoid having their songs masked by the low-frequency noise of traffic sounds.

We also analyzed noise data collected across Paris by Bruitparif. We found that Paris is winning the war on noise pollution and the city has grown quieter in recent years. In fact, Paris today is approximately three decibels quieter than it was 10 years ago. Because the decibel scale is logarithmic, a three-decibel drop represents a major reduction in sound intensity.

Despite this progress, great tits in Paris continue to sing at higher pitches than birds in wilderness areas outside the city.

Birds can revert their tune

However, there is reason for optimism. Research has shown that when cities become quieter, birds in other locations have returned to their natural pitch.

The quiet streets during COVID-19 lockdowns provided a rare opportunity to study birds in a quieter world. Biologists in San Francisco found that the urban soundscape became approximately seven decibels quieter during lockdowns — levels rarely observed since the 1950s.

The quiet airwaves allowed birds to change their tune. White-crowned sparrows in San Francisco responded by singing lower-pitched and quieter songs.

The sound of the great tit singing in spring.

Many species of birds benefited from the quiet soundscape of the lockdown period. In a study of 47 species of songbirds in North America, our research team found that species with broad-frequency songs — sounds that are most immune to the impacts of low-frequency noise — expanded their ranges during this quiet period.

These findings reveal that noise pollution affects diverse birds, even those whose songs seem well-suited to noisy environments.

Listening to the future

Our studies in Paris show that a three-decibel reduction is not sufficient to allow birds to return to their natural song frequencies. Further noise-reduction efforts will be required for us to adequately share the airwaves with our feathered friends.

Paris also provides a hopeful lesson about battling noise pollution. Cities can reduce noise by encouraging cycling and quieter transportation. Public policy also plays an important role, exemplified by Paris’s Bruitparif agency.

If we measure noise pollution, we can strive to reduce it, improve our own well-being and create the space for wild birds to communicate at their natural sound frequencies.

Dan Mennill receives funding from NSERC.

– ref. Paris has successfully cut noise pollution, but urban birds still can’t sing at their natural pitch – https://theconversation.com/paris-has-successfully-cut-noise-pollution-but-urban-birds-still-cant-sing-at-their-natural-pitch-280229

April 20, 2026

Cities helping cities rebuild: How local partnerships are shaping Ukraine’s recovery

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Tamara Krawchenko, Associate Professor, School of Public Administration, University of Victoria

The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe recently called for local and national authorities to work together to help Ukraine recover and rebuild four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country.

The message is clear: cities and regions must lead, and their counterparts around the world should help them do it. The congress also calls on Russia to pay for the damage it has caused, pointing to frozen Russian assets worldwide as one source for those funds — an acknowledgment that recovery cannot wait for the war to end, since communities are already rebuilding under fire.

As a lead author of the report underpinning the congress’s call to action, I want to explain why it matters and why Canada, in particular, has both the track record and the responsibility to step up.

The scale of what needs to be done

The numbers are almost impossible to absorb. By the end of 2024, direct damage to Ukraine’s buildings and infrastructure had reached approximately US$176 billion, with more than 2.5 million households destroyed or damaged.

Total aggregate economic losses from the invasion are estimated at more than US$1.1 trillion. Nearly 6.8 million Ukrainians have also sought refuge abroad, the largest displacement of people in Europe since the Second World War.

Behind every statistic is a community struggling to survive — a mayor trying to keep schools open under missile attacks; a municipal council managing hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons with dwindling resources; a city engineer repairing the same water system for the third time after it was bombed yet again.

Local and regional authorities across Ukraine face these situations every day. And it is precisely because the challenges are so local — tied to specific communities and capacities — that the response must also be local.

Ukrainian decentralization reforms since 2014 have expanded the fiscal capacity of the country’s municipalities, enabling them to respond to the unprecedented shocks of war far more effectively than before. In fact, local budget revenues quintupled between 2014 and 2021.

Russia’s invasion disrupted these reforms.

Why city-to-city networks are different

The call to action by the congress asks local and regional authorities in Council of Europe member states to use “existing co-operation platforms and bilateral partnerships to offer practical support to their Ukrainian counterparts.”

It’s an appeal for cities that have solved difficult problems — managing mass displacement, rebuilding after disaster, reforming service delivery — to share what they know with Ukrainian cities doing the same under fire.

City-to-city partnerships are fundamentally different from top-down aid. They are peer relationships built on what scholars call horizontal assistance — the exchange of practical knowledge and structural social capital between cities navigating similar challenges.

Research on municipal technical exchanges, including a study of Seattle’s city-to-city delegations, shows these networks generate direct benefits: lower costs of accessing policy information, facilitation of collective action and long-term institutional ties that outlast any individual project cycle.

As the researchers who conducted the Seattle research point out, the exchanges “disseminate information, and through the personal relations they initiate, have a potential for influencing future resource decisions among cities and countries.”

This matters enormously for Ukraine. The most effective city networks are those oriented toward concrete policy transfer such as sharing regulatory frameworks, governance tools and public administration practices.

Ukrainian cities need exactly this: working models of how to manage housing allocation for displaced persons, how to deliver trauma-informed social services and how to rebuild energy infrastructure with built-in resilience.

Canadian municipal engineers who might advise a Kharkiv counterpart on water system resilience wouldn’t just be delivering aid — they’d be sharing hard-won professional knowledge among equals. That knowledge sticks in ways that consultant reports rarely do.

The lessons of past reconstruction

History offers clear guidance on what works. Comparative analysis of post-war and post-disaster reconstruction experiences identifies local community engagement and bottom-up leadership as the single most consistent factor separating successful from failed reconstruction.

Top-down donor interventions that bypassed local institutions, as in Iraq after 2003, produced waste, duplication and projects misaligned with community priorities. By contrast, programs that genuinely incorporated recipient input — like the post-Second World War Marshall Plan — achieved lasting results.

The review by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) of Ukraine’s recovery architecture echoes this: Ukraine’s reconstruction ecosystem remains fragmented, with co-ordination gaps among federal government departments, international donors and local authorities.

City-to-city networks can help fill that gap at the most practical level by channelling directly applicable knowledge to the local officials who most need it.

Canada’s proven record, and its moment

Canada has been here before. Beginning in 2010, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), financed by the Canadian government through Global Affairs Canada, built exactly this kind of peer network in Ukraine through the Partnership for Local Economic Development and Democratic Governance.

The $19.5-million, six-year initiative worked directly with 16 Ukrainian cities to strengthen local democracy, support small and medium-sized businesses and advance decentralization.

FCM’s municipal experts worked alongside counterparts in cities like Lviv and Dnipro, co-publishing Ukraine’s first municipal guide to local economic development and helping local governments design collaborative regional projects. A key partner throughout was the Association of Ukrainian Cities, a key municipal advocacy organization.

That program ended, but the relationships it built did not. And the decentralization reforms it supported are now widely credited — by the congress’s call to action itself, the OECD and scholars of Ukrainian resilience — with giving Ukrainian local authorities the capacity to respond as effectively as they have to the shocks of war.

The case for reinvestment

The congress explicitly notes in its call to action that decentralization reforms “have played a crucial role in Ukraine’s wartime resilience.” That is, in part, a legacy of Canada’s investment.

A new, scaled-up commitment through FCM building on existing relationships with the Association of Ukrainian Cities — drawing on FCM’s international programs expertise and connecting Canadian municipal professionals to their Ukrainian peers across the priority domains the resolution identifies (like in housing, social and mental health supports, economic recovery, emergency management, community energy and citizen participation) — would represent a return to a proven formula.

The congress’s call to action urges deeper, more focused work on local recovery and reconstruction. City-to-city partnerships stand out as one of the most cost-effective and sustainable tools: they share practical knowledge that endures, strengthen institutions over the long term and recognize Ukrainian cities as active participants in their own reconstruction.

Canada helped build local government capacity in Ukraine before the war. The Council of Europe’s Congress has now called on the world to do so again. Canada should answer that call.

The author served as a contributing expert to the Council of Europe Congress Report CG(2026)50-10prov, adopted at the 50th Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities in March 2026.

– ref. Cities helping cities rebuild: How local partnerships are shaping Ukraine’s recovery – https://theconversation.com/cities-helping-cities-rebuild-how-local-partnerships-are-shaping-ukraines-recovery-280205

April 19, 2026

What Canada, the U.K. and other G7 nations learned about building resilient education systems during the COVID-19 pandemic

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Louis Volante, Distinguished Professor, Faculty of Education, Brock University

By a dictionary definition, the word resilient means an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. The key words here? “Recover” and “change.”

The notion that psychological characteristics strongly influence resilience is likely familiar to many of us, influenced through mental health or popular discussion.

But in education, resilience should mean more than simply coping with difficulty. It should describe whether students can keep learning, stay motivated and remain connected to school even when their lives are disrupted by crisis, poverty or uncertainty.

From an education perspective, resilience largely pertains to understanding how well students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds perform in traditional subjects like reading, mathematics and science compared to their more affluent peers.

That definition matters, because it reminds us that resilience is not just an individual trait. It is also shaped by schools, families, public policy and the support systems surrounding children. Some students are asked to overcome or recover from much more than others.

What policies help promote student resilience in education systems?

Our research tackled this question by examining how well students responded to the adversity of the COVID-19 pandemic and how effective government policies were in reducing long-term negative impacts.

We compared Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium and Japan — the G10 nations, minus Switzerland and the United States.

Relationship of ‘soft skills’ to achievement?

There appears to be a disconnect between popular and educational notions of resilience, since the former focuses on “non-cognitive” skills — what many might think of as “soft skills” or “socio-emotional skills” — and the latter focuses on achievement.

In practice, however, these two ideas cannot be separated. A student’s confidence, sense of belonging, emotional stability, perseverance and ability to adapt, all influence academic performance. Likewise, repeated academic struggles can weaken well-being and increase disengagement from school.

Our previous research suggested students with stronger non-cognitive skills perform one full year higher in mathematics, and 1.5 years years higher in reading and science, than students with weaker non-cognitive skills.

Clearly, student achievement and the development of non-cognitive skills should be complementary objectives in education systems. That is an important message for policymakers. Too often, education debates force a false choice between raising test scores and supporting well-being. The evidence suggests that systems that neglect one will ultimately undermine the other.

The pandemic stress test

The pandemic created a real-world stress test for schools. It exposed which systems were able to respond quickly, protect vulnerable learners and adapt to new forms of teaching, and which systems were less prepared.

The lessons remain highly relevant today because the academic and emotional aftershocks of COVID-19 have not fully disappeared.

We want to discuss what we learned about national and provincial education policies that work best. Across the very different systems we examined, one broad conclusion stood out: resilience does not happen by accident. It must be designed into education policy through targeted support, early identification of need and sustained investment in students and teachers.

1) Targeted policies

When students are struggling in school, personalized academic supports such as the U.K.’s National Tutoring Programme, France’s intensive tutoring programs or Germany’s remedial education programs were particularly effective.

The implication is fairly clear: education systems should direct resources where they are needed most and avoid funding models that fail to account for the different needs of students and schools. This is especially true because the pandemic did not affect all children equally.

Students from disadvantaged families, those with fewer digital resources and those already at risk of falling behind often experienced the largest learning losses.

Universal support has value, but targeted interventions are usually more efficient and more equitable. Small-group tutoring, structured catch-up programs and direct outreach to families can make the difference between temporary disruption and permanent educational damage.

2) Mental-health policies

Supporting student mental health must accompany academic support. The latter was clear from differences observed between Belgium and Japan. Belgium demonstrated the value of proactive mental health interventions while Japan recorded an alarming increase in youth suicides. Clearly, Japan’s academic achievement objectives must also be met with an urgent need for comprehensive mental health strategies. This is not a secondary issue.

Schools are not only places of instruction; they are social environments where children build friendships, establish routines and develop a sense of belonging. When those connections are weakened, learning suffers too.

Education recovery plans should include school-based counselling, teacher training to recognize distress and preventive interventions that strengthen peer relationships and student engagement. A resilient education system is one that protects both minds and futures.

3) Data collection and monitoring policies

Education systems that collect and monitor detailed data on their student population are better positioned to track both cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes and respond accordingly. The Netherlands is one example of a country that maintains robust longitudinal data. Conversely, across Canada’s decentralized education systems, select provinces experienced significant gaps in data collection, particularly for special education student populations.

Without reliable data, policymakers are often flying blind. They cannot easily identify who has fallen behind, which interventions are working or whether inequalities are widening.

Better data systems do not mean more bureaucracy for its own sake. They mean better tools for timely action, better accountability for public spending and better protection for students who might otherwise be overlooked.

Supporting students today

Collectively, our cross-national research suggests that education policies matter. Organizational structures, supports and governance approaches have the power to help or hinder the development of resilient education systems.

Although the pandemic may seem like a distant memory, many of the long-term impacts remain. These ongoing challenges to cognitive and non-cognitive student development have also been met with new academic integrity concerns related to the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) applications in schools. Future research will need to better understand how AI, and associated policies, are shaping both academic achievement and non-cognitive skills.

The challenge for education systems now is not simply to “return to normal,” but to build something stronger than what existed before. Academic resilience should be understood as the capacity of schools to help all students recover, adapt and thrive.

If policymakers take seriously the lessons of the pandemic, they will recognize that resilience requires targeted learning support, investment in mental health, strong data systems and thoughtful digital strategies. These are not temporary fixes. They are the foundations of a fairer and more future-proof education system.

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

Kristof De Witte receives funding from Horizon Europe EFFEct grant (101129146). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the granting authority. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Luca Salmieri and Orazio Giancola 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. What Canada, the U.K. and other G7 nations learned about building resilient education systems during the COVID-19 pandemic – https://theconversation.com/what-canada-the-u-k-and-other-g7-nations-learned-about-building-resilient-education-systems-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-278367

April 19, 2026

What Canada, England and other G7 nations learned about building resilient education systems during the COVID-19 pandemic

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Louis Volante, Distinguished Professor, Faculty of Education, Brock University

By a dictionary definition, the word resilient means an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. The key words here? “Recover” and “change.”

The notion that psychological characteristics strongly influence resilience is likely familiar to many of us, influenced through mental health or popular discussion.

What policies help promote student resilience in education systems?

We compared Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium and Japan — the G10 nations, minus Switzerland and the United States.

Relationship of ‘soft skills’ to achievement?

The pandemic stress test

The lessons remain highly relevant today because the academic and emotional aftershocks of COVID-19 have not fully disappeared.

1) Targeted policies

When students are struggling in school, personalized academic supports such as England’s National Tutoring Programme, France’s intensive tutoring programs or Germany’s remedial education programs were particularly effective.

Students from disadvantaged families, those with fewer digital resources and those already at risk of falling behind often experienced the largest learning losses.

2) Mental-health policies

3) Data collection and monitoring policies

Without reliable data, policymakers are often flying blind. They cannot easily identify who has fallen behind, which interventions are working or whether inequalities are widening.

Supporting students today

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

– ref. What Canada, England and other G7 nations learned about building resilient education systems during the COVID-19 pandemic – https://theconversation.com/what-canada-england-and-other-g7-nations-learned-about-building-resilient-education-systems-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-278367

April 19, 2026

Is Alberta really ‘following the science’ on trans healthcare?

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Corinne L. Mason, Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies, Mount Royal University

The Alberta government under Premier Danielle Smith’s government has banned gender-affirming health care for youth in the province. This legislation bans access to puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormone replacement therapy for youth aged 15 and younger for the treatment of gender dysphoria, with few exceptions.

In 2024, two organizations, Skipping Stone and Egale Canada, challenged the legislation in court and secured a temporary injunction on the grounds that the ban would inflict irreparable harm.

Instead of appealing this decision, in December 2025, the Alberta government invoked the notwithstanding clause to guard Bill 26, along with two other anti-2SLGBTQIA+ bills (Bills 27 and 29), from court oversight.

As a result, these laws cannot be challenged in court as unconstitutional under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms for five years.

Smith and her government claim that their ban on gender-affirming care is “following the science,” saying it reflects findings from the United Kingdom suggesting there is insufficient clinical evidence about both the benefits and risks of gender-affirming care for youth.

In a media interview, Smith stated: “If we want to take a science-based approach, we’ve got to use the best information available.”

But is Alberta actually using the best available evidence?

How U.K. research is being used

Much of Alberta’s justification for its restrictions draws on the Cass Review — an independent but controversial review of gender identity services for children and youth in the U.K. published in 2024.

The final report called to limit routine prescription of puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria.

Following the publication of the Cass Review, England’s National Health Service closed the Tavistock Clinic, the only specialized youth gender clinic in the U.K. at the time. Since then, NHS England has made puberty blockers available only for clinical trials, the first of which has recently been halted.

Data from England’s National Child Mortality Database shows that suicides among trans youth surged to 22 in 2021-22, the same year NHS England announced it would close the Tavistock clinic. In the two previous years, the number of trans youth suicides were four in 2020 and five in 2019 — a fivefold increase.

This outcome raises serious concerns about the potential consequences of limiting access to gender-affirming healthcare.

What the global evidence shows

Recent research from other jurisdictions has emerged about the effectiveness of gender-affirming care for youth and the harms of restricting access to it.

In 2024, a peer-reviewed study illustrated the effects of anti-trans legislation in the United States, where 48 such laws were enacted across 19 states between 2018 and 2022. Using national data from 61,000 trans and non-binary youth, the researchers found that anti-trans laws were associated with increases in suicide attempts of up to 72 per cent.

At the same time, clinical research on gender-affirming care has found that it has a positive impact on youth mental health. A 2025 study examined suicidality outcomes among 432 youth receiving hormone therapy.

The study found that hormone therapy correlated with a decrease in suicidality scores. Youth who received puberty blockers prior to hormone therapy showed lower suicidality compared with the overall sample.

When governments dismiss their own evidence

Alberta is not alone in selectively interpreting evidence for political reasons. In 2023, Utah lawmakers introduced a moratorium on gender-affirming care for trans youth, citing potential health and safety risks. The legislature commissioned a comprehensive review of existing research into the effects of hormone treatments.

The resulting 2025 report — based on 277 studies and more than 28,000 pediatric patients globally — concluded that puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy are effective, safe, pose minimal risk and have low regret rates. It found there is no evidence-based justification for limiting access.

Despite this, Utah lawmakers dismissed their own 1,000-page report and have permanently banned gender-affirming care for youth.

This dismissal of evidence reflects a disturbing trend of politicians being unwilling to engage with information that is inconvenient to their interests while claiming they are following “the science.”

What does Canadian evidence tell us?

In Canada, research is also beginning to document the impacts of these policies. Since 2024, our research team has been collecting data about the impacts of the anti-2SLGBTQIA+ legislation in Alberta.

Using focus groups, interviews and a survey, we have engaged with more than 100 parents and caregivers of trans and gender-diverse youth across the province. Our research illustrates the immediate and ongoing effects of legislating trans youth’s lives.

In our survey, 56 per cent of parents of trans and gender-diverse youth reported that their child’s mental health has deteriorated since the announcement of the ban on gender-affirming care.

In focus groups and interviews, parents and caregivers reported a steep decline in their children’s mental health and well-being, including increased anxiety, school absenteeism, self-harm and suicidal ideation.

Reports of bullying and harassment have also increased, and families reported that public support — including from neighbours, schools and places of worship — has declined across the province.

According to our survey, 95.6 per cent of parents and caregivers believe the current negative climate for 2SLGBTQIA+ youth is directly related to the Alberta legislation.

The stakes are high for Alberta’s youth

There is now clear and growing evidence that restricting access to gender-affirming care in Alberta is actively harming trans and gender-diverse youth, most notably via declines in mental health and an increased risk of suicidality.

If Alberta’s government is committed to following the science, it must engage with the full body of evidence, not selectively cite it. That includes research showing the risks of denying it.

The implications extend beyond Alberta. Given what we have seen globally and in Alberta, changes in governments in other provinces and territories could bring about similar policies, even in places currently seen as supportive of 2SLGBTQIA+ youth.

The question facing policymakers is no longer whether evidence supporting gender-affirming care for youth exists, but whether they are willing to act on it.

Corinne L. Mason receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Leah Hamilton receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Is Alberta really ‘following the science’ on trans healthcare? – https://theconversation.com/is-alberta-really-following-the-science-on-trans-healthcare-275901