If we look at elections around the world, social media seems to play an important role in influencing citizens' voting, but this does not seem to be the case in Canada.

This is the finding of a new report on digital democracy from the Digital Democracy Project, an ongoing effort from the Public Policy Forum and McGill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy.

The researchers wanted to understand the nature of political polarisation and what it looks like in Canada.

To do this, they conducted a broad survey of Canadians, asking them many questions about what they read, what they believe, their political practices and what they think of supporters of other parties.

The team also used data from social media and in particular Twitter to examine online behaviours.

In the end, four things came out of the report.

Peter Loewen leads the Digital Democracy Project's analysis team and teaches political science, global affairs and public policy at the University of Toronto. He told us more about his findings.

(Photo: Alexis MacDonald)EN_Interview_2-20190913-WIE20

As a result of this study, the team found that there is real polarisation in Canada, mainly along party lines.

However, what is interesting is that the drivers of polarisation are not the media or social media, it is something else.

Canadians are "affectively polarised"

The results suggest that the reason for this polarisation is that Canadians are loyal to their party and that this polarisation is intensifying as party positions have shifted over the past few years.

The study also points out that people tend to easily associate a politician with his or her supporters, suggesting that “polarisation does not just influence people’s opinions about the parties, but also how they view ordinary Canadians."

This behaviour makes Canadian voters " affectively polarised ", which means that they may not like someone simply because of their political opinions.

Professor Loewen describes how they measured this phenomenon and what they found:

(Photo: Jeff McIntosh / THE CANADIAN PRESS)EN_Interview_4-20190913-WIE40

Social media not that powerful in Canada

Although Canadians are polarised, social media has little to do with this, the study suggests.

Researchers at the Digital Democracy Project looked at the activity of about 50,000 Twitter accounts and found that users tend to create "filter bubbles" for themselves.

They tend to follow only one party and its related pages. But this behaviour does not seem to affect the polarisation of voters. The study found that only 16% of Canadians are exposed to highly partisan sources of information.

So people continue to mainly follow mainstream media, but more importantly, they tend to primarily follow their party.

Everything can change during the campaign

The research also shows that parties in Canada have changed ideologically in recent years, with the Liberals moving ideologically closer to the NDP, for example. This new ideological distance could also be a factor of polarisation according to the study.

Considering all these different factors, Professor Loewen says that people's votes could change depending on each candidate's campaign.

"Voters tend to adjust their positions depending on what the parties are saying," explains Mr. Loewen, and some seats can easily swing in some regions as well.

The leader of the survey analysis team gave us his opinion on what could happen during this campaign:

(Photo: Justin Tang / THE CANADIAN PRESS)EN_Interview_6-20190913-WIE60

From now on, the Digital Democracy Project team will monitor the level of affective polarisation throughout the election campaign and examine any changes in voters.

If parties tend to move towards more extreme positions, this could really influence the affective polari...

For many, hydrogen cars are the future. But how far are we from seeing them on Canadian roads?

This is a question that researchers at the University of British Columbia have begun to answer by developing a hydrogen supply chain model that can lead to the adoption of zero emission hydrogen-powered cars in the province.

Hydrogen is an industrial gas that is already produced in large quantities. This energy source has been used as a fuel since the beginning of the space program in the United States, making it a very mature technology for producing, liquefying, storing and distributing.

Today, the main process of producing it is to extract it from natural gas. However, this method is not clean, as it produces carbon dioxide as a result of this process.

Toyota already sells Hydrogen powered cars in British Columbia. (Photo: M 93 / Wikimedia Commons)

The idea of the researchers behind this study is to extract and distribute this technology without carbon footprint.

The research examined the feasibility of deploying hydrogen fuelling infrastructure for hydrogen vehicles in British Columbia.

Their ultimate goal is to de-carbonise the province's transportation sector by focusing on passenger vehicles, SUVs and vans, but also heavy duty vehicles such as trucks, planes, boats or trains.

This interest in hydrogen is driven by the benefits of this technology, as Walter Mérida, senior author of studies and professor of engineering at UBC, explains.

(Photo: Martin Dee)EN_Interview_2-20190912-WIE20

Mérida studies clean energy technologies and leads the transportation futures research group in the faculty of applied science.

Another advantage of hydrogen is its long autonomy.

Because you are storing your energy not in a battery but as a gas [...], you get essentially the same range that you get with a normal gasoline vehicle.Walter Mérida

Hydrogen in Canada

Recently, Canada has lagged behind in the development of hydrogen and fuelling infrastructure.

British Columbia became the first province to open a publicly accessible hydrogen fuelling station in 2018.

Now, Greater Vancouver and Victoria have ambitious plans for 2020:

(Photo: ENILAB / University of British Colombia)EN_Interview_4-20190912-WIE40

The CleanBC plan, which includes a mandate for zero-emission vehicles by 2040, supports the researchers' study by providing support measures such as rebates on electric and hydrogen car sales and incentives for the construction of fuelling stations, for example.

The programme aims at helping people "use more clean and renewable energy in how [they] get around, heat [their] homes, and fuel [their] industry — setting [them] on the path to a cleaner, brighter future" as their website explains.

Need to overcome some challenges

To fully develop this new technology, researchers still have some challenges to overcome, as Walter Mérida explains:

(Photo: Andy Clark /REUTERS)EN_Interview_6-20190912-WIE60

However, co-author and ENILab program manager Omar Herrera sees a bright future for this technology, as he said in a press release: 

Provided B.C. maintains those policies, and assuming enough hydrogen vehicles are available, our model sees hydrogen demand growing significantly every year. Omar Herrera

But what makes this new study really interesting is the prospect of building a new type of hydrogen fuelling station. It would be the first project of its kind in the world, says Mérida:

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Here is a video explaining the project in details:

https://vimeo.com/349700651

The project is expected to be completed by 2020-2022.

A handful of deaths and hundreds of reports of lung illness in the U.S. has greatly raised concern over the practice of vaping among young people.

The recent deaths and illnesses have caused U.S President Trump to weigh in on the issue.

André Picard is a columnist at Canada’s influential Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto and author of "Matters of Life and Death-Public Health Issues in Canada”

Health columnist and author Andre Picard, on policies involving vaping related to recent U.S deaths and President Trump statementEN_Interview_1-20190912-WIE10

While the common connection among these cases is vaping, it’s not entirely clear yet what the exact cause is. Vaping THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, may be the cause or perhaps some of chemicals used in creating the vaping liquid “juice”.

Reports say there's a growing number of young people who are vaping, At least one U.S. study showed the materials in the liquid may adversely affect lung health (Aliaksandr Barouski/Shutterstock)

Canada has introduced measures to limit the marketing of vaping products to young people, but those measures seem not to be working well.

Flavoured “juice” clearly geared at young people is still available, and vaping use has risen considerably among youth in Canada.

There has been speculation in the U.S that products in the juice, possibly Vitamin E acetate used as a thickener, may be involved. While used in many topical products, face cream etc. which are rubbed on the skin, vapourizing it into the lungs may have a negative effect.

August 2019: E-cigarette advertising hangs above candy at a convenience store in Toronto. Many health experts are concerned about marketing of e-cigarettes seemingly aimed at youths, including "fruity flavours" and colourful advertisements and are seeking tighter restrictions on sales and marketing. (Craig Chivers/CBC)

A recent American study also found the solvents used in the juice disrupts a protective layer in the lungs, causing “havoc” according to the researchers.

The solvents are also suspected by Dr. Dilini Vethanayagam, a respirologist at the University of Alberta. Quoted by CBC News.  She noted that the lung air sacs, alveoli, are meant to transfer gases, and when coated by oily droplets, the gases can’t pass through. “"When we inhale something that we shouldn't like lipids [fats] that don't clear well after it's inhaled it kind of lines the alveolar sacs that are meant for respiration. Over time if you're vaping on a daily, weekly basis, it can accumulate further. So death is just one aspect of the tip of the iceberg."

Although there is a federal Tobacco and Vaping Products Act, which restricts flavours appealing to young people and marketing, there are nonetheless varying policies provincially across the country and enforcement would also seem to be an issue.

Earlier this year a British Columbia politician proposed an amendment to ban outright “kid friendly” vape flavours like bubblegum, cotton candy, and gummy-bears.

Bans or even stiff regulations also present a potential problem of people simply turning to online sales. When it comes to products sold online, it is also difficult to be certain where the product is coming from, who makes it, and what exactly is in it.

Picard says that if the U.S follows through and bans flavoured vaping liquids, it is likely Canada would follow suit. He notes however, that regulating online sales will be extremely difficult to control.

Additional information

CBC: A Zafar: Sep 6/19:  Vaping causes havoc in lungs, mouse study

CBC: Sep 12/19: Vaping illness, doctors concerned

Thomson-Reuters (via CBC) Sep 11/19: Trump- U.S must do something about vaping

Maybe all that appears to glitter ain't necessarily the gold it was touted to be.

Case in point: a couple of weeks ago, I wrote a story about the reopening of two prison farms in Kingston, Ontario.

Seemed pretty straight forward: a victory for decency, I wrote, about local residents helping to restore two of the six prison farms that were closed across the country by the former Conservative government in 2010.

Members of the beloved Pen Herd are seen prior to closing of prison farms nearly a decade ago. (Courtesy: Evolve Our Prison Farms)

Well, to use and old farmland expression, "Hold your horses, my friend."

Turns out that maybe the return may not be all it's being cracked up to be.

Shortly after the article appeared, I received an email from Calvin Neufeld, who heads an organization called Evolve Our Prison Farms.

"Prison farms can be a model of justice," says Neufeld (seen feeding a sanctuary cow). "Kingston is the penitentiary capital of Canada and I believe it can also be Canada’s voice of conscience for prisons and prisoners. We are holding onto a beautiful vision of what’s possible. (Courtesy: Evolve Our Prison Farms)

Neufeld, who became involved in prison-farming activism in 2016, was not happy with the article and others detailing the event, nor is he happy with the direction the two Kingston prison farms are headed, which Neufeld says, is Correctional Services Canada running a for-profit industrial goat dairy farm.

Running such a farm, Neufeld says, will result in a failure to bring back the therapeutic programs that worked so well for prisoners before the institutions were closed.

Evolve Our Prison Farms also has a lot of problems with prisoners being used as labour to serve private enterprise.

No one is certain to whom the milk will be marketed though a new Feihe International infant formula factory is being constructed between the two prison sites in Kingston.

Correctional Services Canada says no contracts have been signed.

Neufeld and his organization continue to stage protests to get Correctional Services Canada to return to the original model that prompted almost a decade of demonstrations to restore the prison farms after they were closed.

Neufeld says 14,000 people, including David Suzuki (seen above with Neufeld), Margaret Atwood and Elizabeth May, prominent Canadians all, have lent their support to his cause.

I spoke by phone with Neufeld at his home near Kingston.

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So what now for Bianca Andreescu, the force of nature who over the weekend defeated Serena Williams, the woman most believe to be the greatest female player tennis player of all time, to win the U.S. Open in New York?

Well, first things first.

She's made it in to Manhattan from an outer borough and is cutting a pretty spiffy rug.

If you're a television watcher, you might have seen her on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where she jokingly called out Drake, whose presence may begin to shrink just a tad in the reality show known to some as "The Amazing Race: The Public Life of Canadian Super Stars."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUg-rE7g6Tc

Whoa, hold on a sec: isn't that Bianca on The View?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X8XyY85SlY

Yup.

We are told she is coming back to Canada soon.

When exactly that might be remains a matter of conjecture.

On her return she will be feted in her hometown of Mississauga, Ont. before heading back to the friendly confines of Tennis Canada's Montreal facilities, where she met her coach, Sylvain Bruneau, who is as new to all this celebrity as Bianca.

Bruneau will no doubt remind her that a very lucrative part of the ATP tour is coming up in Asia.

The prize money will be plentiful, but so will the intensity of players gunning for her.

If she is to carry all this forward, best she be in top mental and physical shape.

We'll see if she is.

We do know that Andreescu's victory on Saturday has the potential to change a lot of things.

Might it have already?

Andreescu returns a shot to Caroline Wozniacki, of Denmark, during round three of the US Open. Can she keep the momentum when the top WTA players head to Asia? We will find out soon.l (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Associated Press)

Only Bianca knows for sure.

(Imagine, dear reader, that you are 19 again and just pocketed $5 million Cdn for two weeks work. Get my drift?

Can't relate? Think of what happened after you got your first driver's license and multiply that by a few hundred thousand. Just saying.)

But there will be more new than that.

For a take on just what that that new new might consist of and how Andreescu, her family and her team will handle it, I spoke with Stephanie Myles, editor-in-chief of Tennis.life, who has been watching Bianca's magical summer up close.

I spoke with Myles by phone Tuesday at her home in Montreal.

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An exhibition at this year's Bonavista Biennale in St. John, Newfoundland, highlights a dark part of the province's history - the island's involvement in the 18th century slave trade.

Few people know, but Newfoundland built several ships in the 18th century to transport mainly slaves from Africa to the Caribbean and America.

Toronto artist and academic Camille Turner was very surprised when she discovered all the documentation on these ships and that's why she chose this angle to illustrate her artistic installation.

https://twitter.com/BBiennale/status/1159843704707751938

Her Afronautic Research Lab consist of a "futuristic reading room" as she describes it. "The public is invited to come into the room and engage with material which consist of newspapers from the 18th century and also books that look at the evidence of slavery and its connection to Newfoundland."

Turner really focused her exhibition on the 19 slave ships that were built on the island. She explained to us how she represented them:

Photo of the Afronautic Research Lab by Camille Turner, Bonavista Biennale 2019.EN_Interview_2-20190909-WIE20

Information mostly found on the internet

To create her exhibition, Turner mainly used the Internet and the website slavevoyages.org in particular as official sources are lacking on the subject.

She also drew her work from a Harvard University database which compiles records of slaving expeditions between 1514 and 1866.

She found a lot of information about the ships themselves, but one thing was missing:

(Credit: Screenshot of slavevoyages.org website)EN_Interview_4-20190909-WIE40

As she explains, she found a lot of documents on the expeditions, but what was missing were details about the trafficked people and their lives.

During her research, she discovered that most of the vessels were leaving from various African countries such as Sierra Leone or Senegal, for the Caribbeans to transport slaves. Some have even been to the American continent, to Mississippi and Charleston.

Surprised visitors

Turner's aeronautics research laboratory has toured several cities in Canada and she explains that visitors are often surprised to discover this past history:

Still from video filmed and edited by Brian Ricks.EN_Clip_3-20190909-WME30

Turner’s travelling Afronautic Research Lab is on display at the Bonavista Biennale until September 15, 2019.

Bringing these stories to light

Camille Turner's objective with this art exhibition is above all to highlight this hidden part of Canadian history.

And she's only just begun to discover it, as she explains:

Still from video filmed and edited by Brian Ricks.EN_Interview_6-20190909-WIE60

Research is currently being done in Atlantic Canada to understand the role the slave economy played in the region's history.

Recently, a panel exploring Dalhousie University's history of racism and links to slavery has issued its final report. It calls for an apology from the Halifax school, a provincial memorial of the slave trade and other forms of reparation.

The artist now hopes her exhibit keeps travelling the country to keep the narrative expanding, revealing hidden truths about familiar places.

With files from The Canadian Press

In recent years there have been many reports of news operations cutting back, and many small community and regional newspapers closing. News rooms have also been declining in broadcast media.

It seems to be a case of slow but steady decline in revenue and readership as advertisers and readers turn to the digital world and giants of content like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple.

Lucinda Chodan, along with others, has noted that a strong and reliable press is important to ensure and support democracy. She is senior vice-president editorial for the Post Media group, and the editor-in-chief of the influential Montreal Gazette,the most important English language paper in the province, and one of the more important papers in the country. She recently appeared before a provincial parliamentary committee in Quebec to discuss the state of print and other media.

Lucinda Chodan editor Montreal Gazette discusses the threats to newspapersEN_Interview_1-20190909-WIE10

Even before the arrival of the internet, such as that of the federal Davey Commission in 1970, and Kent Commission in 1981, there were concerns about media concentration and the limitations it might have on the availability of differing public affairs opinions and by extension, democracy.

After 134 years Montreal's La Presse, the most widely distributed French language newspaper ceased printing a hard copy at the end of 2017 going completely digital but continued to struggle. (Jaela Bernstien/CBC)

Now, those concerns have only deepened, as more newspapers and media outlets struggle and are bought out by a handful of larger organisations with many of the smaller operations subsequently closed or newsrooms amalgamated.

However, the newsmedia financial concerns have become worsened by foreign internet giants taking content from the news operations without adequate compensation to the original sources and with the previously mentioned big four alone siphoning off about 80 per cent of advertising, critical to pay for the news outlets and the journalists.

The Beacon is one of four central Newfoundland newspapers that were closed in 2018 to be replaced by one regional paper (Garrett Barry-CBC)

The giants also do so without the burden of having to pay taxes in Canada or providing employment to Canadians as does the Gazette and others.  Chodan notes that the Gazette pays $320,000 annually just in recycling tax alone, in addition to such things as property taxes, infrastructure maintenance costs, and taxes on materials needed to function as a news source.

August 2019: The Groupe Capitales Médias, which owns the newspapers pictured above, is going to file for bankruptcy protection under the Creditors Arrangement Act. The Quebec government has offerred $5 million to help keep the papers going. The Federal government has proposed a $600 m tax credit to newspapers to help them to transition in the digital age (Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press)

She notes that in the Gazette’s case, the newsroom has been cut by 50 per cent since 2013, and that compromises the ability to discover and report on stories, and on the important investigative reporting with background and context.

Also, rightly or wrongly, people want the internet to be “free” and don’t want to pay for online subscriptions as was and is the case for print subscriptions, another blow to revenues. Creating newspaper paywalls, i.e., buying access to the news,  have not been entirely successful.

As noted by CTV, she told the provincial commission, “The reduction represents a threat for democracy in Quebec. Without the Gazette and other media that cover the local and provincial news, a good part of the news that affects Quebecois will simply not be communicated."

Chodan says while the internet has enabled a wider diversity of...

It's that bittersweet time of the year: summer's over, school's back.

Hopefully, that's the way it stays--bittersweet, gentle, optimistic--nothing more than that--energies to help all involved find rhythms and routines they need to navigate the school year.

Still....

Looming over all the usual insecurities ("oof, do I ever hate this guy teaching math...I AM going to make this soccer team...I wonder if that girl REALLY likes me"), hanging over everything, is that primal and tribal scourge of human kind--the bully.

If you have kids, you know who I'm talking about.

A still from the video Trudy Longchap, 17, shot of her six-year-old brother, Andrew Mianscum Jr. in 2018 getting ready to go to Voyageur Memorial Elementary School in the Cree community of Mistissini, Quebec. Trudy regularly accompanies Andrew because of bullying that has gone viral. (Trudy Longchap)

If you're a kid, you know what I'm talking about.

Heck, if you're a human being, you what I'm talking about.

"Bullying is probably ubiquitous amongst life itself," Tony Volk, a developmental psychologist at Brock University, told the CBC's Tai Poole.

The thing about bullying is that hearts get broken and life gets really, really dark.

Shada Mohamed says her son Malakhi has suffered racist bullying at school in Calgary but nothing changes despite reporting incidents to the school and board. In one incident she says her son was kicked by six kids on his school bus after initially being prevented from getting on board and told it’s because he’s black. (Dan McGarvey/CBC)

As for Canada, we may be famed for our good manners, but we know bullying

Take a look at these government stats.

The one from that list that jumps out at me is the that reads 47 per cent of Canadian parents report having a child victim of bullying.

That's basically one out of two, folks.

The question is what do you do about it.

What does a parent tell their  kid? What does a kid tell their parent? What does a kid tell the bully? What does a kid tell himself?

For some answers and perspective I had the pleasure to speak with Dr. Ashley Miller, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at B.C. Children's Hospital. on Thursday.

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More shocking statistics from a new investigation into the welfare of Canada's children.

Bundled with UNICEF's report on the state of Canadian children reported by colleague Marc Montgomery on Wednesday, it adds to the bleak picture of the current conditions facing millions of the country's young people.

According to research conducted by Children First Canada, a national non-profit based in Calgary, at least a third of the country's eight million children do not have what is considered a healthy and happy childhood.

The report--titled Raising Canada: Election 2019--ranks the ten greatest threats to children's well-being in the country and is calling of voters to raise the issues in the coming federal election campaign.

The non-profit Children First Canada is asking voters to make the well-being of children a federal election issue. (Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock)

Accidents and preventable injuries--mainly motor-vehicle collisions, drowning and threats to breathing--are at the top of the threats list as the leading cause of death for children.

The research also reveals that suicide is the second greatest threat to a child's well-being in Canada.

"One in five kids in Canada has seriously considered suicide in the past year," says Sara Austin, the CEO of Children First Canada, who notes Canada ranked 25th out of 41 wealthy countries in 2017 for children's well-being.

"You know it is bone chilling to think about so many of our kids facing that level of despair."

The research (not surprisingly) found that First Nations children are at far great risk of death due to injury than non-indigenous children.

The Children First Canada study found bullying a major problem--and threat--to too many of Canada's young people. (Shutterstock)

According to Indigenous Services Canada, suicide rates are five to seven times higher for First Nations youth than for non-Aboriginal youth.

The rate of suicide among Inuit youth is 11 times the national average, among the highest in the world.

The report lists child abuse, poverty, infant mortality, obesity, food insecurity, immunization, discrimination and bullying among as the other top threats facing children.

The report is based on a 2018 research project by the University of Calgary's O'Brien Institute of Public Health, which collected data from Statistics Canada, the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) and the Canadian Institute of Child Health (CICH).

Sara Austin is the founder and lead director of Children First Canada. (CBC)

With election fast approaching, Austin says the time has come for Canadians to put pressure on politicians to take action on the issues raised and the problems documented in the report.

Among other things, her organization is asking the new government to appoint an independent federal Commission for Children and Youth.

I had the opportunity to speak with Austin at her office in Calgary on Wednesday afternoon.

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They’re everywhere; mobile phones, tablets, and laptops.  It seems we can’t get by even for a moment without them.  That also applies to young people and even young children.

Before “screens” children would often invent playmates and engage in hours of imaginary play. A recent survey of daycare workers in Britain says kids today have fewer imaginary playmates than just five years ago.  Screen devices are thought to be replacing the invisible playmates.

For more on this we spoke to Sara Dimerman (DIP.CS, C.Psych), psychologist and author in Thornhill, Ontario

Psychologist and author Sara Dimerman talks about survey saying screen time may hamper child creativityEN_Interview_1-20190905-WIE10

In the past, a big cardboard box could keep a child and his or her imagination going for hours as they turned it into a fort, a dollhouse, a cave or something else. Playing outside also seemed more common.

These days a child might just as likely be sitting and staring into a cellphone texting or playing a computer game, or watching youtube, with little or no imaginative or creative input.

It was active, it was imaginative. Some children would also invent imaginary playmates and though often a creation of children who experienced shyness, it was a normal part of growing up and often such children demonstrated slightly more advanced creativity and complex verbal and social skills.

Cell phones and other screen devices are becoming more common with younger and younger children. The World Health Organisation and Canadian Paediatric Society have also advised parents to limit screen time for children as a health issue. (via CBC Marketplace)

It seems that screens today are ubiquitous and now becoming more so in younger and younger hands. Dimerman says screens are passive entertainment and that is replacing the active and imaginative abilities of children to entertain themselves..

She also notes that device screens are different than our previous concerns about children and TV.  She says TV is not as distracting as screens are because the latter is in your hands and often requires inputs. She also notes that because screens are so very portable, they have become almost a 24/7 activity and preoccupation.

For parents who may be concerned about excess screen time and effects on creativity and imagination, Dimerman suggests having toys handy and providing ideas and incentives for independent play. Also helping children invent scenarios which could be through reading, drawing, storytelling, and engaging with them to explore scenarios beyond the story or drawings. Basically any activity that doesn’t involve a screen is to be encouraged.

Additional information

Guardian (UK) Aug 30/19: D Buchanan: Imaginary friends a sign of lively creative mind. But they are leaving us