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A new study has found a link between hormonal intrauterine devices (IUDs) and breast cancer.

The research is important, but media reports of a large increase in risk may be causing unnecessary worry.

Let’s put the findings in perspective for people who use IUDs.

What are IUDs?

IUDs are commonly used contraceptive devices. They sit inside the uterus (womb) to prevent pregnancy.

Older versions contain copper as their active ingredient. Newer “hormonal” IUDs slowly release a synthetic progesterone called levonorgestrel. This mimics the body’s natural progesterone hormone.

Both the copper and hormonal types of IUD are highly effective at preventing pregnancy over many years. Fertility is readily restored when they’re removed.

But the hormonal IUDs have the extra advantage of making periods lighter and less painful. Some people have one inserted for these reasons, even if they don’t need contraception.

Many women experience pain on insertion or spotting in the first few months of use. But compared to other contraceptives, women generally find IUDs very acceptable and continue to use them.

What did the new study find?

The new study, by researchers from Denmark, used data from national health registries to look for links between hormonal IUD use and breast cancer.

They tracked nearly 80,000 people who started hormonal IUDs across two decades. They compared these people to an equal number of people born at the same time who did not use hormonal IUDs.

On their raw numbers, you might think hormonal IUDs prevented breast cancer, because there were 720 cases of breast cancer in the hormonal IUD group, and nearly 900 in the other group. But that’s not the full story.

Ideally, when researchers study the effects of medicines, they do a “randomised controlled trial”, where researchers use chance to decide whether people get one treatment or another. This ensures the two groups are very similar apart from the treatment being studied. That’s not what happened here.

Read more:
Randomised control trials: what makes them the gold standard in medical research?

Instead, they simply studied people who had decided to have a hormonal IUD, and compared them to people who didn’t. This means the groups were different in many other ways.

So, the hormonal IUD group and the other group might appear to have a different risk of breast cancer – not because of the IUDs, but because of their other differences. For example, more highly educated women might be more likely to choose IUDs, and also more likely to attend breast cancer screening, where their breast cancer would be discovered.

The researchers “adjusted” their results to account for many differences between the two groups (including education, age, number of children, and some other medicines and medical conditions). After this “adjustment”, the numbers pointed in a different direction: towards a higher risk of breast cancer among people who used a hormonal IUD.

However, there are many other important risk factors for breast cancer the authors seem not to have adjusted for, such as body weight, alcohol use, smoking and physical activity. If there were differences between the two groups in these things, then the study’s results may still be biased. This makes me quite uncertain about the results.

Ultimately, we can’t say the IUDs caused the breast cancer – just that there’s an “association” or “link”.

Read more:
Clearing up confusion between correlation and causation

How big are the risks?

There are two different ways researchers express risk: “relative” and “absolute” risks. Here, the “relative” risk increase was about 30% for women using the IUDs for up to five years, 40% after 5–10 years, and 80% after 10–15 years of use.

These sound like massive risks. But though these statistics compare the risk of breast cancer in IUD users to the risk in non-users, they do not tell us the proportion of women who will get breast cancer. For that, we need to look at “absolute” risk increases.

These are much smaller. For every 10,000 women, this study suggests we might see an extra 14 cases of breast cancer after up to five years of use, 29 cases after 5–10 years use, and 71 cases after 10–15 years use. In “absolute” terms – as a proportion of all the IUD users – all of these risk increases are comfortably under 1%.

Absolute risk increases are much smaller.
Frame Stock Footage/Shtterstock

Reporting the dramatic relative risks, and not the much smaller absolute risks, is a common flaw in stories about health risk, and goes against science reporting recommendations.

What does other research say?

There are other studies on this topic, including a much larger recent study from Sweden based on data from more than half a million users of hormonal IUDs.

This suggested only a 13% relative risk increase in breast cancer – much smaller than the risk increases in the Danish study. This would mean an additional 1.46 cases of breast cancer for every 10,000 women per year.

This is in keeping with a recent large review of studies on this topic, which also found a much smaller risk than the new Danish paper.

The Swedish study also looked at other cancers. The results suggested a decreased risk of cancers of the cervix, ovaries and endometrium (womb lining). This mixed picture of some cancer risk and some cancer protection is also seen for traditional contraceptive pills.

And of course, all contraception protects women from the risks of pregnancy.

What does it mean for me?

The link between hormonal IUDs and breast cancer is probably very small, and might be a statistical illusion rather than a real thing.

Even if it’s a real risk, it may be offset by protection against other cancers.

And it may be dwarfed by other risks for breast cancer, such as high body weight, physical inactivity, alcohol use, and smoking. Online resources can help you visualise these risks.

Hormonal IUDs aren’t the right contraceptive choice for every woman. However, they deserve to stay high up on the menu of options. Läs mer…

New Zealand is highly reliant on trade – particularly on maritime routes, which are lifelines for exports and imports. Key sectors such as agriculture, construction, and wholesale and retail trade depend heavily on this global network.

External events can severely disrupt the flow of goods, delay deliveries or damage critical infrastructure.

But a crisis like the COVID pandemic can also disrupt business commitments to sustainability goals such as reducing carbon emissions, minimising waste and improving resource efficiency.

This is important, because several major New Zealand companies have introduced sustainability measures into their operations over the past decade.

Fonterra, for example, adopted low-carbon logistics and distribution practices. Zespri uses blockchain technology to improve the transparency of its sustainable practices and enhance tracking across its supply chain. Air New Zealand partners with local suppliers and adopts initiatives to lower its carbon emissions.

In our recent research, we reviewed 287 studies on supply chains. We identified key tensions between efficiency and sustainability, and how major disruptions to supply chains and operations can swing the balance between the two.

On one hand, businesses are pressured to maintain lean, cost-effective operations. On the other, there is a growing recognition of the need to build resilience and sustainability, particularly in the face of climate change.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted New Zealand’s dependency on global supply chains.
Zhao Gang/Getty Images

Traditional strategies

New Zealand’s supply chains are susceptible to disruptions from natural disasters (such as earthquakes and floods), geopolitical tensions and global health crises.

Businesses have historically responded in a variety of ways: diversifying suppliers, increasing inventory buffers and securing alternative transport routes.

The use of technology, such as radio frequency identification, has played a crucial role in tracking goods across the supply chain. It provides real-time visibility and accurate inventory management.

Blockchain is becoming a key tool for making supply chains more sustainable. This technology uses a digital ledger to keep information safe and easy to trace.

But the ongoing technological innovation risks disadvantaging people and businesses with limited resources and capabilities along the supply chain.

Embracing a circular economy

During the pandemic, businesses experienced shortages of critical supplies, delays in shipments and fluctuating demand. This forced them to temporarily abandon long-term sustainability strategies in favour of short-term survival tactics.

This made sense from a business perspective. But to build more resilient and sustainable supply chains, businesses will need to move beyond traditional strategies.

Our research found integrating circular economy principles into supply chain management can help create a buffer for businesses.

The circular economy model focuses on minimising waste – keeping products and materials in use for as long as possible. There is also a focus on regenerating natural systems to foster economic, social and environmental resilience.

Companies can reduce their reliance on external supply chains by focusing on reusing materials, creating closed-loop systems with regional partners and by boosting the technologies already in place.

By fostering stronger links with local suppliers and focusing on regional sourcing, businesses can reduce their exposure to global risks. This will also help build more self-sufficient supply chain ecosystems.

Building sustainable supply chains requires investing in advanced technologies, such as blockchain and artificial intelligence. But implementing these technologies should be done carefully and in stages to minimise disruption. Going slowly can also allow for the inclusion of all supply chain partners in these technological transitions.

The way forward

New Zealand’s supply chain future hinges on greater collaboration between everyone involved, including businesses, policymakers and communities.

In practice, this means working together to build systems that are not only efficient and cost-effective but also resilient and sustainable.

Equally, resilient supply chains require regional manufacturing ecosystems. To mitigate the risks from global supply chain disruptions, it’s essential to support local manufacturing, even when offshore manufacturing costs are lower.

This will require government support and strategic investment in regional manufacturing innovation.

While New Zealand’s supply chains face significant challenges, there are great opportunities to reshape them for a more resilient and sustainable future.

By integrating circular economy principles, using advanced technologies and fostering regional collaboration, New Zealand can build supply chains that are prepared for future crises and which also contribute to the country’s sustainability goals. Läs mer…

In July 2023, after the release of the damning Robodebt Royal Commission report, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared:

it was wrong, it was illegal, it should never have happened and it should never happen again.

A major finding was some senior public servants were overly responsive to the wishes of ministers, to the detriment of the general public. The report describes an environment that was:

fraught […] characterised by a powerful drive for savings, strongly expressed ministerial policy positions […] and intense pressure experienced by public servants.

Investigating the scheme, which ran under the Morrison government, Commissioner Catherine Holmes was disturbed by “the lengths to which public servants were prepared to go to oblige ministers”, undermining the concept of impartiality and frank and fearless advice.

The release of Rick Morton’s new book Mean Streak brings a renewed focus on the lessons from Robodebt. To learn from such a serious crisis, organisations need to openly confront what happened, discuss and understand what the failure means. What were the systemic causes? What cultural failings did it expose? How can we ensure a similar disaster does not happen again?

Our research found little evidence these questions were being asked by many public service leaders immediately after the royal commission.

In the six months after the royal commission report’s release, almost half of the heads of Australian Public Service (APS) agencies apparently decided they didn’t need to communicate with their staff about Robodebt and explain what it meant for them.

What did department leaders do?

Learning from the failure of Robodebt will take time. In 2024, the public service is investigating and punishing some of those involved and implementing a new integrity plan.

Our research focuses on the six months after the release of the royal commission report: July to December 2023. Research shows the immediate post-crisis period is crucial to effective learning.

But before organisations can respond, they have to interpret and understand the meaning of the failure.

Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet Glyn Davis, sent out an all-staff email after the report was released.
Lukas Coch/AAP

Just as the public turns to political leaders in a crisis, employees look to management. Leaders’ communication, whether by email, an all staff video, or a town hall meeting, is crucial.

These messages set the organisational narrative that explains what happened and why, what the repercussions are, how it can be resolved, and what lessons (if any) should be drawn from the crisis.

Three days after the royal commission report was released, the secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Glyn Davis, and Australian Public Service Commissioner Gordon de Brouwer, emailed all public service employees saying:

we are committed to working through the findings in an open and constructive way with you — the APS — and with the Australian public.

Our focus, however, is on how leaders of individual departments and agencies responded. Using Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, we asked how leaders communicated with staff in the crucial period straight after the commission reported.

Departments are where policy development occurs and they often work closely with ministers.

But only half of all public servants work for departments. The rest work across the 100 or so agencies.

While most department heads communicated with their staff about Robodebt, only 54% of agencies’ leaders did.

The 50 agencies that did not communicate with their staff about the meaning of Robodebt in the months following the report employ more than 45,000 people, more than 25% of the public service.

Not my problem mentality

Three large departments told us that “no documents were identified” or “the Department does not hold documents […] that meet the terms of the request”. This indicates they did not communicate with staff in the first six months after the Robodebt report was handed down. The departments were:

It is not clear why those secretaries decided not to write to their staff directly about Robodebt, but the absence of communication sends a message.

This was explicit in some responses. For example, in declining our request, we were told that the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority:

[…] is not an outwardly facing organisation and as such does not provide payments to individual recipients. Consequently, it is not required to respond to the Royal Commission and there are no documents that are relevant to your request.

Even when there was some communication, agencies were not necessarily addressing the cultural issues. For example, the Clean Energy Regulator was focused on public perception:

there is a heightened sense of scrutiny on regulators […] please be vigilant if you are approached by anybody working for a media outlet.

In such circumstances, it is unlikely cultural change will occur.

Some positive signs

On the positive side, there were examples of agencies that addressed the serious implications of Robodebt for their work, which is likely to improve their organisational culture.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) identified a number of recommendations “albeit directed at other agencies […] that ASIC should act on”. They noted that “given most of our people come from the private sector”, there was a need to improve training on “our obligations as public servants”.

Read more:
Two former federal departmental heads breached public service code 25 times in Robodebt scandal

Similarly, Australian statistician David Gruen emphasised creating a culture where “people feel supported if and when they seek to raise difficult issues with their colleagues or superiors”. Similar discussions were had at AUSTRAC.

The report detailed a culture where public servants were overly responsive to the wishes of ministers.
Lukas Coch/AAP

Departments are closest to ministers, so we hoped their communications would address problems in the relationships between senior public servants and ministers, a key issue exposed in the Robodebt case.

Unfortunately, only four departments discussed over-responsiveness with their staff or in executive meetings, in the period studied.

The department of industry and science was the most comprehensive. Secretary Meghan Quinn wrote to staff several times, reflecting that the “findings go to the heart of leadership and culture and this should be our focus going forward”. The department’s integrity branch wrote to staff:

public servants [must] […] provide the government with advice that is frank and honest. If you ever feel pressured to do or sign something you are not comfortable with, it’s important you speak with your supervisors […] you have the Executive’s backing not to put your name to anything that is not true or not in the public interest.

However, this was one of the few departments where senior staff confronted these core issues directly in the early months after the royal commission reported. Most departments did not name or discuss the underlying cause of the failures: over-responsiveness to ministers at the expense of protecting the public.

While many of the errors of Robodebt can be solved through new procedures and rules, changing public service culture is a bigger learning project.

It requires a shift in norms and reweighting the competing duties of public servants. They must serve elected ministers, but equally, they must serve the public by ensuring probity, fairness and legality.

Robodebt illustrated the harm that occurs when the balance tips too far towards ministers and away from the public interest.

That this was rarely part of the communication from public service leaders to their staff in the immediate aftermath of the royal commission does not bode well for lessons being learnt from the crisis. Läs mer…

So, on we go His welfare is of my concern No burden is he to bear We’ll get there For I know He would not encumber me He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother – He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother by The Hollies

Writer–Director David Vincent Smith’s reference to The Hollies’ 1969 hit as the title for his new film is not without irony.

Max (Sam Corlett) – drug-dependent and out of control – is clearly a crushing weight on his sister Jade (Leila George) and mother Bev (Greta Scacchi).

The opening scene of this compelling new Australian production throws us right into the chaos he visits upon them. The desperate, violent, off-camera shouts of abuse from Max as his sister sneaks past concerned neighbours and into their mother’s house are obviously nothing new.

Bev, seated at the kitchen table, shows none of the anxiety we see in Jade. Perhaps she’s beyond reacting to Max’s outbursts. Perhaps she looks past the ugly side of her son through eyes that see only with a mother’s love.

Jade, however, is at the end of her tether. Everything she’s tried has failed. She’s left with just one last desperate measure.

This desperate measure didn’t come to David Vincent Smith as a narrative conceit. It was much closer to home.

One night, Smith got a call from his mother who told him his own drug-addicted brother was outside their home. As he explains in the film’s press kit:

I could hear smashing windows in the background as he tried to claw his way inside. I was done. There had been many years of violence, emergency rooms and mental trauma […] my own life was suffering as a result […] what could I do? I had an idea – I could kidnap him. Take him out to the desert, throw away the car keys and resolve this once and for all.

Smith didn’t pursue that extreme thought in real life. Instead, it found its way onto the screen, first as a short “proof of concept” film – I’m Not Hurting You, which played at the 2019 Sydney Film Festival – and then as He Ain’t Heavy, his first feature film.

The kidnapping and withdrawal

Jade does indeed kidnap her brother. She sedates him and brings him to their dead grandparents’ home in the country, which Jade and Bev have been packing up in preparation to for its sale.

Here, we see Jade’s methodical preparation of the room where she will incarcerate Max, the food she will feed him, the posters and pamphlets that inform her how to manage a drug addict’s withdrawal.

The film follows Jade (Leila George), who has spent much of her life trying to bring her brother Max out of his drug addiction.
Bonsai Fims

The choice of the grandparents’ home is significant for our understanding of this fractured family. Here we find evidence that things weren’t always like this.

We see old photo albums of happier times, toys and games that are now just reminders of fun family visits, a guitar that was once part of Max’s promising singing career, the nearby waterhole where lazy days were spent, and pencil marks on the door jamb recording the siblings’ growth.

Perhaps the resonance of their better days will be as powerful as the enforced withdrawal in bringing Max back. But, of course, Jade’s best-laid plans don’t go as she might have hoped.

Sam Corlett, who plays Max, also plays the role of Leif Eriksson in the popular Netflix series Vikings: Valhalla.
Bonsai Fims

In many ways, Max’s drug addiction is what Alfred Hitchcock would have called a McGuffin – the story element you think the film is about, when in fact the film is about something else entirely.

In this case, that something else is love: the love Jade feels for her brother that leads to this extreme action, the love Bev feels for her son that makes her vulnerable to his unpredictable and violent behaviour, and the absence of love Max feels for himself – a void that sucks him into a self-destructive spiral.

He Ain’t Heavy is essentially a three-handed chamber piece that delivers a triumvirate of distinctive, grounded and well-delineated performances, each one serving a sharply written screenplay imbued with an authenticity that reflects Smith’s lived experience.

Bev (Greta Scacchi) feels a lot of lover for her son, which makes her vulnerable to his unpredictable and violent behaviour.
Bonsai Fims

A powerful portrait of familial love

Without giving any spoilers, there are some narrative conveniences along the way that might detract from a lesser film. In this case, however, they are easy to forgive, in favour of the powerful viewing experience they help deliver.

If only for the curiosity factor, it’s worth noting Leila George is also Greta Scacchi’s real-life daughter (her father is Vincent D’Onofrio). This obviously doesn’t hurt when it comes to casting for family resemblance. But this tidbit of trivia is quickly forgotten in the moments of each of their finely crafted, absorbing performances.

In Smith’s earlier short film version, we see a plaque on the grandparents’ kitchen wall with the following aphorism:

RECIPE FOR LIFE – pinch of persistence, dash of kindness, spoonful of laughter, heap of love.

This is a story about a family that has exhausted its persistence, and for whom laughter is something of the past. But Jade’s extreme action is really an act of kindness. Both she and Bev, in their own ways, are driven by that heap of love.

He Ain’t Heavy is a film that deserves the same heap of love from its audience.

The film serves a sharply written screenplay imbued with authenticity.
Bonsai Fims

He Ain’t Heavy is in select cinemas from October 17. Läs mer…

With British Columbians going to the polls this week, a whole host of key issues are on the agenda. Among these issues stands the future of species at risk legislation in B.C. — and perhaps with it Canada as a whole.

Canada, with its vast area, is home to 18 terrestrial and 13 aquatic ecozones and a staggering 140,000 plant and animal species. However, Canada’s abundant biodiversity is under threat from ongoing human-caused extinctions.

As polar regions warm at an accelerated rate, Canada’s species face increased peril.

Canada’s current laws aren’t doing enough to protect species at risk, and the time for action to make new laws or strengthen the existing ones is now.

Read more:
B.C. election: Party proposals on climate action point in opposite directions

Gaps in existing law

Now, you may be wondering, “doesn’t Canada already have species at risk laws?”

The federal government enacted the Species at Risk Act (SARA) in 2002, however, its impacts have been far from perfect.

A major issue with SARA is that it does not apply everywhere. Canada’s legal system divides power between federal and provincial governments. Wildlife, including species at risk, are mostly the provinces’ responsibility. SARA only applies to aquatic species, migratory birds and species on federal land (like national parks).

Unfortunately, most animals are not adept at reading maps, and a SARA-protected species can lose its protection simply by crossing a jurisdictional boundary. SARA does include exceptions where the federal government can intervene if a province is not doing enough to protect a particular species. But in practice the provinces have mostly been left to their own devices.

A two-year-old female orca calf swims in Little Espinosa Inlet near Zeballos, B.C. in April 2024.
(Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press via AP)

These jurisdictional dynamics, characteristic of Canadian federal politics, have created variations in species protection efforts across the country.

Of Canada’s nine common law provinces (excluding Québec and the territories), five have designated species at risk laws. The other four — British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island — have only limited protections within other laws.

So, does it matter that only some provinces have species at risk legislation? To address this question, we compared the protections provisions of each province, and found that those with designated species at risk laws consistently provided much more robust protection frameworks than those that didn’t.

Read more:
B.C. election: Debate over the rights of gender-diverse youth continues as their school safety declines

‘Endangered’ does not mean protected

Species protection efforts are marked by numerous momentous decision-points. Perhaps the most significant decision of all is whether to list a species as at risk.

Most Canadian jurisdictions use committees of experts — including Indigenous knowledge holders and conservation scientists — to evaluate the risk to a species. In some provinces, like Nova Scotia, this becomes the official species at risk list.

In others, including federally, the committee decision is only a recommendation and the relevant minister has final discretion on listing. Ministerial discretion has led to certain types of species — particularly ones whose harvest or habitats are economically important — to repeatedly not be listed.

Spawning sockeye salmon make their way up the Adams River in Roderick Haig-Brown Provincial Park near Chase, B.C. in October 2014. Sockeye salmon have been assessed as endangered by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, but are not listed federally.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

Discretion is not limited to listing decisions. In jurisdictions with species at risk laws, discretion allows governments to not enforce protections that interfere with other priorities. For example, a provincial government deeply invested in forestry could use ministerial discretion to de-emphasize protections for old growth forests, despite providing critical habitats for species at risk.

Where species at risk laws are insufficient, leaving room for discretion only weakens already limp protections. The only way to improve conditions for species at risk is to support governments that promise to prioritize the environment, and continually hold them to those promises.

Promises without progress

B.C. has over 2,000 plants, animals and habitats listed at risk. This is eight times more than Ontario, which has the second most listed species at risk with just over 250. Despite this, B.C. has some of the least complete legal protections, barely edging out Alberta to not come last in our scoring comparison. The province also has a history of promising species at risk law reform with no concrete action.

B.C. clearly illustrates how promises do not always lead to results.

In 2017, the B.C. NDP formed the province’s government under an agreement with the B.C. Green Party to prioritize environmental issues — including protecting species at risk. The 2017 mandate letter charged George Heyman, the Minister of Environment, to develop species at risk legislation.

An endangered Burrowing Owl is seen at the Calgary Zoo Conservation Centre near Calgary, Alta., in January 2019.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

After 2020’s mid-coronavirus snap election, the B.C. NDP gained a majority government without needing support from the B.C. Green Party. Consequently, 2020’s mandate letter showed weakening environmental priorities. The letter signalled a move away from species at risk legislation and instead directed the minister with “continuing to work with partners to protect species at risk”.

Perhaps realizing this language could not be further softened, new premier David Eby made no mention of species at risk or wildlife in the 2022 mandate letter.

Nonetheless, species at risk protections are back on the political agenda in the ongoing election, with both the B.C. NDP and B.C. Conservative parties promising “made-in-B.C.” and “science-based” biodiversity initiatives and species at risk legislation.

However, the result of the election will have a significant impact on the strength of any new laws, as the NDP’s platform focuses on overall biodiversity and increasing protection to critical habitats such as old-growth forests, while the Conservative’s seems mostly aimed at working with hunters to increase ungulate populations to allow larger hunting quotas.

Uncertain future

In recent legislative debates, B.C.’s ministers responsible for species at risk (and their habitats) have explained delays in making a species at risk law by increasingly emphasizing that they are taking the time to include Indigenous perspectives.

While it is positive that legislators are acknowledging the necessity of collaborating with Indigenous Nations on environmental laws, it is hard not to read repeated references to the length of consultation as deflecting responsibility for government inaction onto Indigenous communities.

Read more:
Swing state voters along the Great Lakes love cleaner water and beaches − and candidates from both parties have long fished for support there

Elections are impending across the country and environmental interests are back in the conversation. However, any progress could easily be lost if new governments are not committed to support environmental interests, both during and after the election cycle.

It is vital to support political parties with an environmental platform aimed at protecting biodiversity. Canada’s species at risk need voters to keep them in mind at the ballot boxes. Läs mer…

Right now, in provincial election campaigns across Canada, voters are trying to work out which political parties and local candidates might be their best representatives.

In British Columbia, the NDP and Conservative parties are running neck and neck ahead of this weekend’s election. In New Brunswick, the race between the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives is equally tight. In Saskatchewan, Premier Scott Moe’s lead over the NDP appears to be more comfortable.

In each of these elections — and in the important municipal elections that are also happening across the country in weeks and months ahead — voters face the task of working out which candidate is best equipped to serve as their representative.

In the work that our politicians do on our behalf — their legislative votes, their policy advocacy, their casework, their community service — we want them to behave in ways that reflect our policy attitudes and priorities.

But do they?

Pathways to representation

In political science research, the relationship between politicians and citizens is typically thought to arise through one of two pathways.

In the first pathway, politicians represent their constituents’ preferences because they share those preferences — they agree with their constituents. We call this the “congruence” pathway.

In the second pathway, politicians represent their constituents’ preferences because they know those preferences and choose to represent them. This is the “knowledge” pathway.

Both pathways are thought to lead to the same destination: representation of constituents’ preferences by politicians.

But think for a moment about which pathway you would prefer for your representative to take: congruence or knowledge? Which option do you think provides the best representation for citizens?

We’ll tell you our own answers to these questions shortly. But first we need to understand just how different these pathways really are.

Are you choosing the correct path when you vote? A dog walks past an advance poll voting station in Lasalle, Que., in September 2024 ahead of a byelection.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christinne Muschi

Measuring policy representation

In an upcoming article, our goal was to explore how well politicians perform on the congruence pathway and how many perform well on the knowledge pathway.

To answer these questions, we began with a very large survey of the Canadian public, asking more than 10,000 Canadians for their opinions on nine policy issues. These included gun control, immigration, trade with China, taxes, public transit investment and climate change — a wide variety of important policies.

We used this survey to make an estimate of the proportion of people who supported and opposed each policy statement across hundreds of municipalities.

Then, using the Canadian Municipal Barometer’s annual survey of municipal politicians, we asked politicians to guess the percentage of their constituents who support each policy statement. We also asked for each politician’s personal opinion on each statement.

These two surveys — one of the Canadian public, and the other of hundreds of Canadian municipal politicians — allowed us to measure and compare the two pathways.

Conservative Leader John Rustad, front second right, is flanked by local candidates as he listens during a campaign stop after the party’s election platform was released, in Vancouver, B.C., on Oct. 15, 2024.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Two pathways or one?

Let’s start with the good news: In general, politicians do a good job on both pathways. Across nine issues and hundreds of politicians, we found that nearly 60 per cent of politicians performed well on both pathways, and another 19 per cent performed well on at least one pathway.

The bad news is that politicians’ performance on both pathways is highly variable. On some policy issues, like gun control, nearly all politicians perform extremely well. On other issues, like immigration, politicians struggle.

But the most striking thing we discovered in our data was that the two pathways are closely related: Politicians who performed well on one pathway also tended to perform well on the other.

It turns out that these “pathways to representation” may not be very distinct after all.

People look on as Liberal Leader Susan Holt kicks off the official launch of the party’s campaign in Fredericton on Sept. 8, 2024. The provincial election is on Oct. 21.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Hina Alam

Choosing your pathway

So, returning to our earlier question:

Which should you prefer? Should citizens choose politicians who represent their views through the congruence pathway or the knowledge pathway?

Our research suggests that most of the time, citizens don’t have to make the choice, because the two skills are so strongly connected. But suppose you did have to choose — what should you prioritize?

Personally, we’d choose congruence and would recommend focusing on finding a candidate who agrees with you on the things you care about, and support them.

Why prefer congruence? Because recent research shows that politicians struggle to think beyond their own beliefs when making guesses about their constituents’ attitudes. When politicians think about what their constituents want, they tend to assume that their constituents agree with them on various issues.

Our research has shown that they’re often right — congruence and knowledge are closely related. But this isn’t always the case, and politicians tend to think (much like the rest of us) that other people agree with them even when, sometimes, they don’t.

Read more:
Power to the people: How Canada can build a more connected and responsive Parliament

Ask policy questions

The good news is that politicians do tend to do reasonably well on both pathways, according our findings, so in real-world elections, you won’t typically be faced with this choice.

But when a political candidate comes to your door asking for your vote, here’s our advice: don’t quiz them about local public opinion, or ask them how often they’d conduct public opinion polls after they get elected.

Instead, ask them some questions about policy issues you care deeply about, and pick the candidate who shares your views.

You’ll be making your choices based on congruence — one of the two possible pathways to representation. But our research suggests that if your local representative aligns well with constituents, they’ll be a good performer on knowledge as well. Läs mer…

More and more of our lives are being spent on digital platforms. And, as we spend more time online, we are more vulnerable to a wide range of risks. This fact is particularly true for women and girls.

A 2024 global survey by Microsoft found that women are more likely than men to experience any type of risk online. And 25 per cent of teen girls reported experiencing sexual risks in their online lives, compared to 19 per cent of teen boys.

When online violence or abuse occurs to people because of their gender or gender presentation, it falls under the umbrella term gender-based online violence and abuse, also known as tech-facilitated gender-based violence. Unfortunately, incidents of this type of online violence seem to be increasing.

Appropriate responses need to be created within this dire landscape.

Some governments are creating policies to address gender-based online violence and abuse. For example, Australia has passed legislation mandating dating apps to update and enforce codes of conduct that address instances of sexual abuse.

The Canadian government tabled the Online Harms Act in February 2024, which, if passed, would introduce a regulatory framework that demands social media platforms moderate violent content. These legislative acts aim to hold digital platforms accountable for creating methods for reporting and deleting violent content by requiring them to assume full responsibility.

Governments must hold digital platforms accountable for the violence that happens on them, but are such approaches enough?

Our recent research suggests that some men might not even recognize if and how they are complicit in gender-based online violence. Cultural ideas, like rape myths, may influence their spheres of understanding. And, in these cases, they may not be compelled to follow a code of conduct set up by government or platform policy.

Governments must hold digital platforms accountable for the violence that happens on them, but it is also important to address prevalent narratives and myths about rape and sexual abuse.
(Shutterstock)

Rape myths

Rape myths are prejudicial and false beliefs that shape societal attitudes towards gendered violence. Examples of such myths are seen, for instance, when blame is put on the victim, the rapist is excused, and the rape is minimized and even sometimes justified.

In our study, we took a validated psychological scale for measuring the presence of rape myths and adapted it to understand how myths about gender-based online violence might influence behaviours that cause it, or at least prevent people from intervening.

The rape myths acceptance scale shows the degrees to which people accept certain myths that normalize sexual violence (such as, “she was asking for it” or “he didn’t mean to”). This scale is used to show how taken-for-granted assumptions contribute to cultures where victims of sexual violence are blamed or subject to disbelief when they come forward.

We adapted the rape myth acceptance scale because responses to it can reveal the cultural narratives that normalize many forms of gendered violence.

Indeed, research on rape myth acceptance points to the fact that we cannot fully address the acts of gender-based violence without first addressing these narratives. And gender-based online violence and abuse is not an exception.

What we found

Once we had adapted the rape myths acceptance scale to account for gender-based online violence and abuse, we used it in a survey of 1,297 Canadian men between 18 and 30 years old.

We used a likert scale to determine the degree to which young men agreed with statements like “claims of online gender-based violence are often weaponized against men” or “people who post about gender are sexuality are looking to start arguments.” We found that certain toxic myths and cultural narratives are prevalent among some respondents.

We found that certain rape myths were prevalent among some respondents.
(Shutterstock)

In particular, we found four myths that were more strongly endorsed: 1. It wasn’t really gender-based online abuse; 2. he didn’t mean to; 3. gender-based online abuse is a deviant event, and 4. she lied. These myths trivialize the impact of the violence, minimize the blame of those enacting the harm and discredit the voices of targets.

We noticed that as many as 30 per cent of our survey respondents agreed with many of these myths — a significant number of young Canadian men taking these regressive attitudes towards gender-based online violence.

As we looked to other research to explain the prevalence of these ideas, we also found that similar ideas are found in manosphere-related influencers — people like Andrew Tate, who are a growing source of hateful ideas about women and gender-nonconforming people.

Thinking ahead

We cannot address gender-based online violence and abuse by simply reporting and deleting offensive content. It also won’t stop by simply mandating that platforms have codes of conduct in place. In order to tackle the problem, we must addressing the cultural narratives that sustain it.

Everyone — from academics to policymakers to the public — needs to think about how we can address toxic beliefs to create long-lasting change and foster safer online communities. We can aim for such change in multiple ways.

We can create educational initiatives that promote inclusive and accessible narratives about the nature and importance of gendered violence. We can encourage citizens to engage in bystander intervention when they encounter these narratives. And finally, we need to understand why some young men take comfort in ideas that promote toxic expressions of masculinity.

Practitioners and researchers must keep exploring the nature and prevalence of myths surrounding gender-based online violence and abuse. We need to spend time with young men and ask them questions about what they think it is to be a man, and we need to provide positive examples of masculinity in order to make manosphere-style ideas less attractive. Läs mer…

The treatment of sexual minority and gender-diverse youth in Canadian schools continues to be a contentious issue among parents and political parties, particularly in provinces like Alberta and British Columbia.

In the run-up to the upcoming B.C. election, discussions around a sexual minority framework for schools and the SOGI 123 initiative are prominent.

What is SOGI 123?

Introduced into B.C.’s public schools in 2016, SOGI 123 aims to make schools safer and more inclusive for students of all gender identities and sexual orientations. The initiative provides resources to help educators combat and address discrimination and bullying, and foster supportive and inclusive environments for 2SLGBTQ+ students.

The push for SOGI 123 was informed by a 2014 study which included data from the McCreary Centre Society’s 2013 BC Adolescent Health Survey. That study showed that schools with an established Gay Straight Alliance or Gender Sexuality Alliance, along with anti-homophobic policies, lowered the odds of sexual minority students reporting discrimination, mental health issues and suicide attempts compared to students in schools without such initiatives. Notably, heterosexual students also benefited from these inclusive settings.

In 2018, a subsequent BC Adolescent Health Survey of more than 38,000 youth aged 12-19 — including almost 1,000 children who identified as gender diverse — revealed that gender-diverse youth, including those identifying as transgender or non-binary, faced high rates of bullying, both in-person and online. The findings highlighted the importance of strong school and family relationships, which were linked to better mental health and lower rates of substance use and suicidal thoughts.

Despite hopes that SOGI 123 would bridge the health and well-being disparity gap for gender-diverse and cisgender youth, recent events may be undermining those efforts. Over the past two years, there has been a notable rise in vocal opposition to the rights of trans and non-binary students across the country, with schools becoming a backdrop for protests and counter-protests.

In response to these challenges, researchers at the University of British Columbia teamed up again with McCreary Centre Society to analyze the BC Adolescent Health Survey data from 2023 to see what, if anything, has changed for trans, non-binary, and questioning young people in B.C. since 2018.

Protestors gather at the legislature during a rally for trans rights in Edmonton, Feb. 4, 2024 after Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced the most restrictive policy for trans and non-binary youth in Canada, that critics say will increase the risk of abuse and self-harm.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Amber Bracken

Key findings from the 2024 report

Improved family support: Some positive findings from the 2024 report include improved family support for gender-diverse youth with a noted reduction over time in these young people running away or getting kicked out of home.

Decreased feelings of safety: Results for students’ experiences at school were less positive, with decreases in feeling safe at school for both gender-diverse and cisgender youth. Gender-diverse young people were the least likely to report feeling safe in different parts of their school, and particularly in less supervised locations such as changing rooms and washrooms.

Increased reports of bullying: The majority of gender-diverse youth had experienced at least one type of in-person or online bullying in the past year, and rates of experiencing online bullying were at least twice those of cisgender boys.

Rising discrimination: Compared to five years earlier, there was an increase in gender-diverse youth reporting they had experienced discrimination, and the majority had experienced at least one form of discrimination in the past year. The most common location where discrimination occurred was at school: 32 per cent of trans girls and 57 per cent of trans boys reported they had experienced discrimination at school, compared to 29 per cent of cisgender girls and 20 per cent of cisgender boys.

School connectedness is crucial for mental well-being: Similar to past studies, strong school connections remained a strong protective factor for health and well-being, linked to reduced suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts. For example, trans boys with the highest school connectedness were 99 per cent less likely to report seriously considering suicide in the past year compared to those with lower school connections. Likewise, trans girls with strong connections were 8.7 times more likely to report good or excellent mental health compared to other trans girls with low school connections.

B.C. election issue

As the debate about SOGI 123 continues during this election cycle, the recent data from more than 76,000 Grade 7-12 students serves as a crucial and timely reminder.

It highlights the importance of considering the experiences and perspectives of B.C.’s youth in discussions about how to create safe and inclusive school environments for all. Läs mer…

Google Street View has fast become a tool for people trying to get the feel for a community, look at real estate – and sometimes prank the tech giant when its mapping car drives by. But it also has the potential to help prevent falls and injuries in New Zealand’s urban environments.

Falls are a leading cause of injury and accidental death among older adults, but identifying the location of risks outside is labour and time intensive.

In our new research, we have created a tool using Google Street View to audit the places where people walk.

The goal of our new tool – Fall-SAFE – is to identify the risks in New Zealand’s built environments and create a database for local councils and community groups to understand where an older person might fall – and why.

A costly risk

Annually, one-in-three people over 65 are injured in a fall. This figure rises to one-in-two for people over 80.

In 2023 alone, ACC received 236,985 new claims for falls from people over the age of 60. Many of these falls resulted in serious injury, such as a hip fracture, hospitalisation or even death.

It’s not just older people who are at risk of falling – though they are, by far, the largest group. Last year, ACC paid out NZ$2.15 billion to cover claims for falls.

The flow-on effect from falls extends further than just medical recovery. Older people who have fallen outside, or who fear falling due to perceived risks, may be less willing to go for walks. They then miss out on the physical, mental and social benefits of this sort of activity.

Google Street View has become increasingly popular. But it can also be used as a tool to assess fall risk on footpaths and other outside areas.
Smith Collection/Getty Images

Assessing the environment

Using data from ambulance service Hato Hone St John, we identified 2,117 falls between July 2016 and June 2018 in urban areas involving adults aged 65 and over. Wellington was excluded as the city uses a different ambulance service.

Auditors then used Google Street View to assess the locations of these falls and identify risks in the built environment that might have contributed. These risks included trip hazards, uneven foot paths, obstructions (such as overgrown bushes) and slopes.

Auditors used a “drop-and-spin” approach to their assessment, where they completed a 360° audit of the fall location. The Google Maps imagery was set to be as close to the date of the accident as possible.

Drop-and-spin virtual audits are quicker than physical audits, but similarly reliable. Furthermore, drop-and-spin virtual audits enable assessment over large geographic areas that would be difficult to examine in person.

Understanding New Zealand’s streets

After examining the different fall sites, we gained a better understanding of where falls happened and the hazards that could have contributed to the falls.

Half of all the falls had occurred in residential locations (49.1%) and one quarter occurred in commercial locations (22.4%). A further 16.2% of the falls had occurred in “other” locations (such as rural or industrial areas).

Over 60% of fall sites had at least one trip hazard due to poorly maintained footpaths. The most common obstructions were manholes, service covers or grates (71.5 %), poles (65.4%), utility boxes (46.6%) and overhanging vegetation (39.5%). Other obstructions such as bus shelters, chairs and tables, or drains were noted at 64.5% of the sites.

Three-quarters of the falls had occurred in locations that had a flat or gentle slope (76.3%). Only 15.5% of the falls had occurred on a moderate slope, while 8.2% had occurred on a steep slope.

Most (95.6%) of the fall locations had a normal kerb height (ten centimetres). Few locations had no kerbs (2.3%) or storm drains (2%). Streetlights were present in most fall locations, either on one side of the street (including partial or very sparse locations) (54%) or on both sides (44%). Streetlights were not visible in 0.9% of sites.

Of all the locations we assessed, just under 6% had no obvious risk whatsoever. This seems to indicate that external hazards were a contributing factor to the vast majority of falls – though without information from the person who fell, it is hard to know for sure.

A cheaper and faster option

The current approach to assessing the safety of urban environments – sending people out to physically look at a footpath to identify issues – can be time consuming and costly.

And the money to do the work is simply unavailable. Several councils, including Hamilton and Masterton, have announced significant cuts in funding from the New Zealand Transport Agency to maintain and repair footpaths and cycle lanes.

Another problem is that these assessors may not fully understand the experiences of older people in these locations. A hazard for someone aged 65+ may not seem like one for someone in their 30s or 40s.

Understanding the factors that contribute to a fall for older people – such as obstructions and trip hazards – allows city planners to address problems in the built environment.

Our free auditing tool provides a way for councils and advocacy groups to look at environments to understand the risks. Our research applied this to places where we know people had fallen, but the tool can be used to assess the risk of any environment.

Investing the time and effort now to address these fall risks early could save money – and lives – further down the track. Läs mer…

Today the perilous state of the environment is often in the news. Many stories describe how Earth is being damaged by human beings and discuss ways to prevent this.

These concerns are not new. Millennia ago, people in ancient Greece and Rome already knew humans were damaging the natural world. Literature from these ancient times contains many references to the environment and the harms it suffers.

Many of these insights ring true today. Polluting the soil we farm, air we breathe and water we drink has clear repercussions. We can only degrade the environment for so long before it will come back to haunt us.

So let’s explore what the ancient Greeks and Romans can teach us about nature and our place in the world.

An agent of destruction

The ancient Roman writer Pliny the Elder, who lived in the first century AD, was concerned about the way human beings were abusing Earth. In his work titled Natural History, he wrote:

We taint the rivers and the elements of nature, and the air itself, which is the main support of life, we turn into a medium for the destruction of life.

He thought of the planet as something humanity ought to protect rather than harm, because we owe our existence to mother Earth:

It is my pleasant duty first of all to champion Earth’s cause and to support her as the parent of all things.

Two millennia later, Pliny’s words seem directly relevant to us.

In the modern world, concerns about the health of the environment have become one of the hottest political topics.

For example, a survey last year of almost 20,000 young people in Australia showed 44% think the environment is the most important issue of our time.

A 19th century imaginary portrait of Pliny the Elder. Artist unknown.
Wikimedia Commons

A growing understanding

Roman writers noted their soldiers eventually poisoned the water and the air around their camps. The military writer Flavius Renatus Vegetius, who lived around the fourth and fifth centuries AD, observed:

if a numerous army continues long in one place in the summer or in the autumn, the waters become corrupt, and the air infected, from whence proceed malignant and fatal distempers, which nothing but frequent change of encampments can prevent.

Roman writers also had a lot to say about the pollution of the river Tiber, which runs through Rome.

The biographer Suetonius, who was born around 70AD, tells us the river had been “filled with rubbish and narrowed by jutting buildings” before emperor Augustus (63BC-14AD) took action to clean it up.

Bad policies had polluted the river’s waters. For example, the emperor Nero (37–68AD) dumped huge amounts of rotten grain into the river.

The Roman poet Juvenal (of the first and second centuries AD) referred to the Tiber as a “gushing sewer”. And the physician Galen (129–216AD) said the Tiber was so polluted that fish caught there were not safe to eat.

Measures to protect the environment

The Greeks and Romans introduced various measures to prevent or reduce environmental harm.

In 420BC, for example, the Athenians introduced a law to protect the river Ilissus:

It is forbidden to soak the coats [of animals] in the Ilissus above the sanctuary of Heracles and to tan them. It is forbidden to throw the residue of the laundering into the river.

Modern researchers think this measure might have helped the Ilissus stay clean. That’s because authors writing in the fourth century BC (after the law was introduced) describe the Ilissus as a pure and beautiful river.

The Ilissus river was a picture of health in the 19th century.
Edward Dodwell, Wikimedia Commons

Other measures to reduce pollution included banning public defecation and urination. Bans on washing clothes or throwing rubbish into rivers were also common. But it’s unlikely the public adhered to these restrictions all the time.

Some rulers also tried to do public works such as building sewers and aqueducts to clean up pollution.

For example, the emperor Nerva, who ruled 96–98AD, undertook a series of construction projects to make Rome cleaner and healthier.

Sextus Julius Frontinus (35–103AD), manager of Rome’s aqueducts, tells us that thanks to Nerva:

the appearance of the city is clean and altered; the air is purer; and the causes of the unwholesome atmosphere, which gave the air of the city so bad a name in former times, are now removed.

Damaging the environment harms our health

Sometime in the late first or early second century AD, the Roman aristocrat and lawyer Pliny the Younger (61/62–112AD) wrote a letter to the emperor Trajan, who ruled 98–117AD. He complained about a public health issue in the city of Amastris, in modern Turkey:

Among the chief features of Amastris, Sir, is a long street of great beauty. Throughout the length of this, however, there runs what is called a stream, but is in fact a filthy sewer, a disgusting eyesore which gives off a noxious stench. The health and appearance alike of the city will benefit if it is covered in, and with your permission this shall be done.

The emperor replied that he was happy for this to be done:

There is every reason, my dear Pliny, to cover the water which you say flows through the city of Amastris, if it is a danger to health while it remains uncovered.

This story shows the ancients were aware that the health of the land, air and water is intertwined with human health. So when the environment is in an unhealthy state, this is also damaging for our health and wellbeing.

The modern world can learn from antiquity

The message from the ancient Greeks and Romans is as true today for us as it was for them. As humanity grapples with multiple environmental crises, it’s worth reflecting on this age-old knowledge.

The bottom line is, keeping the planet in a healthy state is good not just for the environment, but also for ourselves.

In a modern world where stories about pollution and related environmental problems frequently appear in the news, this message of the ancients is well worth remembering. Läs mer…