The Latest Breaking News from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

For customers who don’t have the freedom to choose where they shop, technological advancements — particularly artificial intelligence (AI) and intrusive personal data collection — are making price discrimination, inflation and lower-quality goods increasingly likely. Vulnerable consumers are most at risk.

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, a global reckoning on anti-Black racism ignited protests, conversations and demand for action. Across North America, universities scrambled to make public commitments to racial justice. They pledged to make changes and address systemic inequalities.

Fears of foreign interference loom over the Canadian election. The federal inquiry on foreign interference revealed that entities aligned with India and China interfered in recent elections, albeit without major impact on the results, and concluded that disinformation campaigns pose the greatest threat to Canada’s long-term democratic health.

Today, both climate action and equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) are increasingly under attack. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the United States, where the Trump administration is leading a concerted effort to obstruct climate action and penalize EDI.

According to a recent poll conducted by Ipsos for Global News, Canadians’ top priorities are the cost of living, health care, and housing availability and affordability.

Issues surrounding students’ data and schools’ use of educational technology (EdTech) are in the spotlight as school boards in six provinces respond to a “significant cyberattack” on an administration software platform.

Donald Trump’s proposed new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is already earning praise and criticism in the United States weeks before the president-elect’s inauguration.

A teen in British Columbia recently became critically ill after becoming infected with H5N1. H5N1 is a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu.

As the world gathers in Azerbaijan for this year’s annual UN climate conference (COP29), the urgency to act on climate change has never been greater.

Video games have always been a showcase for new technologies. They help create new audiences and new markets. In the 1990s, computer parts manufacturers advertised the speed of their video cards in terms of the frames they could render per second of popular video games like Quake.

In 2023, more than half of Canadian children (up to five years old) were in child care and more than 25 per cent of young children were on a wait list. Many children are in child care for several hours per day and multiple days per week. Parents control children’s…