A demonstration against AI data centres outside the council chambers at city hall in Hamilton in July, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nick Iwanyshyn

When a nurse in Thunder Bay opens a patient’s chart or a shopper in Halifax taps a bank card, the request travels somewhere physical — a building humming with servers, storage, network equipment, backup power and cooling systems.

Data centres are not mythical “AI factories” or innocuous warehouses, but industrial infrastructure with real appetites for electricity, water and land.

Current debate about data centres seems to offer a false binary: stop these facilities or accept them unconditionally.

There is a better option. We need to develop projects that are transparent, low-carbon, grid-responsible, respectful of Indigenous rights and that leave durable public value where they stand.

A baseline, not a permit

On Sept. 3, the federal government and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities unveiled Canada’s Responsible Data Centre Development Principles, backed by 23 industry signatories. The principles say projects should:

• Create lasting local benefits.
• Avoid shifting project-driven electricity costs onto households and existing businesses.
• Minimize freshwater use and environmental impacts.
• Provide transparent, independently verifiable information on local impacts and commitments.
• Deliver lasting strategic value for Canada.

The principles are a common national framework, a baseline of expectations that complement provincial, territorial, municipal and Indigenous processes. They are not binding federal law, a permit or an approval.

These principles are a necessary start. Ottawa acknowledges that Canada relies significantly on infrastructure abroad for computing power, cloud and data storage. If we build domestic capacity, we can strengthen our resilience, keep critical services running and support innovation here.

However, location is not sovereignty. A Montréal server run by a firm subject to foreign law may still face foreign legal demands.

No two facilities are alike

A facility’s impacts depend on several things: its workload (AI or conventional); IT load (the power the computers themselves draw) and how fully it runs; cooling design; water source and local water stress; electricity mix; grid connection; backup generation and location.

Power usage effectiveness (PUE) is calculated by dividing a facility’s total energy by the energy its computers use; the theoretical ideal is one. Water usage effectiveness (WUE) counts litres of water consumed per kilowatt-hour of computing energy. Carbon usage effectiveness (CUE) does the same for emissions.

Natural Resources Canada’s best-practice guide notes that PUE ignores the useful work servers perform. It also reports that only about 22 per cent of Canadian data centres report their PUE. And these ratios measure efficiency, not absolute local impact or public value. An efficient university campus, for example, can still strain a regional grid or a stressed watershed.

In Alberta, companies have requested about 19,565 megawatts (MW) of new data centre load. That is more than the province’s record hourly peak of roughly 12,800 MW. The International Energy Agency projects that global data centre electricity use will roughly double between 2025 and 2030.

Energy and water stewardship

Principles and expectations are not enforceable outcomes, however. We need to test these principles on a project-by-project basis, using data that communities, regulators and Indigenous rights holders can inspect and commitments they can enforce.

This begins with mandatory disclosure before approval. Proponents should report:

• Peak and average electricity demand, and expected load shape.
• New transmission, generation and substation needs.
• Water withdrawal and consumption by source.
• Cooling design and backup generation.
• Noise, emissions and land impacts.

We then need independent measurement, public reporting and enforceable consequences when a project deviates materially from its commitments.

Those building data centres should bear the connection, grid-upgrade and reliability costs their projects directly cause, not households or existing businesses. Clean-power rules should fit the local grid. A project should be judged against the capacity and emissions of its regional grid, not a one-size-fits-all national rule.

They should also disclose whether a company’s clean-energy claims rest on annual matching (balancing yearly totals) or hourly matching (clean supply at the time power is used). Research has found that hourly matching could substantially cut long-run system emissions in the western United States, although the cost is contested.

Water stewardship should start from basin conditions and drought planning. Cooling choices trade water against energy, so no single technology is always best. Waste-heat recovery should be assessed in contexts where a viable heat customer and infrastructure exist.

Communities must benefit

Community benefits should be enforceable and should outlast the construction of data centres. Benefits can include training, Indigenous and local procurement, research partnerships, municipal infrastructure and local access to computing power.

When a government decision could negatively affect Indigenous or treaty rights, the Crown must consult the affected Indigenous Peoples and, where needed, adjust the decision or reduce the harm. Consultation is not consent. A data centre also does not automatically trigger a federal impact assessment. Engagement should begin early and be grounded in rights.

Advocates of rapid expansion have a point. Blanket bans on data centres could forfeit economic and resilience gains, push impacts to other jurisdictions and deepen dependence on foreign infrastructure. But that argument supports conditions, not their absence. It does not excuse opaque projects, subsidized grid costs or disregard for host communities.

Canada has an opportunity to lead, if we can turn principles into proof. The question is not whether Canada should build more data centres, but what it should ask of them before they draw on public systems and local landscapes.

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The post What Gen Z‑led uprisings across Asia reveal about the strengths and limitations of youth protest appeared first on TMU Research Blog.

Protesters shout slogans during a demonstration demanding educational reforms as part of the Cockroach Janta Party’s ongoing protest movement in Mumbai, India, on July 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

In response to a derogatory remark made in May 2026 by India’s chief justice, who called unemployed youth in India “parasites” and “cockroaches,” the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) was born. Rather than reject the label, Gen Z claimed it defiantly and turned it into a symbolic reassertion of identity.

Described as unprecedented due to its reach, impact and speed, as well as its creativity and courage, this Gen Z movement shares a playbook with other recent youth-led uprisings in South Asia and internationally.

Why this story matters

The movement began with a demand for the government to take responsibility for the leaked national medical entrance exam, NEET, which quickly spiralled into a nationwide push for educational reform and broader institutional accountability. Huge momentum grew online as protesters flooded Instagram with satirical reels, mocking memes and irreverent language.

That energy spilled into the streets on July 20, when a peaceful protest at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, was violently disrupted by police wielding lathis and using tear gas and pellet guns, injuring hundreds.

In the days that followed, hundreds of thousands of citizens of all ages showed up in solidarity, joining the movement from other Indian cities. Parallel protests were sparked internationally in support of the students in Delhi. The numbers of protesters and the speed at which they grew forced the Indian state to the negotiating table, culminating in the resignation of the education minister. Government crackdowns on protesting youth, however, have continued both offline and online.

As an interdisciplinary social science researcher whose work focuses on migration, social justice and storytelling, I study the way narratives affect how we view the world. Stories also become the lens through which we come to understand ourselves in relation to the world we live in.

The post What India’s ‘cockroach’ protests reveal about youth, solidarity and hope appeared first on TMU Research Blog.

Upholding the promise of Canadian birthright citizenship requires more than legal action — it needs leadership with the courage to reverse racist reproductive rhetoric and question false narratives. (Eyasu Etsub/Unsplash)

The United States Supreme Court recently struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to limit birthright citizenship for children based on their parents’ migration status.

This reflects a broader trend where policymakers target migrant women’s reproduction to justify stricter citizenship laws. Our research shows that Canada is not immune to such influences.

What can the U.S. ruling teach Canada about the importance of upholding birthright citizenship?

Global debates

Birthright citizenship via what’s known as  jus soli allows children born in a country to automatically acquire its citizenship at birth. Trump falsely claims that the U.S. is the only country with birthright citizenship, but 36 countries — including Canada — currently maintain unrestricted jus soli citizenship provisions.

Birthright citizenship has become a point of debate as some governments adopt more restrictive policies aimed at limiting citizenship for certain migrants. While the latest American attempt failed, successful rollbacks of birthright citizenship in other countries serve as a warning.

At the heart of these debates is reproductive racism — the systemic control or regulation of people’s pro-creative capacities based on their race. The political reasons for restricting citizenship policy are tied directly to anti-immigrant, racist and sexist sentiments that stigmatize migrant women’s reproduction.

This was at play in the 1986 Australian Citizenship Act amendment, following the Kioa v West case where Tongan parents of an Australian-born child sought to avoid deportation; the 2004 Irish citizenship referendum, which maligned African women asylum-seekers’ reproduction; New Zealand’s 2005 Citizenship Act amendment, which restricted citizenship for children born to transient migrants; and the Dominican Republic’s 2010 constitutional reform, which was rooted in anti-Haitian racism and sexism.

Baseless birth tourism arguments

In the U.S., proponents of restricting birthright citizenship allege that birth tourism is on the rise. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court found “there is scant evidence for this dramatically revisionist view.”

In Canada, similar arguments rely on questionable evidence. In 2025, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner moved an amendment to Bill C-3 that would end unrestricted birthright citizenship to children born to non-resident parents.

As she cited an alleged rise in birth tourism, Rempel Garner warned that allowing birthright citizenship to remain in place eroded the integrity of Canada’s immigration system. While narrowly voted down, the amendment marked the latest legislative attempt to end unrestricted Canadian birthright citizenship.

The entry of non-residents who are pregnant into Canada isn’t tracked by the Canada Border Services Agency. Researchers, media and politicians have relied on hospital “other country resident self-pay” codes to claim that birth tourism is an issue that needs attention.

When newborn delivery rates under this code increase, the assumption is that the rate of birth tourism increases. But this data only provides a proxy measure for quantifying birth tourism because the population captured in this pay code includes any non-resident giving birth.

Reliance on this billing code assumes a singular motivation, glossing over the overlapping reasons non-resident parents give birth on Canadian soil in the first place. Labelling all non-citizens and permanent residents as “tourists” is inaccurate, serving as a strategy to advance a broader anti-immigration agenda.

In both Canada and the U.S., there are similar high-profile attempts to target migrant women’s reproduction. Republicans claim that birth tourism offers an illegal immigration pathway for those south of the border, while Canadian critics associate birth tourism primarily with Chinese women.

While political rhetoric about the threat of birth tourism is ongoing, successive Canadian governments have reached similar conclusions: the available data don’t justify a substantive overhaul of Canadian birthright citizenship.

Birth-registration bordering practices

In the lead-up to the U.S. federal challenge to birthright citizenship, states like Texas curtailed access to birth certificates by refusing to accept Mexicans’ national ID cards and requiring a passport with valid visa. This administrative practice was successfully challenged in court. But it shows how birth registration can function as a bordering practice — the social and legal actions that create boundaries between people — before any legislative changes take hold.

In Canada, the Birthing Canadian Citizens project identified similar digital and administrative practices that can block access to a birth certificate for a baby.

In Québec, some hospital administrators withhold birth forms to pressure the uninsured to pay exorbitant fees out of pocket. This illegal practice has been contested before the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women.

Online systems requiring digital authentication can be inaccessible to migrant parents in the midst of securing their own status. Their children are born Canadian citizens, but may lack a birth certificate and health card proving as much. This type of institutional bordering in the health-care system is on the rise, partly in response to panic about birth tourism.

Restricting birthright citizenship would require costly administrative changes to how births are documented. Even conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court questioned the viability of implementing such a policy change.

Our birthright citizenship victory was 2 years in the making: we started planning when Project 2025 flagged it as a target, so we were ready on day 1Trump tried to rewrite who counts as an American & the court said noMore on this & our 250th anniversary anthology on @contrariannews.org -TN👇

— Norm Eisen (@normeisen.bsky.social) 2026-07-04T19:16:15.127408Z

In Canada, cracking down on birthright citizenship would require shifting federal immigration enforcement to provincial health-care and civil registration authorities — a move that would conflict with their mandate to uphold and fulfil human rights to health and identity.

It’s also worth noting the likely increase in statelessness among children born to parents with precarious status. Documents submitted as part of the U.S. Supreme Court challenge noted the potential for dramatically expanding the number of stateless people and unauthorized migrants in the U.S. — a result at odds with Trump’s policy aims.

Protecting birthright citizenship

While the U.S. Supreme Court justices have preserved birthright citizenship for now, the battle is likely to continue in congress.

Unlike the U.S., birthright citizenship in Canada isn’t protected as a constitutional right. Our research shows that access to birthright citizenship is being undermined for some Canadian children through policy debates, online authentication systems and administrative practice.

This runs counter to longstanding Canadian commitments to equality, multiculturalism, human and reproductive rights. Making it harder for newborn Canadians to be recognized as citizens seems counterproductive at a time when the country urgently needs population growth.

Upholding the promise of Canadian birthright citizenship requires more than legal action. It needs leadership with the courage to reverse racist reproductive rhetoric and question false narratives. It needs a policy to prevent and address statelessness. It needs transparent bureaucracies that protect reproductive and citizenship rights together. And most of all, it needs a population committed to keeping a promise too easily broken.

The post The U.S. narrowly upheld birthright citizenship. What about Canada? appeared first on TMU Research Blog.

Displaced Palestinians gather to collect water from a truck at a makeshift tent camp in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, in April 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

When millions of people fled Ukraine following Russia’s invasion in 2022, governments and humanitarian organizations used mobile phone and online platform data to track movements and identify where support was needed.

Similar approaches have been used to monitor population displacement in Cameroon, and in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war. This is part of a wider shift in which governments, organizations and researchers are using a new generation of data — including mobile phone records, social media activity, satellite imagery and online search patterns — to understand migration.

The value of these tools is clear. Migration is dynamic. These digital traces reveal population movements in real time, often months or years before official statistics become available.

But every form of measurement captures some realities while obscuring others. As researchers working on migration and digital technologies, we have found that while digital data are analytically valuable, they exclude key populations and cannot capture migration as a lived experience.

Migration’s digital traces

In 2024, Canada’s population grew by 744,324 people; 97.3 per cent of them were international migrants, according to Statistics Canada. Yet the number of migrants in Canada at any one time depends on how we measure migration in the first place — what counts and who is included?

For instance, the Canadian Census counts country of birth. Administrative records track visas and immigration status. Surveys can capture intentions, experiences and settlement trajectories. Data on temporary migrants are based on temporary work or study permits, but such data were not even part of the immigration policy debate until 2023.

None of these sources measures migration directly. Each is a proxy — a stand-in for something that is difficult to track — that captures just one aspect of a complex reality.

As Canada now advances its national AI strategy, we must ask: what happens when migration is increasingly understood through digital proxies that do not directly observe migrants themselves?

Elderly, digitally excluded

Digital data are not inherently flawed. On the contrary, they often reveal patterns that traditional sources cannot.

Consider mobile phone data. Researchers often infer movement from changes in the location of a device. This can reveal important mobility patterns at a scale that surveys could never achieve.

A moving phone does not automatically indicate migration, however. It may reflect commuting, tourism, temporary displacement or even a device being shared among family members. The data show movement, but not necessarily migration.

The same challenge appears with social media data. Researchers can use online activity to study migrant networks, integration processes and migration-related discussions. Yet social media users are not representative of all migrants. Those who are older, digitally excluded, undocumented or economically vulnerable are often less active and hence less visible in these datasets.

The people most affected by migration policies may therefore be among the least represented in the data used to study migration.

Lived experience matters

Migration has always been measured through proxies such as country of birth, nationality and status. But none of these dimensions fully capture a person’s migration history, identity or sense of belonging. What is new about digital proxies is their scale, speed and growing role in decision-making.

This is where artificial intelligence enters the picture. AI systems do not generate migration knowledge from scratch. They learn from existing data, including mobile phone records, social media activity, administrative databases and other digital traces.

In other words, AI does not observe migrants directly either. It relies on the same measures. The difference is that AI can process these data at unprecedented scale and speed, turning proxy-based indicators into forecasts, classifications and decision-support tools. As a result, the assumptions built into migration data become increasingly consequential for policy development, enforcement or support for integration.

This distinction matters because migration is not simply movement. A satellite image can reveal population change. A phone signal can reveal mobility. An online search can indicate interest in moving abroad. Yet none of these signals can tell us why a person moved, whether that movement was voluntary or forced, how long it will last or what it means for the people involved.

These dimensions of lived experience matter more than recording movement in real time.

Data-driven governance

The challenge for policymakers is not whether to use digital data. Increasingly, these data are too useful to ignore. The challenge is understanding what each source can and cannot tell us.

No single dataset offers a complete picture. Administrative records provide legal and demographic precision but often arrive slowly. Surveys reveal motivations and lived experiences but are costly and difficult to conduct during crises. Digital traces offer speed and scale but may overlook important populations and contexts.

Each source captures different dimensions of migration. Together, they provide a richer understanding than any could alone.

As governments invest in artificial intelligence and data-driven governance, this lesson becomes increasingly important. The availability of real-time big data should not obscure other types of data that complement the picture.

If AI is truly to work for all, as the Canadian AI strategy suggests, we must look beyond algorithms themselves and pay closer attention to the data on which they depend.

The question is not whether we use proxies to understand migration. We always have. The real question is which proxies we use, what they reveal and what they leave unseen.

The post How AI and digital data shape our understanding of migration appeared first on TMU Research Blog.

Some new Canadians celebrated in nationwide citizenship ceremonies on Canada Day — but countless migrants are facing the reality that they may never reach that milestone.

The Canadian immigration system is changing rapidly, challenging Canada’s reputation as the “gold standard” for immigration policy. Amid growing uncertainty and xenophobia, temporary migrants, including international students, are left with fewer choices.

Some have depleted all their savings — paying tens of thousands of dollars in tuition,, getting paid $7 an hour, if at all — only to find out that the permanent residency route they’d invested in for years has now been removed.

Drastic reductions

Rapid policy changes are, as the Migrant Rights Network notes, “pushing people out at more than 3,000 per day.”

The International Study Program that sets out rules for foreign nationals studying in Canada has seen more than 25 changes since 2023, drastically reducing numbers beyond previous targets. The Liberal government has adopted Bill C-12: Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act that introduces major amendments across multiple federal laws.

Ontario, British Columbia and Manitoba have also removed dedicated pathways for international graduates.

Although some changes aim to “make it clear that asylum is not a shortcut to permanent immigration,” as many have repeatedly pointed, framing international students as “queue-jumpers” sidesteps real questions.

‘Chutes and ladders’ immigration system

Within Canada’s “two-step” immigration system, migrants first enter the country temporarily through work or study permits. Once they meet certain criteria, such as gaining “Canadian work experience,” they may be invited to apply for permanent residency.

But this has changed rapidly. As a settler-colonial state, Canada has historically preferred predominantly white, European permanent residents. Although explicitly exclusionary policies are less obvious today, there are still inherent problems in the system that must be addressed.

While presented as a win-win solution, Canada’s emphasis on temporary migrants since the mid-2000s has been criticized for creating what some call “probationary precarity.” In fact, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery reported that Canada’s temporary foreign worker program is a “breeding ground for modern slavery.”.

Although the government has addressed some concerns, issues remain.

From ‘study, work, stay’ to stronger borders

Our ongoing research found that international students came to Canada with drastically different expectations. Backed by government-endorsed slogans like “study, work, and stay”, these students were aggressively recruited.

But during the last federal election campaign, international students officially became easy scapegoats for issues that were already urgent. Since then, there has been a surge in anti-immigrant sentiment.

At the same time, more than 25 policy reforms were introduced to the International Student Program from 2023 to 2025. These changes range from restrictions on work permits to a cap on international students and, for the first time, targets on temporary migrants.

As a recent Auditor General report found, these changes have resulted in much greater reduction of international students than targeted, disproportionately impacting smaller provinces.

Public colleges, too, are impacted significantly, suffering from unprecedented job losses and program closures.

These reforms were introduced while international students were largely blamed for the increase in asylum claims and faced allegations they use this pathway to prolong their stays in Canada.

As such, despite criticisms from the Senate and more than 300 civil society organizations, the Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act became law in March 2026.

It introduced security-focused provisions, including expanded discretionary powers, personal data-sharing powers and restrictions on asylum claimants that critics argue are inconsistent with Canada’s Constitution and international obligations.

The myth of the back door

The notion of a “back door” or shortcut to permanent residency is false; Canada has a robust visa and asylum process. Despite claims that most asylum-seekers are international students, only seven per cent of asylum claims came from study permit holders in 2023 and 13 per cent in 2024.

General migration trends such as post-COVID 19 backlogs, the rise in global displacement and changes to the temporary visa requirements led to an increase in asylum claims. Painting an entire group as responsible is inaccurate and dangerous.

These changes often mislead migrants and also reduce legal pathways towards permanent residency. For example, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced that it would introduce a temporary resident-to-permanent resident pathway. But this much-awaited change was merely about faster processing.

Better together?

Restricting immigration will not fix Canada’s systemic social and economic problems.

Temporary migrants like international students, who are members of our communities, are facing greater barriers, inequalities and uncertainty due to Canada’s abrupt policy changes.

The question remains as to whether Canada will pursue increasingly restrictive immigration policies or tackle divisive xenophobia?

The post Broken immigration promises are based on false narratives appeared first on TMU Research Blog.

But what happens when AI increasingly decides who gets access to those opportunities in the first place?

As migration scholars at the Bridging Divides initiative at Toronto Metropolitan University, we are researching how AI is reshaping immigrant access to employment. We see a growing intersection between Canada’s immigration agenda and its AI agenda, both of which are essential to Canada’s economic future. Yet these agendas are rarely discussed together.

As AI becomes increasingly embedded in hiring, the question is no longer just who Canada admits, but how opportunity is distributed once immigrants arrive.

The technologies shaping recruitment today may play an increasingly important role in determining whether Canada’s skilled immigrants can fully contribute to the economy tomorrow.

Canada’s reliance on immigration

Across the OECD, immigrants represent a growing share of the workforce. They are increasingly central to economic growth, demographic sustainability and innovation.

In Canada, immigrants accounted for four-fifths of labour force growth between 2016 and 2021, underscoring Canada’s continued reliance on immigration to sustain its workforce.

At the same time, Canada is rapidly embracing artificial intelligence. The use of AI across workplaces is expanding quickly, including in recruitment, hiring and workforce management. Recent evidence from Statistics Canada suggests that AI adoption among Canadian businesses has doubled in the past year.

These developments are often discussed separately. They should not be. The future success of one may increasingly depend on the other.

Immigrants are underemployed

Canada’s immigration system is widely regarded as one of the world’s most developed systems for selecting skilled migrants. Yet labour market integration remains one of the most persistent challenges facing immigrants.

Despite high levels of education and professional experience, immigrants continue to face higher rates of underemployment and over-qualification than Canadian-born workers. Statistics Canada reports that nearly one-third of recent immigrants with post-secondary education are overqualified for their jobs, compared with fewer than one in five Canadian-born workers.

Many continue to encounter barriers linked to foreign credential recognition, limited professional networks and demands for so-called “Canadian experience.” Research has long documented how internationally acquired skills and experience are often undervalued in Canadian labour markets.

These challenges are not new. What is new is the infrastructure through which they increasingly operate.

Algorithms as gatekeepers

Historically, access to employment was mediated largely through human institutions and judgments, from credential recognition bodies and hiring managers to recruiters and professional networks that determined whose skills were recognized and whose were overlooked. Today, many decisions occur earlier, within digital systems that evaluate, rank and filter applicants before a human recruiter reviews an application.

Across Canada and other OECD countries, recruitment is being transformed by applicant tracking systems, automated screening tools, predictive analytics and AI-enabled hiring platforms.

A growing body of research has raised concerns about how these systems can reproduce existing inequalities through the data and assumptions on which they rely. A study from Cornell University found that many claims about fairness in algorithmic hiring remain difficult to verify because hiring systems often inherit patterns embedded in historical recruitment data.

Similarly, Safiya Noble, a professor of gender studies and African American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles has shown how seemingly neutral digital systems can reproduce broader social inequalities in her book, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.

The OECD Employment Outlook warned back in 2023 that AI systems used in employment can raise significant concerns around transparency, explainability, accountability and discrimination, particularly for groups already facing labour market disadvantages.

AI is moving beyond simply providing advice to increasingly exercising authority in decisions that affect people’s lives and livelihoods. Hiring is one of those decisions.

‘Black box’ screening systems

Preliminary findings from our recent Bridging Divides study, based on interviews with immigrants, employers and recruitment professionals across Canada, suggest many immigrants experience digital hiring systems as a “black box” that shapes outcomes but remains largely invisible to those affected.

One participant described repeatedly applying for positions that matched their qualifications:

“By the description itself, you felt that you are the right candidate, but somehow your resume is not picked up because of some reason that they said, like your resume is not matching the criteria.”

Another participant explained:

“I applied for seven jobs without response. That’s when I went to ChatGPT and researched why I might not be getting responses.”

Many participants described learning to adapt their applications not for recruiters, but for algorithms. In effect, job seekers are increasingly required not only to demonstrate competence but also to make themselves legible to machines.

Equity in Canada’s AI future

None of this means that AI is inherently discriminatory, nor does it mean employers should abandon digital hiring technologies. Used responsibly, these tools can improve efficiency and help employers identify qualified candidates.

But Canada has spent decades refining how it selects skilled immigrants. Less attention is being paid to the technologies increasingly shaping whether those skills are recognized after arrival.

As AI becomes embedded in recruitment, we need to consider how opportunity is governed once immigrants enter the labour market. If immigration policy selects skilled immigrants, AI is increasingly shaping whether they are seen as skilled workers.

Canada’s future depends on both immigration and artificial intelligence. Ensuring that these two ambitions reinforce rather than undermine one another may become one of the defining policy challenges of the AI era.

The post Are algorithms unfairly screening out immigrant job applications? appeared first on TMU Research Blog.

Ongoing research on the labour market in Canada draws attention to disparities in outcomes for workers according to gender, race or immigration status. Often these social identities intersect to form unique barriers that have a marked impact on key labour market outcomes like employment status, income and job segregation.

Racialized immigrant women, for example, have been found to experience a “triple disadvantage,” reporting higher-than-average unemployment rates and lower income levels than other workers. Such findings underscore the fact that the Canadian labour market is not a meritocratic space but one shaped by systemic barriers that produce unequal access to opportunity.

It’s within this context that my recent report sought to investigate the labour market experiences of Muslims in Canada. My co-researchers and I conducted a pilot study, “Working While Muslim,” which drew on data from the 2021 census and an original survey of 423 Muslims in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.

Our results point to significant gaps in labour market outcomes between Muslims and non-Muslims that persist even when the data are broken down by gender, immigration status or visible minority status. Muslims in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area have higher unemployment rates, face employment segregation and earn lower incomes than their non-Muslim counterparts.

Why this study matters now

One intention of our study was to show how Islamophobia in Canada has a systemic impact on the well-being of the Muslim community. We released our report to coincide with the five-year anniversary of the June 6, 2021, attack in London, Ont., in which a man deliberately drove a truck into the Afzaal family as they walked in their neighbourhood, killing Salman Afzaal, his wife Madiha Salman, their 15-year-old daughter Yumnah Afzaal, 15, and Salman’s mother Talat Afzaal.

Nathaniel Veltman was convicted of four counts of first-degree murder in November 2023 and automatically sentenced to life in prison. The sentencing judge ruled the attack was an act of terrorism.

What occurred in London — and the ongoing surge in hate-motivated violence against Muslims across Canada — should not be understood or confronted as random or individual acts of violence.

They are symptoms of broader systemic issues rooted in fear and hatred of Muslims that permeate the education system, health-care system, the criminal justice system and the labour market.

The earnings gap

Using census data, we focused our analysis on full-time, full-year workers of prime working age (25 to 54 years). Within this group, Muslims had a median employment income of $61,000 compared to $73,000 for non-Muslims — a $12,000 gap.

This disparity grew when we broke the data down by gender and visible minority status. Muslim women working full-time had a median employment income of $54,000, or 64 cents for every dollar earned by white non-Muslim men. White non-Muslim women earned 87 cents, and visible minority non-Muslim women earned 73 cents, for every dollar earned by white non-Muslim men.

Using statistical analysis that controlled for other variables affecting employment income, we found that Muslims in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area face a wage penalty owing to religious affiliation, resulting in an estimated aggregate annual income loss of $1.2 billion.

Limits of the ‘immigrant effect’

Such disparities in economic standing are often explained as an “immigrant effect” rather than evidence of systemic bias. The idea is that immigrant workers simply take time to integrate, and may face hurdles such as language barriers, unrecognized credentials or a lack of relevant work experience that are not due to discrimination.

Anticipating this, our study included generation status as part of our intersectional analysis. Reducing our sample again to full-time, full-year, prime-age workers, we noted an overall difference in earnings between first- and second-generation workers. But once we accounted for visible minority status, gender and religious affiliation, the degree of “generation benefit” was conditional.

First-generation non-Muslims had a median employment income of $67,000, rising to $78,000 for second-generation non-Muslims. Muslim workers earned $60,000 at first generation and $72,000 at second generation.

Visible minority Muslim women continued to earn the least: second-generation workers in this group had a median employment income of $64,000 — less than that of first-generation non-Muslim workers.

Household income and poverty

The income disparities extended beyond individual workers to Muslim families and households across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. Overall, an estimated 56 per cent of non-Muslim households had a total household income at or above $110,000, compared to 45 per cent of Muslim households.

We also drew on Statistics Canada’s low-income measure, after tax — a poverty indicator measuring the share of people living on less than half the national median after-tax income, adjusted by household size.

Results suggest that 17 per cent of visible minority Muslims and 18 per cent of non-visible minority Muslims fall below the low-income threshold, compared to eight per cent of the non-visible minority non-Muslim population and 11 per cent of the visible minority non-Muslim population.

Our findings echo what research has consistently shown: that regardless of level of education, expertise or credentials, a worker’s immigration status, gender, race or religion — or some combination of these — dictates what opportunities they can access.

The Canadian labour market — the terrain that shapes the livelihood of millions of workers and their families — is one constrained by systemic discriminatory barriers. The marginalization fostered by these barriers are of particular concern at a time when xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment and Islamophobia continue to find mainstream acceptance, and as rapid changes to the economy continue to unsettle the lives of working people.

What the COVID-19 pandemic taught us is that in a time of economic change and uncertainty, those most marginalized in the labour market are the first to bear the cost.

The post The Muslim wage gap in Canada’s largest metro area costs workers an estimated $1.2 billion a year appeared first on TMU Research Blog.

Parliament voted down a motion on April 15 to ban a practice most Canadians have never heard of, but that retailers are already rolling out: surveillance pricing.

Also called algorithmic personalized pricing, the practice uses personal data to estimate how much consumers are willing to pay, then adjusts the price accordingly. Two shoppers, same store, same item: two different prices, generated by data neither of them can see.

The NDP motion urges the government to prohibit surveillance pricing both in stores and online. The Liberals and Conservatives voted it down. NDP leader Avi Lewis had called the practice “unfair” and “downright creepy” at a news conference days earlier.

A poll by Abacus Data conducted in March found that while most Canadians are not familiar with the term, when the practice was explained to them, 52 per cent said it should be banned. Another 31 per cent of the Canadians surveyed said it should be allowed but more strictly regulated.

For Canadians struggling with cost-of-living pressure, the practice is spreading among retailers, and the laws meant to protect consumers were not designed to catch it.

Not the same as surge pricing

A useful distinction first. Dynamic pricing, the kind used by airlines, hotels and rideshare companies, adjusts based on conditions like demand, the time of day or weather, and applies the same algorithm to every customer equally.

Uber’s surge pricing is the textbook example of dynamic pricing: every rider in the same area at the same moment sees the same multiplier. Annoying? Perhaps. Personalized? No.

Surveillance pricing is different. Where dynamic pricing responds to market conditions, surveillance pricing responds to the individual. It draws on browsing history, device, postal code, purchase frequency and inferred income to predict a person’s willingness to pay.

Dynamic pricing seems to ask: “What are the conditions right now?” Surveillance pricing asks: “Who are you, and how much can we extract from you?”

How much is happening in Canada?

It’s difficult to know how much surveillance pricing is happening in Canada, if at all. So far, there has been no confirmed Canadian case, and the practice is opaque by design.

The Competition Bureau’s discussion paper, published in 2025, reported that more than 60 companies in Canada offer services that use algorithms to optimize pricing across retail, hospitality, transportation and ticketing.

The bureau’s What We Heard report, published in January after a public consultation on algorithmic pricing, identified transparency as Canadians’ chief concern. Shoppers do not know whether the price in front of them has been personalized to them specifically.

The most prominent real-world example came from south of the border. An investigation by Consumer Reports and Groundwork Collaborative documented Instacart customers in the U.S. being charged up to 23 per cent more than other shoppers for the same items, at the same store, at the same time.

Nearly three-quarters of grocery items tested were offered to shoppers at multiple price points simultaneously.

Instacart disputed the characterization, but halted the program in December 2025 following public backlash. New York Attorney General Letitia James has since demanded that Instacart share information about its price-testing experiments.

Canadian retailers, meanwhile, are assembling the same underlying toolkit: digital shelf labels that allow prices to be changed remotely in seconds, AI-driven pricing engines and the loyalty card data that feeds them.

Where Canadian law runs out

Most Canadians assume that if something feels deceptive at checkout, the law catches it. For some familiar problems, that is true.

Recent amendments to the Competition Act introduced an explicit ban on drip pricing — the practice of advertising a low price and then adding unavoidable fees at checkout.

The Cineplex case is the most prominent recent example of that law in action. The Competition Tribunal levied a record $38.9 million penalty against the cinema chain for concealing online booking fees, a ruling the Federal Court of Appeal upheld in January. Cineplex has since sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

But surveillance pricing slips past this framework entirely. The price displayed is technically accurate. No fee is buried and no phantom “regular price” is invented. What is hidden is the process.

Deceptive marketing rules assume everyone is offered the same price and someone is misrepresenting it. Surveillance pricing inverts the premise: everyone is offered a different price, and almost no one knows it’s happening.

The Competition Bureau’s mandate is to protect and promote competition, not consumer fairness. Its tools were built to catch anti-competitive behaviour between companies, not price discrimination between individual shoppers.

Similarly, provincial consumer protection laws like Ontario’s Consumer Protection Act are designed to deal with misleading or unfair practices in one-on-one transactions — not large-scale, automated differences in how millions of consumers are treated.

Privacy law, in turn, governs consent to data collection, not consent to how that data is used to shape what you pay. Three legal regimes circle the problem; none quite covers it.

What other jurisdictions have done

In November 2025, New York’s Algorithmic Pricing Disclosure Act took effect, requiring any business that uses personalized pricing to display a notice reading “this price was set by an algorithm using your personal data,” with civil penalties of up to US$1,000 per violation.

The European Union has required disclosure of personalized pricing since its 2019 consumer rights overhaul. Manitoba’s Bill 49, introduced March 17 by the NDP government of Premier Wab Kinew, would go further than either of those measures and prohibit surveillance pricing outright, making it an unfair business practice.

When asked if he would follow suit, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he would not, telling reporters he believes in a “free market” and a “capitalist society.”

Federal AI Minister Evan Solomon said the federal government is “looking into” the issue, but that it would fall under the purview of the Competition Bureau.

What real protection would require

In the short term, shoppers can use private browsing mode, turn off location services and log out of loyalty apps before they shop.

These, however, are only workarounds. They place the burden of navigating an opaque system on the least-informed party in the transaction and they require a level of digital awareness some shoppers don’t have.

Real protection means either a federal disclosure mandate along New York’s lines, or an outright prohibition like the one Manitoba is pursuing. The Competition Bureau can keep monitoring, but monitoring is not enforcement, and competition law wasn’t designed to police unfairness on its own.

Until Parliament or the provinces close the gap, Canadian consumers have no reliable way of knowing whether the price they see is the price everyone else sees.

The post Your browsing history could soon set your grocery bill — and Canada isn’t ready for it appeared first on TMU Research Blog.

Prime Minister Mark Carney meets with members of the Canadian Rangers in Iqaluit, Nunavut, in 2025. There are roughly 5,000 Canadian Rangers, part of the Canadian Armed Forces, who provide a paramilitary presence in the North and in other remote areas. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

On April 9, 1917, my great-grandfather, A. Harold Carter, was a 16-year-old underage Canadian Expeditionary Force soldier from the 5th Canadian Mounted Rifles, 8th Brigade, 3rd Division.

At 5:30 am, he went over the trench at Vimy Ridge. He was a scrawny, 5’4″ kid from London, Ont., who defied his mother and signed up two years earlier at age 14. He survived.

Almost 109 years after the war that was to end all wars, Canada must once again consider training its citizens, as it did my great-grandfather, for a potential global conflict.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first mandate letter in May 2025, a month after his election, clearly prioritized Canada’s industrial, military and civilian global sovereignty as a key pillar of his new government.

His first budget, entitled Canada Strong, attempted to lay the fiscal foundation for Canada to act boldly and decisively, specifically on the much-neglected defence portfolio.

The June 2025 Building Canada Act has begun to cement that industry/civilian vision into reality, and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) Inflection Point 2025 seeks to enable the CAF to be “Ready, Resilient and Relevant” to fulfil this mandate.

Canadian needs

Not since the Second World War have all levels of Canadian society — government, industry, citizenry and military — been fully aligned to “ensure that Canada is once again the master of its own defence,” as Carney puts it.

But either by intention or incompetence, the ill-timed leak in November 2025 of the CAF’s Defence Mobilization Plan raised serious concerns due to its suggestion that more than 300,000 federal employees should be trained for emergency quasi-combat duties. The intent was valid, but the context wasn’t.

The CAF’s “Defence of Canada” vision prioritizes a total defence framework. Canada currently deploys an emergency management, whole-of-society governance strategy, which is a layer of total defence, to ensure that all levels of society recover quickly from a crisis.

It’s a tested and proven model used by South Korea’s Civil Defence Corps and Australia’s State Emergency Service, which are primarily focused on disaster relief.

The recently revised Humanitarian Workforce Program is Canada’s primary federal funding vehicle for building a professional, civilian, disaster-response capacity training, led by non-governmental partners.

In practice, a whole-of-society approach is designed to free up the military from non-combat duties during major crises. But a total defence doctrine supports both civilian auxiliary and military roles and responsibilities. Canada is missing that piece of the equation.

A Finnish solution?

Canada’s 400-year legacy of voyageurs, militia, pathfinders and rangers reflects a long tradition of civilian contribution to defence. Since the War of 1812, the country has not faced invasion, due in part to co-ordinated efforts among regular forces, allied Indigenous Nations and civilian auxiliaries.

That history raises a contemporary question: if civilian capability once played a decisive role in national defence, what form should it take today? As modern threats evolve beyond conventional warfare, Canada must reconsider how to structure, train and mobilize civilian expertise, not as an ad hoc reserve, but as a genuine component of national resilience.

Canada could draw from the very successful defence-adjacent, civilian-co-managed National Defence Training Association of Finland (MPK), a mixed-model approach that supports annual training for ex-military personnel, reservists and, specifically, non-military civilians.

The Finnish system is based on a total defence doctrine adopted and successfully deployed primarily by the Scandinavian and Baltic states as a direct result to their proximity to Russia, a much larger adversarial nation. The doctrine recognizes that survival and mobilization of their civilian population is necessary in the face of an existential threat or a major war.

National defence has consequently becomes not only a military function, but also a societal capability.

A Finnish-inspired Canadian Defence Training Organization would align with the intent of the CAF’s Defence Mobilization Plan, while expanding civilian participation beyond national and provincial public service employees to a broader, self-selecting and even transnational pool of defence-minded Canadians.

For Canadians who want to contribute

As part of a broader civilian defence system, volunteers could receive annual training in practical skills like first aid, logistics, communications and evacuation. Over time, the program could also expand to include drone use and countermeasures, as well as small arms training.

It would function as a distributed, community-based resilience network — a modern civilian defence initiative similar to the Canadian Rangers training programs, but adapted for civilian use in southern urban and rural settings.

It would not replace the CAF’s Reserve Force, but instead offer a complementary pathway for civilians who want to contribute to defence in a supporting role.

Using the Finnish model would boldly address Carney’s mandate letter and captures the spirit of the Defence Mobilization Plan within a more Canadian sensibility. It’s defence-oriented without being alarmist.

Many civilians want to contribute to national defence, but are put off by the demands of reserve service and the challenge of fitting it into established civilian lives. This approach would give willing, highly skilled volunteers a way to help defend Canada without taking on a major, immediate commitment.

By adopting the shared military–civilian governance model of Finland’s MPK and drawing on the Canadian Rangers’ strong sense of community and resilience, a Canadian defence training organization could serve as both a force multiplier in times of crisis and a community builder in times of peace.

The post Canada urgently needs a civilian defence strategy — before the next crisis forces one appeared first on TMU Research Blog.

A child wears and holds Ukrainian flags during a rally on Parliament Hill to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

I live and work in Toronto, but as a Lebanese‑Ukrainian immigrant in Canada, my attention has been elsewhere since the United States and Israel launched their war with Iran. I refresh my phone constantly, checking in with family in Lebanon, scanning group chats, watching the news, hoping the next alert is not the one I fear most.

For many in diaspora communities, this has become a daily condition. As conflict in the Middle East intensifies, its effects are not contained by borders. They are lived transnationally, folding distant violence into the routines of everyday life.

What emerges is a condition I — a displacement, migration and identity scholar — call “split belonging”, an experience of being physically located in one place while remaining emotionally, cognitively and relationally anchored in another that is under threat.

Unlike more familiar accounts of diaspora and hybrid identities, — which often emphasize continuity or the preservation of an unbroken cultural lineage and the formation of new identities through cultural mixing — “split belonging” is about being pulled by two places at once.

It captures the demand to function in conditions of stability while remaining persistently oriented toward instability elsewhere, especially where loved ones still reside there

This distinction shifts the focus from identity to capacity, asking how people live, work and participate while managing ongoing exposure to crisis.

Living in between stability and instability

My own experience reflects this.

I’ve lived at a distance from conflict in both my home countries: the October 2019 Lebanese uprising; the Beirut explosion in August 2020; the Russian invasion of Ukraine beginning in February 2022; the Israeli war in Lebanon in 2024; and the current bombardments displacing more than a million people.

Experiencing these events remotely reorganizes daily life. It shows up in the rituals that become instinctive: calling for proof of life, calculating the distance between a bombing site and a relative’s home, then returning, almost automatically, to meetings and deadlines.

This is the emotional architecture of split belonging. It is not a single crisis, but a constant oscillation between urgency and routine.

It is hearing your niece say: “They hit the house next to my school, but we’re OK, we’re used to this,” and realizing she has already learned to normalize fear. And then, because life here keeps moving, it’s also returning to your work inbox as if nothing has happened.

This rhythm is sustained by technological proximity and social expectation. The same tools that enable connection, such as WhatsApp and live news, also ensure that distance no longer protects against exposure.

The hidden strain of transnational stress

Cultural psychology research helps explain why this condition is so consuming. The distress often appears in indirect forms, including fatigue, distraction, irritability or emotional numbing — states that are easily misread in workplaces and classrooms.

This is compounded by what researchers describe as remote conflict stress, the strain experienced by individuals who are physically safe but emotionally embedded in zones of violence. This form of stress disrupts concentration, sleep and decision-making, shaping how people engage with their environments even when those environments are stable.

The concept of split belonging extends this insight by situating remote stress within broader social and relational dynamics.

Migrants are often expected to provide emotional support, financial assistance and real-time co-ordination for family members in crisis. These obligations intensify during periods of conflict, increasing pressure and dependency across borders.

Scholars of migration and diaspora have long argued that belonging is not a fixed state but a negotiation between place, memory and the stories we inherit. Sara Ahmed, a post-colonialism and critical race scholar, writes that emotions “stick” to bodies and histories, shaping how individuals move through the world. This helps explain how attachments to places in conflict are not easily set aside through migration.

Feminist and gender studies academic Judith Butler similarly argues that grief reveals the attachments that constitute who we are. This clarifies why distant violence is experienced as immediate. Under conditions of split belonging, threats to loved ones abroad are not abstract concerns but disruptions to the very relationships that anchor a person’s sense of self.

Together, these frameworks show how global conflict becomes embedded in the everyday lives of diasporic individuals, even though they remaining geographically distant.

Why this isn’t just personal

Digital media plays a central role in this process. It acts as both infrastructure and amplifier.

Continuous immersion in graphic content and live updates extends the reach of violence and makes disengagement difficult. Following it online can trigger anxiety, depression and symptoms resembling PTSD even when people are physically safe. Digital exposures intensify the psychological burden of watching violence unfold from afar.

These dynamics have concrete consequences that remain largely unacknowledged in public discourse. In workplaces, cognitive overload can affect performance, productivity and career progression, contributing to underemployment. In educational settings, disruptions to attention and memory shape participation and outcomes.

Ongoing crises abroad can also deepen social isolation for migrants, which is one of the strongest predictors of poor mental health among newcomers.

Canada’s multiculturalism model recognizes that belonging can extend across local and global contexts, but it often treats these connections as stable rather than crisis-driven. Split belonging highlights this limitation.

Recognizing the feeling of split belonging has important implications for policy and institutional practice. It points to the need for more flexible and responsive systems.

Workplaces need to account for transnational stress. Educational institutions need trauma-informed approaches that recognize ongoing crises. Settlement services need to address not only past trauma but also continuous exposure to instability abroad.

As global conflicts persist, immigrants will continue to meet their obligations to employers, schools and families while navigating forms of strain that remain private. But to meaningfully support diasporic inclusion, Canadian institutions need to understand this reality.

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Most immigrant cybersecurity professionals come to Canada with strong educational backgrounds and skills in technology, but while high human capital facilitates their entrance into the labour market, their career progression is often constrained by the absence of mentorship, professional networks, language and cultural adjustment challenges. (Unsplash)

Canada is facing a well-documented shortage of cybersecurity workers, with estimates suggesting a shortfall of 25,000 to 30,000 qualified professionals — a figure projected to grow to 100,000 by 2035. The persistence of this labour shortage weakens Canada’s capacity to defend itself against cybersecurity threats.

One possible way to address the shortage is to expand the recruitment of skilled foreign workers.

Although Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced in 2025 that the Express Entry system will shift its focus from the technology sector toward fields like health care and francophone immigration, cybersecurity remains one of the few technology occupations still considered in high demand for foreign applicants.

Meanwhile, organizations are developing diversity initiatives to attract a broader workforce, including women and racialized women, to the sector. While racialized immigrants account for the majority of information technology sector workers in Canada, they remain underrepresented in cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity historically originated from the military and has been shaped by national security priorities; as a result, it remains a field predominantly composed of white men. The problem is more acute in the upper echelons of security leadership.

In 2023, non-white men made up only 15 per cent of the global cybersecurity workforce. Racialized women are even less represented. Only two per cent of racialized women are in senior management positions.

As researchers who study the experiences of immigrant tech workers in cybersecurity in Canada, we have found that while racialized immigrant women are vital to the workforce, they continue to encounter barriers that limit their integration and career progression.

Ensuring equity and improving retention will require more than superficial diversity initiatives; the sector must adopt deeper, systemic changes that meaningfully support immigrant employees.

Strong qualifications, constrained careers

To understand how this labour shortage is experienced on the ground, we conducted 55 in-depth interviews between 2023 and 2025 with foreign-born cybersecurity professionals in Canada. Participants represented 13 countries, with most orginating from India, Iran, Brazil and Venezuela. The majority had attained Canadian permanent residency and had at least two years of experience in the Canadian cybersecurity sector.

These interviews help explain how the structural dynamics play out in everyday work.

Most of these cybersecurity professionals came to Canada with strong educational backgrounds in technology and skills that are highly transferable. While high human capital facilitated their entrance into the cybersecurity labour market, their career progression was often constrained by the absence of mentorship and professional networks, by language and cultural adjustment challenges, as well as a disproportionately heavy workload.

These barriers are even more difficult for immigrant women to navigate in an industry shaped by traditionally masculine principles, where competition and aggressive growth have long been celebrated as markers of success. The complexity of all these barriers often keeps immigrants, and racialized immigrant women in particular, in entry-level positions.

Interviewees described daily work experiences structured by systemic barriers and stereotypical expectations.

Many reported struggling to achieve a balance between their professional and personal lives as their roles require working long hours and constant investment in updating their technical knowledge. Experiences of discriminatory behaviour from male colleagues toward women were common. Women with foreign accents, in particular, discussed feeling interrupted or unheard during team meetings.

The layered realities of exclusion

Participants in our study described facing challenges shaped by overlapping forms of discrimination.

Some highlighted that their citizenship status played a role in limiting their access to certain positions. For example, participants on temporary work visas — specifically those from countries experiencing geopolitical tensions with Canada, such as Iran — reported greater difficulty entering the sector.

When they did find work, they were often placed in the most arduous positions, such as incident response and security operations centres, with minimal control over their schedule or tasks. Foreign accents or cultural backgrounds often led to exclusion from non-technical roles that require interaction and relationship-building connections with clients in the cybersecurity sector and contributed to marginalization in day-to-day work interactions.

For women participants, these experiences were often compounded by an industry defined by masculine norms — characterized by heavy workloads, long hours and an implicit requirement to avoid any display of weakness. They described experiencing strain in having to prioritize work over family while navigating workplace relationships in which they were frequently talked over and silenced.

The burden of being a minority in an overwhelmingly white, male-dominated workplace varied depending on the women’s race and ethnic background.

Asian and white immigrant women often felt compelled to speak more assertively and loudly to challenge assumptions that cast them as submissive or unassertive. And Black women described having to carefully manage their frustration and tone of voice to avoid triggering stereotypes that label them as inherently angry.

The weight of stereotypes often left them feeling isolated or uncertain about their place.

Change requires a collaborative approach

Removing the barriers that hinder immigrants in their career progression means addressing both the stereotypical behaviours and the systemic factors holding them back.

This would involve changing the workplace culture and adjusting policies at both immigration and organizational levels. Changing hiring, training and mentoring processes can shift how competency is defined and evaluated within organizations.

Our findings suggest that while diversity programs may reduce overt discrimination and encourage the hiring of women and ethnically diverse employees, this doesn’t guarantee that minority groups will be treated equally or have the same career advancement opportunities as other employees.

Encouragingly, our findings also show that employees treat one another fairly in workplaces where leaders demonstrate fairness in their behaviour. Women in leadership positions, particularly, play an important role in changing workplace culture and advocating for underrepresented groups.

Enhancing diversity in the top leadership positions may also contribute to a more equitable work environment.

Hiring more gender and racially diverse people, and integrating them in leadership positions, can help create a workplace where every employee has access to mentorship that reflects their identity.

Federal and provincial governments can support these changes by embedding equity goals into immigrant selection and labour standards. Strengthening early and predictable pathways to permanent residence would also reduce immigrants’ vulnerability to precarious work and exploitation.

Together, these measures can help ensure diversity initiatives translate into genuine inclusion rather than merely masking persistent inequities. But without addressing the structural issues, Canada risks relying on immigrant talent to fill labour shortages while systematically limiting their success.

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