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Deadline today for Canada's Arctic resource claim

Written By Unknown on Jumat, 06 Desember 2013 | 22.12

Today is the deadline for Canada to file scientific evidence to justify its claim to Arctic resources beyond its 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone. 

The federal government is being cagey about the submission that it is supposed to file within 10 years of signing the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, an international treaty setting out maritime rules.

"It's being a really closely held secret. The big thing that everyone is wondering about is how far up the Lomonosov Ridge we're [Canada] actually going to go," says University of Calgary professor and Arctic expert Rob Huebert.

The Lomonosov Ridge is an undersea mountain range that runs between Ellesmere Island, Canada's most northern land mass, and the east Siberian coast in Russia.

The science package that Canada will file with the UN is essentially a series of undersea co-ordinates that map what the government claims is this country's extended continental shelf. Under Article 76 of the UN maritime treaty, any coastal country can claim rights to the seabed and sub-seabed up to 150 nautical miles beyond its exclusive economic zone.

In one exception, a country can claim beyond 150 nautical miles if there is a ridge that juts out from its extended continental shelf.

Overlapping claims

Canada could potentially have conflicting claims with Denmark on its border with Greenland and with the U.S. in the Beaufort Sea. But the contentious overlap might be with Russia on the Lomonosov Ridge.

Russia presented its claim to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in 2001. That claim ran along the Lomonosov Ridge right up to the North Pole. If Canada has a claim to the Lomonosov Ridge, it could reach 200 nautical miles beyond the pole. That is the halfway point between Canada and Russia.

RUSSIA ARCTIC

A titanium capsule with the Russian flag is seen seconds after it was planted by the Mir-1 mini-submarine on the Arctic Ocean seabed under the North Pole during a record dive on Aug. 2, 2007. (Association of Russian Polar Explorers/Associated Press)

The UN commission just judges the science and doesn't have the power to resolve competing claims. Those have to be resolved state-to-state.

University of Ottawa Russia specialist Ivan Katchanovski doesn't expect there will be a conflict, even if the Canadian and Russian claims overlap.

"There is potential for significant dispute, but don't expect this is going to lead to a major confrontation or cold war," Katchanovski told CBC News.

He argued that such a confrontation would make Russian President Vladimir Putin look weak.

"Putin wants to collaborate with Western powers. He does not want to be treated as a secondary power. He wants to be considered to be equal," Katchanovski explained. "Any confrontation would be detrimental to the Russian image abroad."

As for the Danes and Americans, Canada worked closely with both of them on mapping the sea floor. Denmark submitted its claim to the commission in November. 

U.S. hasn't signed treaty

The U.S. situation is a little more complicated. It has yet to ratify the maritime treaty, so it doesn't have the right to submit a scientific claim to the UN commission. 

That hasn't stopped the Americans from working with Canada, though.

"We get along pretty well with the Canadians, and with respect to the surveying of the extended continental shelf, the two countries found that they could co-operate, and that would be a win-win that would save the taxpayers money," said John B. Bellinger III, an international law expert and former adviser to the last Bush administration on the treaty. 

Bellinger said the U.S. would accept Canada's submission to the UN commission even if there was overlap, "provided that it does not prejudice the U.S. claim."

Bellinger did offer one caveat to the government in Ottawa.

"If Canada tries to take the North Pole just before Christmas, I think the United States would be very opposed to that."


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3D printed gift ideas that look amazing

3D printing is rapidly being harnessed to produce beautiful goods that can make desirable holiday gifts. But beyond that, the technology has sparked a profound revolution in manufacturing, arts and science, a new CBC Radio documentary reveals.

Experts interviewed by documentary maker and computer scientist David Gerhard in The Revolution Will Be Extruded argue that within this decade, 3D printing will change the very fabric of our lives. The documentary airs Friday on CBC Radio's Ideas.

Chris Anderson, a 3D printing pioneer and industrialist living in Silicon Valley, called 3D printing "a way to [do] digital fabrication on your desktop that would have been impossible, or too expensive, just a few years ago."

At that time, 3D printers required skill and knowledge to build and use, he told Gerhard.

"Today, they're ready-made and so simple, any child can use one."

Any child … and many artists and craftspeople, too. 

Check out a gallery of the some of the hottest arts and crafts brought to us through the magic of modern technology. 


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Rocket with secret payload launches

Rocket Launch

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base Thursday night, carrying a secret payload for the U.S. government. (The Associated Press)

A rocket carrying a secret payload for the U.S. government has successfully launched from the central California coast.

The Atlas V rocket lit up the night sky at about 11:15 p.m. PT Thursday, lifting off from Vandenberg Air Force Base toward low-Earth orbit.

The 19-storey-tall rocket carried a payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates the nation's system of intelligence-gathering satellites. The agency has not released any details about the payload.

A California cold snap had threatened a possible delay, but the rocket took off within moments of the opening of its launch window.

Thursday's launch was the second time an Atlas 5 rocket has lifted off from the West Coast this year. Overall, there have been 77 Atlas V launches from Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral, Fla.


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Arctic rain threatens baby peregrine falcons

Written By Unknown on Kamis, 05 Desember 2013 | 22.12

Warmer Arctic temperatures and changing weather patterns are introducing a new problem for peregrine falcons breeding on the west coast of Hudson Bay: rain. 

When it rains, adult falcons crouch above their chicks, wings spread like a canopy, to keep them dry. But warmer temperatures and more frequent heavy rains are, in some cases, forcing adults falcons to give up, leaving the chicks exposed in the nest.

The chicks can die from hypothermia, or even drown.

"They're completely covered in fluffy down," says Alastair Franke, of the University of Alberta's Circumpolar Institute. "That down gets wet very quickly."

Peregrine falcon nest

A peregrine falcon tries to brood two nestlings who succumbed to exposure. (University of Alberta)

The latest research looked at 30 pairs of falcons near Rankin Inlet, Nunavut. It found that after a heavy summer rain, more than a third of the chicks died.

Researchers watched one case where a healthy adult mother saw her well fed chicks succumb to the cold and damp. When attempts to revive them with more food didn't work, she killed and ate both chicks.

While infanticide is not uncommon in other raptor species, Franke says this is the first time it's been documented in peregrine falcons.

"In extreme weather conditions where adults are exposed, at some point they give up," Franke says.

He says this is done likely to save their strength for the next breeding opportunity.

The research found that offering protection to the falcons, in the form of nest boxes, made a difference, but some birds who used the nest boxes still died of starvation. That prompted concerns that heavy rainfall is also affecting creatures lower down the food chain, such as lemmings, ground squirrels and other birds.

Right now, Franke says, it's not clear what action should be taken. The study was limited to one small population in a species that is, overall, doing very well.

Peregrine falcons were in steep decline in the 1970s because of the heavy use of pesticides such as DDT. Now peregrine falcons can be found around the globe. 

However, one N.W.T. bird expert says the plight of the falcons shows action needs to be taken on climate change.

"We are not doing much in response to climate change in terms of mitigating it or stopping the causes of it," says Bob Bromley, a Yellowknife ornithologist and a member of the Northwest Territories legislature.

"They are sort of a canary in a coal mine," Bromley says.


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Endangered status for bats urged again by scientists

Canadian scientists have issued a second appeal to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government to protect bat populations being rapidly wiped out in the Maritimes.

The endangered status the scientists are seeking would force the federal government to develop a plan to save three bat species.

"The die off has been dramatic," said Graham Forbes, a biologist with the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton.

White-nose syndrome is blamed for killing off between 95 to 99 per cent of the little brown bat population in some parts of the region. The fatal infection is caused by a fungus that causes bats to wake frequently during winter hibernation and with limited food available, the bats die from starvation and hypothermia.

The deadly infection — believed from Europe — arrived three years ago with devastating results.

"We've had a catastrophic decline. Totally unexpected. One of the most abundant species in the region is actually gone from a large part of the Maritimes," Forbes told CBC News.

Forbes chairs the terrestrial mammal section of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), a committee of experts that assesses and designates which wildlife species are in some danger of disappearing from Canada.

Earlier this week, the committee recommended Federal Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq give three bat species endangered status: the little brown, the northern and the tri-coloured bats.

The COSEWIC report obliges Aglukkaq to respond within 90 days, either accepting, rejecting or seeking more information on the recommendation.

The federal government did not respond to a first request made by COSEWIC in 2012, although the filing did prompt a full scientific review carried out last week in Ottawa.

Forbes is hopeful the Aglukkaq will grant endangered status to the bats.

"The minister decides if there is too negative an impact to some other values in society by listing a species — economic or social issues," he said.

"In the case of bats, I can't imagine there's too many things that's a great concern to other interests. These things are very beneficial to agriculture, they eat a lot of pests. From the forestry and agriculture point of views, the more bats the better."

Forbes said steps are being taken to close some caves and educate the public.

The federal government has created a national committee to co-ordinate a response and Forbes said a species-at-risk listing would take it further.

"The recovery plan would work on more specific activities and maybe prioritize some regulations specific to certain sites," Forbes said.

At this point, the goal is to stop the spread of the disease to the west and north.


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Snowy owls spotted in N.B. in record numbers

Birders in New Brunswick are on the lookout for snowy owls.

Snowy owl

This snowy owl was spotted on the Kennebecasis River. (David Putt)

At least 25 have been spotted in the province this week. That's the highest number Alain Clavette can recall in his 20 years of birding in the province.

On Tuesday, a group of four birders spotted 10 snowy owls between Shediac and Cape Tormentine.

"They are popping out everywhere," said Clavette, noting that more than 146 were counted on the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland on Sunday.

"We're seeing right now, in eastern Canada and eastern United States also, an amazing movement," said Clavette. "Nova Scotia is the same thing.

"You've got to remember, those are the ones that are being reported. Imagine the amount  that are not being seen by observers."

On Prince Edward Island this week, a snowy owl was spotted on the causeway to Robinson's Island on the North Shore.

Snowy owl map

This map by Anne Maloney Assaff charts where snowy owls have been spotted in New Brunswick since Nov. 22 (Anne Maloney Assaff)

​Clavette said anyone hoping to see a snowy owl should look in an area resembling the arctic tundra.

"Think maybe of an airport, along the beach, the salt marshes along the coast," he said. "Any areas where there is going to be a concentration of rodents, maybe close to a dump site."

Snowy owls are day hunters, he said.

"You'll see them very often just plain on the ground. If you look in an area where there are no trees at all, they are at home there because that's what it's like in the tundra where they are nesting."


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SpaceX rocket lifts off on 1st commercial satellite launch

Written By Unknown on Rabu, 04 Desember 2013 | 22.11

An unmanned Falcon 9 rocket developed by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, blasted off on Tuesday to put the company's first commercial satellite into orbit, staking a potentially game-changing claim in a global industry worth nearly $190 billion a year.

The 22-storey rocket lifted off from its seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 5:41 p.m. ET.

Two previous launch attempts last week were scuttled by technical glitches, including a last-second abort on Thursday. Engineers later discovered oxygen inside the rocket's ground-based engine igniter system.

Perched on top of the rocket was a 3,175-kilogram communications satellite owned by Luxembourg-based SES S.A., which operates a 54-satellite fleet, the world's second-largest.

"I'd like to thank SES for taking a chance on SpaceX," company founder and chief executive Elon Musk posted on Twitter an hour before launch. "We've given it our all."

The satellite, known as SES-8 and worth more than $100 million, will be positioned to provide television, broadband and other communications services to customers in India, China, Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia.

"It's an extremely important satellite for us," Martin Halliwell, chief technology officer of SES, told reporters before the launch.

"We know that as we go forward into these very significant growth markets that it's absolutely critical that we have a cost-effective and efficient way to get to orbit. That's really what SpaceX has brought us," Halliwell said.

SpaceX's launch schedule includes nearly 50 missions, worth about $4 billion. About 75 per cent of the flights are for commercial customers.

The global satellite industry had revenues of nearly $190 billion in 2012, including nearly $90 billion in television services alone, the Satellite Industry Association trade group reported in October. The U.S. share of the market is 45 per cent, the report said.

Previous SES satellites were launched primarily aboard Russian Proton and European Ariane rockets, which cost far more than the approximately $55 million the company paid for its ride on SpaceX's Falcon booster, Halliwell said.

He would not say exactly how much SpaceX undercut the competition, but did say SES received a discount by agreeing to fly on Falcon 9's first mission to high orbits orbit used by communications satellites.

In addition to a Sept. 29 test flight of an upgraded Falcon 9, older versions of the rocket flew five times successfully, including three missions for NASA to deliver cargo to the International Space Station, which orbits about 400 km above Earth.

SpaceX aims to put SES-8 into an elliptical orbit that reaches more than 80,000 kilometres from Earth, about a quarter of the way to the moon.

That altitude requires less fuel for SES-8 to fly itself into its 36,000-kilometre high operational orbit, thereby extending its service life.

SpaceX needs three successful launches of its upgraded Falcon rocket before it will be eligible to compete to carry the U.S. military's largest and most expensive satellites, a market now monopolized by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.


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What helps drive online suicides? Web anonymity

A University of Guelph student's decision to stream his suicide attempt on the internet this past weekend raises the obvious question about what would drive him to want to end his life.

But equally perplexing is the fact that 200 people signed up to an online chat room to watch him do it — and in some cases goaded him on.

How could anyone take pleasure in witnessing another human take his own life?

Ian Colman, Canada Research Chair in mental health at the University of Ottawa, says part of the answer is that the anonymity of the web allows people to engage in conduct that they likely wouldn't in real life.

"The internet provides a medium through which we can be voyeurs to all sorts of human behaviour," he says.

But a key difference between witnessing a suicide online and seeing one in person, says Colman, is that you're less likely to take action when you see it on a screen.

He says the physical distance from the actual event leads to complacency and a "diffusion of responsibility," meaning those watching are less compelled to try and stop an event like this from being carried out.

In fact, in this case, some of those watching were actively encouraging the young man to go through with his threat, which he did by setting fire to his dorm room and crawling into bed while a webcam live-streamed the event.

That kind of perverse cheerleading can be another aspect of these online spectacles, some psychologists say.

The Guelph student announced his intention to take his life on 4chan, an anonymous message board that has become notorious for its controversial content.

4chan users quickly signed up to watch the video, even encouraging him to go through with his plans.

4chan has a longstanding reputation for anti-social behaviour, says Cole Stryker, author of the book Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan's Army Conquered the Web.

Aimee Morrison, an associate professor of English at the University of Waterloo, told CBC's The Morning Edition that the site is like "a perpetual sleepover party with no parental supervision."

Due to its anonymity, 4chan "encourages people to be as outrageous as they wouldn't be if they were operating under their real name," says Stryker.

He says 4chan posters poke fun at every conceivable subject and pride themselves on breaking taboos — in fact, suicide is a recurring topic.

In one of his 4chan posts prior to his suicide attempt, the Guelph student said he was going to be "an hero" — an apparently caustic reference to the death of Mitchell Henderson, a 12-year-old from Minnesota who committed suicide in 2006.

After Henderson died, friends started a memorial page on MySpace, where one poster repeatedly called him "an hero," an awkward phrase that some 4chan posters quickly adopted as a sneering verb for committing suicide.

"It was just a grammar mistake, but it became a meme where people [on 4chan] said, 'You should kill yourself, you should 'an hero,'" says Stryker.

The attitude of many of witnesses in this sort of situation, says Baillie, is that the individual is doing this to themselves, so "if I'm encouraging them, it's that they want to do it anyway."

Ian-Colman

Ian Colman, University of Ottawa, Canada research chair in mental health epidemiology. (University of Ottawa)

Colman says that what complicates this sort of extreme act is that despite the individual's bluster, it may in fact be an elaborate cry for help.

"They're struggling with something really difficult, and they don't know where to turn, and they're hoping that an extreme gesture like this will precipitate a major change in their lives, for the better," he says.

Even mental health clinicians can have trouble determining whether an individual is serious about taking his or her life, or is hoping for an intervention, he says.

"You can imagine if you're just somebody who's observing a situation online — it can be immensely difficult to figure out whether somebody's actually thinking of going through with something or not."

Desperate act

Officials at the University of Guelph confirmed that on Saturday night, a 20-year-old student apparently tried to kill himself by setting his fourth-floor room at the Dundas Hall residence on fire — while filming it on a webcam.

In the video, the student, whose name has not been released, sets the fire, turns off the lights and crawls into bed.

The Guelph Fire Department extinguished the blaze. The student suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries and is now in stable condition at Guelph General Hospital, according to the university.

Dr. Patrick Baillie, a senior psychologist with Alberta Health Services, says the basic explanation for wanting to watch such a spectacle is morbid curiosity.

He says it's the same reason so many people sought out the video of Luka Magnotta allegedly killing Chinese exchange student Jun Lin last spring, to the point where all that voyeurism crashed Best Gore, the site housing the video.

"These things have a certain shock value," he says.

Speaking specifically about the Magnotta clip, Dr. Baillie said "everybody knows precisely what's in this video, and yet people are going for that gruesome, wow-I-haven't-seen-something-quite-like-this-before."

With files from Andrea Bellemare


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Chris Hadfield, newly minted prof, answers 4 questions

Retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield was in Waterloo Tuesday to give a lecture at the University of Waterloo a few months before he takes on an adjunct professor role.

'We had a fruitcake on the space station and it was like, Wilson in [the movie] Cast Away...'- Chris Hadfield

The former commander of the International Space Station says he looks forward to working with students in the aviation program in the fall.

The visit marked a homecoming for Hadfield who completed post-graduate research at the University of Waterloo in the 1980s and started his family in Waterloo Region. 

The following is a condensed and edited transcript of a CBC News interview with Hadfield at the University of Waterloo.

1. What made you decide to come back to the university?

I have been the lucky recipient of so many things that people have taught me over the years. You know you don't become an astronaut by birth. You become an astronaut by training, and training takes teaching and professors and knowledge and smart people who have figured it out and are trying to put that knowledge into your own head.

And, I have always felt...every time I give a convocation address, I always exhort the students to realize that they have been given a privilege. This isn't a degree, this isn't a diploma, this is a responsibility and an obligation to go back and at least bring one other Canadian up to the same level of capability that you've been brought to.

And in my case I've just been so lucky that's it's always been an intent of mine to teach. To some level I've always taught – it's been part of my role as an astronaut to share my experience in schools across the country.  But it just makes sense at this stage to try and teach at a university.

Really the crux is that they invited me and I was really delighted, with my roots in this area, to be able to accept.

2. As you mentioned, you've been teaching us every since you went to space. You've been teaching the world. How is your role going to change when you teach university students as an adjunct professor?

I'll have to grade papers, I guess. That'll be different. I think the big difference is the formality of it...making sure that it fits in someone else's curriculum, making sure I'm teaching to a certain text book.

But I'm really looking forward to it ... to interweave the actual technical content that is important ... with the practicality and reality with all the years of experience that I have, so that students come away from it, not just understanding the pure theory, which is necessary, but also seeing how it fits in.

And so I need to fit myself into the faculty here and make sure that I'm meeting all the objectives and doing my responsibilities, but at the same time I bring something to it that's maybe slightly different than some of the other professors.

3. Chances are some of your students will also be aspiring astronauts like yourself. What advice would you give to them?

Really, three pieces of main advice. And one of them, they're doing in spades, and that is getting an advanced technical education. We're not going to allow people to operate spaceships who don't have an advanced technical education. You have to have proven your ability to learn complex things at a high level.

The second is just physical. To fly a spaceship, we can't fly unhealthy people because there aren't good medical facilities on spaceships. So you have to stay healthy if you ever want to do anything far away from home. That includes if you want to do research in Antarctica or in the high Arctic or undersea or on a space station, you have to be at least healthy enough to stay away from medical facilities.

The third is: we can't just hire healthy students to fly spaceships; we need people with deep practical experience and ability to make good decisions. Decision making is a perishable skill. It's easy to go through life and just let it sort of decide for you. Both as a student, [and] then afterwards, to gain the practical experience that demonstrates the ability to make good decisions when the consequences matter.

4. Since you've been back on Earth you've pretty much just been talking about what's going on in space. When you were in space, what kind of conversations were you having?

Well, on board the space station, we talk about everything. The views out the window...we share the culture of all of the international people on the space station, so everyone will talk about birthdays and what this particular Russian holiday is and what this American holiday [is].

You know, just sharing everybody's experience, talking about where the food came from. We had a fruitcake on the space station and it was like, Wilson in [the movie] Cast Away. This fruitcake had its own personality and we all told stories based on fruit cakes.

It's just a place where humans live, just on the edge of our existence...the edge of our capability. And the shared humanity of it...the reflections and how it all ties back to our culture and home, that's really the key of it, and it was a constant delight to compare notes that way.


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Canada's students slipping in math and science, OECD finds

Written By Unknown on Selasa, 03 Desember 2013 | 22.11

A new international study ranks Canadian students among the top of the class in key subject areas, but there has been a noticeable decline over the years in math and science scores among the country's pupils.

Canada was among 65 countries and economies participating in the assessment by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which takes place every three years. Findings of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment — or PISA — from 2012 were released Tuesday.

Canada released its own companion report, "Measuring Up: Canadian Results of the OECD PISA Study."

More than 500,000 15-year-old students were tested on their knowledge and skills in three subject areas. The primary focus was on mathematics with a smaller proportion of students assessed in reading and science. Around 21,000 Canadians from about 900 schools across the country's 10 provinces took part. Canada's three territories elected not to participate.

Scores are taken from students assessed in each OECD country and pooled together and set at an average of 500 points, which is the baseline used for the study.

The average estimated score in math was 494. Canada had 518. Shanghai, China topped the list in math with an average of 613. Canada was also outperformed by Singapore, Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei, Korea, Macau, Japan, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.

Canada had an average score of 523 in reading and 525 in science — well above the OECD averages of 496 and 501, respectively.

Shanghai topped the list in both reading and science with 570 and 580, respectively. Canada was outperformed in both subjects by Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Korea. Finland and Estonia also fared better than Canada in science.

While Canada was among the high-level achievers, performance of the country's 15-year-olds in math has declined, with a 14-point dip in the past nine years. While performance in reading has remained relatively stable, the decline in science performance was "statistically significant," dipping from an average of 534 in 2006 and 529 in 2009.

Along gender lines, boys continued to outperform girls in math across most participating countries — including Canada — while girls placed ahead of boys in Canada and internationally in reading. The performance was similar among boys and girls in science.

'Slowly trending down'

Looking at Canada's scores in the context of being in the top 10 or 15th percentile is "good news," said Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson, chair of the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC). But he acknowledged Canada has been "slowly trending down" as have a number of other nations who have been high performers, including New Zealand, Sweden and Finland.

Johnson said it's also important to keep in mind that among countries and economic regions tested, high-achieving students in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macau came from one country — China.

"If you look at countries on the whole, more strictly speaking, our numbers would even be higher. Still, very respectable numbers. But the one that we're paying extra attention to is the math because it's such a fundamental skill for the 21st century and because that's the area that the results have been trending downward on."

Johnson said there are several schools of thought about potential reasons for the decline in math scores, adding that he doesn't think there's "any one single bullet." However, what should be the point of discussion and focus surrounds the money and efforts needed to bolster training for educators, he noted.

"It seems from the study … some of the jurisdictions from around the world that are doing well spend more resources on teacher quality, teacher training and making sure that their math teachers have more specialized training in math and that is paying on," he added. "We're looking at those best practices all over, and not only from outside Canada but from within Canada as well."

Results vary

At the provincial level, only students in Quebec exceeded the Canadian average. Recognition of Quebec's performance was one of the reasons the province presented and led discussions when CMEC met last July in Nunavut, said Johnson. The approach to numeracy math was one of the items of discussion among the country's education ministers, he noted.

"Every jurisdiction is going to tackle this potentially a little bit differently and not every jurisdiction in Canada has the same results, either," he said.

"It's an ongoing process, a process of continuing improvement."

Johnson said there "a couple of silver linings" in the report: first, that Canadian students are still performing well and second, that equity among the results remains "very high."

"In Canada, it matters less who your parents were and what neighbourhood you live in than it does in many of the other countries around the world."

PISA2012 CanadianReport en Web (PDF)
PISA2012 CanadianReport en Web (Text)


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