Weekly Quiz: Plastic Pollution, Indian Interference, and Toronto’s Multicultural Accent

1 2 const title = "Plastic Pollution, Indian Interference, and Toronto’s Multicultural Accent"; const date = "April 12, 2025"; const data = [ { image: "https://walrus-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/img/WEB_Apr25_Rise-of-Borderless-Authoritarianism.jpg", title: "India’s Meddling in the Poilievre Campaign Reflects a Dangerous New Alliance", url: "https://thewalrus.ca/indias-meddling-in-the-poilievre-campaign-reflects-a-dangerous-new-alliance/", question: "India’s alleged interference in Canada’s 2022 Conservative Party leadership race by funding diaspora community organizers and amplifying pro-Pierre Poilievre narratives is just one piece of evidence pointing to a rise in global right-wing alliances. But the Canadian Security Intelligence Service warns that foreign interference aims not just to sway elections but to accomplish what other goal?", options: [ "Amplify voices typically silenced in multilateral organizations", "Build unlikely economic alliances", "Erode trust in democracy", "Distract from internal instability", ], answer: "Erode trust in democracy", correct: "The Canadian Security Intelligence Service warns that foreign interference aims not just to sway elections but to erode trust in democracy itself. As India exports its neighbourhood realpolitik, and right-wing leaders formalize their transnational network, democracies face a critical choice: tolerate short-term interference for geopolitical gains or confront the long-term corrosion of electoral integrity. Sushant Singh, a lecturer in South Asian studies at Yale University, notes that with Pierre Poilievre declining security briefings and Giorgia Meloni normalizing illiberal collaboration, the stakes for Canada’s upcoming federal election extend far beyond Ottawa. The world must recognize that the integrity of one democracy affects all others.", incorrect: "The Canadian Security Intelligence Service warns that foreign interference aims not just to sway elections but to erode trust in democracy itself. As India exports its neighbourhood realpolitik, and right-wing leaders formalize their transnational network, democracies face a critical choice: tolerate short-term interference for geopolitical gains or confront the long-term corrosion of electoral integrity. Sushant Singh, a lecturer in South Asian studies at Yale University, notes that with Pierre Poilievre declining security briefings and Giorgia Meloni normalizing illiberal collaboration, the stakes for Canada’s upcoming federal election extend far beyond Ottawa. The world must recognize that the integrity of one democracy affects all others.", }, { title: "A Canadian Company Says It’s Fighting Pollution in the Philippines. Is It Cashing In Instead?", url: "https://thewalrus.ca/plastic-credits/", question: "According to various studies, the Philippines is one of the world’s largest contributors of mismanaged plastic waste into the oceans. Still, Filipinos use much less plastic on average than individuals in wealthier countries. How many kilograms of plastic do they use per capita annually?", options: [ "Ten kilograms", "Twenty kilograms", "Thirty kilograms", "Forty kilograms", ], answer: "Twenty kilograms", correct: "Filipinos use about twenty kilograms of plastic per capita annually as opposed to, by one estimate, 105 kilograms in Canada. But in most neighbourhoods, waste is not sorted; it’s mixed together in garbage trucks and stored in poorly managed landfills. (The Philippines, unlike Canada and other countries, does not export its trash.) Many products, from shampoo to coffee, are sold in single-use, multi-layer sachets, which are almost impossible to recycle. It’s a detail that’s gone overlooked by companies financing plastic collection via plastic credits schemes, who follow no universal standard when it comes to managing and regulating plastic credits. While various players in the industry all handle easy-to-recycle plastics like PET bottles, they have yet to find a solution for single-use sachets. Plastic Bank, founded by Canadian David Katz, advocates for a ban on non-recyclable materials; its member pickers tend to leave sachets in the street.", incorrect: "Filipinos use about twenty kilograms of plastic per capita annually as opposed to, by one estimate, 105 kilograms in Canada. But in most neighbourhoods, waste is not sorted; it’s mixed together in garbage trucks and stored in poorly managed landfills. (The Philippines, unlike Canada and other countries, does not export its trash.) Many products, from shampoo to coffee, are sold in single-use, multi-layer sachets, which are almost impossible to recycle. It’s a detail that’s gone overlooked by companies financing plastic collection via plastic credits schemes, who follow no universal standard when it comes to managing and regulating plastic credits. While various players in the industry all handle easy-to-recycle plastics like PET bottles, they have yet to find a solution for single-use sachets. Plastic Bank, founded by Canadian David Katz, advocates for a ban on non-recyclable materials; its member pickers tend to leave sachets in the street.", }, { image: "https://walrus-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/img/WEB_RFKJrHealthCzar.jpg", title: "RFK Jr. Is Bad for Canada’s Health Too", url: "https://thewalrus.ca/rfk-jr-is-bad-for-canadas-health-too/", question: "Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—now the head of the US Department of Health and Human Services—has long been a purveyor of medical misinformation, particularly around the efficacy of vaccines. Which disease has been resurrected in the US due to the sentiments of “anti-vax crusaders” like Kennedy?", options: [ "Rabies", "Measles", "Polio", "Malaria", ], answer: "Measles", correct: "In February 2025, the first recorded US measles death in about a decade earned a blithe dismissal from RFK Jr., who responded to legitimate concerns of a growing crisis by saying that outbreaks occur every year. What he didn’t mention is that in the year 2000, measles had been eradicated in the US, thanks to vaccination. Journalist Taylor C. Noakes doesn’t mince words: it is precisely because of anti-vaccine crusaders like RFK Jr. that the disease has not only been resurrected in the country but is once again killing Americans. As of April 9, 2025, there have been three deaths, including two children, and nearly 500 have been infected in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. As the outbreak expands across the country, and perhaps soon to Canada, Kennedy has made baffling, false, and unfathomable claims, including a suggestion that getting measles would offer better protection than the vaccine.", incorrect: "In February 2025, the first recorded US measles death in about a decade earned a blithe dismissal from RFK Jr., who responded to legitimate concerns of a growing crisis by saying that outbreaks occur every year. What he didn’t mention is that in the year 2000, measles had been eradicated in the US, thanks to vaccination. Journalist Taylor C. Noakes doesn’t mince words: it is precisely because of anti-vaccine crusaders like RFK Jr. that the disease has not only been resurrected in the country but is once again killing Americans. As of April 9, 2025, there have been three deaths, including two children, and nearly 500 have been infected in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. As the outbreak expands across the country, and perhaps soon to Canada, Kennedy has made baffling, false, and unfathomable claims, including a suggestion that getting measles would offer better protection than the vaccine.", }, { title: "The Toronto Accent is Real", url: "https://thewalrus.ca/toronto-accent/", question: "Multicultural Toronto English (MTE), more commonly known as the “Toronto accent,” reflects the city’s rich diversity and is spoken predominantly by young, racialized Torontonians across multiple ethnic groups. According to linguistic experts, MTE’s key features are most influenced by which diasporic community?", options: [ "The South Asian community", "The Latino community", "The Caribbean community", "The West African community", ], answer: "The Caribbean community", correct: "Linguist Derek Denis says that the major linguistic influences of Multicultural Toronto English stem from the Caribbean, particularly Jamaican Patwa, with slang terms like ahlie used either as confirmation (“right?”) or to express disbelief, with other influences from Somalia (bucktee or “drug addict”) and Arabic as well (wallahi or “I swear”). Writer Maia Wyman explains that although the Toronto accent is shared among multiple ethnic groups, it predominantly belongs to Toronto’s Black community, which is largely descended from Jamaican and Bajan immigrants who came to Canada earlier than many other racialized immigrant groups in the 1950s via ship work and domestic labour. And so, its arrival in Canada is divided between the origins of the accent itself, which began to emerge during waves of immigration in the ’50s and later in the ’70s and ’80s after new Canadian immigration regulations were passed in 1967, and the slang, which started to pop up around the late ’90s and early 2000s.", incorrect: "Linguist Derek Denis says that the major linguistic influences of Multicultural Toronto English stem from the Caribbean, particularly Jamaican Patwa, with slang terms like ahlie used either as confirmation (“right?”) or to express disbelief, with other influences from Somalia (bucktee or “drug addict”) and Arabic as well (wallahi or “I swear”). Writer Maia Wyman explains that although the Toronto accent is shared among multiple ethnic groups, it predominantly belongs to Toronto’s Black community, which is largely descended from Jamaican and Bajan immigrants who came to Canada earlier than many other racialized immigrant groups in the 1950s via ship work and domestic labour. And so, its arrival in Canada is divided between the origins of the accent itself, which began to emerge during waves of immigration in the ’50s and later in the ’70s and ’80s after new Canadian immigration regulations were passed in 1967, and the slang, which started to pop up around the late ’90s and early 2000s.", }, ]; The post Weekly Quiz: Plastic Pollution, Indian Interference, and Toronto’s Multicultural Accent first appeared on The Walrus.