Hello...I'm Lee-Anne Goodman, the Politics Editor for The Conversation Canada and Editor Scott White has asked me to write our newsletter today. I was a White House correspondent eight years ago this week when Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. I wrote about the joyous celebrations that erupted in D.C. and across the country that night. Last year, the mood was in stark contrast when Donald Trump pulled off one of the most stunning upsets in American political history by beating frontrunner Hillary Clinton. If you missed the scathing piece about Trump’s apparent contempt for democracy by McMaster University’s Henry Giroux earlier this week, we’ve bumped it back up to prominence today on the one-year anniversary of the brash real estate mogul’s surprise victory.

Closer to home, a Canadian female politician managed to make history this week when Valerie Plante became the first woman to be elected mayor of Montreal. Harold Chorney of Concordia University writes about how Plante has big challenges ahead, particularly pertaining to Montreal’s crumbling infrastructure.

Workers in Alberta’s oilsands have been hit hard by the oil price slump, and now there’s evidence they want to be retrained in renewables. Andrew Voysey of the University of Cambridge has spoken to some of them, and has an insightful piece on efforts to get them the training they want and need. 

And finally, if you’re lucky enough to have a company pension, you’re likely aware that defined benefit plans have long been considered the “gold standard.” But they’re losing some of their lustre as companies woefully underfund them, Brock University’s Michael Armstrong writes.