Huge global disparities in electric car ownership - study

By Nick Carey 

EARTH DAY 2021

© Reuters/ALY SONG Auto Shanghai show in Shanghai

LONDON (Reuters) - Europe and China dominate the world market for electric cars, but there are still very few electrified vehicles on the roads in large markets like Russia, South America and Africa, according to a study conducted by the Munich Mobility Show.

Europe sold more new electrified vehicles than China for the first time in 2020 and between them the two markets are home to more than 70% of the 9.9 million electrified cars sold so far, the study shows.

Sales of electric and plug-in hybrid cars in the European Union almost trebled to over 1 million vehicles last year, accounting for more than 10% of overall sales.

The Munich Mobility Show - the revamped and expanded successor to the Frankfurt auto show, which is slated to be held in September this year - examined vehicle registration data from a number of sources and found that through 2020, China had 4.2 electric vehicles on the road, Europe had 3.2 million and the United States had 1.7 million.

New electric vehicle sales rose in all major markets in 2020 despite the coronavirus pandemic, except for the U.S. market where sales fell 6%.

While 80% of the electrified vehicles sold so far in China and 79% of those sold in the United States were battery electric models, only 54% of those sold in Europe - including the European Union, European Free Trade Association countries and the United Kingdom - were battery electric, as the continent is still fairly reliant on sales of plug-in hybrids.

Plug-in hybrids face an uncertain future in the EU as policymakers are considering regulations that could make them uneconomical for carmakers to produce.

The Munich Mobility Show's study also showed vast disparities in electric vehicle ownership.

Norway, with a population of 5 million and strong support for electric cars is an unparalleled success, with a cumulative total of 433,609 electric cars sold so far and new sales of more than 105,000 units in 2020.

But Russia, with a population of around 145 million, only sold 1,760 electrified cars through 2020.

Cumulative electric car registrations through 2020 in South America, a continent with a population of more than 420 million, were below 18,000.

And the only registrations in Africa, a continent that is home to 1.2 billion people, were exclusively in South Africa and totaled just 1,509 cars through 2020.

(Reporting by Nick Carey; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

J.D. Power says Canadians 'unimpressed' with their wireless service


TORONTO — J.D. Power's latest annual study of Canadian wireless network performance found consumers were even hungrier for data than last year, but a significant portion were unimpressed with the quality they got.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

It found 24 per cent of about 9,500 people contacted said they have at least 10 gigabytes of data in their monthly plan, up from 20 per cent in 2020.

Another 17 per cent had unlimited data plans, up from 11 per cent in 2020.

About 14 per cent said they exceeded their plan's data allowance in the past six months.

The biggest use of the data was browsing (an average of 57 minutes over the previous 48 hours) followed by video and music streaming (46 minutes)

Only 67 per cent of the wireless customers agreed that their carrier’s network was reliable when streaming music and video — a finding that J.D. Power said is a red flag for carriers because of how much data is used for that.

“Despite massive investments in infrastructure and technology, customers remain relatively unimpressed by their carriers' wireless networks,” said Adrian Chung, director of the technology, media and telecom practice at J.D. Power Canada.

This year's J.D. Power study of Canadian wireless network quality was conducted in February and March, about a year after wireless and internet usage patterns changed dramatically because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Industry observers, including some of the major carriers, have noted that wireless phones were used less by some customers while they worked from home because they relied more on their internet and in-home Wi-Fi wireless connections.

In other cases, there have been anecdotal reports of some customers increasing their wireless data packages because of slow or inaccessible internet connections outside of urban areas.

The federal budget included an additional $1 billion for the Universal Broadband Fund, bringing the projected total to $2.7 billion by 2026. It's just one of many public and privately funded efforts to build high-speed internet and wireless networks in rural and remote regions.

The J.D. Power study of Canada's wireless services provided a regional analysis of customer experience in different parts of Canada and ranked the carriers in those areas.

It found that BCE's Bell Mobility and Telus Mobility tied for first place in Ontario, with eight problems per 100 connections (8 PP100).

In the east region, which includes Quebec and the four Atlantic provinces, Quebecor's Videotron had best ranking at 5 PP100, just ahead of Rogers Wireless and Telus Mobility at 6 PP100.

In the West region, which includes five provinces and three northern territories, Telus Mobility had the best ranking (8 PP100) followed by Rogers (9 PP100) SaskTel (10 PP100).

Telus said in a statement that J.D. Power has ranked it as No. 1 in Ontario for seven consecutive years, including this year's shared top spot.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 22, 2021.

Companies in this story: (TSX:BCE, TSX:RCI. B, TSX:SJR. B, TSX:T, TSX:QBR. B)

David Paddon, The Canadian Press

Lifelike robots are proliferating thanks to the pandemic
CBSNews 


The coronavirus pandemic is pushing robots — long used for everything from heavy lifting to online customer service — toward finally becoming more lifelike.

© Henrique Casinhas/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images David Hanson, SingularityNET Founder (L), gives a press

"I've been very worried about COVID-19 lately," said Sophia, a creation of the Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics. Sophia, who has appeared onstage at a multitude of technology conferences and even appeared on "The Tonight Show," is one of the world's best-known androids — robots designed to appear humanlike. Sophia can now carry on a conversation, offer a range of facial expressions and even high-five.

Hanson designed the robot in 2016 and has been improving the technology ever since. Last month, a piece of art Sophia co-created was auctioned for $688,000 — the first time an artwork created by a robot has been sold.

But the company doesn't intend to make an army of artists. Instead, the robots are meant to be used as health care aides, using a chest-mounted thermal camera to take a person's temperature and pulse. They will start rolling out of the factory in the first half of this year, company founder and CEO David Hanson told Reuters recently. He plans to sell "thousands," he said.

The coronavirus pandemic has made robots more common. Businesses now use them for tasks like disinfecting public areas and delivering food. Experts in automation predict the COVID-19 crisis will make people even more willing to rely on robots, especially for jobs that are low-paid and potentially dangerous.

But there's also a new emphasis on making robots more humanlike.

Promobot, a Russian company, is creating machines that can work in customer service alongside their human counterparts. Currently it has about 10 of these robots in use. They can respond to voice commands and help process applications.

At $42,000 apiece, the robots aren't cheap. But the makers point out that, unlike human workers, they never need a lunch break — or vacation.

As Canada’s federal and provincial budgets swell, sales-tax increases may follow

Higher sales taxes would be an easy-to-implement and effective way to beef up government revenues, Askari says. But they are considered a somewhat regressive form of taxation, one that hits low-income households harder than higher-income ones, he notes.

Erica Alini 

NO NOT A BANDIT, 

ITS THE FINANCE MINISTER

© Provided by Global News Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland walks to a news conference before delivering the federal budget in Ottawa, Monday April 19, 2021.

Canada's provincial and federal government debt has ballooned during the COVID-19 pandemic, as it has for governments around the world, as they cope with both the costs of a health emergency and the need to use taxpayer dollars to prop up their economies.

But in Canada, some of the new public spending will settle at a permanently higher level or resume an upward trend once life goes back to normal, some economists say.

Read more: How Canada’s federal budget affects benefits, taxes, and the minimum wage

In Ottawa, the 2021 federal budget is eyeing a slew of new measures — from a national childcare system to revamping the outdated Employment Insurance program and a bump in Old Age Security benefits — that go far beyond a temporary increase in federal outlays to carry the country through the last months of the pandemic and restart the economy.

"Budget 2021’s ambition goes far beyond these targeted efforts to boost the recovery," RBC economist Josh Nye writes in a recent report. "The government is significantly increasing transfers to older Canadians and lower-income workers." And that, he notes, would mean permanently higher spending."

And at the provincial level, healthcare costs were ballooning even before the pandemic — a trend that economists say will likely continue even after the battle against COVID-19 is over

So does that mean Canadians should expect tax increases once the economy is back on solid enough footing?

That depends on who you ask.

For Bill Robson, CEO of the C.D. Howe Institute, higher taxes are "implicit" in the 2021 federal budget.

A first analysis by the Institute of Ottawa's latest spending roadmap suggests "we're really on a knife's edge here," Robson says.

"If they're lucky with interest rates, if they're lucky with economic growth rates, then (we'll) probably have a stable debt ratio," he adds.

With federal deficits of $354 billion for 2020-21 and expected at $155 billion for 2021-22, and more than $50 billion for the following two years, the size of the federal debt is set to hover around 50 per cent of GDP until at least 2025-26, according to current budget projections.

Read more: Post-COVID-19 Canada: What the federal budget tells us about the end of the pandemic

But that ratio could creep higher if borrowing costs increase or the economy hits a rough patch, Robson says.

The few revenue-raising measures introduced by the budget — such as a new luxury tax on high-end cars, yachts and private aircraft — won't count for much in the federal government's balance sheet, Robson predicts.

And there was no mention in Ottawa's 739-page budget of increasing the goods and services tax (GST), a move the C.D. Howe Institute has been advocating for.

A hike in the GST rate, which has been sitting at five per cent since 2008, would be an effective way to boost revenues, Robson argues.

"A lot of economists would like to see higher GST instead of other taxes because it is such a broad and robust tax base that doesn't discourage people from working as badly as personal income taxes do," Robson says.

And higher sales taxes also don't tend to drive business out of Canada to the same degree that corporate tax hikes do, he adds.


Still, if Ottawa was pondering raising the GST, the right time to do it would likely be sometime in 2023, when the economy is back on its feet and Canadians who've been benefitting from the government's COVID-19 emergency income supports will be in a better financial position to pay, Robson says.

Mostafa Askari, chief economist at the University of Ottawa's Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy (IFSD), on the other hand, doesn't see federal tax hikes as inevitable based on the latest spending patterns laid out by Ottawa.

Read more: Budget 2021: What’s missing as feds say no to new GST hike, universal basic income

Askari's analysis of the latest federal budget shows that, barring significant interest rate increases or a long-term slowdown in economic growth, "what you will see is that the debt-to-GDP ratio actually starts to decline gradually over time." And that, he adds, "is what we call a sustainable fiscal structure or fiscal policy."

That's because about 60 per cent of the federal government's spending is currently based on formulas that ensure those outlays grow as fast or slower than GDP. Social transfer to other levels of government, for example, are capped at three per cent a year, while Canada's long-run GDP growth trend (including inflation) is around four per cent per year, Askari says. The Canada Health Transfer and equalization payments are also linked to GDP growth, which ensures they won't expand faster than the economy.

While the budget presented by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland would dial up permanent spending, it stops short of setting Canada on an inevitable path of expenses growing faster than GDP, Askari says. Notably, Ottawa resisted provincial calls to boost health transfers, he adds.

Read more: Liberals eye ‘lost generation’ risk with sweeping COVID-19 recovery plan

Still, the federal government's fiscal position is becoming more vulnerable to changes in underlying conditions like interest rates, Askari says. Interest rates rising by two percentage points or more over the next four or five years, for example, could mean that Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio may not actually shrink over time, he warns.

But it's in some of the provincial government coffers that Askari sees the most serious fiscal strains. Healthcare spending, which makes up about 40 per cent of provincial budgets on average, will keep growing fast even after the pandemic is in the rearview mirror, due in large part to the ever-rising costs of new drugs and treatments as well as the needs of Canada's aging population, he says.

That's why Askari sees room for sales tax increases at the provincial level.

For example, a provincial sales tax — however, unsavoury politically — would "significantly" help in Alberta, where provincial debt remains relatively small compared to the size of the provincial economy but the debt-to-GDP ratio keeps rising.

An increase in net debt to $82 billion this year will leave Alberta’s net debt to GDP ratio at 24.5 per cent. But continued deficits are set to push that to 26.6 per cent by 2023-2024, according to the province's 2021 budget projections.

But both Askari and Robson singled out Newfoundland and Labrador as facing an especially daunting fiscal picture. Like Alberta, the province has been facing the twin challenges of COVID-19 coupled with uncertainty in the oil market. But the province's greatest fiscal woe comes from its demographic makeup, Askari and Robson say.

"They have a huge problem and the aging population," with healthcare costs set to balloon, Askari says.

Higher sales taxes would be an easy-to-implement and effective way to beef up government revenues, Askari says. But they are considered a somewhat regressive form of taxation, one that hits low-income households harder than higher-income ones, he notes.

Still, without an increase in revenues or a boost to economic growth, there's a risk one or more of Canada's provinces may need Ottawa to come to the financial rescue, Robson warns.

"I would much prefer to see the federal government leave more fiscal room for the provinces by not getting so big itself," he says.

Alberta teachers and education minister swap accusations of politicizing curriculum


EDMONTON — Education Minister Adriana LaGrange says the group representing Alberta teachers is playing politics with a proposed new kindergarten to Grade 6 curriculum and isn’t sincere about real bridge-building.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The Alberta Teachers' Association has publicly stated the proposed learning plan is “fatally flawed, and teachers, academics and curriculum experts should work on a revised version."

“I have the utmost respect for teachers, and the work that they do, and the professionalism that they have,” LaGrange said when asked about the association Wednesday.

“I want them to weigh in on the curriculum," she said. "The union for teachers appears to want to make it more political. I really don’t want to go down that path. I prefer to work collaboratively.

THE ATA IS NOT A UNION PER SE IT IS A PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION WHICH IS RESPONSIBLE FOR TEACHERS ACCREDITATION AS WELL AS TEACHER WELL BEING AND BARGAINING THE SAME AS THE DOCTORS BOTH BOOK OFF WORK THEY DO NOT HAVE PICKET LINES. IN BC TEACHERS HAVE A UNION THAT PICKETS AND A PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR ACCREDITATION, SOMETHING THE CONSERVATIVES IN ALBERTA WANTED TO DO HERE.

“The fact they have not reached out to me or my department since the curriculum has come out to set up a meeting, to have a discussion, speaks volumes to me.”

LaGrange’s spokeswoman, Nicole Sparrow, in a subsequent statement, said the minister’s door remains open.

“Alberta’s government will continue to work with the education system, including the teachers' union, to gather all feedback to make this the best curriculum possible,” said Sparrow.

“It is clear that the union is more interested in political theatre than actually providing feedback.”

Teachers president Jason Schilling lobbed the accusation right back.

“We need to have the whole curriculum redesign process depoliticized. In fact, I would like to see politicians get out of the way and let’s go back to the way we used to do curriculum redesign,” Schilling said in an interview.

Schilling said LaGrange cancelled a memorandum of understanding in late 2019 that had put teachers and other experts at the centre of the curriculum review. Teachers have fought for a place at the table ever since, he said.

“The association has essentially been shut out,” said Schilling.

“The minister is very well aware of the fact I have concerns about the curriculum, that I want to make sure that teachers are involved, (so) that we can get this right.”

The result has been a high-profile back-and-forth word fight. The teachers association says it was shut out of the curriculum consultation. LaGrange counters that 100 teachers were involved.

Schilling has said it was 100 teachers for two days who had to sign non-disclosure agreements.

The ATA has said 91 per cent of teachers in an in-house survey are against the curriculum. LaGrange has dismissed the survey sample she says was less than seven per cent as minuscule.

Sarah Hoffman, the NDP Opposition's education critic, said LaGrange and the United Conservative government need to meaningfully work with teachers who have the expertise and front-line experience on what works and what doesn’t.

“The minister is picking massive fights and trying to discredit teaching professionals who work to make sure students learn quality information to set them up for success,” said Hoffman.

The draft is to be piloted in select schools this fall and fully implemented in September 2022.

To date, almost 30 of Alberta’s 63 school boards, including the public school boards in Edmonton and Calgary as well as francophone school boards, say they won’t teach it.

It’s been the subject of fierce debate since being outlined by LaGrange in late March.

Advocates defend it as a common-sense approach that includes basic concepts, such as multiplication tables, along with real-life skills for the information age, including how to budget and computer code.

The ATA and other critics say the plan is not developmentally appropriate for young kids, is jammed with random facts, and too loosely structured with concepts well over students' heads. They say it pushes Eurocentric history while giving short shrift to francophone and Indigenous cultures and perspectives.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 21, 2021.

Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press

WATER IS LIFE

WATER IS A RIGHT

Autumn Peltier on the fight for clean drinking water in Canada's Indigenous communities

Duration: 05:17 

EARTH DAY 2021

What is our earth without water? Chief Water Commissioner for the Anishinabek Nation, Autumn Peltier, shares her fight for clean drinking water in Canada's Indigenous communities.

Alberta passes bill to give all workers paid leave to get COVID-19 vaccine shot

NDP said the legislation was first proposed by Opposition leader Rachel Notley on Tuesday.

EDMONTON — Alberta has passed legislation that will give all workers three hours of paid, job-protected leave to get a COVID-19 vaccination.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Labour Minister Jason Copping says Bill 71 will reduce barriers for Alberta workers to get vaccinated.

He says the change which goes into effect immediately means no one will have to choose between getting vaccinated and putting food on the table.

The amendment to the Employment Standards Code applies to all employees regardless of their job status or length of employment.

The legislation was passed quickly Wednesday only hours after health officials reported 1,699 new COVID-19 cases in the province and a test positivity rate of 9.5 per cent.

Health officials confirmed another 1,332 variant cases and said variants now make up about 59 per cent of Alberta's 18,873 active cases.

"Effective today, every working Albertan can access up to three hours of paid, job-protected leave for each dose of the COVID-19 vaccine," Copping said in a release.

"This is the right thing to do and we will continue to take bold actions to protect Albertans lives and livelihoods while ensuring our economic recovery."

The NDP said the legislation was first proposed by Opposition leader Rachel Notley on Tuesday.

Notley said the bill passed unanimously.

"We need to do everything we can to get Albertans vaccinated," Notley said in a release. "This is our best weapon against COVID-19 and the best way to keep workers and the people they interact with safe."

Alberta has the highest per-capita case count in Canada.

Notley noted that British Columbia introduced similar legislation earlier this week and Saskatchewan adopted measures to allow for paid leave to get the vaccine in March.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 21, 2021

The Canadian Press

Automakers show off flying cars in Shanghai — but Warren Buffett-backed BYD stays clear

Evelyn Cheng 

CNBC

4/22/2021

At the auto show in Shanghai this week, Chinese electric car start-up Xpeng revealed its second prototype for a flying vehicle the company claims has already undergone eight years of development.

Hangzhou, China-based Geely, which owns Volvo, also showed off an "air taxi" developed by its joint venture partner Volocopter.

BYD, backed by U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett, plans to focus on road transportation right now.

© Provided by CNBC Less than half a year since revealing a flying vehicle prototype, Chinese electric car start-up Xpeng unveiled a second model at the Shanghai auto show in April 2021.

SHANGHAI – Flying cars may have made headlines at this year's Shanghai Auto Show, but China's BYD — which is backed by Warren Buffett — is sticking to ground vehicles for now.

This week, Chinese electric car start-up Xpeng debuted its second prototype for a flying vehicle the company claims has already undergone eight years of development. The new model resembles a flying car more than the initial version revealed in Beijing in September, which looked more like a human-carrying drone.

© Provided by CNBC Geely showed off a Volocopter electric-powered

Xpeng isn't the only one looking to the skies.

Companies including Hyundai, German start-up Lilium, and China-based Ehang are developing flying vehicles that can carry individuals.

Hangzhou, China-based Geely, which owns Volvo, showed off in Shanghai an "air taxi" developed by its joint venture partner Volocopter.
'We're more focused on road transportation'

One of the companies' selling points for flying vehicles is the country's growing urban street traffic. However, while the level of consumer demand remains unclear, regulation has prevented wider use of flying cars.

But there are many ways to fix the problem of street congestion, said Li Yunfei, a spokesperson for BYD, in comments that CNBC translated from Mandarin. "Right now," he said, "we're more focused on road transportation."

Li said the flying models aren't all that different from helicopters.

Backed by investing guru Buffett, BYD sold more than 100,000 cars in the first quarter, more than half of which were new energy vehicles, a category which includes pure electric and hybrid cars.

The company announced at the auto show a new version of its electric car operating system that comes with its internally developed "Blade" battery. BYD plans to sell this battery system to third-party automakers and already counts state-owned high-end Chinese car maker Hongqi as customer for the Blade battery, Li said.

© Provided by CNBC Buyers of BYD's luxury Han electric car can customize the interior, as shown in this model displayed at the auto show in Shanghai in April 2021.

Last summer, BYD's luxury Han sedan became the company's first car to use the Blade battery. The vehicle has become one of the most popular in the new energy category, ranking third in sales nationwide during the first quarter. Only the Hongguang Mini EV and Tesla's Model 3 outsold it, according to the China Passenger Car Association's sales rankings.

Li said 70% of Han vehicles sold are pure-electric battery-powered models. Beginning this month, BYD said it plans to use the "Blade" battery in all of its pure-electric cars.

U.K. apologizes for racism in commemoration of WWI dead

Haley Ott 

CBS NEWS

4/22/2021



The U.K. government apologized Thursday for not properly commemorating thousands of African and Asian troops who died fighting for the British Empire during and after World War I. The reason for the failure, according to a report by the organization that commemorates service members who died in the two World Wars, was "entrenched prejudices, preconceptions and pervasive racism."

© Getty Images BRITAIN-ARMY-RACISM-POLITICS-HISTORY

While White, European casualties were commemorated with individual headstones, up to 404,000 Indian and African casualties who served the British Empire in World War I either had their names recorded in registers, were commemorated collectively or were not commemorated at all, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission found.


The commission initially set out to examine the commemoration of soldiers from the British Empire during both World Wars, but restricted its inquiry due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Contemporary attitudes towards non-European faiths and differing funerary rites, and an individual's or group's perceived 'state of civilisation', influenced their commemorative treatment in death," the report said.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission "should not overlook the mistakes in the organization's early history — many of which have been forgotten or reimagined over the century of its existence," and should search for historic inequalities and act on what is found, the report continued.
"Whilst we can't change the past, we can make amends"

U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace issued an apology in Parliament in response to the report.

"On behalf of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the government both of the time and today, I want to apologise for the failures to live up to their founding principles all those years ago and express deep regret that it has taken so long to rectify the situation," said Wallace. "Whilst we can't change the past, we can make amends and take action."

Wallace said the government would assemble a diverse team of experts to help research and act upon inequalities in commemoration, and that physical or digital commemorative structures would be built.
"Dignity that they deserve"

The inquiry into inequalities in the commemoration of British Empire casualties from the two World Wars came after a 2019 documentary hosted by Member of Parliament David Lammy, who said he found mass graves in Kenya and Tanzania in which African troops who fought for the British Empire had been "dumped with no commemoration whatsoever."

"I'm just really, really pleased that the dignity that these men deserved — who were dragged from their villages and commandeered to work for the British Empire — that dignity that they deserve in death can be granted to them," Lammy told CBS News partner network BBC News.

Historian David Olusoga, who produced the 2019 documentary, told the BBC that if the commission was interested in restorative justice, more than an apology would be necessary.

"If the Commonwealth War Graves Commission had set up a committee and discovered that 100,000 white British soldiers lay in mass graves — unmarked, uncommemorated — and the documentation proved that that had been deliberate, what would they do?" he told the BBC.

Eva Mendes Has Sparked a Major Controversy on Instagram Over Spanking

Mendes made her feelings on spanking children clear. The photo featured a quote that reads, "Spanking does for a child's development what hitting a spouse does for marriage." 

THE MOTHER OF TWO RESPONDED TO PEOPLE ON INSTAGRAM WHO DISAGREED WITH HER.

By ALLIE HOGAN
APRIL 22, 2021




Getty Images/Cindy Ord/WireImage for New York & Company

Celebrities are subject to scrutiny every time they post to social media. Whether it's a simple selfie or a stance on a hot topic, people in the comments always have something to say. Recently, Eva Mendes sparked major controversy in her Instagram comment section when she posted a quote about spanking children. The actor, who shares two daughters with Ryan Gosling, expressed a strong opinion that not everyone agreed with. Read on to find out what got Mendes' followers riled up, and for more social media controversy,

Eva Mendes posted a quote that was against spanking children.
Shutterstock

Earlier this week, Mendes shared an Instagram post that sparked some controversy. The post began with a picture of her on the red carpet in a gorgeous dress. "I'm often asked what my favorite red carpet dress is. This Versace is definitely up there," the star wrote. "I'm not often asked what my favorite parenting quote is, but I'll post it anyway. Please slide if you care."

In the second photo, Mendes made her feelings on spanking children clear. The photo featured a quote that reads, "Spanking does for a child's development what hitting a spouse does for marriage." While some followers praised Mendes, others disagreed. And for more of the actor's online behavior,

There was a split reaction to Mendes' recent Instagram post. Some fans thanked Mendes for sharing her parenting advice. When one fan commented in agreement, Mendes said she was "so happy to be able to talk about alternative discipline now," because when she was a kid it was not an option.

But others disagreed with Mendes' stance. One person commented, "I was spanked, and now I'm a respectful adult. And believe me, I deserved those whoopings. I was a brat." Mendes replied, "Thank you for your comment. So happy to agree to disagree. Want this page to offer that in a loving way. We all parent our own way, and I have no idea what I'm doing most the time. This didn't come with a manual, so when there's something that resonates with me, I pass it on. Lotsa love."

The actor has been open about parenting struggles in the past.

WENN Rights Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo

As Mendes mentioned in the comments, parenting doesn't come with a manual, which means there can be some challenging moments. In Sept. 2019, Mendes told Access Daily that parenting with her husband is "so fun and beautiful and maddening." She added, "It's so hard, of course. But it's like that feeling of like you end your day, you put them to bed, and Ryan and I kind of look at each other like, 'We did it, we did it. We came out relatively unscathed.'"

Mendes hasn't acted recently, because she's been focused on parenting.

If you've noticed Mendes missing from the big screen over the past few years, it's because she's been focused on her daughters, six-year-old Esmeralda and four-year-old Amada Gosling. "I feel like, as far as my ambition, it didn't go away, it just shifted onto the children," Mendes told The Sydney Morning Herald. "I applaud and look up to those women who can do it all, but I'm not one of them, and, thankfully, I have a choice not to work, and I realize how fortunate I am that it's even a choice."

Mendes did hint that she might be heading back to work soon. "I've been so happy to be able to incubate with my babies, but now they are four and six. I'm starting to feel like my ambition is coming back," she added. And for more celebrity parents,