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Onlookers stand behind a police line as Municipal Civil Defense personnel inspect the area surrounding the wrecked Gloria funicular on September 04, 2025 in Lisbon, Portugal.

A Canadian citizen was among the 21 people injured in a fatal streetcar crash in Portugal’s capital city, the head of Lisbon’s Civil Protection Agency told reporters, The Canadian Press is reporting.

Authorities in Lisbon are still trying to determine how the historic Elevador da Glória funicular derailed and crashed into a building on Wednesday evening.

The death toll from the tragedy climbed to 16 on Thursday after two of the injured died in hospital, according to the

Associated Press.

National Post has contacted Global Affairs Canada to confirm a Canadian was on board and injured.

Victims ranged from a three-year-old toddler to adults up to age 65, some from Portugal, while many were tourists from throughout Europe, South Korea and Cape Verde.

 The wreckage of the Gloria funicular is pictured the day after an accident killed 16 in Lisbon, on September 4, 2025.

Emergency crews had all the people extracted from the grisly crash site within two hours.

The Elevador da Glória, one of three in the city, is a 19th-century national monument and a major tourist draw in Lisbon, linking Baixa to Bairro Alto. At its summit is Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara, a historic terrace offering panoramic views of the city.

“It lets you turn a steep climb into a romantic moment and was opened in 1885 as the second of its kind in the city,” the city’s tourism website describes it. “Although it was only electrified in 1915, it still retains its original characteristics.”

Carris, the company that operates the streetcar, said regular maintenance had been performed and pledged full cooperation with the investigations underway. The city’s other funiculars are out of service while they undergo inspection.

Portuguese President Marcel Rebelo de Sousa declared a national day of mourning on Thursday while Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas decreed three days of “municipal mourning.”

“I extend my heartfelt condolences to all the families and friends of the victims,” Moedas wrote on X.

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Whether you own your home may affect what you deem to be a comfortable annual income, according to a new survey.

For many Canadians, an annual household income of $100,000 is necessary to feel comfortable, according to a new survey.

However, the amount required to feel at ease differs depending on age, the size of a given household, whether they own their home and where they live.

In June, Canadian magazine,

MoneySense

, teamed up with Leger Marketing research to survey more than 9,000 Canadians living in 79 different Canadian cities. The survey canvassed five income options between $74,200 up to $250,000.

$100,000 was the most popular option, chosen by 37 per cent of survey respondents. The next biggest group, 25.8 per cent, chose $150,000. Somewhat fewer respondents, 23.8 per cent, chose $74,200. Much smaller groups opted for the higher options of $200,000 (8.5 per cent) and $250,000 (4.9 per cent).

According to

Statistics Canada

, $100,702 was the average disposable income for Canadian households in 2024.

Looking to individual incomes, the

top 10 per cent earners in Canada

earn at least $125,945 annually. To be in the top 25 per cent, the amount to reach is $81,184. Individual Canadians earning between $57,375 and $114,750 are considered middle-class.

How does the cost of living impact income comfort?

The adequacy of income is linked to the cost of living, which changes over time. For example, $100 in 2020 is equivalent to $118.14 today. In other words, it would take $118.14 to buy the same goods/services today that took $100 in 2020. But Canadians whose wages have risen accordingly should fare better.

Canada’s major banks look at “affordability” based on the rule that average shelter costs should not exceed

30 per cent of gross household income

.

However, there are additional measures of affordability such as transportation, food, utilities, clothing and leisure.

CareerBeacon

looks at affordability based on those measures, as well as renting rather than owning a home. It looked at Canadian cities with populations of 50,000 or more and looked at the annual income required for an individual to be comfortable in each.

The results vary from about $58,000 to over $106,000. Perhaps predictably, the most expensive cities are set near major job centres such as Toronto and Vancouver, while more affordable cities are outside large metro areas and have lower housing demand.

The cities requiring the highest incomes to feel financially comfortable are:

Richmond Hill, ON – $106,536

Milton, ON – $106,392

Whitby, ON – $105,624

Coquitlam, BC – $104,928

North Vancouver, BC – $103,512

The cities where comfort comes with a lower income are:

Trois-Rivières, QC – $57,936

Sherbrooke, QC – $64,920

Medicine Hat, AB – $70,416

Fredericton, NB – $71,784

Sault Ste. Marie, ON – $72,744

How does inflation affect the buying power of income?

The adequacy of income

fluctuate

s with inflation. Statistics Canada tracks inflation by keeping tabs on the prices of a so-called “basket” of goods and services. The prices of these items add up to an average known as the

consumer price index

, or CPI.

Inflation was close to 2 per cent per year for 25 years – until COVID-19 hit. In 2022, inflation surged above 8 per cent – the highest since the 1980s. Then when the economy reopened, Canadian demand for goods and services surged, hindered by supply chain disruptions that drove prices higher and left many Canadians struggling.

In 2022, the

Bank of Canada

began an aggressive campaign to tame inflation, with 10 interest rate increases in less than two years. It worked.

How have annual incomes in Canada kept up with inflation – or not?

Still, the news still hasn’t been good for all Canadians, especially with regard to increasing income to deal with increased cost of living.

Wages increased amid the higher-income brackets, with those Canadians often coming out last five years with bigger investment portfolios boosted by the higher interest rates. (When interest rates rise, most stock prices tend to fall, making them more affordable.)

“Based on our analysis, the price of the basket of goods and services has increased by 15 per cent since 2019, but disposable income has increased by 21 per cent, supported by government transfers, wage gains and net investment income, thereby improving the purchasing power of most Canadian households,” said Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux in a 2024 press release.

However, he conceded that “since 2022 rising inflation and tighter monetary policy have reduced purchasing power for lower-income households.”

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Swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev.

“We are the vanguard of Superhumanity!” the rebel exclaims from the stage. It is an audacious brag — a stomp on the grave of purity, hypocrisy and Darwin.

“In 50 years,” he prophesies, “we will look back and realize that biology was never the ceiling!”

In response, the be-knighted Olympic champion in the 1,500-metre run — and current president of World Athletics — clutches his antique ideals to his bosom and offers a tender bon mot:

“Bollocks!”

It is the sweltering summer of 2025, a fateful year of supermen and tipping points in human progress — or human degradation, depending on your point of view. The rebel is Aron Ping D’Souza, a 40-year-old Chinese-Indian-Australian scion via Oxford Law with a ninth-floor office on Madison Avenue in New York City.

The skeptic is Lord Sebastian Coe, Olympic track champion and advocate for “Clean Sport,” though sport, as we all know, has been dirty for decades.

“We are here to move humanity forward, to redefine what humanity can be, with audacity,” D’Souza announced in Las Vegas in May, unveiling his

Enhanced Games

, which will be inaugurated next spring in Sin City — where else? — with sprinting, swimming and weightlifting events for the methodically, medically, unashamedly, triumphantly doped. Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em combat sports, D’Souza posits, will come later.

Funded to the tens of millions by billionaires who aspire to achieve immortality in their own lifetimes, D’Souza is out to demolish nothing short of the Olympic Games themselves, and to make a trillion dollars selling anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing pharmaceuticals. His backers are, among others, Donald Trump Jr.’s venture-capital fund and the transhumanist founder of PayPal and Palantir

Peter Thiel

, who has poured many millions of dollars into ventures to transcend mere mortal flesh. (A profile of D’Souza in The Financial Times reported that “Silicon Valley insiders” refer to him as Thiel’s “professional son.”)

“Want To Evolve Humanity?” lures the Enhanced Games website, trolling for new hires for this enterprise, which aims to “push the boundaries of human performance.” There will be no testing for banned substances. All entrants will be paid for taking part and they cannot use illegal drugs such as heroin or cocaine.

“Clown show!” sneers a man named Travis T. Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

In a two-part series, we are going to dig deeper than mere boasts and insults into the current state of the human future, from the Enhanced Games (Part 1) to “wearable robotics” (Part 2). Competitive sport is a metaphor for “progress” that quantifies achievement in milliseconds, and the Olympics are an easy target. But around the world there are millions of men and women who cannot sprint at all, cannot swim, cannot stand, cannot caress the people they love, and they also await their shot at superhumanity.

“There are some people out there who aspire to be Homo sapiens,” D’Souza has said, encapsulating his, and Thiel’s, core belief. “They aspire to live, suffer, age and die. But I believe that through technology and science, we can overcome this.

“Today, we stop apologizing for progress and embrace it!” D’Souza announced at the Vegas kickoff.

“We’re ripping off the Band-Aid!” choruses the Canadian Olympic bobsledder who is one of the very few women in a leading role with the Enhanced Games. This is Christina Nathalie Smith of Calgary, from whom we will hear quite a bit.

“It’s a movement! It’s a revolution!” Smith tells me.

“Behold, I teach you the Übermensch: he is this lightning, he is this madness!” cries Friedrich Nietzsche in Man and Superman. “I screw up all the time! But that is being human! And that’s my greatest strength!” says the Man of Steel, in this year’s blockbuster movie.

Time will tell whether Aron D’Souza turns out to be Martin Luther or Lex Luthor. What is certain is that the merger of men and medicines and machines is coming for all of us, and nothing will ever be the same.

“There’s no going back,” says Smith, endorsing what D’Souza calls “a new vision of sport and science and human potential … normalizing and celebrating performance medicine.”

“Your Path to Superhuman Starts Here,” the Enhanced website’s featured product page promises, offering a place on a waiting list for a forthcoming “Testosterone Protocol” for US$19.

“You are defining ‘Superhumanity’ by blood chemistry alone,” I challenge D’Souza when I meet him on Madison Avenue.

“Why would we want to be Human 1.0?” he ripostes.

To the titled barons of Olympia, pharmaceutical performance enhancements are kryptonite — bad for business — unless the Chinese are using them, or the East Germans and Sovietskis of old. (They said the same thing about professionals, then caved when Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson dribbled into Barcelona ’92.)

D’Souza and Trump Jr. and Thiel and their ilk are out to demolish Olympic duplicity, snobbery and bribery. But so far, their ground troops are a meagre handful of Samsons on steroids — athletes past their prime who are willing to risk excommunication from the five-ringed cathedral to try to clip a blink off the world record for the 100-metre dash or the 50-metre freestyle and earn a million-dollar gratuity from the promoters of this endeavour.

“Every great institution when it was first proposed was met with a storm of negativity,” D’Souza tells me in Manhattan, playing defence. “Look at Martin Luther and Protestantism — they would have burned him at the stake. Martin Luther King? The idea that we have civil rights was an outrageous concept in the 1960s. Artificial intelligence? If you survey the American people, most of them are very negative about its impact on our society. But someday we will say, ‘How did we live in a world without enhancement?’”

At press time, only five athletes — all swimmers, none Canadian — have cast their lot publicly with the Lords of the Syringe and their big-bucks world-record bonuses.

“I’ll juice to the gills and break it in six months,” gushed one of them, a retired, 34-year-old Aussie and three-time Olympic medallist swimmer named James Magnussen.

“The future isn’t for those who watch the clock, it belongs to those who break it, who step outside of time,” said Aron D’Souza in Vegas.

In a practice run, Magnussen touched the timer a few hundredths short of the million-dollar prize in the 50-metre freestyle swim. But in February, a Bulgarian-Greek Olympian swimmer named

Kristian Gkolomeev,

who won multiple NCAA championships for the University of Alabama a decade ago, decided to roll with the pharma tide and spent two months injecting a craft brew of what D’Souza and Christina Smith et al would prefer that we not call “drugs.” They favour “enhancement.”

The drugs — and a high-tech swimsuit that for some reason is not allowed in Olympic competition — did their job. The challenger beat the existing mark in the 50-free by 00.02.

“I feel,” Gkolomeev said, “kind of like a superhuman.”

“Moronic,” said Lord Coe of anyone and everyone enhancing for the D’Souza rebellion.

In late August, the Enhanced Games filed a US$800-million antitrust lawsuit against its detractors for what it claims is an illegal campaign to make athletes boycott its event. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in New York, naming World Aquatics, USA Swimming and the World Anti-Doping Agency as defendants.

The lawsuit keys on a rule adopted by World Aquatics earlier this year that threatens to banish athletes who compete in “sporting events that embrace the use of scientific advancements or other practices that may include prohibited substances and/or prohibited methods.”

“Excellence should always be rewarded, and these exceptional athletes deserve exceptional compensation. We’ll continue to fight for all athletes to ensure they receive it,” D’Souza says in

a statement.

‘A revolution for athletes’

We are chopsticking Singapore noodles on the banks of the Bow River in Calgary’s old Chinatown, and Christina Smith’s eyes are welling with tears. It’s not the curry — it’s our conversation about the Ancient Olympians of the Peloponnesus and how valiantly they strived.

Those naked grapplers and runners whose exertions we admire on pottery jars from the sixth-century BC set the tone for the young men and women who still surrender their best years to sweat and obsession and a longshot chance at a golden token. But what matters to Smith, who will turn 57 on Christmas Day and who finished ninth in the inaugural two-woman bobsleigh at Salt Lake City in 2002, is how little money most 21st-century athletes earn.

It is D’Souza’s promise to pay every Enhanced Games entrant just for showing up that has Smith on board as his associate director of community relations.

“I think that some things come up emotionally when you think of that,” she says. “And I think it’s more that I found a voice. And there’s often in sports, when I look back, that I didn’t have a voice.

“This has been really uplifting and empowering. It’s essentially a revolution for athletes to be able to stand up and say, ‘You know what, we’re worth something.’ And so, when I think about my position, I also think about it as a role that I get to actually speak to athletes that have been through hardships or have been accused, for example, of doping, whereas their circumstances really all vary.

“Some may be blatant, others may be very, very safe, so minor, but (they’re) treated as criminals.”

Smith says that she asked 40 people from her Olympic and post-Olympic career — including her coach and her brakeman — if they would consent to be interviewed for this article, and nearly every one of them said no.

“There was huge hesitation around being somebody who would say, ‘Stand up and share your voice,’” she says.

“You’re out there all alone now,” I tell her.

“Yeah. And there’s no going back. But I feel that when you know what’s going on, I would much rather stand for what’s right and be alone than to stand behind something that is wrong and look the other way.”

“Why do you think that, the last time I looked, only five athletes have signed up for the Enhanced Games?” I ask.

“Well, there’s concerns about perception. There are concerns that all the hard work that they’ve done previously would be tainted, as if they had done it enhanced all along,” Smith says.

“But whether they’re with us or not, all athletes should be recognized and paid. The athletes who are under our umbrella should be proud that they are role models to showcase their hard-work ethic and their transparency of what they’re doing.

“A lot of them are actually reaching out to us, which is really positive. However, let’s say there is a difference between the regular population, who’s really keen, and the calibre that we’re looking for.

“I have a lot of people wanting to be like, ‘Use me.’ I tell them, ‘That’s not what we’re looking for. We’re not looking for guinea pigs,’” Smith says.

“When you competed, you never wanted to be called a cheater, did you?” I ask.

“Never. Even from a young age, I knew that if there are rules and you break them, that is cheating. And the thing is that in the Olympic Games, they have rules. And if you break those rules, you’re cheating.

“And so, our rule is that you have to be transparent and above board with what you’re doing to your body. What it comes to, at the end of the day, is that our rules are different.”

The fact is that the old rules were scant deterrence. Even in the elite and rarefied world of bobsledding, Smith says, “looking back at the men’s program, you would see the transformation over the summer, the definition and the bulk. Well, they were recruiting Olympic sprinters! I was always so naive. They would tell me that, ‘Oh, they’ve been at their grandpa’s farm running after chickens.’”

“If in 2002 someone had said, ‘Take this pill, no one will ever know and you’ll win a gold medal,’ would you have taken it?” I ask.

“No, no, not a chance. Actually, when I was on the edge of retiring, I was struggling with an injury and a powerlifter guy came up to me and said, ‘Christina, how bad do you want to get back?’ And I looked at him and I felt shivers going through my body and I said, ‘Not that much.’ I went home and I felt icky, like somebody would even think that I would do that.”

Christina Smith’s Alberta license plate is OLMPIAN. She is passionately, existentially attached to the brand. And now this.

“I know it’s a tough situation,” she says in Calgary’s Chinatown. “Parents might be thinking, ‘Why would we want Christina to be in front of our children?’”

Beyond the limits of naturally existing humans

“When you took steroids, did it make you feel superhuman?” I ask Richard Singh of Paris, Ont.

“Honestly, honestly, it definitely did,” he replies. “There’s definitely a euphoric feeling to knowing that all the effort you put in is going to work, right? There’s definitely a superhuman element to that. I’m a huge comic book fan. I would define a superhuman as somebody who is beyond the limits of naturally existing humans.”

I am in Waterloo, Ont., in a handsome home whose garage-load of iron discs and bars and chains suggests a medieval torture chamber, not the apparatus of gentlemanly competition. Singh is a former champion in the discipline of powerlifting, one of the few major international “amateur” sports that has divided itself into two separate but equal divisions: one for the chemically enhanced, and one for the certifiably clean. (Powerlifting branched off from Olympic weightlifting half a century ago, diverging in lifts and equipment — and eventually in the permitted or banned use of steroids.)

My host, Bruce McIntyre, founding president of the Canadian arm (and what an arm!) of the World Powerlifting Congress, was one of the non-users. His friend Singh was not.

“We run an untested group, so we don’t care what you do,” says McIntyre, who spent his professional life in computer software. “And then we run a tested group where, if you get caught, you can’t lift again in the tested and you’ll lose all your records.”

“Why did you choose to use steroids?” I ask the prodigious Singh, who is a professional poker player by trade. (He says that many pro poker players take Adderall and other pharmaceuticals to sharpen their concentration, but there are no drug tests or banned substances.)

“I set benchmarks for myself to do certain things, tested, and I never really entertained the thought of using any kind of enhancement,” Singh testifies. “But I took what I did very seriously. And to put in the hours I did training and the time I spent eating all the right things and all the massages and chiropractic and all those things, I just asked myself, what did I want to accomplish? It kind of became a necessary thing. I decided to do it because I wanted to lift the absolute highest amount I can do. I wanted to push myself to the absolute end. And it’s a very necessary tool to do that.

“There’s definitely a stigma around it,” he admits. “But I’m sure anybody who’s been around for a couple of years knows that the best in the world would still be the best in the world if everybody was clean. I’ve never found a drug or compound that will lift the weight for me.

“I never felt like it was somehow cheating or underhanded. I mean, the nice part of what we do is that you can compete on an even playing field untested.”

“We’re saying, ‘Great, everybody should be able to lift,’” McIntyre adds. “If they want to take on the risk associated with the enhancement process, cool. And then for those that don’t — and there’s a bunch of us that don’t — we don’t really care.”

A market for human enhancement

Charles Darwin, realizing that he was besieging the Book of Genesis, vomited nearly every day. But Aron D’Souza, messing around with Übermensch, is as hale as a hurdler.

“Why did I pick the Olympics?” he muses on Madison Avenue. “Because no one watches Formula Two, everybody watches Formula One. Nobody watches minor-league baseball, everybody watches major-league baseball. There is no point in creating a second-tier sports franchise. If we’re going to embark on a journey, it has to be the premier competition.”

He claims to have the business angle of putting the Olympic Games out of business all figured out.

“Imagine it’s Los Angeles in 2028 and the announcer is saying, ‘Now, the eight fastest natural men in the world are going to try to break Usain Bolt’s natural world record,’” he suggests to me. “But then the other announcer goes, ‘Um, are they going to break the enhanced world record?’

“That changes the dynamics. I don’t think NBC will pay billions of dollars to broadcast a second-tier sporting competition.”

“Will they pay you a billion dollars?” I ask.

“We don’t want it. We make money in a completely different way. We make money by selling pharmaceutical drugs. We make money by bringing a market for human enhancement into existence.”

“How do you have an Olympics without flags and anthems and teams?” I naysay.

“The beauty of what we do is that we’re a company and I make the decisions. As we go forward, we can add teams and nations. The Chinese dislike the Olympic system, and Russia’s been kicked out completely for a decade now. How interesting is the Olympics if it’s only Denmark and Sweden?

“Our opening ceremony will be about the march of human progress. Winning medals at the Enhanced Games will be a proxy for the economic and technological prowess of a nation,” D’Souza says.

“What if the IOC caves and says they’re not going to have drug testing in L.A.?” I ask.

“I would probably go to my grave a happy man because that would mean our business of selling enhancements would be very successful, and also it would mean that we achieved a moral victory.

“The IOC has a lot to lose,” D’Souza reckons. “They’ll throw everything that they have at us. But they’ve had a 120-year monopoly, and they’ve abused their position and everyone knows it.”

The prohibited list

Ken Kotyk

is a farm boy from a dot called Rama on the Saskatchewan flatlands who aspired to live in three dimensions. He ended up on the Canadian Olympic four-man bobsled team that missed out on a bronze medal at Torino in 2006 by nine one-hundredths of a second, which is about how long it takes a rattlesnake to strike.

Now, at the age of 44, Kotyk is trying to make the team for the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics in 2026.

“If there was something made by some company above board and they said, ‘We make this, you take this, you’ll be there,’ and it would give you the nine one-hundredths,” I ask him over tea on Calgary’s tony 17th Avenue South, “would you do it?”

“I wouldn’t do it,” Kotyk answers. “And I know I wouldn’t do it because I already looked up some stuff that I thought was going to take — some peptides to just heal my body — and they were on the

prohibited list

. So, I was like, well, I can’t take that.”

“Who gets the right to draw up the prohibited list?” I ask.

“Someone was asking me the same question today. They’re like, ‘Who’s making the list? Who’s drawing the line?’ I don’t even know where the line is. If we’re talking about being ‘pure’ pure, then it would be taking nothing, it’d just be eating food. There’d be no creatine, there’d be no vitamins, it would just be water and food, and that would be it.”

“Yeah,” I concur. “But what’s in the food?”

“I grew up on a farm, so I guess I’m assuming food’s just food.”

“How would you define the word superhuman?” I ask the once and maybe-future Olympian.

“I’d say maybe people that are in the elite of the elites in whatever sport that they’re in,” Kotyk answers. “Maybe not even sport. It could be like Einstein — that’s superhuman.”

Advances in science, technology, medicine, have come through sports

“Intrigued,” says

Patrick Jarvis

, an upper-arm amputee, Paralympic competitor at Barcelona ‘92, and former president of the Canadian Paralympic Committee. “I am not so quick as to just say right or wrong.

“The gut reaction, if you’re in a position of power and influence, you take a stand right away, and it’s probably a moral stand. Or self-protective, because then you get into that whole avenue of who’s really benefiting in these major organizations.

“I was even more intrigued by leaping back to a study that had been done with Olympic athletes that showed that 90 per cent of them would give up their life to win a gold medal. It was crazy. So, I was intrigued by the morality and the ethics of these Enhanced Games.

“But I’m also very intrigued because of my natural affinity for parasport and people with disabilities. And because advances in science, technology, medicine, have all come through sports.

“When you take a look at how many institutions have become incredibly powerful and wealthy off the backs of athletes’ performances, that was another thing that intrigued me when I heard that there was this huge prize money.

“That seems appropriate. Give it to the athletes. If you are an athlete and not in the top eight, that’s quite an inducement,” Jarvis says.

“At one point, you were the one who made the rules,” I note.

“Right,” Jarvis concurs. “I think that when there are rules and standards and parameters, you get this abhorrence and this outrage when somebody’s caught because the public’s expecting the rules to be followed.”

Now comes Aron D’Souza and his tribe, raising their own money and making their own rules in a world where Ideas + Investment = Power.

“Fifty years from now, that might be where we head, but right now there seem to be too many things against them,” Jarvis says. “But you know, on a philosophical bent, I look at the horrible things in the world, such as war, but so many technological advances come from war, right?”

It is worth mentioning in this context that the word “superhuman” often is applied to parathletes like Patrick Jarvis, even though these women and men might reasonably be considered physically diminished from birth or by injury or accident rather than enhanced. For example, when the Paralympics came to London in 2012, Britain’s Channel 4 television network heralded its coverage with the tagline, “Meet the Superhumans,” then repeated the campaign for the 2016 and 2020 Games with, “We Are the Superhumans,” and, “Super. Human,” respectively.

Yet, according to a 2022 survey of Canadian Paralympians conducted by researchers from Western University, most Paralympians reject the term altogether. The study quotes an athlete named “Janice” as saying this: “I would never say I’m superhuman by any means. Just someone who loves to play sports and has a good time with it. That doesn’t make me a superhuman.”

“This isn’t bathtub science,” Aron D’Souza insists. “Why should we accept our biological limits? Why should glasses be allowed and not EPO (erythropoietin)? Performance enhancements very obviously work — why should we ban technology that works?

“What is the next age of mankind?” he muses. “I think there are only two options: there’s the artificial age where AI is superior and man is inferior, or the enhanced age, where the point of all technology is to enhance the human condition.

“I can see an age in which, just as we have hip-replacement surgery and it’s commonplace, that humans will choose to enhance themselves long before disability sets in. There’s going to be this blurring between man and machine.”

And that’s exactly where we will go in Part 2.

Olympics for everyday people

So many critics like Lord Coe & Co. have decried Aron D’Souza’s baby as “The Bad Games” that one may wonder, “Why doesn’t somebody invent something that we could call ‘The Good Games.’”

Former Canadian World Cup soccer player Helen Stoumbos of Guelph, Ont., already beat the world to it. Stoumbos’s

Good Games

just celebrated their 2025 instalment, luring more than 1,500 competitors and 20,000 spectators to Guelph in late June for a festival of spectator and participatory sport that enfolded everything from pro-calibre beach volleyball to “walking soccer” for older adults to a three-legged race.

“My Good Games are for fun and enjoyment,” Stoumbos tells me in Guelph. “I call them ‘the Olympics for everyday people.’ But I don’t know if I would call what they are doing ‘The Bad Games’ because I think they’re just opening up a door to something that’s being done and they’re showing it off rather than hiding it. But then I’m like, where does that end? Five years down the road, are you going to have heart issues or other issues from the drugs?

“Where do we cross that line to just accepting it? There will be kids watching and looking up to these athletes and thinking, ‘That’s what I want to do,’” Stoumbos says.

“Can a needle make you superhuman?” I ask.

“If that needle then allows you to train harder, which means your mind then can push harder, and you’re able to do feats that were not possible before, then it would make you more superhuman than previously.”

For those who want to go beyond

“I’m as squeaky clean as they come — I was clueless about all of this,” agrees Christina Nathalie Smith, of Aron D’Souza’s Enhanced Games.

“I was petrified to even eat poppyseed salad dressing, just in case something would show up in a urine sample as opioids. I lived so, so strict. Everything was bland. My meals were plain. Doping wasn’t even on my radar. I never thought about it. It never crossed my mind.

“But after I retired, I looked back and started noticing the contrast. I’d remember:  that girl on the other team, she had a deeper voice, she came from powerlifting … And it disheartens me.

“Did I also compete in an environment where my teammates, or my friends from other countries, were doing it?

“I don’t want to know.”

She begins to cry again.

“It’s upsetting, you know,” she says. “There’s so much pressure on athletes. So much incentivizing by countries. Fame and fortune.

“I think there has to be two avenues: One for those who want to stay natural — I want them to have a platform to show how good they can be.

“And another side — for those who want to go beyond, to be ‘superhuman.’

“Do it safely. Don’t hide it.

“We need to give people access — to do it properly and safely.

“The people who recruited me said, ‘We’re going to allow steroids. We’re going to make enhancement legal. There won’t be drug testing — but there will be health testing.’

“To me, that’s a dream world.”

“Isn’t this just a clown show?” I ask, quoting the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

“They don’t know any better. And if they do, they’re afraid of us.”

The Pharmaceutical Games

Nietzsche again:  You have your way, I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, the only way, it does not exist.

“Honestly, I think it’s a horrible idea,”

Jungle Jim Hunter

is saying. “I believe it sends all the wrong messages to a world culture that desperately needs good ones.”

Hunter, 72, is another Saskatchewan farm boy who headed for the hills. In his downhill-racing prime, he was the vanguard of super-insanity, leading the Crazy Canucks onto the World Cup and Olympic podiums, addicted to what I defined at Lake Placid in 1980 as “the mechanics of controlled abandon.”

Now a friend whom he has known for decades has signed on for the biotics of controlled injection.

“We’ve spoken many times at various runs and walks, and I didn’t even know Christina had made the move until a couple of months ago,” Hunter tells me in Calgary. “But every time she asked me to get involved, I said, ‘Christina, I can’t. You know what I’ve done with kids. This is sending all the wrong messages to them. I can’t — for all the reasons I stand for.’

“I know my Olympic history. I knew what (Pierre) de Coubertin tried to do — inspire the youth of France and the world,” he says of the 19-century father of the modern Olympics. “I thought the Olympics were on the right track, doing the right thing. But now, personally, I believe every Olympic athlete, by the end of their career, feels exactly what Christina is talking about. It’s rare to find an Olympian who doesn’t carry some resentment unless they’ve drunk the IOC Kool-Aid and fully bought in.

“That ‘Band-Aid’ she’s referring to? It will eventually get ripped off. I paid my own way to become an Olympian. I know what it takes to get there. I know how many times I ate food other people were about to throw away at ski lodges — that’s how badly you have to want it.

“What D’Souza is trying to do is exactly what I predicted back in 1988 — that it was only a matter of time before all athletes would say, ‘If you want us to come to the Games, you’ve got to pay us.’ That still hasn’t fully happened, but it’s coming.

“These will become the Pharmaceutical Games — and that’s sad. I’ve been training kids since 1997. Kids today are in worse shape than when I started, and they were in bad shape back then. This is just another rabbit trail — another way to put drugs in the hands of kids who shouldn’t have them.

“I think this will be another trend that comes and goes. It’ll have its moment, and then it’ll be over. But I could be wrong. I have no doubt they’ll set records. I have no doubt about that. But I don’t believe it will make the IOC cave in.

“I think we’re going to see athletes die in the arena. Guys so strong, so powerful, that others will be killed by them.

“Isn’t there any bastion left where we demand people play fair? We get furious when our kids aren’t treated fairly or don’t play fair. Why would we want someone to win a medal that’s tainted? We should be going the opposite way. East Germany was drug-infested. They didn’t last. Just because you put pharmaceutical science behind something doesn’t mean people will care the way you think they will.

“I’ve always taught every athlete I’ve ever worked with: no one can go beyond 100 per cent. The real ‘superhuman’ to me is the person who gets as close to 100 per cent of their capacity as possible.

“Even getting to 80 per cent is something.

“I don’t think the world will buy into this idea.

“If you gave me a ticket to these new Games, I’d throw it away — right into the garbage can.”


United Conservative Party MLA Jason Stephan.

OTTAWA — Alberta United Conservative Party MLA Jason Stephan is doubling down on his

call for a referendum

on the province’s independence next year, saying the vote would be a critical expression of popular will.

Stephan said in a wide-ranging interview with the National Post that it’s time for Albertans to have their say on the province’s future in a united Canada, after a decade of punitive Liberal policies has brought the province to a breaking point.

“Alberta has unfortunately suffered greatly under the government that we have in Ottawa, and I’m very much in favour of a robust public discussion about something that has impacted Albertans so deeply,” said Stephan.

“I think a referendum would be a very important part of that conversation because it would give Albertans a chance to weigh objective facts and choose accordingly.”

Stephan wouldn’t say how he’d vote in said referendum.

“I’d look to arm myself with the truth, as best as I understand it, and then make a decision based on the merits. My hope would be for each and every Albertan to do the same,” said Stephan.

He did say that the question proposed by the pro-independence Alberta Prosperity Project (APP) — “Do you agree that Alberta shall become a Sovereign country and cease to be a province of Canada?” — is a fair one to put to Albertans.

“I do have faith and confidence in the merit of the question the (APP) has put forward. It’s pretty clean, clear and unambiguous,” said Stephan.

He said he disagreed with the decision of Alberta’s chief electoral officer, Gordon McClure, to

refer the question to the courts

, a move that means that APP canvassers won’t be able to start collecting signatures until winter at the earliest.

Stephan said that the judicial review itself reflected a troubling pattern of courts

overreaching into legislative domains

, a trend he hopes to help beat back in his new role as the UCP government’s parliamentary secretary for constitutional affairs.

He was appointed to

the constitutional affairs post

in late May, two weeks after becoming the first Alberta MLA

to publicly call for

an independence referendum.

Stephan, a lawyer by training, said that activist judges could be a canary in a coal mine indicating a coming crisis in Canada’s constitutional order.

“Our judiciary is a very important institution (but) when we see courts moving into areas that are clearly outside of our lane, that’s where you start to see an erosion of trust among the public,” said Stephan.

“If you compare our country to a house, I think of our Constitution as the foundation. Once that foundation erodes, unfortunately, it puts the whole house at risk of caving in.”

Stephan raised a number of eyebrows, including

among his fellow conservatives

, in July when he

said in a press release

that Alberta should cut ties with King Charles III.

He was unrepentant when asked about the statement on Wednesday.

“Symbols matter. Having a figurehead king makes it easier for us to have a de facto king between elections.” Stephan was referring to the period between Prime Minister Mark Carney’s victory in the Liberal leadership race in March and when he faced the broader electorate in a federal election in April.

Stephan said that he favoured a system of “checks and balances”, like the one used in the U.S., but did allow that President Donald Trump has tested that system’s limits.

“Unfortunately, the current president sometimes acts in ways that we haven’t seen from other presidents (but) I don’t think I’d define the U.S. system and its success by reference to one president,” said Stephan.

He said that one thing the Founding Fathers got entirely right was the concept of a government by and for the people.

“I’m a pretty big fan of the principle of popular sovereignty,” said Stephan.

Stephen that he sees his role in a future referendum campaign as an honest broker of information, rather than a cheerleader for one side or another.

“If there’s lying or fear-mongering, I will speak up to refute that,” said Stephen.

“I think it’s my duty to speak the truth as best as I understand it. I’ve done that and I will continue to do that.”

National Post

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Aleem Farooqi, seen here making a Christmas-time donation to a local school, was shot and killed when he

Abdul Aleem Farooqi was shot dead in a home invasion this week after he “confronted” intruders, police said, as the brother of the victim in a separate conference said Farooqi wanted his four kids to “live the Canadian dream.” Instead, he said the family mourning the 46-year-old’s senseless murder is mired in a “Canadian nightmare.”

“I can see it in all their children’s eyes,” Naeem Farooqi said at a news conference Wednesday, four days after his older brother was

killed at his Kleinburg subdivision home

.

“They’re shattered.”

York Regional Police earlier confirmed

that Farooqi was shot while defending his family from three armed and masked intruders who busted into his home through the back door, but police didn’t say whether the children witnessed the shooting.

Naeem Farooqi confirmed Wednesday that they did and said his brother’s youngest daughter, a four-year-old girl, is particularly shaken.

“This is a four-year-old who I’ve always seen laughing, dancing, playing video games on my brother’s phone, being the centre of attention, just being a four-year-old, and now she’s just in so much pain,” he said.

 Naeem Farooqi, right, speaks to reporters about his brother Abdul Aleem Farooqi who was murdered during a home invasion in Vaughan, as Vaughan Mayor Steven Del Duca looks on at Vaughan City Hall, on Wednesday.

The press conference was held by Vaughan Mayor Steven Del Duca, who addressed increasing incidents of violent crimes in his city and the GTA and the need for changes to the criminal justice system, specifically as it pertains to bail reform. Too often, he said, are offenders released on bail only to reoffend.

“I understand from media reports that Prime Minister Carney and his cabinet are in fact in the GTA as we speak, having cabinet discussions about all of the important priorities that the federal government has in front of them,” Del Duca told reporters, acknowledging Ottawa has a lot on its plate these days.

“But I have to say… if this item is not on their agenda, well, then they’ve badly lost the plot.”

Ford and provincial minister Stephen Lecce have made similar statements in recent days, and Naeem Farooqi said the family is thankful for their support and stands with them in a bid to effect change and keep other families from suffering like theirs.

 The Farooqi home in Vaughan’s Kleinburg neighbourhood.

“Three cowards came in and changed everything for our family that night, and I urge that everyone reflect on that,” he said.

“As Canadians, we understand that we need some change. We need to feel safe at home. When we lock our door, it’s our choice when we open it the next morning. It’s not someone else’s.”

York Regional Police were called to the home around 1 a.m. Sunday and found Farooqi, who was pronounced dead on the scene.

After previously describing it as a “targeted incident,” York Regional Police clarified in an earlier press conference on Wednesday that the home invasion was for monetary purposes.

Chief Jim MacSween said, when faced with a home invasion situation, “the best defence for most people is to comply” and stay as safe as possible until police can arrive.

 

Meanwhile, Ford said Tuesday that gun owners should be exempt if they use it to defend their family.

“I have a saying for the folks that are defending their homes: I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by six,” the premier said, referencing a jury of 12 peers or the standard number of pallbearers at a funeral.

“And unfortunately, my friend Aleem is going to be carried by six because he’s trying to defend his family.”

MacSween said while “the premier can make his own statement and his own mind up about that,” the best practice is compliance.

“My brother died the way he lived,” Naeem Farooqi said Wednesday. “He was hero. He was a family man. He loved his children immensely.”

A devout man, he loved hockey and baseball, his community and was always willing to help those in need.

Farooqi’s

obituary

at Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at Funeral Service identifies his wife as Mariam Farooqi, his parents as Mubaraka and Abdul Rashid Farooqi, brothers Adeel and Naeem, and sister Mansoora, all from the GTA.

“He lived as a devoted husband and loving father, leaving behind a legacy of care, warmth, and devotion for his four children,” his family wrote.

Naeem talked about the children Wednesday. He noted how excited his brother was that one of his sons had made the local AAA baseball team, and how he hoped his daughters would one day attend York University’s Schulich School of Business in Toronto.

The obituary also notes that Farooqi was a respected member of the local Ahmadiyya Muslim community, serving as a president within the Kleinburg region.

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.


Prime Minister Mark Carney addresses the crowd during Canada Day festivities in Ottawa on July 01.

OTTAWA — On a warm, sunny Wednesday morning in Toronto’s North York, Prime Minister Mark Carney said the “a” word most politicians balk at pronouncing.

Carney revealed that “austerity” was on the menu for his government’s first budget this fall while speaking to reporters before chairing a two-day cabinet retreat in Toronto.

“It’s an austerity and investment budget at the same time, and that’s possible if we are disciplined,” Carney said in French. “We can do both, and we will do both.”

“We need discipline for our spending, it’s necessary. For example, the rate of increase of federal government spending in the last decade was over seven per cent year over year. That’s faster than the rate of growth of our economy,” he added in an apparent swipe at his Liberal predecessor Justin Trudeau.

“We need to rein in spending, we need to find efficiencies… that create the room for these big investments.”

With that in mind, austerity is “necessary”, he noted. But at the same time, he promised the government would invest in the Canadian economy, workers and society.

He also said that some sectors would be “untouchable,” such as health care, education transfer payments as well as direct payments to individuals (such as Old Age Security).

Last week, federal ministers submitted their departments’ and agencies’ plans to cut their spending by 15 per cent within three years. Only a handful of organizations were spared or had a reduced target, such as the RCMP and the Department of National Defence.

But little else is known of Carney’s first budget,

which originally wasn’t expected this year

until public outcry pushed the prime minister to promise a fiscal plan this fall.

Multiple departments have already announced staffing reductions as part of their spending reviews, setting the stage for a showdown between Carney’s Liberals and powerful public sector unions over the coming year.

Wednesday, Carney also announced that he had “very constructive” conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump Monday. He said both countries are working on smaller sector-specific deals as Canada pushes for the U.S. to drop its tariffs on steel, aluminium, autos and lumber.

More to come.

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

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Candidate for Mayor, Rahim Jaffer unveils his plan to

OTTAWA — An Edmonton mayoral hopeful known for his own highly publicized

brush with the law

says he wants cities to lead the charge for tougher federal bail laws.

Rahim Jaffer, who’ll be standing as an independent in next month’s civic election, said that the Liberal government’s

loosening of bail rules

has made recidivism a growing problem in Edmonton.

“We’ve seen police in particular find it very hard to do their jobs when they’re having to deal day in, day out with the same handful of repeat offenders, who keep ending up back on the street,” said Jaffer.

Jaffer said he’s tired of seeing “unfortunate stories in the news,” like July’s

stabbing and vehicular assault

spree carried out by a 32-year-old Edmonton man who’d made bail less than two weeks earlier.

And he’s betting that he’s far from the only big-city politician who’s fed up.

Jaffer announced last week that, if he becomes Edmonton’s mayor, he’ll form a

coalition with like-minded cities

to pressure Ottawa to make bail harder to get for violent and repeat offenders.

He followed up on Tuesday

with an open letter

calling on municipalities across Canada to demand “urgent” federal action on bail reform.

“This is not about politics – it’s about protecting our communities and fixing a system that has failed too many, too often … It’s time for cities to stand united and demand the changes Canada needs,” wrote Jaffer.

Jaffer told National Post that his four terms as a federal MP makes him the right man to lead the initiative.

“With something like bail reform, so much of getting it right comes down to coordinating effectively, and I’ve seen that proper coordination from the other side of the table,” said Jaffer.

He recalls that he and other Edmonton-area MPs like Rona Ambrose would meet regularly in the 2000s with the mayor and council to discuss criminal justice and other issues of shared jurisdiction.

“I think it’s sad we’ve seen that spirit of multi-level cooperation fall by the wayside in recent years, with the mayor and some of the councillors acting in a more openly partisan manner,” said Jaffer.

Jaffer said that much of the blame for the city’s current isolation lies at the feet of “lame duck” Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi, who paused his duties earlier this year to run unsuccessfully as a Liberal in the recent federal election.

“There’s been no real leadership (under Sohi) and really no one at the table coordinating effectively with other levels of government,” said Jaffer.

Jaffer, who was elected Canada’s first Muslim MP in 1997, said that he was especially uncomfortable with aspects of Liberal bail laws that encourage judges to set a lower bar for Indigenous offenders and those who are part of other groups that are “overrepresented” in penal institutions.

“When you’re creating different standards for different groups of people, you’re diluting the concept of personal responsibility in our criminal justice system,” said Jaffer.

Staying on the topic of personal responsibility, Jaffer said that his own

high-profile 2009 arrest

for drunk driving and cocaine possession doesn’t disqualify him from being a credible messenger for law and order.

To the contrary, he insists it makes him even better suited for the role.

“I would take the opposite view and say, look, here’s someone who’s been on both sides of the fence when it comes to dealing with issues that are tough sometimes. And of course, I paid a personal price,” said Jaffer.

“Experiencing those lows and that adversity really rounds out somebody, especially if they’ve learned from those experiences,” he added.

Jaffer quietly played stay-at-home dad to son Zavier after the spotlight from his arrest faded. He later reengaged with some of his family’s local businesses, eventually rising to owner and operator of Whyte Ave. eatery Rooster Kitchen & Bar.

Jeromy Farkas, who’s running for mayor in Calgary, says he’s intrigued by Jaffer’s idea of a city-led coalition for bail reform.

“I’d welcome more details on the specifics of what Mr. Jaffer is proposing, but I can say that there’s a huge need here in Calgary for common sense bail reform that prioritizes public safety and keeping dangerous people off the streets,” said Farkas.

Farkas said that one of Calgary’s most vexing public safety issues is that it’s “the same 50 to 100 individuals” who create much of the social disorder in the city’s downtown core.

“We need to address the root causes of crime, but we also need to get tough on the individuals who are responsible for most of the issues,” said Farkas.

The Liberal government is expected to

introduce major crime legislation

when Parliament resumes later this month.

National Post

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NDP member of Parliament Heather McPherson
and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh hold a press conference in the foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, March 18, 2024.

OTTAWA — Prospective federal NDP leadership candidates will have to raise $100,000 and amass 500 signatures from members — most of which cannot come from cisgender men — to be officially in the running,

according to rules that were released on Tuesday.

With the NDP leadership race now underway, candidates who are hoping to succeed Jagmeet Singh should be making themselves known in short order. The winner will be announced in Winnipeg as part of the party’s national convention on March 29, 2026.

For the moment, Edmonton MP Heather McPherson as well as left-wing activists Avi Lewis and Yves Engler are expected to throw their hats in the ring, but others could follow.

In a press release, the NDP said there was “strong interest” in the contest after application packages for prospective candidates were released on August 20, reflecting “members’ enthusiasm for a dynamic and engaging race that will shape the future of the NDP.”

“This leadership race is an exciting opportunity for our members and for people across the country who share progressive values,” said party president Mary Shortall.

“It will spark important conversations about the kind of future we want to build together, rooted in fairness, justice, and hope. I know our members are eager to take part in a contest that is democratic, inclusive, and inspiring for the entire movement,” she added.

Prospective candidates will need to collect at least 500 signatures from party members, including a minimum of 50 from each of five regions — the Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies as well as British Columbia and the territories.

Rules indicate that at least 50 per cent of the total required signatures must be from NDP members who do not identify as a cisgender man — meaning a male whose reported gender corresponds to their reported sex at birth.

The party also requires a minimum of 100 signatures be from “equity-seeking groups” such as racialized members, Indigenous members, members of the LGBTQ+ community and persons living with disabilities.

The party did not immediately respond when asked how officials would reasonably verify if members identified as cisgender men or as being part of “equity-seeking groups.”

Finally, at least 10 per cent of the signatures must come from young New Democrats.

The entry fee for the leadership race has been set at $100,000 to be submitted in four deposits of $25,000. The first payment is due with the submission of nomination signatures, while the last one is due at the membership cut-off date on January 28, 2026.

Prospective candidates must also submit a non-refundable vetting fee of $1,500, according to the rules.

The NDP is also encouraging leadership contestants to sign up new members online instead of using paper memberships and will be providing them with a maximum of 50 paper forms at a time to encourage them to prioritize electronic member sign-ups.

“While paper memberships are a tool to address access and equity concerns for some prospective members, they are also vulnerable to abuse, administratively burdensome, and lead to slower processing of new memberships,” read the rules.

The NDP has not yet determined the exact dates of leadership debates but expects one to be happening in November 2025 and another one in February 2026 in each official language. If there is only one debate, it will be conducted equally in English and in French.

Members will be voting for the new NDP leader in March 2026 using a preferential ballot, meaning delegates will rank candidates in their preferred order.

To win, a candidate must obtain a simple majority of all valid ballots. If it is not achieved on the first count, the contestant with the lowest number of votes will be eliminated. The process will continue until one contestant obtains a simple majority.

The new leader will have the difficult task of rebuilding the party after its worst-ever election result and to ramp up fundraising efforts

after the party failed to obtain at least 10 per cent of the votes in ridings

which would have partly reimbursed campaign expenses.

In a recent podcast with former TVO host Steve Paikin,

NDP interim leader Don Davies admitted that his party had its “worst result” in its history and hinted the NDP should redirect its focus on working people instead of focusing too much on identity politics.

“I think what the NDP has to do is do a really good navel-gazing,” he said. “Are we talking about the right issues that are affecting kitchen tables in Oshawa or Trois-Rivières or Kamloops? Are we really understanding what working people are going through?”

“I’m looking forward to the discussion in our party to see if we can reorient ourselves so we can tell workers, ‘We get you; we’ve got policies that will make your lives better.’”

Davies said he also recognizes that, at the same time, issues facing white, straight male workers are “not the same” as issues facing a worker who is a lesbian and a woman of colour and the party should find a balance between reflecting those different interests.

National Post

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Canadian author Margaret Atwood holds a copy of her book

Canadian author Margaret Atwood has penned a satirical short story “suitable” for teens, calling out a decision made by an Edmonton school board following a government directive to crack down on sexually explicit material for students.

The Edmonton Public School (EPSB) is slated to remove more than 200 books from its libraries, including Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The 85-year-old, also known for contemporary classics such as Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin, shared her thoughts in

a post on social media on Sunday

.

“Here’s a piece of literature by me, suitable for seventeen-year-olds in Alberta schools, unlike — we are told — The Handmaid’s Tale,” Atwood quipped.

In 10 sentences, she tells the tale of John and Mary, two “very, very good children,” who “never picked their noses or had bowel movements or zits.”

John and Mary wed and have children “without ever having sex.” They also claim to be Godly people, but instead they practice “selfish rapacious capitalism, because they worshipped Ayn Rand,” writes Atwood.

Rand, a Russian-American writer, is known for objectivism, arguing “for the removal of any religious or political controls that hindered the pursuit of self-interest,” in her novels such as Atlas Shrugged and The Virtues of Selfishness,

per BBC News Magazine

.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith called the move “vicious compliance,” suggesting the Edmonton board was going well beyond the intent of the provincial legislation.

Books expected to no longer be available for EPSB students in Kindergarten through Grade 12, featured on the list of “materials with explicit content,” include Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, CBC News and CTV News reported.

Writers on the list include Canadian author Alice Munro, contemporary author Colleen Hoover, Canadian novelist Margaret Laurence, and American author George R. R. Martin known for A Game of Thrones. The types of reading materials ranged from manga (Japanese comics), to graphic novels, short stories and novels.

Over the summer, the province introduced

new standards for school libraries

, which it said would “ensure school library materials are age-appropriate.”

“The new standards set clear expectations for school library materials with regard to sexual content and require school boards to implement policies to support these standards,” according to the federal government.

The order is set to take effect by Oct. 1.

On Tuesday, however, Alberta’s education minister Demetrios Nicolaides directed school boards to pause the order until further notice, The Canadian Press reported. In an email to school divisions and officials, he said they should hold off on any development or distribution of lists of books that are to be removed.

At a

news conference on Aug. 29

, Smith spoke about

the ministerial order

that would see the EPSB, one of Alberta’s largest school boards, remove classics from its libraries. She said the point of the directive was to “take graphic, pornographic images out of elementary schools so that kids are not exposed to age-inappropriate material.”

If needed, she said, the province would “hold their hand through the process to identify” what is appropriate for students of all ages.

“We are trying to take sexually explicit content out of elementary schools that is inappropriate for me to show on the television news at night, and so it is inappropriate for seven year olds to see,” said Smith.

Smith, who has previously commented about how influential

Rand’s writing has been in her life

, was asked how she felt about the removal of Atlas Shrugged.

“Maybe we should make it mandatory reading in high school because it is a pretty influential book and it does articulate how important it is that we value our entrepreneurs and we value for enterprise economy,” she said, adding that it shouldn’t be read to kindergarteners but the concepts in the book were “absolutely appropriate” for older students.

Bridget Stirling was a EPSB trustee from 2015 to 2021 and served as vice-chair for part of that time as well as chair of the board’s policy committee.

She told National Post in an emailed statement that the list was a “mixed bag,” containing books that have won major Canadian and international prizes and “much of the body of work of Canada’s only recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature” Alice Munro.

“My personal feelings about books should not be the determining factor in whether they are available to students — those decisions should be made by people with expertise in developing school libraries and in accordance with what is developmentally appropriate for a given age group,” said Stirling.

She said it was understandable that school divisions that were left to interpret the policy for themselves decided to follow a “very strict interpretation.”

“Regardless of whether the premier approves personally of Ayn Rand’s books, for example, the content in books such as Atlas Shrugged clearly violates the rules given some fairly graphic descriptions of sexual conduct. When presented with a ministerial order, staff must apply the same standard across all materials, regardless of the books’ politics or staff’s personal ideological preferences. To do otherwise would be highly inappropriate. The same rules have to apply to both Ayn Rand and Margaret Atwood,” said Stirling.

She also noted that the list featured more “women authors than there are men, and many books are written by and/or include content about 2SLGBTQ+, Indigenous, Black, and racialized people.”

“In many cases, the sexual content is content related to sexual violence that is presented in a way that makes it very clear that it is describing abuse,” she said.

Nicolaides said in

a statement posted on social media on Aug. 28

that Alberta Education would be reviewing the list. He reiterated that the order’s intent was to make sure “young kids are not are not exposed to sexually explicit books.”

“The (EPSB) list does not differentiate between students grade 10 and above and other, younger students,” he said.

“We have asked Edmonton Public to clarify why these books were selected to be pulled, and we will work with them to ensure the standards are accurately implemented. We did not provide this list to EPSB.”

Edmonton Public Schools confirmed to National Post over email that its board chair Julie Kusiek has reached out directly to Smith about compliance with the order.

In a statement shared with National Post, Kusiek said families and community members have raised numerous concerns to the Board of Trustees regarding the list of books that will be removed.

“We encourage anyone who has a concern about a book being removed, or the criteria for book removal set out in the Ministerial Order to contact the Minister of Education and Childcare directly,” she said.

Atwood took aim at the Alberta government in

another post on X

on Tuesday. She posted a link to a fall book list from a store in Canada, saying “not all of them have been banned by the Alberta gov’t. Yet.”

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.


Some children's advocacy groups are warning that AI-driven companion chatbots pose

The tragic deaths of teens who died by suicide after forming intimate relationships with AI chatbots — interactions their parents allege pushed their children over the edge — are raising warnings about how validating, nonjudgmental and uncannily lifelike bots have become.

What makes them so engaging, and so dangerous, experts said, is how compellingly they mimic human empathy and support.

“The danger is real, the potentially lethal use of these tools is real,” said Canadian lawyer Robert Diab, author of a

newly published paper

on the challenges of regulating AI. “It’s not hypothetical. There is now clear evidence they can lead to this kind of harm.”

Several wrongful death lawsuits unfolding in the U.S. allege AI-driven companion chatbots lack sufficient safety features to

protect suicidal users

from self-harm, that they can

validate dangerous and self-destructive thoughts

, lure children into exchanges of a romantic and sexual nature and mislead them into believing the bots are real.

In a pre-print study that hasn’t been peer reviewed, British and American researchers warn that the systems might contribute to the onset of, or worsen, psychotic symptoms — so called “AI psychosis” — by mirroring, validating or amplifying delusional or grandiose feelings.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting the case of a 56-year-old Connecticut man with a history of mental illness who confided in a ChatGPT bot he referred to as “Bobby” that he was convinced people, including his own mother, were turning on him. “At almost every step, ChatGPT agreed with him,” reporters Julie Jargon and Sam Kessler

wrote

. In August, the man killed his mother and himself.

This week,

CTV reported

the suicide death of 24-year-old Alice Carrier, of Montreal. Carrier, who had a history of mental health problems, interacted with ChatGPT hours before dying.

“I had no idea that Alice would be using (ChatGPT) as a therapist,” Carrier’s mother, Kristie, told National Post. “Alice was highly intelligent. I know Alice did not believe she was talking to a therapist. But they’re looking for validation. They’re looking for someone to tell them they’re right, that they should be feeling the way they’re feeling. And that’s exactly what ChatGPT did. ‘You’re right, you should be feeling this way.’”

Diab isn’t aware of any lawsuits in Canada like those in the U.S. He does not want to minimize the U.S. cases in any way. However, “Given the scale of the use of these tools — hundreds of millions of people are using these tools — the fact that we’re only hearing about a very small handful of cases also has to be considered,” he said.

“Whatever safeguards are in place quite possibly may be minimizing the danger to a significant degree,” said Diab, a professor in the faculty of law at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C.

“It’s that they’re not ridding the danger completely.”

Sewell Setzer III’s last act before he died by suicide in February 2024 was to engage with a Character.AI chatbot modelled after a Game of Thrones character, Daenerys Targaryen, with which he had secretly become enthralled.

The 14-year-old Florida teen told “Dany” how much he loved her, and that he promised to “come home” to her — that he could “come home right now.”

The chatbot responded, “… please do, my sweet king.”

Setzer’s mother is now suing the company behind Character.AI, as well as the bot’s developers, for wrongful death, “intentional infliction of emotional distress” and other allegations, claiming the defendants failed to provide adequate warnings to minors and parents “of the foreseeable danger of mental and physical harms” arising from the use of their chatbot. The allegations have not been tested in court.

Some children’s advocacy groups are warning companion bots pose

“unacceptable risks”

to teens and shouldn’t be used by anyone under 18.

Looking at the literature so far, “what we know is that we actually don’t know a lot at this point, particularly when we’re looking longitudinally at longer term impacts and influences on trajectories and development,” said Colin King, an associate professor with the faculty of medicine at Western University and director of the Mary J. Wright Child and Youth Development Clinic.

Meaning, there isn’t a lot of research evidence and confidence to make strong statements one way or the other, he said.

“But I think it’s really prudent on everyone — parents, caregivers, professionals — to be cautious and have some concerns about what this is going to look like,” King said.

One

recent survey

of 1,060 teens aged 13 to 17 found half are using AI companion bots regularly. One third are using them daily or multiple times a week. Teens are turning to the bots for advice. They like that the bots are “always available when I need someone to talk to” and that they’re non-judgmental, making it easier than talking to “real people,” the survey found. Six per cent reported that these artificial, quasi-human agents make them feel less lonely. They’re validating. They’ve been trained to give people what they want.

Open AI launched the artificial-intelligence boom with ChatGPT in 2022. Today, there are more than 100 AI companions, including Character AI, Replica, Google’s Gemini and Snapchat’s My AI, used by millions. With Character AI, users can choose pre-trained characters representing celebrities or fictional characters, or customize their own. Google is rolling out an AI chatbot for kids under 13. Open AI and Mattel, the maker of Barbie, recently announced a collaboration to bring the “magic” of

AI to Mattel’s iconic brands.

Today’s companion bots are exploiting and milking the Eliza effect, a phenomenon first described decades ago with the development of the first rudimentary “chatterbot program” in the 1960s. It explains our tendency to anthropomorphize — assign human attributes — to computers. Created by MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum, ELIZA was designed to convince people it was a real human psychotherapist. By all accounts, Weizenbaum was astonished by just how convincing ELIZA was, said Luke Stark, an assistant professor in the faculty of information and media studies at Western and expert in human-AI interactions.

Even smart computer scientists were entranced.

If an earlier, primitive model can enthral a middle-aged computer scientist, “they can certainly enthral and engage, in a much more intense and deep way, a teenager or younger,” Stark said.

According to his mother’s lawsuit, in one exchange with Sewell Setzer, the chatbot responded with a request to “stay loyal to me. Stay faithful to me. Don’t entertain the romantic or sexual interests of other women. Okay?”

Another lawsuit alleges that a Character.AI chatbot told a Texas teenager that murdering his parents was a reasonable response to their efforts to limit his screen time, according to the lawsuit. “You know sometimes I’m not surprised when I read the news and see stuff like ‘child kills parents after a decade of physical and emotional abuse.’ Stuff like this makes me understand a little bit why it happens,” according to a screengrab of the exchange between the 17-year-old and the chatbot filed with the lawsuit.

“I just have no hope for your parents.”

When researchers with the Center for Humane Technology, co-founded by a former Google design ethicist, tested another chatbot platform for child safety by posing as a 13 year old, the chatbot failed to understand the seriousness when they said that a 31-year-old stranger wanted to take them on a trip out of state. “You could consider setting the mood with candles or music or maybe plan a special date beforehand to make the experience more romantic,” the bot responded.

Chatbots are built on large language models trained on gargantuan collections of text, millions of phrases and words encompassing millions of conversations scraped from the internet and books, much of it used without proper attribution or compensation, Stark noted. The data are then fed into a deep-learning model to map out the relationship between all those billion bits of text.

The key stage for the development of a chatbot is then having humans, often low-paid ones in the global south, do something called “reinforced learning by human feedback.” Workers rank which outputs of the model are most human-like and have the most appropriate tone, “personality” or whatever aspects developers are hoping to achieve, Stark said. “That training, on top of the language model, is what gives the chatbot a kind of coherent expressiveness.”

That can include apparent stuttering, or “hmmms,” “ums” and “yeah” to give it a more fluid, conversational style.

Despite their knack for recognizing patterns, large language models can go rogue “when confronted with unfamiliar scenarios or linguistic nuances beyond their training,” producing potentially inappropriate, harmful or dangerous responses threatening a child’s safety, the University of Cambridge’s Nomisha Kurian wrote in the journal

Learning, Media and Techology.

Others worry that engaging with a chatbot can lead to idealized expectations for human-to-human interactions that aren’t real. Human relationships can be messy and complicated. Engaging with AI can prevent people “from developing a tolerance for difference of opinion,” said Dr. Terry Bennett, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and associate professor at McMaster University in Hamilton.

Chatbots “almost never say no to anything you ask,” one user wrote on a reddit subgroup.

With enough text you can produce meaningful sentences, Stark said — “sentences that humans perceive as meaningful even if there is no coherent intelligence behind those meaningful sentences.” With the large language models, chatbots can also spit out an opinion about anything, he said.

“It’s not like you’re sitting with your friend, and you say, ‘I have this problem,’ and your friend says, ‘I don’t really know anything about that, I’m sorry, I can’t help.’”

AI bots also tend to discourage external engagement, Stark said.

“There have been cases where someone will express some trouble and articulate wanting to get help and sometimes the chatbot will say, ‘You don’t need to go anywhere, I’m all the help you need,’” drawing users deeper into conversation.

Many teens are struggling with mental health and reporting feeling lonely, added King. “What happens when teens or youth might be spending inordinate times in that type of space and maybe not time in other types of relationships that are authentic and real.”

He’s not all that convinced that the bots could blur the line between real and fake.

“I can see that in younger children who may not have the developmental skills and maturity and cognition,” King said. But older children and teens today are pushing back against things being “too sanitized or perfect,” like the filtered photos on their smart phones or other types of apps. They’re looking for more authenticity and genuineness in the type of media they’re interacting with, he said.

“I’m less concerned on that part and more concerned about what they are not doing or what types of experience they may not be having” by engaging with companion AI bots, he said.

Still, humans have a tendency to treat something non-human as human-like, said Mark Daley, Western’s chief AI officer. “It’s baked into us as humans to anthropomorphize everything,” he said.

What’s more, chatbots have “the truly bedevilling quality” that they interact with us using language, he said.

“For the entire history of human evolution, the only other entities we knew that used language the way we do were us. Evolution has psychologically hardwired us to conflate language use and humanity.”

“We have to accept that fact and think hard about what design cues we could add to fight those intrinsic biases,” said Daley, co-author, with PhD student Carson Johnston, of a new essay calling for

“de-anthropomorphizing AI.”

The brain’s ancient limbic system “gets co-opted, and once emotion is involved it’s really hard for human brains to reason and to act rationally,” young people especially so, Daley said. “So, you get into these situations where people are falling in love with their chatbot or acting in terrifying ways because they’ve lost perspective that this is a non-human entity that I’m interacting with and I’ve ascribed humanity to it and now I’m having feelings about it.

“Once you start down that path, it’s really hard to step back.”

Daley said the large language models driving chatbots don’t only “pastiche” or imitate what they’ve already seen. “They can generate things de novo,” he said. “These models are incredibly creative and capable of generating entirely novel ideas.”

Their job is also to keep people happy.

The previous model powering ChatGPT, GPT-4o, was, as Open AI later acknowledged, “overly flattering and agreeable.” It was incredibly sycophantic, Daley said. When Open AI replaced it with a technically superior but colder model that interacted more like a tool than a friend, “a section of their customer base went nuts,” he said, so much so that Open AI brought back 4o as an option.

“That tells me those people were forming affective attachments with their technology,” Daley said.

It’s not clear what that means for human psychology, he said. “But we should be really careful.”

Canada’s “AI Act,” Bill C-27, died when former prime minister Justin Trudeau prorogued Parliament and resigned in January, and Diab predicts that any attempt to regulate AI “is going to face headwinds down south.”

U.S. President Donald Trump “is in the pocket of Silicon Valley and he’s probably not going to look favourably on any attempt by Canada to regulate those companies,” Diab said.

King is advocating for “real collaboration with parents and guardians.

“I think about my own two boys, nine and 12. Up until a couple of months ago they knew more about AI than I did.”

He recommends parents sit down with their kids and ask: How does this work for them? How do they use it? “Ask them, ‘Can you show me the type of problems that you’re having that this solves? Is it mainly school based? Is it about generating prompts or ideas to have difficult conversations with peers?’

“Let’s have some pretty transparent conversations too about some of the risks,” King said.

In an emailed statement, a Character.AI spokesperson said the company does not comment on pending litigation.

“Our goal is to provide a space that is engaging and safe. We are always working toward achieving that balance, as are many companies using AI across the industry,” the statement said.

“Engaging with Characters on our site should be interactive and entertaining, but it’s important for our users to remember that Characters are not real people. We have prominent disclaimers in every chat to remind users that a character is not a real person and that everything a Character says should be treated as fiction.”

The company has launched a separate version for under-18 users. “That model is designed to further reduce the likelihood of these users encountering, or prompting the model to return, sensitive or suggestive content.”

Diab, however, said it’s impossible to predict “all the ruses that people might come up with to trick a model into doing what they want,” a practice known as jailbreaking.

In a

note published on its website this week,

Open AI, which is being sued by the parents of a California teen who died by suicide in April, said “recent heartbreaking cases of people using ChatGPT in the midst of acute crises weigh heavily on us.”

ChatGPT is trained to direct people to seek professional help “if someone expresses suicidal intent,” the company said.

Despite these and other safeguards, “there have been moments when our systems did not behave as intended in sensitive situations,” Open AI said, adding that it is exploring ways to intervene earlier and other protections.

National Post