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The
Canadian Post-Modern
(Liberal
Government) Version
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The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his
house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's
a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the
ant is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper calls a press conference
and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed
while others less fortunate like him are cold and starving.
CBC shows up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshopper, with
cuts to a video of the ant in his comfortable warm home with a table filled
with food. Canadians are stunned that in a country of such wealth, this
poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so while others have plenty.
The NDP, the CAW and the Coalition Against Poverty demonstrate in front
of the ant's house. The CBC, interrupting an Inuit cultural festival special
from Nunavut with breaking news, broadcasts them singing "We Shall Overcome."
Svend Robinson rants in an interview with Pamela Wallin that the ant has
gotten rich off the backs of grasshoppers, and calls for an immediate tax
hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."
In response to polls, the Liberal Government drafts the Economic Equity
and Grasshopper Anti-Discrimination Act, retroactive to the beginning
of the summer. The ant's taxes are reassessed and he is also fined for
failing to hire grasshoppers as helpers. Without enough money to pay both
the fine and his newly imposed retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated
by the government. The ant moves to the US, starts a successful agribiz
company.
The CBC later shows the now fat grasshopper finishing up the last of the
ant's food though spring is still months away, while the government house
he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around
him because he hadn't maintained it. Inadequate government funding is blamed,
Roy Romanow is appointed to head a commission of enquiry that will cost
$10,000,000.
The grasshopper is soon dead of a drug overdose, the Toronto Star blames
it on obvious failure of government to address the root causes of despair
arising from social inequity. The abandoned house is taken over by a gang
of immigrant spiders, praised by the government for enriching Canada's
multicultural diversity, who promptly terrorize the community. |
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