A parable for my American friends…
The ant & the grasshopper … Classic Version!
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 has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
The End
The Maple Leaf Version (i.e., The Canadian Version) [with appropriate footnotes to explain things for my non-Canadian friends, eh?]
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. So far, so good, eh?
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.
The CBC[1] 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 laden 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[2], the CAW[3] and the Coalition Against Poverty demonstrate in front of the ant’s house. The CBC, interrupting an Inuit cultural festival special from Nunavut[4] with breaking news, broadcasts them singing ‘We Shall Overcome.’
Jack Layton[5] rants in an interview with Mike Duffy[6] 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 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 the fine and his newly imposed retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.
The ant moves to the US[7], and 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 hasn’t bothered to maintain it.
Inadequate government funding is blamed, Bob Rae[8] 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[9] blames it on the 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 set up a marijuana grow op and terrorize the community.
(I got this from my sister and added the footnotes. I don’t know who the original author is.)
[1] CBC = Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, our state-owned television network, sometimes aka ‘Corrupt Broadcasting Corp’ or ‘MotherCorp’.
[2] NDP = New Democratic Party, a political party in Canada left of left of center. Actually, they are out and out socialists.
[3] CAW = Canadian Auto Workers union, one of the most powerful unions in the country.
[4] Nunavut = one of three northern territories in Canada. Territories are like provinces, only less organized. Hardly anyone lives there. They are vast regions of cold cold tundra, mostly. Lots of natural resources, so we like them. Nunavut was carved out of the Northwest Territories (NWT) a few years ago. The rest of the NWT is called the NWT. (In a naming contest, ‘Bob’ came in second. I was hoping for Bob. I am not making this up.)
[5] Jack Layton = political leader of the NDP. Looks a lot like that guy that sells computer training videos on TV.
[6] Mike Duffy = Canadian TV political reporter, but not on the CBC. He broadcasts on CTV, a private television network in competition with the CBC. Only in Canada!
[7] US = The United States of America. Up here in Canada, we are not Americans! Those ants must be medical doctors, all our good ones flee to the USA.
[8] Bob Rae = former provincial premier of Ontario as the head of the provincial NDP. Now a member of the Liberal Party of Canada, he recently won re-election to the House of Commons where he once sat as an NDP Member of Parliament. Only in Canada.
[9] Toronto Star = noted left-wing newspaper in Toronto, Ontario. Most newspapers in Canada are left-wing. The TorStar is particularly left-wing.
Comments