A Grievance from the Great White North

(Per Vandelay's request, wealthy Industrialist H.E. Pennypacker sends us his warmest grievances)

Fellow AofGers:

Vandelay suggested that I write something about the Canadian educational system. Seeing as how education is a provincial matter and the phrase "Canadian educational system" doesn't really make sense, I'll just rail against the federal government in its entirety.

Canada has a reputation for being a meek little peace-maker on the international scene. Nobody burns our flags, nobody sets fire to effigies of our leaders in the streets in foreign capitals, and
everybody wants to wear our flag on their backpack when they travel.

Enter Copenhagen and the climate summit.

See, once upon a time, we did the environmental thing. We signed on the Kyoto dotted line, and we were starting to make some inroads. We had a Liberal government (and a slightly-incomprehensible, yet also slightly-loveable Prime Minister), which was largely elected by people
in eastern Canada, where people sit in circles and sing Kumbaya and generally have brains in their heads.

Then, Stephen Harper happened.

Harper, the leader of the Conservative party, became Prime Minster in 2005. The Conservatives draw their power from western Canada, which is well-known for being, well, not the most progressive part of the country (think "American south" minus some of the guns, most of the racism, and nearly all the love for NASCAR). There's also a little bit in there about minority Parliaments, threats of coalitions and
something called "proroguing," but that's for another day.

...flash forward to modern times. Harper and his Conservative dicktrees are in charge up here, and boy-oh-boy do they like the Alberta Tar Sands: basically crude oil mixed in with dirt and rock and
stuff, which you have to blast away to get at the Texas Tea locked inside. Problem is, the oil you get from this is (a.) low-quality, (b.) energy-intensive to actually acquire, and (c.) leaves a gigantic
environmental impact; some groups all around the world have referred to the Tar Sands project as the biggest environmental clusterfuck (I'm paraphrasing, but only slightly) in the world today.

But my-oh-my do these Tar Sands bring in the bucks for Alberta (the province Harper works out of, and draws a ton of support from). The streets are paved with gold in Fort McMurray these days, and even
though oil's taken a bit of a dip lately, it's only a matter of time before it'll be triple-digits again and the Tar Sands projects get expanded yet again.

So, here we are, on the cusp of the entire environment of the planet going tits-up, and Harper & Co. are only too happy to fluff the Tar Sands projects until they develop carpal tunnel syndrome because it
keeps Alberta solvent. Finally, the world is starting to (rightly) get pissed-off at Canada -- not only for the Tar Sands fiasco, but because the Conservatives have basically flipped off the environment for the
last four years and the Liberals (in opposition) have been too chickenshit/disorganized to do anything meaningful about it.

The Yes Men, a group of anticonsumption pranksters, burned the Harper government good a few days ago. They put out a fake-but-realistic press release under the name of our Environment Minister, Jim
Prentice, saying we were gonna get all hardcore on these greenhouse gases. Then they put out a fake response from Uganda saying, "Fuck yeah, Canada! We love you!", and even a fake article in the European edition of the Wall Street Journal. Read all about it here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/dec/14/environment-canada-spoof

The next day, Prentice was forced to come out with the Conservatives' plan, which was underwhelming to say the least, and everyone was all, "Hey, asshole, we liked the fake one better!" Needless to say,
Prentice was not happy with all this fakery -- but not as displeased as, say, the rest of the goddamn world because a lot of the Conservatives up here are Bible-thumping Jesus-freaks who think the
Rapture is upon us any day so why plan for the future and besides the world's only 6000 years old and dinosaurs were planted to test our faith so let's rip up the Tar Sands and have a big oily party!

Fucking Conservatives.

Comments

[Vandelay]

Seeing as how education is a provincial matter and the phrase "Canadian educational system" doesn't really make sense

Well...duh!

(think "American south" minus some of the guns, most of the racism, and nearly all the love for NASCAR)

How about the retard gene? Gotta have the retard gene.

By the way, isn't Vancouver supposed to be awesome or something?

[Assman]

By the way, isn't Vancouver supposed to be awesome or something?

I assume Vancouver is their Miami.

[Mr. Kruger]

whistler and revelstoke kick ass- hellssss yeah!! western canada is my shangri-la. and the women like to play hard. i need to move there.

but yea just like down here where there's a lot of trees and mountains and pristine lands and stuff you'll have a lot short sighted folks who are easily manipulated by political and financial predators.