The Great White North Fiasco

The Great White North Fiasco

Look at that! We’ve got a Great White North! And our prime minister has discovered it! Just imagine, of all the prime ministers we’ve had, he’s the first to become aware of this magnificent land of opportunity. Not only are there diamonds oil and gas up there, but also the cost of living is ten times that of southern Canada. What an opportunity for the merchants of Toronto! There’d be something there for everyone, if only someone was living there.

Did you take note of how we are serving notice of our presence in the area? We’re not saber rattling or making loud noises about our military prowess to warn off foreign interests. No we’re not doing that at all. We are after all, a civilized, peaceful nation. No, we’re just searching for the remains of Lord Franklin’s ships lying at the bottom of Davey Jones’s Locker up there. The icebreaker Sir Wilfred Laurier needs to be commissioned to facilitate the peaceful search (it’s not for patrolling the arctic ocean). Well and the robotic submarine that must go down to find these wrecks also just happens to have the ability to map the whole ocean floor (which is just an incidental byproduct of this archaeological exercise). What a smooth move, Harper! Nobody will ever suspect your real intent. At least the politicians won’t. Well, what do you expect? They’re politicians. But somebody must have noticed, judging by all the other icebreakers in the area.

Aha! Now we know why Canada is dragging its ass on global warming. They’ve got to get the Northwest Passage opened up to get at all that oil and gas you know, in order to ship it to Asia and to Russia. Oops! Maybe somebody spilled the beans. The icebreaker traffic is getting heavy out there. The thing is that China already owns half the oil business in Alberta and who knows what else. And Russia has a number of flags planted on the Arctic Ocean floor, and maybe even a nuclear submarine or two. That leaves Denmark sailing around claiming everything that pokes its head out of the ocean on the horizon.

Its kind of looking like Canada is turning into a giant Winnipeg. Now them critters in Toronto and Ottawa will get to know what it feels like to be the world’s warehouse while head office (Beijing) moves all its (our) products around.

And Lord Franklin - well he was only an excuse to make a lot of noise up north. It’s a good thing we have California orange juice we can sell to the Inuit for eighteen bucks a liter. That’ll give us an income in case we get short changed by head office. Now if only we could figure out how to populate the north, we could chalk up some pretty good sales. At least that’s the way it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin’.