A National Nightmare

I had a bad dream last night. There was a funny clown, a sad clown and a scary clown.


The funny clown left, laughing all the way. The sad clown left too, crying. Then, the scary clown called his sidekick.

"Oily, come here you little runt. Now that we had to deep six the democratic reform chief Del Mastiff for his electoral irregularities (HA HA HA, that kills me... so funny...), you are in charge of this file. So, if we wanted to change the Canada Elections Act to make it easier for us to keep doing the kind of cheating we have been, and need to keep doing to get elected, what would you propose?"

"Don't worry boss. We got it covered. The main problem is that the Chief Electoral Officer has a big mouth. Every time he finds the tiniest bit of cheating, boom, out it goes and Canadians find out. So we can change the Act so that all he can say publicly is where the polls are and when they are open."

"Really? We can do that? No whistleblowing?"

"No."

"No press releases on anything?"

"No."

"No campaigns to encourage people to do their civic duty and vote?"

"No."

"Sweet. What else you got?"

"Well, the next big problem is their enforcer, the Commish. Even though he has no teeth, a short reach and his hands are tied, he's still a problem. Right now, if he thinks there is a case that should be prosecuted, he brings it to the Director of Public Prosecutions, you know the guy that reports directly to MacKay, whose mandate includes initiating and conducting prosecutions on behalf of the Crown with respect to offences under the Canada Elections Act. As soon as he does that, it's all over the news. So to fix that, we will have the Commissioner of Canada Elections report directly to the Director of Public Prosecutions. MacKay will be the boss of him, if you know what I mean...."

"HA HA HA. MacKay, boss of him. That's so funny...You're killing me, Oily. Well, that's great. We should be good to go."

"There's one more thing boss. Not a big problem, but I thought you would like this. There is this thing called vouching, where poor saps who don't have ID, and don't vote Conservative, can get someone else to vouch for them so they can vote. We'll take that out. That should take about 100,000 non-Conservative votes away."

"Oh Oily, you've outdone yourself this time. This is fantastic! What are you going to call this bill, the Awesome Elections Act?"

(Blushing) "No boss, we are using our standard communications policy. Call everything the exact opposite of what it is. We're calling it the Fair Elections Act."

I woke up in a sweat. And then I realized, IT WASN'T A DREAM. It was really happening, right now, in our country.