The Ant and 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 grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.


MODERN CANADIAN 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 shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands
to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others
are cold and starving.

The CBC shows up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to
video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
Canada is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can it be that, in a country
of such high taxes, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Then a representative of the NAAGB (National Association of Green Bugs)
show up on CTV and charges the ant with "green bias", and makes the case
that the grasshopper is the victim of 30 million years of greenism. Kermit
the Frog appears on TV with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when he
sings "It's Not Easy Being Green".

Aline and Jean Chretien make a special guest appearance on the CBC Evening
News to tell a concerned Don Cameron that they will do everything they can
for the grasshopper, who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by
those who benefited unfairly during the Mulroney summers, or as Jean refers
to it, "the temperatures of the 80s".

Paul Martin exclaims in an interview with Mike Duffy that the ant has
gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax
hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share".

Finally, Parliament drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism Act"
retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs
and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is
confiscated by the government. Jean gets his old law firm to represent the
grasshopper in the defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried
before a panel of federal judges that Jean appointed from a list of
single-parent welfare moms who can only hear cases on Thursday's between
1:30 and 3:00 p.m. when there are no talk shows scheduled.

The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the
ant's food while the government house he's in, which just happens to be the
ant's old house, crumbles around him since he doesn't know how to maintain
it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow. - And on the TV, which the grasshopper
bought by selling most of the ant's food, they are showing Jean Chretien
standing before a wildly applauding group of Liberals announcing that a new
era of "fairness" has dawned in Canada.


Author Unknown
11/01/1999