Annex Canada

AntiUtopia@aol.com
Mon, 18 Oct 1999 19:37:53 -0400 (EDT) 

> Last month, I spent a week in Vancouver, Canada. Beautiful place;
> I've always enjoyed visiting third-world countries. And while I was
> there, I found myself wondering:
> 
> Why haven't we simply annexed Canada?
> 
> It would make sense. Both countries would be much better off. The
> Americans, for example, would finally learn how to spell "humour"
> correctly, which would make it much easier for them to subscribe to
> HumourNet.
> 
> But what about the benefits to the Canadians? There are so many of
> them (benefits, that is, not Canadians); I'll try to hit some of the
> highlights ...
> 
> Reason Number 1: BETTER SCANDALS
> 
>     When was the last time you heard about a really juice scandal in
>     Canada? Hmmm? Thought so. That's because Canadians don't know
>     how to do scandals right. "RCMP accused of not cleaning their
>     guns on schedule" is hardly a scandal. Americans, OTOH, have
>     scandals down to a science. Sometimes, we have so many of them
>     occurring simultaneously that we don't even have time to keep
>     track of all of them.
> 
> Reason Number 2:  BETTER CURRENCY
> 
>     Canadian money is very attractive, yet not entirely valuable. If
>     we annexed Canada, we could collect up all of the Canadian
>     currency and give it to the Hasbro Corporation. The next edition
>     of Monopoly would have money that looks very convincing. Plus,
>     American money just sounds better -- we have "dimes" and
>     "nickels," not "loonies" and "twonies." Well, okay, we have
>     quite a lot of loonies, but we put them on currency only if they
>     have been elected to public office. Which seems to happen rather
>     often; see Reason Number 1.
> 
> Reason Number 3:  NO GST
> 
>     GST, or "Goods and Services Tax," is a nationwide sales tax that
>     Canadians must pay in order to sustain the delusion that they
>     live in the Greatest Country on Earth(tMS). Thankfully, the
>     Canadian authorities realize that tourists generally don't
>     suffer from that particular delusion (preferring, instead, to
>     suffer from entirely _different_ delusions), and thus are kind
>     enough to refund any GST that we paid while visiting the
>     Greatest Country on Earth(tMS). There's a minimum amount
>     required, but given that the GST tax rate is rather staggering,
>     it's really rather easy to make the minimum amount. (Note that
>     GST does not include Provincial Sales Tax, Local Sales Tax,
>     Local Income Tax, Travel Tax, Non-Travel Tax, Purchase Tax, Use
>     Tax, Abuse Tax, and Greatest Country on Earth(tMS) Tax; those
>     mut be paid separately, and are non-refundable.)
> 
> Reason Number 4:  BETTER, CHEAPER HEALTH CARE
> 
>     So every time I rag on Canada, I get this staple "we have free
>     health care" response from the Canadian side. That's nice. Here
>     in the U.S., we have doctors who attended medical school. And,
>     once we annex Canada, the amount of money that Canadians will
>     save by not having to pay GST will _more_ than cover the cost of
>     top-notch health insurance here in the U.S. For example: I was
>     in Canada for one week. The GST on roughly one-half of my
>     purchases was refundable (not all GST is created equal), and
>     amounted to about $100Cdn. This is about $200Cdn per week total
>     GST, which is roughly $10,000/year. For that amount of money,
>     you can buy Blue Cross/Blue Shield's most expensive coverage,
>     and still have enough left over to take a pretty nice vacation,
>     even after you've converted the currency to American. This is why
>     we Merkins vacation more than our Canadian counterparts. Well,
>     that and the fact that we need to get the hell out of here every
>     once in a while or the scandals will surely drive us over the
>     edge.
> 
> Reason Number 5:  NO DEFECTIONS
> 
>     Canadians LOVE to point to members of the American entertainment
>     industry and say things like, "You know that Celine Dion is
>     Canadian, don't you?" and "Shania Twain is from Canada." Big
>     deal. If Canada were so great, then why do all of these people
>     feel the need to defect? If we annexed Canada, it'd all be one
>     huge country, so entertainers would no longer have to defect in
>     order to find work.
> 
> It's simple: The U.S. should annex Canada. We owe it to the
> Canadians to do it. And it would be so very easy to pull off: The
> Canadian Air Force has already sent its airplane over to the Balkans
> as part of the peacekeeping initiative; the entire country is thus
> undefended except for a bunch of guys on horseback. All we'd have to
> do is make a sufficiently attractive offer to their stockholders --
> the Canadian people -- and the deal is as good as signed. Looking at
> the arguments presented above, I've no doubt that the Canadian
> citizens would jump at the chance.
>