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 shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

THE END

THE 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 ant is warm and well fed. So far, so good, eh?

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 less fortunate, like him, are cold and starving.

The CBC shows up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshopper, with cuts to a video of the ant in his comfortable warm home with a table laden with food.

Canadians are stunned that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so while others have plenty. The NDP, the CAW and the Coalition Against Poverty demonstrate in front of the ant’s house. The CBC, interrupting an Inuit cultural festival special from Nunavut with breaking news, broadcasts them singing ‘We Shall Overcome.’

Jack Layton rants in an interview with Mike Duffy that the ant has gotten rich off the backs of grasshoppers and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his ‘fair share’.

In response to polls, the Conservative Government drafts the Economic Equity and Grasshopper Anti-Discrimination Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant’s taxes are reassessed, and he is also fined for failing to hire grasshoppers as helpers.

Without enough money to pay both the fine and his newly imposed retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

The ant moves to the US, and starts a successful agribiz company.

The CBC later shows the now fat grasshopper finishing up the last of the ant’s food, though spring is still months away, while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he hasn’t bothered to maintain it.

Inadequate government funding is blamed, Bob Rae is appointed to head a commission of enquiry that will cost $10,000,000.

The grasshopper is soon dead of a drug overdose, the Toronto Star blames it on the obvious failure of government to address the root causes of despair arising from social inequity.

The abandoned house is taken over by a gang of immigrant spiders, praised by the government for enriching Canada’s multicultural diversity, who promptly set up a marijuana grow op and terrorize the community.

THE END

Source: http://bob-sakamano.blogspot.com/2008/03/ant-and-grasshopper.html

If you would like a government job you can apply:

http://jobs-emplois.gc.ca/

I took a government job after being laid off and took a 33% pay cut. After 8 years in government I am making 14% more than when I was when I was laid off.

I’m not saying a government job isn’t a sweat deal but the jobs are there for everyone to apply for.

Unfortunately not everyone can have a government job as we would all starve to death in short order.

Here’s what worries me: If my taxes increased to pay for a new pension plan, then I wouldn’t be able to afford much to put into my own retirement savings. I’m wary about so much of my money being diverted to a program that probably won’t exist in thirty years when I actually get to retire. (If I can ever afford to retire…)

Michael: Thanks for the link. I’ve been under the impression that the CARP is calling for a true pension plan with the UPP, in the sense that benefits would depend on the size and length of contributions into the plan. That is how the CPP works for current contributors. But the wording in that link seems to suggests that retirees would be able to immediately get benefits from the UPP.

Finally, this is on the far side of extremely silly here, but I figured I’d share it since I got a good laugh when it came to mind. Before that the primary means of sustaining old age was to have kids and get them to take care of you. If you were on the tailing edge of that and faced with the prospect of all your kids leaving home for factory jobs, would it make sense to enact laws forcing one of them to stay behind? Would it make sense to expect the government to assign a younger person to an older couple without kids?

http://www.carp.ca/advocacy/adv-article-display.cfm?documentID=3749

It describes UPP as an extended CPP that would provide expanded benefits to all retirees immediately and would eventually replace all other private and public pension plans over a 47-year period. Presumably, during the 47 years those who have other sources of retirement income would have some or all of their UPP taxed back. So, all workers would be taxed more to pay for current retiree benefits. And as the percentage of the population that is retired increases, all workers would have to be taxed more.