Christmas Is to Blame

They look like us, they speak like us, but Canada’s like a foreign country up there.

I can’t say I understand exactly what he did, but Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper of the Conservative Party has managed to piss off the rest of the opposition political parties so much that three of them have gotten together to form a coalition for, like, the first time ever (including those wacky secessionists), and they were on their way to ousting Harper from office.

So Harper did what all good leaders do, and made it impossible for them to call their no-confidence vote. He got the Governor General, an unelected official — appointed in fact by Queen Elizabeth (they’re so cute up north, honoring the Queen and all) — to give Harper permission to shut down the Parliament until January.

(Apparently, the Canadian left feels about Harper the way the American left feels about Bush, Cheney, or Rove, all rolled into one diabolical figure.)

But I think I know why all this is going on. All told, especially in comparison to just how much landmass they’ve got up there, the population of Canada is quite small.

It’s also Christmas tree season and, as we all know, the Canadians head south to our cities — especially New York and Boston — to make their annual incomes by selling tiny, dead pine trees at an enormous profit to Christians (and some curious secular Jews who celebrate Christmas — a phenomenon I’d never seen before living in New York) preparing for the holiday season.

With the population gone and no one left to hold the government employees accountable, all hell is breaking loose.

We need to hurry up and get through these holidays, so that the Canadians can go back to their country before it’s another country altogether.