Dear Government of Canada: Love the EU

by Alex Brown

22 February 2012

Sincerely yours, Hans Gruber, Head of the European Commission on Shuffling Paper Around

With the recent news that the European Union is planning on singling out the oil sands in Canada as being extraordinarily environmentally hazardous (despite evidence to the contrary), it’s good to see Canada standing up for itself and planning trade retaliation against such an inept and corrupt organization. In fact, if one were to call the EU a paper tiger, they would be treating origami the world over unfairly. But despite the EU’s bountiful shortcomings – such as an apparent allergy to making money – this issue won’t just go away overnight given the nature of the content-starved 24/7 news cycle.

So, while every party is fine-tuning their best hollow rhetoric, it’s important to not lose sight of the simple truth that the oil sands are integral to Canada’s continued success on the world stage, and that the proper and safe cultivation of oil sands crude would position the great white north as a global shot-caller for the foreseeable future. But that means nothing to the big government folks of the European Union, so in honor of their continued ineptitude, here’s a fictional letter in response to Canada’s outrage.

Dear Government of Canada,

Sorry this will reach you so slowly; we have recently switched to carrier pigeon as our primary means of mail delivery as we went over budget following our 5000-delegate meeting known as The Vienna Conference on Mail Delivery Ideas.

It hurts us to see that you have “fired a shot across our bow” in response to our condemnation of your oil sands because, firstly, that’s just mean. And secondly, when you fired this shot, did it emit the same invisible gas that we are constantly trying to police despite the apparent inability to even keep our own ship afloat? Oh and thirdly, did you know that the same water that this hypothetical ship sits on doesn’t even prevent dehydration? Well, that’s not true, our food standards commission just said that because they didn’t want to take such a wild risk and claim otherwise. We’re tough like that.

However I really should get back on topic here, as by the time this is edited by 100 separate employees to make sure that I haven’t said anything that is politically incorrect this letter could be considered quite dated – and that’s without even taking into account the transatlantic flight of our rat with wings. Basically, we don’t like the idea of your oil sands because how can you really be sure it’s safe if you don’t use our principles? Principles like gigantic government surrounded by a maze of bureaucracy that taxes its citizens back to the Stone Age – which we actually no longer call the Stone Age over here because we feel that it’s derogatory to rocks.

You need to realize that we take the necessary and bold steps towards protecting the environment. Those steps include complaining about other countries while we neglect our own policies and hemorrhage money hand over fist because those policies were a fiscal disaster to begin with. So listen to us, the European Union, because we did a great job with Greece, and every trilateral commission full of University professors that we throw together is never a waste of money because we always come to definitive conclusions such as the aforementioned one where we didn’t have the stones to stand behind the simple fact that water hydrates you.

Sure, countries might start bailing from our union soon once they realize we only lose them money, and that we have cost them their sovereignty. But if they do that they will be met with our strictest retaliation possible: a letter with a slightly passive-aggressive tone. So pay no attention to them, or basic cost-benefit analysis, or even common sense. For while we don’t use the word unequivocally here at the EU because it is far too definitive (and that scares us) we can assure you that even though we don’t know how to run our own organization, we do know exactly how the ever-changing climate of a giant mysterious ball that exists in an even more giant and mysterious space works.

We look forward to your reply. But please don’t reply by mail out of respect to trees, or even by phone out of respect to those that can’t afford one. Don’t even email actually, as our recently concluded Human Rights for Binary Code Commission just published a startling lack of findings on the rights of computers. Just tell a friend to tell a friend and eventually it will get back to us. We have a lot of time to wait after all, we just passed a resolution giving every European Union citizen a mandatory 200 vacation days a year; giving us plenty of leisure time to figure out how to fix our economy!

Sincerely yours,

Hans Gruber

Head of the European Commission on Shuffling Paper Around

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author's own and do not necessarily represent those of The Prince Arthur Herald.

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