By: Matthew Nightingale
Federal Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty is awaiting input from highly-regarded finance critic, metallica_fan_1983, before tabling the Conservative government’s federal budget for 2013, according to the Minister’s spokesperson Dan Miles.
The decision comes after the 2012 budget was nearly defeated last spring when metallica_fan_1983 called the document “total bullshit” in a comment attached to a Winnipeg Sun article.
“We never really looked at it that way until (metallica_fan_1983) pointed it out,” said Miles. “Then it was like, ‘He’s right, this is bullshit’. Some of his ideas were flat-out brilliant. I mean, why didn’t we think to flood the sidewalks so people can skate to work in the winter?” lamented Miles. “That would have given relief to our cities’ already strained public transportation budgets. Here we were wasting our time trying rework our national employment insurance program…”
The resulting backlash against the government’s 2012 spending plan forced the Department of Finance to fire over 200 economists and policy analysts with a combined 1,436 years of experience in the field.
“With the slew of credentials our analysts had, you’d think at least one of them would have proposed shooting garbage into space, issuing a no-income tax on the homeless, or lowering the graduation age to Grade 6, like metallica_fan_1983 did,” said Miles. “It’s embarrassing to say, but we didn’t even know that beer prices at NHL games was our jurisdiction,” he admitted. “And we call ourselves economists…”
Flaherty hopes to avoid any similar incidents this year by conferring with metallica_fan_1983 before tabling the budget on March 21st.
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Matt Nightingale is a writer and stand-up comedian based in Winnipeg. Follow him on Twitter: @NightingaleMJ