‘Canada as a Family’ - What a Concept

- Satire - Suppose you had a family with a dozen kids. Each child representing a Province or Territory, and the parents representing the Government, (played by 'Pa') and the Opposition, (played by 'Ma'). Ma and Pa disagreed with each other on almost everything, a rocky relationship at best, but it was arranged for the sake of the family to work as a unit, tolerate and try to respect each other. Pa being a fiscally responsible and slightly right of centre type. Ma being left of centre or further left if the occasion called for it and a bit of a carefree goodtime party doll most of the time.

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Now the eldest child 'Que', (a twin brother of 'Ont') has developed a devious connivance to exploit the cohesiveness of the family unit, has schemed, and cavorted to get more out of the family than the other sibblings.  Most children learn how to exploit one parent against the other at a very early age and get quite accomplished at this game. Sometimes, whining, demanding and throwing a tantrum works but not very often, so other ingenious, sophisticated and opportunistic ploys are invented.  'Que' had become this favoured child who had the nack of pressuring the parents and extracting more than his share of the family's worth. He would occasionally use extreme techniques if necessary, (like threatening to burn down the house), which naturally led to resentment among the other sibblings.      Pa and Ma had tried to operate the family in a democratic manner as much as possible and Ma was for most of the marriage in control of the finances. However a few years back unbeknown to Pa, Ma's financial reputation was tarnished when she was caught squandering a lot of their money (siphoned off under the table) to her and Que's friends, which soured the relationship.    Hence, a family vote was taken and it was decided it was Pa's turn to control the household finances. Ma was accustomed to high society partying, (heavy tipping and then some) and did not take kindly to this turn of events.   The kids were old enough and all worked the Farm. Que now an adult, but still living at home, had for years been scheming of divying up the family farm into 12 equal heritage shares. He wanted his inheritance share now, in advance of Pa and Ma's demise, so he could venture out on his own. Meanwhile he would continue to agitate and extract as many goodies as he could from the farm.    Ma, still seething inside, was still overspending, bouncing cheques and losing most of her high-rolling friends. She had secretly discussed with Que of her inescapable desire to oust Pa and regain control of the family farm and it's purse. Now Ma had been harboring more than resentment toward Pa, she had been carousing with another shady cohort on the sly, 'Midnight Jack Laydown' (for moral support she said) and was getting her ducks in a row for a showdown the next time Pa so much as mentioned she would have to cut back on her spending.  She was sure it would become inevitable to have to serve papers on Pa. Que knew of Ma's unfaithfulness to (Pa and the farm's finances) so played his cards to worm in on Ma's Tri-Party-Scheme.    Meanwhile, Pa (oblivious to Ma's scamming) was being responsible, doing exceptionally well with the purse strings, prepairing for rainy days and proudly was the envy of most all other families.   But then there came the inevitable day where the family came upon hard times through no fault of their own, caused by a deep worldwide recession whereby many family's finances were now becoming at risk.   Pa thought things could get a whole lot worse, was getting nervous and wisely thought the prudent thing would be to look for areas to cut back on spending. So he started off by floating the idea of cutting back on the most frivolous areas first. That included Ma's 'bonus' high society partying allowance, that Ma used as influence money to reward and persuade her friends to support her lavish spending and gift giving. Ma also had her favourite eccentric academic friends that she liked to impress with her make believe sky is falling environmental fantasies.   Pa explained that he was willing to set a good example and give up his (the biggest) portion of this 'discretionary' prestige spending and wanted to give this money to the others who were out of work, so they could buy food. The kids thought the least they could do in such dire circumstances was to give up part of their allowance and didn't object but Ma, no way, Ma went crazy, off the deep end and threatened divorce. Ma immediately arranged a meeting with Que and Midnight Jack to resume their conniving Tri-Party plan to oust Pa and take over the farm.   They concocted a manifesto; Here is the deal: -Ma wants full control of the family finances and chequebook so she can resume the lifestyle she is accustomed to.  -Midnight (black-hole) Jack Laydown wants Ma to acquiesce and yield to the family purse so he can pretend to buy his friends back their jobs to make more cars that nobody will buy. -And Que wants Ma to concent the family purse to a triple commission and kickbacks on every transaction regardless, plus lots more bonus spending money for his friends. -Pa would get the bums rush, visitation rights to the farm until it went bankrupt and then he could have it back.   -The rest of the kids would get screwed again and are ticked right off because there will be nothing left for them.   Pa applied for and was successful in aquiring a stay of proceedings from the courts but will have to deal with Ma again later.   The stranger than fiction Saga continues. Rumour has it that Ma's reputation was ruined by her strange bedfellow indiscretions and that her sister may take over her role in the family, platonic of course.  Thats just the way she goes, first your money, then your clothes.