EDITORIAL: Why my cheque giveaway is great whereas Doug Ford’s cheque giveaway is desperate and terrible – by Justin Trudeau
Hello. It’s me, Canada’s most popular Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. Here to tell you all the good news – that I feel your pain.
I don’t mean feel your pain in a literal sense. I’m still the son of a Canadian political dynasty and just flew first class halfway across the globe to a G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. It was awesome. But someone told me that all of you can’t afford to buy groceries, and I don’t think that’s a good thing. That is why I’m going to be personally mailing (almost) every Canadian a $250 cheque, in a way that is completely different and superior to the recent desperation cheques announced by Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
We all know that times are tough. For some, that might mean an inability to keep up with rising housing costs – or so I’m told, because I haven’t really paid for my own housing since at least 2008. It’s hard to remember. For others, tough times might mean not being able to find employment (again, never actually had to worry about unemployment, so I understand that one in a purely academic sense).
Still, the toughest time of all that some Canadians are currently facing is a looming election where polling numbers aren’t so good and you need to quickly enact a kneejerk financial giveaway to get voters back on your side. I am confident that this is a relatable quandary that many of you reading this are also currently facing.
Clearly, there is a right way to hastily send out one-time rebate cheques to potential voters in lieu of a spring election, and a wrong way. With my cheques, aka “the right way”, recipients will receive $250 dollars, whereas with Doug Ford’s cheques (“the wrong way”, btw) people will only get $200 dollars. That is not only less money, but $50 DOLLARS LESS, which I am qualified to explain as a former public school teacher.
Point, me.
The next way that my cheques are completely different is that I will only be sending them to people who earned under $150,000, whereas Doug Ford’s cheques will go to unpopular jerks who earned more money than that, like myself. Do you want some trust fund wiener like me getting the same amount of money in the mail that you do, even though I’m just going to laugh at the pitifully small amount and then toss the cheque as a chew toy for my purebred Portuguese water dog? My extensive internal polling shows that you definitely DON’T want that.
Finally, the key difference between my awesome cheques and Doug Ford’s sucky cheques are that the $250 Federal cheques are being given away by me, Justin Trudeau. Whose face would you rather see smiling up at you from the front of a government cheque (note: We’re putting our faces on these, right?) Me, Canada’s raven-locked newly-single smiling heartthrob who’s still got it after only 9 flawless years in office? Or Doug, who looks like if they shaved down Donkey Kong and stuffed him into an off-the-rack Tip Top Tailors suit?
I’d say the choice is obvious, as would all of my aides, who have been instructed to say that as well.
Now sure, some naysayers might claim there’s no difference at all between the Federal and Ontario cheques: that both are cynical attempts to buy cheap votes leading up to an election being presented by scandal-ridden sons of privilege who’ve clung to power long past their best-before date. To those people saying nay, I would counter: do you know who my father is?
In closing, please enjoy the $250 that I am mailing to you, and use it to buy candy or lottery tickets or whatever it is that people purchase down in your income bracket. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for my box seats at the Eras Tour with Doug Ford.
