THE CLASSIC VERSION: <br /><br />The ant spends all summer long in the withering heat, toiling to provide for <br />his family by building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. <br /><br />The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the <br />summer away. Come winter, the ant and his family are warm and well fed. <br />The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold. <br /><br />THE MODERN CANADIAN VERSION: <br /><br />Ants spend all summer long in the withering heat, toiling to provide for <br />their families by building his houses and laying up supplies for the winter.<br /><br />Grasshopper's think them to be fools and laugh and dance and play the <br />summer away. Come winter, the ants are warm and well fed. The <br />shivering grasshoppers call a press conference and demand to know <br />why ants are allowed to be warm and well fed while others who are less <br />fortunate are cold and starving. <br /><br />The CBC shows up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshoppers <br />with cuts to a video of ants in comfortable warm homes with tables filled <br />with food. Insects everywhere are stunned that a country of such wealth <br />would allow poor grasshoppers to suffer amidst such plenty. <br /><br />The NDP & CAW join to form the Coalition Revolt Against Poverty <br />(CRAP) and demonstrate in support of grasshoppers. The CBC, <br />interrupting an Inuit cultural festival special from Nunavua with breaking <br />news, broadcasts the protest march and singing of "We Shall Overcome." <br /><br />Svend Robinson rants in an interview with Pamela Wallin that ants have<br />gotten rich off the backs of grasshoppers, he calls for an immediate <br />tax hike on ants to make them pay their "fair share." In response <br />to media polls, the Liberal Government passes the Economic Equity <br />and Grasshopper Act Against Discrimination (EEGAAD), retroactive <br />to the beginning of the summer. <br /><br />The ants have their taxes reassessed and they are also heavily fined for <br />failing to employ grasshoppers as helpers. <br /><br />Without enough money to pay both the fine and the newly imposed <br />retroactive taxes, ants have their homes confiscated by the government. <br />The ants all move to the US and start rebuilding their lives again. <br /> <br />The CBC later shows the grasshoppers finishing up the last of the ants <br />food supply although Spring is still months away, while the government <br />owned homes they occupy, which just happen to be the ants old homes, <br />crumble from lack of maintenance. <br /><br />Inadequate government funding is blamed, Roy Romanow is appointed <br />to head a commission of inquiry that will eventually cost $10,000,000. <br /><br />Grasshoppers again begin to die from malnutrition as well as drug abuse <br />and violent crime. The Toronto Star blames this tragedy on the obvious <br />failure of government to address the root causes of social inequity faced <br />by grasshoppers in this country. <br /><br />The now abandoned homes are taken over by illegal immigrant spiders, <br />who are praised by the government for enriching Canada's multicultural <br />diversity. The spiders, granted full legal status under the constitution <br />have all their legal, medical and living expenses paid by the Liberal <br />government, which vows to find a way to make the ants pay. <br /><br />THE END
