So, in light of my continuing tradition of making a new category for every concept I create at least four posts on, I now present you with the "urk" category. Do not worry, "fools and jesters" is still around, and will still be used for the general-purpose news of the world, but this new one will be primarily the repository of really, really stupid nonsense I stumble across in real life, the internet, and wherever else my eyes and ears may wander.
Case in point, the following news story. Being an American, I am somewhat used to the people of the world complaining about all of the various things going on in my country. Hell, I do my own fair share of complaining about those things as well (that said, I do have something of a right to do so, since I am a citizen and all). Of course, in a lot of the complaining cases, one has to really wonder what is going through the complainer’s mind… In others, you have to wonder how the topic of complaint ever came to pass to begin with.
This would be one of the latter cases.
Sometime in 1947, the people North of the Border decided to pass a Citizenship Act. This act, possibly among other things (such as establishing Canadian citizenship), had an interesting clause contained within it. This clause dictated that all Canadian citizens (those new ones it just made) had to celebrate their 24th birthday within the borders of their country… or they would automatically lose their citizenship.
Do you not believe me? Honestly, I would not blame you. However, this Fox News article, and this CBC News article, tend to give a little credibility to my words.
To be fair, the Canadian government did give their citizens (well, ex-citizens, in this case) a loophole – if they filled out the appropriate paperwork, they would have been legally allowed to celebrate their 24th birthday out of the country. But, let us be honest with one another for a moment – just how many national laws, statutes, and regulations are passed each day that you and I actually know about? Two? One? None? And can you quote the specifics of each of those laws? There are all kinds of absurd laws on the books – how many do you know about?
I honestly feel sorry for those … kind-of-Canadians who fell subject to this law, and I am frankly amazed that it took the Canadian government this bloody long for them to notice what was going on. Thirty years is a bit of a stretch for this particular subsect of their population to go without doing things that would require citizenship… Or was the Canadian government just stringing them along, waiting to spring this particular trap on them at their convenience? If this is not a case for false advertising, I honestly do not know what would be a better example… Regardless, I do believe this is a perfect opportunity for those "Lost Canadians" to tell the Canadian government exactly what they can do with their citizenship offer. Those people have been paying taxes and living under the Canadian government for the past 30+ years, only to have that suddenly yanked out from underneath them. I would bloody well want all those taxes (and, in Canada, they pay a lot) back, and then I would just pack up and head for greener pastures, where people are a lot less intent upon making other people’s lives miserable all over a technicality that suddenly got entirely enforced. Not entirely sure where that would be, but come on people… how trivial is something like this? And how much better could this have been handled by the Canadian government, rather than leaving these people in limbo for months or years?
So, as an inaugural stupidity, I think this works pretty well. Look forward to more plain stupidity in this category in the future. Oh, and go Canada!
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