WASHINGTON D.C. — Following a brief meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper yesterday afternoon, President Barack Obama announced that America will proceed with a controversial plan to import Canadian humour to the American market at production-level prices.
The deal, struck in the late hours of the campaign leading up to the American federal election, in which the incumbent Obama emerged victorious against his Republican adversary, has proved controversial on both sides of the aisle.
Adolf Zainmer (R-New Hampshire), a critic of the bill, argued before the U.S. Senate that the nature of the deal threatened to undercut domestic production in his home state, long known for the quality of its humorists. “If this deal goes ahead,” Zainmer said in a statement to the press early Thursday morning, “it could cause serious and irreparable damage to a job sector that employs tens of Americans and brings nearly a thousand dollars in taxes every year.”
The bill, which was brought to the floor following a motion sponsored by a coalition of special interest groups across the nation, would require Canadian humorists and comedians to provide laughs to the United States at deeply discounted prices. Jennifer Winkler, CEO of the Washington-based lobbying group Cheap Canadians, Cheap Laughs, stated, “Canadians have long provided an easy reserve of humour for Americans. Their historically weak dollar and reputation for polite deference makes them the perfect place to outsource content production.”
Winkler responded to suggestions that the move could cost Americans jobs by saying that, “These aren’t jobs real Americans are going to want to be doing anyways. It’s dirty, unpleasant labour, and we don’t plan to pay them very much. Canadians are better suited for this. The buzzword in the industry now is that Canada is the new China, and besides: it’s not like the money we pay them is going to be leaving America. They’re going to be spending their meagre wages on iPhones and Taco Bell, which means those higher-quality jobs stay here in America.”
Canada has historically been an exporter of humour to the world market, but the sudden theft of the National Maple Syrup Reserves earlier this year caused a sudden decline in Canadian morale that brought humour production to an all-time low. This plan will mark the first steps to a slow recovery, though analysts predict it could be years before the Canadian psyche can support a return to previous humour levels.
