By Mike Spelay
Rt. Hon. Jean Chrétien, Prime Minister of Canada
Dear Mr. Chrétien,
Thank you so much for the $125 heating rebate cheque you sent to me at the beginning of the month. Even though I live with my parents and don’t pay heating bills anymore, I certainly appreciate the money. I like to call it a bonus GST cheque.
I understand everybody who regularly receives GST rebates was issued one of these hearing rebates. Of course, you know that not everybody who gets these cheques pay heating bills, so I don’t know exactly what you were thinking, but thank you.
It would seem to me that if you actually cared about the people who were suffering from the increase in heating prices, you would have taken more precautions to ensure that they got the money. But I noticed that my parents did not receive a rebate. All you had to do is ask heating companies to put rebates directly on my parents’ next bill, and then have them send you an invoice you could pay back.
But instead you sent these heating rebates to people like me — people who live in dormitories and apartments, whose heat is included in their rents — and prisoners and deceased persons are getting cheques.
I guess it would be hard to justify handing out $1.4 billion to us just because you’re in a generous mood. After all, if the opposition realizes your lapse in judgment, you can’t very well ask for it back. So you called them heating rebates, and even made a campaign promise out of them. Thank you for fulfilling this one loopy promise. I hope nobody notices the bizarre and random distribution. (Too late.)
Anyway, I know that some people may call this a mess, but I don’t. I know deep down you hope this will work itself out and the problem will disappear. After all, this strategy has worked for you before. Really, $1.4 billion is not that much money, especially considering that Ralph Klein is currently bringing the total value of gas and electricity rebates to $4.1 billion in Alberta. Of course, his system is allegedly going to give the money to actual bill payers instead of apartment-dwelling heat free-riders.
But still, that’s a lot more money, and who’s to say that people in Alberta who pay for heating deserve government-issued cheques more than me or the drug dealer who used to live on my street and now has a nice present to cash when he gets out of the slammer.
So this is a big thank you from me, my friends, inmates and dead people everywhere, as well as the large number of GST cheque recipients who pay heating bills. Maybe this summer, you can send me another bonus GST cheque. We’ll call it an air conditioning rebate.