The Truth Party

Everywhere I go, people are fed up with politicians, political parties, and their promises. In a recent poll, 76 per cent of Canadians indicated they do not believe election promises. Seventy-six per cent! People are sick of being told one thing, and being given another. The people demand to be told the truth! They want an honest choice, a straight shooter, someone they can trust, representing a party devoid of lies and half-truths, a party with platforms built on honest answers and not useless rhetoric.

Well Canada, that choice has arrived.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Michael Nickerson, and I'm your local Truth Party candidate. And let me assure you that a vote for Truth is a vote for never having your baby kissed again. "Why?" you ask. Because we at the Truth Party don't like babies. They cry, they smell, and more often than not they drool on our freshly pressed lapels. No politician likes kissing babies, but we are the only ones who will tell you so.

Nonetheless, we at the Truth Party are in full support of publicly funded daycare for each and every one of the little rotters, for as recent polls indicate, most of you favour it and we aren't about to tell you different. You see, we're particularly sensitive to polls, follow them religiously, and if they say we can win an election by flipping the bill for your kids to finger paint on the public dole, who are we to argue?

Because the goal of our party is to get elected. Others will talk about vision, direction, global competitiveness and other fluffy notions that don't have a thing to do with the matter at hand, which is to win a seat, get to Parliament Hill, and start logging those critical years of public service to qualify for federal pension. Do you really think that any of the other parties actually cares about you, the voter? Ha ha, silly you. We're a breed of power-hungry, over-educated swine with a list of personality disorders as long as your arm, not the least of which is the need to prove the grade school bullies wrong by having the power to take their employment benefits away from them.

So if you want to know our feelings on, say, taxation, by all means pull out your local paper, check the latest polling results, and there you are: Our views on taxation, which funnily enough always seem to involve tax cuts. People are always in favour of tax cuts. And turning to page two, we find that a majority of Canadians are concerned with the quality of health care. Well, who in their right minds would come out and say they like people to get sick, and stay that way? Not us! We fully support people being healthy, particularly on election day, because a sick voter usually isn't very good at filling out a ballot.

And you know where we want you to put that "X," don't you?

Now, I know what you're thinking: how can we go around promising to spend more on daycare and health care while cutting the one thing that actually pays for them?

Very good question.

In truth, we have absolutely no idea how we would do that. It makes absolutely no sense at all, if you think about it, but quite frankly, that really is more of a reflection on you, the voter, than us, now isn't it?

Other parties will come up with budget projections that wouldn't stand up to the auditing rigours of a grade three math dropout, all in a vain, misleading attempt to make it look feasible and hide the fact that voter expectations are about as realistic as a hallucinating hippie who thinks jumping off a ten-story building might be a good way to rack up air miles.

We, on the other hand, have told you up front that you have no idea what you're asking for, and we will happily point this out when the pluses and minuses add up to an unholy figure best left to bureaucrats to chew on and turn into another reason for a civil service pay hike.

But unlike other parties that would then switch gears and start doing something silly like breaking a promise in order to balance the books, or to keep heart patients from having to do self-administered bypass surgery, we will do what we promised to do and damn the consequences...though we're told the possibilities are quite frightening.

So give us your wish list, and check it twice. Because come election day, Canada, we'll give you everything you've ever wished for.

You have our word.