A steamed ham got us into this mess. It's going to take a steamed ham to get us out
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Four years ago, millionaires and hard-working people from across Ontario came together to elect a steamed ham. Experts told us it would be a disaster to put a juicy hunk of pork in charge of Canada's most populous province. But you know what? From the balcony of my palatial 5-bedroom Neo-rococo detached home here in Capitoline Heights, Vaughan's newest and hottest semi-gated community, things have never looked better.
On June 2nd, Ontario will make another historic choice. We can continue down the path we've been on for four long years, ambling leisurely through the greatest public health crisis of our time, our well-being hammered daily by unfettered cronyism, meaningless promises, mindless propaganda, and record-setting underfunding of our public institutions. Or we can change direction, elect a government committed to, at the bare minimum, coherent communication in at least one official language. But why take that risk?
As a real estate developer with a diversified portfolio of NFTs, I know what it will take to stare down Ontario's crippling structural deficits and not flinch, or even react in any way at all: rich parents, a pile of BlackBerrys, and the courage to pack up and go to the cottage whenever things get a little too spicy. In other words, more ham. There's no doubt the pandemic has revealed dangerous fault lines in our healthcare, housing and education systems. Surely a steamed ham deserves more than four measly years to fix the root cause of these issues, i.e., the unfairly high property taxes on my many downtown Airbnbs.
Now, some of you might be thinking, if a tender, fragrant steamed ham could have gotten us out of this mess, wouldn’t we be out of it already? Nice try, but you're forgetting one thing: this is a steamed ham we're talking about. It isn't, strictly speaking, capable of anything. Besides, the people of 2018 have spoken, and we should respect our ancestors. Personally, I don't like to think of the last election as "a small-minded conservative temper tantrum" or "an ill-advised electoral experiment gone horribly wrong." I prefer to call it a learning experience.
Back in 2018, wealthy PC donors like me learned we could convince our credulous, petulant compatriots that what they really wanted was a province run like the worst kind of family business: criminally inept, hopelessly stupid, and sustainable only through the exploitation of the working poor. You wanted a hands-off government, and who could be more hands-off than a succulent ham! (I mean, I think they take the hands off before they steam it? To be honest, I've never steamed a ham, or anything else, in my entire life. That's what our housekeeper is for! We keep her passport in a lockbox.) And sure, since then, many people's "worst" "fears" have come true, like the dozens of Ontarians still dying every day from COVID-19. But consider this: our government won't need to spend your hard-earned tax dollars on healthcare if all the most vulnerable people are dead. That's the kind of big brain politics you can continue to expect from a steamed ham and the sides of veggies that enable it.
Listen, I'm not saying it hasn't been a rough few years. Our children have been yo-yoed in and out of school more times than they can count (which, to be fair, is not such a bad thing, since counting leads to numeracy, which leads to critical thinking, which leads to... shudder). Nurses are quitting, businesses are closing, and our capital has been invaded by history's lamest gang of Visigoth cosplayers. But it's important that in all this darkness, we look for the light, like Shoppers Drug Mart's stellar revenue numbers or the soon-to-be shimmering asphalt of Highway 413.
No one can promise an instantaneous return to happier days. But I, a white man who has never been told "no" or endured any hardship worth mentioning, will sleep soundly knowing that a steamed ham -- soft, moist, silent, spineless -- will have my back if I ever decide to drive my smokin' blue Ford F-150 King Ranch up to Ottawa to harass its residents and urinate on its monuments.
In conclusion, I implore you to join me at the ballot box this June 2nd and cast one more vote for ol' steamie. After all, when winter comes, who do you want digging you out of a snowbank with a tiny red shovel: a steamed ham or literally anyone else?
