Canada Party Election Vow: Reshape America's Landscape

• America, but Better: The Canada Party Manifesto
• Chris Cannon, Brian Calvert
• Douglas & McIntyre (2012)

[Editor's note: Earlier on The Tyee we introduced you to The Canada Party, otherwise known as two Vancouver satirists who've pledged to invade the American election; their book America, But Better: The Canada Party Manifesto outlines their plan to inject some Canadian spirit in the race. As Nov. 6 nears, Brian Calvert and Chris Cannon offer up their final campaign promise -- should they win -- with image help from Tyee graphic designer April Alayon. And what if they lose? Stay tuned next Saturday...]

As our campaign to make the people of Canada the 45th president of the United States enters the home stretch, we are simultaneously tailoring star-spangled inauguration suits and burying food caches in the forest. Should America have the foresight to vote us their leader, we will bring a touch of Canada with us to the White House. Should they instead fold to the will of people who vote based on cat-based Internet memes, well... we have a plan for that too.

This week, we offer our plans should our bid for presidency succeed this November.

Our book lays out a general platform for how we will reshape American policies, but should we win the election, we also have a plan to reshape the American landscape to lend the U.S. a little of that "Canado" spirit. Of course we'll start with an extensive interbreeding program to pass along the Canadian humility gene, but since this will take generations to make America meek enough to inherit the earth, we have a short-term plan to integrate our cultures by sharing our countries' respective iconography.

We'll start by making some modifications to American monuments to bring a certain Canadiana to the U.S.

 

The Statue of Liberty doesn't seem to be welcoming foreigners anymore, so now that torch is only attracting anchor baby moths to America. We want to fix that with something worth traveling across an ocean for.

 

Give us your hungry, your tired, your poor, your huddling masses yearning to breathe free, and your Boston Bruins so we can beat the shit out of them.

 

Abe Lincoln already looks like he could be the mayor of Vancouver, so why not complete the ensemble to make him full-blooded Canadian?

 

Little-known fact: After freeing the slaves, Lincoln planned to free Marc Emory. Never got around to it.

 

Of course we will continue to honour America's fighting forces, but since Canada stayed out of Vietnam, it was tough to find a Canadian angle on this one.

 

Too soon?

 

We know Americans hold their founding fathers sacred even when misquoting them, so Mount Rushmore is an important symbol of vision and enterprise that made America what it is today. We will therefore add our own element of vision and enterprise to the South Dakota skyline.

 

Ladies and gentleman, we give you Mount Shatmore. You may now boldly go where millions of tourists have gone before.

 

The Washington Monument is the ultimate symbol of American potency. We don't think Americans will take too kindly to us altering their nation's official penis -- dudes are kinda sensitive about that -- so rather than redesigning it, how can we make it more Canadian?

 

We'll make it a little bit bigger! (Yes, we are not above the occasional penis joke.)

Next Saturday, what happens should the Canada Party's election bid fail. Not that that's likely.