O O Ø O O O O
Beans
The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa K1A 0A2
Dear Mr. Harper:
Last week I was feeding my daughter Eloise, and when I hoisted her up against my shoulder to burp, she spat up all over my favourite cowboy shirt.
Why would she do that, Mr. Harper?
Please allow me to speculate:
I think she was recollecting your comments of a few weeks ago concerning jelly beans.
You were making light of peoples’ accusations that the Three Amigos—Mssrs. Bush, Calderón and you—were in secret negotiations to turn North America into a bureaucratic union along the lines of the EU.
(Funny, isn’t it, Mr. Harper, how the shrillest voices in Europe decry American-style federalism, while the fearmongerers here worry about some nebulous European agenda to undermine the States.)
You jokingly pointed out that Canada and the US have different regulations governing the contents of jelly beans, requiring cross-border confectioners to maintain different inventories for the two markets. You asked, doesn’t it make sense to harmonize these rules?
As author Thomas Pynchon said in Gravity’s Rainbow, “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”
Mr. Harper, you rhetorically asked the wrong question.
Why—why?— are there regulations governing the content of jelly beans in the first place?
This is a glowing example of how there is no facet of Canadian life too small, too picayune, too private, that the government doesn’t think it has some business making its will known. You think it ridiculous that American and Canada have different jelly bean content regulations. I think it is ridiculous that jelly beans are mentioned at all.
If you at all stand for a limited government of any sort, you will remove from the laws of the land any and all regulations pertaining to jelly beans.
If you are not willing to limit government even by this minute, token amount, then please take a moment to explain to Eloise and me how regulating jelly bean contents furthers the so-called public interest.
Barring this explanation, I will be happy to forward my laundry bill when my daughter editorializes on your next act of overgovernance.
Evan Spence
September 4, 2007
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