Meanwhile, in Soviet Canuckistan

In the midst of a giant tainted meat recall, the federal government is desperately trying to force the press not to reveal that they want to cut the holy hell out of the inspection agencies.

Once you gather together the chunks of your surely-exploded head, here's some fun links. Mostly from Kady O'Malley, who is really way too good for Macleans.

Edit: These guys are also co-opting the entire postal service, too. Hark:

In order to let my constituents know about the Town Hall meeting I held Wednesday night with Dion, I decided to use my ability to send mailers, called “ten percenters” to residents. Each one can cover only 10% of the riding, and each has to be different. So, I prepared ten of them, rushed them into the print shop and ensured they could be in mailboxes in time for people to book a seat.

In all, there were 60,000 pieces of mail, and getting this project done was a major task. The printing was done by August 6th, and they went to Canada Post the next day, marked for immediately delivery in Halton.

Sadly, on the day of the event – August 20th – not a single resident in Halton had seen one of these. Instead, skids of the mailers were sitting in Canada Post substations in Milton, Oakville and Burlington.

But at the same time, just prior to my meeting, two Conservative ten percenters arrived by mail to blanket the riding, sent by MPs in eastern Ontario, and Alberta.

So, my printing was garbage – expensive garbage, since it had all been paid for with tax dollars and was now worthless. And yet MPs that my constituents can never speak to and will never see, also used tax dollars to send them mailers on the benefits of Conservative policies.

Obviously, we called the postal service to get an explanation. Human error, said Gilles Campeau, our Canada Post liason. Sorry.

But M. Campeau also made it known that because of the barrage of mailings by out-of-town MPs, the agency’s workload has increased, “by 500%.” He also let it slip he’d been pressured by CRG (the Conservative Research Group – the marketing arm of the Harper caucus) to give it preferential treatment. Finally he told us that, “trucks are pulling up non-stop from printers all over the city (Ottawa)” full of MP literature, and they can’t keep up.

Bolding? Mine.

One can only speculate on what that "pressure" amounts to. It's almost impressive: having learned from the Republicans, these Canadian Repub-lites have arguably surpassed them. The apprentice has become a master.

(Kind of like Sith. Except with more evil.)