I finally realized why Brian Mulroney was so confused about all the money that he received in those envelopes!
It was because it didn't come with any sort of T4! There was no sort of tax receipt!! Therefore it wasn't really and truly a payment. It was like a gift! And when you receive a gift, it's, well, a gift! And since it didn't come with a gift receipt, it's not like he could return it or anything!
Oh sure he was supposedly supposed to do something of some sort or some kind for the money, but he didn't actually have anything in writing or anything, so it wasn't like he had an actual mandate -- he didn't have one of those so-called SMART objectives. And what could he do to earn the money without a specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely objective? He didn't have anything in writing or any means of indicating whether or not he had completed his task -- so, it wasn't really a job then, was it?
And if someone gave him cash with no receipt or any true expectation of the work actually being done... well, that must have been mighty confusing. But the envelopes kept on coming!
These two guys, Brian and Karl, can't even agree how much money there was because it was just a friendly little informal exchange. It was like going out with a bud for a coffee at Tim Horton's: "Oh, let me buy this week. You can get it next time. Want a honey cruller? No-no, it's my treat. Oh, and here's an envelope stuffed with cash."
And it's not like you can open the money while you're sitting at Tim's eating your cruller cuz that would just be crass. And it would have been equally rude to count the money or keep a record of it because (do you see now?) it was like a gift!
Sure, sure, there are rules regarding declaring gifts when one is a member of parliament, but that's if it's like an expensive vase or an African totem of fertility or something like that. How do you put a value on money when you haven't even counted it?
He just put it away for a rainy day. Imagine his surprise when he saw how much it was! That must have been a shocker: "He gave me this much money for doing nothing?!? Wow! What a gift!"
Poor, rich Brian. Given so much money that he to put it in a safety deposit box and then had to sue the government because it was rumoured that he had done something wrong. Over a simple misunderstanding that could have been corrected if he'd been given a T4 or a gift receipt!
When you look at it that way, it was like a political twist on the theory of Schrodinger's Cat: not really a gift, not really a payment, more like a cat that is whisked into non-existence until someone asks the right question to magically make the safety deposit box, the cat and the envelopes re-appear!
It can all make so much sense when it's examined from a quantum physics-like Alice in Wonderland perspective. "I make the rules! Nothing to see here! There is no cat. There are no envelopes. And off with their heads!!"
No comments:
Post a Comment