Uncle Fun and Sparky Land

 

An open letter to Nigel Wright, Chief of Staff, Office of the Prime Minister of Canada:

Dear Sir,

    We hear tell that you have at your disposal large sums of money which you are freely willing to hand out to anyone who’s in a fix. The fact that you’re able to pull out your chequebook and sign over $90,000 without a second thought means that you must be both a great philanthropist and an astute financial manager. An amount like that must be fairly close to your salary for an entire year, so to be able to throw it to the winds means that you must be sitting on top of quite a considerable nest egg indeed.

    With that in mind, we wish to beg a boon of you. We and several of our acquaintances habitually find ourselves on the wrong side of the balance sheet, so naturally we thought to turn to you for help. You are exactly the sort of fair-minded and trusting individual we prefer to do business with, since you don’t seem to worry yourself too much over trivialities like proper documentation to justify expenditures.

    Before moving on to the further details of what we hope will be a long and fruitful partnership, however, we do require one small gesture in good faith from you. We know that the results of audits don’t concern you much, but a recent once-over of your government’s coffers revealed that something to the tune of $3.1 billion dollars has gone missing. Since the money can’t be accounted for, you can’t be using it for anything important, so you should probably return it to the taxpayers who gave it to you in the first place. With interest, of course — we understand that this is the standard practice of your tax department when they collect delinquent payments. What’s good for the goose that laid the golden eggs, as it were, is good for the gander. As a gesture of our own good faith, we ask nothing more than you make out a cheque for the full amount to the Canada Revenue Agency, and let them distribute it as their own records guide them to. We are confident that you have this much squirrelled away somewhere…or at least can get your hands on it without too much trouble.

    We are equally confident that any money you subsequently give to us has been obtained by means which will pass scrutiny; if it hasn’t, we have no qualms about laundering as much of it as you don’t plan on ever seeing again. You may count on our discretion, if nothing else.

    Looking forward to hearing from you by mail, private courier, wire transfer, or the time-tested method of a satchel of unmarked bills left in a hollow tree, we remain yours sincerely,

Uncle Fun and Sparky

P.S. If you review our offer, you’ll find it to be a much better deal than other possible ways of sharing your good fortune — for example, trying to buy the silence of a mooching ex-journalist who turns around and spills the beans to his former colleagues when things get too hot for him.