The Countries of Alberta, Saskatchewan , Manitoba

The Countries of  Alberta, Saskatchewan , Manitoba

Once upon a time, in a land far away, was a little colony. That little colony was ruled by a tyrant king who was oppressing the people of the little colony with many taxes which annoyed the good sovereigns.

And when the tyrant king further afflicted the people of the colony with a tax on their favorite beverage, the people declared that enough was enough. They sank the kings boat and declared that they would have no taxation without representation.

Well, it was not long before the king heard of this and sent his soldiers over to teach the colonials who was boss. As it turned out the people of the colony became the boss and they set up their own government. It was a noble effort, but the people made one mistake. They gave themselves no way to control the men in their new government.

Meanwhile, some of the people in Canadas Lotus Land planned a modern-day tea party. Because they had no representation in their kings parliament, they organized a system to stop sending taxation to the king. All the people still paid their taxes, but they kept them at home in Lotus Land and used them locally. And they made their Lotus Land government ask the people for permission to govern them - imagine that. So their taxes were used the way the people wanted.

Now the Canadian king was unhappy and the local government was unhappy too, because their age-old game was ended. But the people were happy because now they sent representatives to their local Lotus Land government to carry out the peoples wishes, and the people vetoed any government laws that were against the people’s wishes.

At first the people used their veto every three months, but only if the government needed correcting. Soon a vote was not needed every three months, in fact hardly ever, because the government tried to avoid this peoples veto, and the people were happy with their laws.

Social services improved, corruption declined, free enterprise flourished, and everyone became proud of their new society. Even corporations had to work more for the general welfare and the environment instead of just for shareholder profit. The people in other Countries became jealous of the simple way the people of Lotus Land had found to govern themselves instead of being ruled by a king, and they decided to start their own tea party.

The king was soon short of money and could not operate a post office and an army for the country, so the Countries all agreed to pay the king if he provided the services needed by the provinces. But when the provinces went to put this arrangement in writing they could not find any document where the people had voted the king into power in the first place. It turned out that the king had simply taken power long ago and ordered the people to obey his rules.

So the people in each of the Countries voted on which powers they would now give to the king and which powers they would give to the their provincial governments, and which powers they would keep themselves - especially the power to veto all governments when necessary. They put all this in a document they called a constitution and the king had to obey it.

The big country next door boasted that they had had a constitution for many years. But the trouble in that country was that the people had no way to make their king and his parliament obey the constitution, so eventually the people of the big country copied Lotus Land and did what they should have done years ago. They put into their constitution that every three months the people would veto or approve what their government had done. Immediately social services in the big country improved and corruption declined, and the new system was loudly recommended to all other countries.

A tiny country far away shook their head in wonder at all the excitement about this new system. They were glad that the people of the big country had control of their king at last because now there would be less war, but their tiny country had enjoyed this system for hundreds of years already. Thats where Lotus Land got the idea in the first place.

And they all lived happily ever after.