where the truth is stranger than fiction
Yes, we know that's the same format, script and concept for every single episode of the longest running unreality show in political history. Jackman managed to come up with a novel twist to open this season: blaming a federal Conservative candidate for driving up the cost of gasoline worldwide and causing a North American economic slowdown, both of which were the real major causes for the reduction in road-bound tourism.
The UnLove Boat - In the season premiere of a series now in its 60th season, a provincial cabinet minister (played again this season by Provincial Conservative Clyde Jackman) bitches and moans incessantly about the quality of service provided by Marine Atlantic.
Highlights from last season: In an episode titled The law of diminishing visitor returns, Jackman showed that doubling the provincial tourism advertising budget didn't produced the extra visitors everyone hoped for.
Yes, that's right, non-resident visitors, the people most of us would regard as tourists, actually contributed only 43% of the total economic activity generated by the province's tourism industry. ... We are spending more per visitor to attract them, but the return per visitor is diminishing.In an episode called Didn't I see those at Canadian Tire?, Jackman's department bought a billboard at Ottawa airport that was billed as including "an actual clothesline hung with quilts". It was based on the idea that people in eastern Ontario have never seen either quilts or clotheslines, apparently, hence they would be impressed by "actual" ones.
5 Wing: In the season opener - Shocked and Odd - Provincial Conservative cabinet minister Tom Hedderson writes letters trying to get an elite anti-terror unit based in Goose Bay 18 months after the public learned the soldiers were going to another base in Canada. Hedderson claims to be shocked by the news. Odd that he missed it.
Hedderson replaced the previous star John Hickey in the no-action comedy.
House: Now in its fifth season, less and less takes place in each House episode each year as the program morphs into a show about nothing. In the budget episode from last season, finance minister Tom Marshall uttered the immortal words:
We are standing tall as powerful contributors to the federation – as masters of our own domain, stronger and more secure than we have ever been before.
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