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The Honorary Canadian

Following up on this post, it seems that Michael Moore might be becoming a Canadian.

If Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley has his way, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore will soon be an honorary citizen of his town.

Bradley has offered Moore the key to his city in an attempt to stave off what he believes would be a “frivolous abuse” of the elections law by a group of young Ontario Conservatives.

A Queen’s University student and president of the Ontario Campus Conservatives has launched a Web site and online petition calling on Elections Canada to charge Moore with interfering in the recent federal election. When Moore was in Toronto during the election, promoting his film Fahrenheit 9/11, he urged Canadians to rally against Conservative leader Stephen Harper.

According to the Canada Elections Act, it is an offence for anyone who is not a Canadian citizen and does not live in Canada to “in any way induce electors to vote or refrain from voting or vote or refrain from voting for a particular candidate” during an election period.

So Bradley, not short on creativity or humour, wants to make Moore a “de-facto Canadian” with all the rights and privileges that come with citizenship. And he’s written to Canada’s chief electoral officer advising him of his offer.

“Making him a honorary Canadian will give him the right to whine, bitch, moan, complain about taxation and the high level of taxes and then move forward and pay his tax bill and vote for the government in power,” he wrote in his cheeky letter to chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley. “While we do not have equality with the value of our dollar with the United States, we certainly have equality with the right wing and their stupidity,” he wrote. “It was always amazing to me that a group of individuals who promoted and believed in free trade do not believe in the freedom of ideas and political opinion.”

It’s always amazing to me that a group of individuals who promote and believe in the law don’t believe in prosecuting people who break it.

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