Ottawa, Canada - Canadians woke up this morning to find a "Gone Fishing" sign hung on the locked doors of their Parliament. "I was as surprised as anyone," said the Canadian Prime Minister at a press conference today. "They didn't invite me, let alone tell me they were all going ice fishing and closing down the Parliament for the first time ever in the history of Canada."
At a press conference to discus the matter, the prime minister expressed concern for the safety of the Parliament to go ice fishing all at once and so early in the season but attributed the rash decision to the economy doing so well.
The staff of the prime minister's office then dimmed the lights at the press conference and began a Power Point presentation, explaining what they believed happen to the Canadian Parliament on their ill fated unannounced spontaneous ice fishing expedition.
"We believe that immediately after the Parliament passed a referendum, giving the prime minister and his government their full vote of confidence, they all decided to celebrate by enjoying the fauna and flora of the Great White North," said a voice over during the Power Point presentation.
The first slide project onto on overhead screen showed a cartoon rendering of the Canadian Parliament marked referendum secession. Behaving with reckless abandonment and total disregard for their personal safety and each other, Parliament members were depicted as an unruly mob climbing and clamoring over each other to unanimously place pieces of paper marked "YES" into an overstuffed ballot box confidence. A light from Heaven shining on it, while the "NO" confidence ballot box was off to the side in the shadows covered in spider webs.
The second slide showed Parliament members outside gathering in a great convoy of jeeps, station wagons and some even riding double on the backs of horses, their arms securely rapped around their Canadian Mounties. All lined up bumper-to-bumper, horsetail-to-horsetail, headed toward some ominous looking woods and just beyond that, an ice covered lake with fissures and fractures.
The final slide showed the Canadian Parliament members gathered around a single fishing hole craved into the ice, their fishing poles and lines hovering over each other. Underneath them, the ice shows signs of stress of the weight on the surface as it slowly gives way. On the shore, trampled with footprints, a discarded sign warning, "Caution! Thin Ice!"
With the lights turned back up, the Canadian Prime Minister retakes the stage, once again addressing the press core.
"Gee, I hope they are all alright and no one finds the lifeless frozen body of the legislative branch of our government at the bottom of that lake," nervously joked the Canadian Prime Minister. "What would we do without them?"
The prime minister then vowed to honor the final vote of the missing Parliament and carry on this his governance in their absence.
"It's not only what they wished, but what they voted for. Now I am the law -- I'm sorry, I meant to say, it is the law," said the prime minister as he exited the press conference refusing to take any more questions.
