Rick Mercer, Canada’s answer to Jon Stewart. But Better. Because let’s face it, when it comes to sketch comedy, Canada owns. When it comes to criticizing politics, Canada owns. When it comes to making fun of ourselves, Canada owns. That’s just the way it is. Who’s got the world’s biggest comedy festival? Yeah! That’s right.
So Rick has been doing fake news long before people heard of The Daily Show. Don’t take it bad, TDS still rocks, but Rick brings more anger to it and a whole lot more sarcasm. Even better, he can get the Prime Minister to slapshot hockey pucks at him.
Tonight’s episode started out with a Sugar Shack interview with the new minister of the environment, Rona Ambrose, who looks nothing like a minister. She’s not an old stuffy white man. Quite the contrary. But she’s a conservative. He got her to whack a maple tree with an axe to install a sap bucket while making jokes about how Pamela Anderson would object to tree torture. And he didn’t play nice, well not too nice.
He questioned her on the Conservatives killing the environmental project, The One Ton Challenge (for which Mercer is/was the spokesman). He grilled her on getting her to recite the five key priorities the Cons made to get elected, to which she was stumped. (The answers are cleaning up government by enacting and enforcing the Federal Accountability Act; lowering taxes, starting with a reduction to the GST; strengthening the justice system; supporting child care choices of parents; and delivering wait-time guarantees for health care.)
We break for commercial… so you think. It’s a fake commercial, brilliantly produced to spoof a Holiday Inn ad that promotes its internet access, where the guy thanks all the people from work who are in his hotel room. Instead we have Mercer thanking ministers, former ministers and party leaders. And it’s really them, not comedians or look-alikes. It cracked me up so badly I got a headache from it.
Article comments
1 - R. C,
Canada is a very beautiful place in winter, summer , fall, or spring, I've learned a lot living in vancouver b.c., gastown is a place unlike any other place in the world, to see King George's castle and the beautiful mountain landscape is breath taking, to b a part of Canada 's creation is one of the best things on earth. there I was able write my manuscript IT'S COMIN' AND also I began to learn about Book Publishing, and how even someone as simple as me could get my voice in print. I still remember going to Toronto , we had to go thru what is called "HELL'S GATE" and it states at first that it was best the devil founded out 28 minutes later that you had died and went to heaven or he would be trying to steal your body, then as we got closer to it, it stated that it was best that the devil founded out two minute later that you had died and went to heaven.