The proposal to move Canada’s capital from Ottawa to Kapuskasing, Ontario, hasn’t received much publicity.Neither has the proposal to privatize the Canadian Army. I guess the news media has considered the source – the Rhinoceros Party.  

As the Canadian election drags on and on, politicians are making promises, left, right and centre. Most of them will not be kept. After all, most of the people who run for public office are unsuccessful in their quest. it is easy to promise people the moon or a chicken in every pot if you know there is no chance of having to follow through after the election.

Elections of course are serious business, but sometimes we need to take a break and just laugh at ourselves. Which is why we have The Rhinoceros Party. As part of their platform the Rhinos insist that if elected they will resign. That is a promise they are unlikely to be called upon to keep as they are only running about a dozen candidates, far fewer than the 170 Members of Parliament needed to form a majority government.

The Rhinos have been on the Canadian political scene in various forms since 1963. I went to Wikipedia (to save you the trouble) and here is a list of some of their past promises. I offer them to you as a piece of humour to hopefully brighten your day.

• Repealing the law of gravity^[18][19]
• Providing higher education by building taller schools^[10]
• Instituting English, French and illiteracy as Canada’s three official languages^[10]
• Tearing down the Rocky Mountains so that Albertans could see the Pacific sunset^[19]
• Making Montreal the Venice of North America by damming the St. Lawrence River^[20]
• Abolishing the environment because it’s too hard to keep clean and it takes up so much space^[10]
• Annexing the United States, which would take its place as the third territory in Canada’s backyard (after the Yukon and the Northwest Territories—Nunavut did not yet exist), in order to eliminate foreign control of Canada’s natural resources^[21]
• Ending crime by abolishing all laws^[22]
• To provide more parking in the Maritimes and to create the world’s largest parking lot respectively, paving the Bay of Fundy and the province of Manitoba ^[10][19]
• Turning Montreal’s Saint Catherine Street into the world’s longest bowling alley^[10]
• Amending Canada’s Freedom of Information Act: “Nothing is free anymore; Canadians should have to pay for their information”.^[23]
• Making the Canadian climate more temperate by tapping into the natural resource of hot air in Ottawa.^[23]
• Storing nuclear waste in the Senate: “After all, we’ve been storing political waste there for years”.^[23]
• Adopting the British system of driving on the left; this was to be gradually phased in over five years with large trucks and tractors first, then buses, eventually including small cars, and bicycles and wheelchairs last.^[12]
• Selling the Canadian Senate at an antique auction in California^[19][21]
• Putting the national debt on Visa^[24]
• Declaring war on Belgium because a Belgian cartoon character, Tintin, killed a rhinoceros in one of the cartoons^[25]
• Offering to call off the proposed Belgium-Canada war if Belgium delivered a case of mussels and a case of Belgian beer to Rhinoceros “Hindquarters” in Montreal (the Belgian Embassy in Ottawa did, in fact, do this)^[25]
• Painting Canada’s coastal sea limits in watercolour so that Canadian fish would know where they were at all times^[20]
• Banning guns and butter, since both kill^[20]
• Banning lousy Canadian winters^[10]
• Building a bridge spanning the country, from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland.^[26]
• Making the Trans-Canada Highway one way only.^[26]
• Changing Canada’s currency to bubble gum, so it could be inflated or deflated at will.^[27]
• Donating a free rhinoceros to every aspiring artist in Canada^[21]
• Counting the Thousand Islands to see if the Americans have stolen any^[8]

The Rhino Party also declared that, should they somehow actually win an election, they would immediately dissolve and force a second election: “We Rhinos think that elections are so much fun, we want to hold them all the time”

Doesn’t that make you fee better about the political process?