Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_27
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. Warren Steinley: I am excited that more people are here to listen to the second part of Mouseland. Tommy Douglas said that mice should vote for mice because if mice vote for cats, cats only govern cats. In 2010, there was a Mouseland part two. It was delivered by Premier Brad Wall in a 2010 convention speech. I would like to read Mouseland part two for my NDP colleagues. Brad Wall stated: It seems a great change had taken place in this magical location known as Mouseland. For many years, life in Mouseland had been going downhill because mice aren't exactly the most productive species in the animal kingdom. They don't really produce anything except droplets. What they do is wreck things that others have produced, like the time they got into the potatoes, spud coal. Now, for years, all the other animals had been sick and tired of the mice wrecking everything so a lot of them just left to Alberta. There was one mouse ... who had been around for a long time ... a long, long time. He was one of the mice who had made life difficult for the other animals, he was one of the mice who had wrecked the potatoes. But one day he even got sick of the other mice, so he packed up and moved to the land next door [known as Alberta]. The funny thing is when he got there, he told everyone, he wasn't really a mouse. He put on fake cat ears and fake cat whiskers and told everyone he was a cat. Now, no one there really believed him but there weren't very many mice in the new land next door. Not enough to wreck anything anyways so they decided to let him stay. Now, as I was saying, after he left, a great change took place in Mouseland. The cats and the other animals had finally had enough of the mice wrecking everything and told the mice they weren't allowed to run things anymore. In fact, the place wasn't even called Mouseland. They discovered, that place called Saskatchewan. All of the animals liked this new Saskatchewan with the mice no longer chewing up all the food, there was more food for everyone. The animals stopped moving away. In fact, new animals started moving in from near and far and for the first time that anyone could remember Saskatchewan was growing. Lots of animals who came liked to dig holes in the ground and as it turned out there was buried treasure everywhere, oil, potash and uranium, and so there were lots of new jobs digging holes and lots of new jobs for all the other animals doing things they liked to do. Things were even better jobs for the mice. There was more cheese for the mice, so they didn't have to chew on other animal potatoes anymore. Things were going so well in the new Mouseland called Saskatchewan that the mouse who had moved next door decided that he wanted to move back home [and take over]. So, he took off his fake cat ears and fake cat whiskers and he came back and announced that he was going to be the new leader [but the changes that had happened in Mouseland caused people to not want to go back to the way thing used to be. They considered it] ...the bad old days of the mice wrecking everything and driving the other animals away. Even the mice didn't seem too sure [they wanted to go back to the way Mouseland was. They weren't sure they wanted a fake cat from next door, Alberta, to come back and lead them]... Some of the mice liked the new Saskatchewan with its new abundance of cheese, some of the other mice didn't really trust him. They weren't so sure he really even was a mouse anymore. [After all, those fake ears looked pretty real.] ...as a result, the new mouse who now looked like a cat didn't have many mice [supporting him]... everything had changed, the old Mouseland and had changed to the new Saskatchewan and one day soon, all the animals would make a great choice. Did they want to follow the mouse who looked like a cat going back to the old Mouseland days or did they want to keep moving forward in the new Saskatchewan and that chapter has yet to be written. Premier Wall gave this speech in 2010. What happened is in 2016 and 2021, he decided to move forward with a new Saskatchewan.