RickWJune 21, 2009 15:33 EST

While reading this article, I conjured up two pictures.

The first was that of many comfortable persons, passing thick slices of pie around the table to one another, consuming them ravenously and with gusto. Every time each would bite into these savoury morsels, bits of filling and pastry crust would explode forth, falling to the ground — where we as average Canadians waited to gather up the crumbs.

The second vision is that bit of dark operating room humour, where the doctors are congratulating themselves on a successful operation, even though the patient had died.

These fanciful (or perhaps not-so-fanciful) scenarios have since been "fleshed out" in degree, when Prime Minister Harper and Michael Ignatieff agreed to debate proposed changes to EI over the course of the summer. Are neither of these gentlemen (who each seem more concerned with punctuation than with content) aware that there are people out of work NOW?