Fredericton — As the Legislature prepares for a holiday recess until 2016, the opposition Tories are attempting to bring new life to the ghosts of Christmas past. While the rest of the province prepares to greet Baby New Year, the PC’s have a backward-looking obsession with governments of the past and in particular, the year 2010.
Last week, the PC Party shocked New Brunswickers by turning over computer servers that once belonged to the bankrupt Atcon corporation to the RCMP. The servers have been in the possession of the Tories since July 2013, when they were purchased at a liquidation auction and examined by third-party IT consultants. Now only 29 months later, the Tories are handing over the situation to the police claiming that the servers are like a time machine containing new evidence related to the Atcon scandal.
“We know how evidence works in a police investigation,” said PC Leader Bruce Fitch. “In the inception, you leave the evidence in the possession of the alleged wrongdoers (Atcon) for as long as possible. After the company is done with it and presumably destroys all possibly compromising information, the evidence is sold at a public auction to the political opponents of the former government. Then, IT consultants are needed to snoop through the servers for political dynamite before the upcoming election.
“After the Auditor General conducts a one-time investigation and delivers a scathing analysis of the Atcon affair (where these servers and their contents are never mentioned), then and only then do you deliver said evidence to the police. That’s the kind of chain of custody that iron-tight legal cases are made of, like the evidence in the Oland trial for example.”
After having some measure of success at keeping the Atcon scandal in the headlines, the Official Opposition is now attempting to revive other popular subjects from 2009 and 2010:
- The Tories are lobbying for the Na’vi language from the movie Avatar to receive equal standing in the Legislature;
- The Opposition Twitter account is ending all of its tweets with the once-infamous hashtag #nbpower4sale;
- The Tories are launching a separate investigation into the remaining questions not addressed in the series finale of Lost;
- Fitch ends every caucus meeting by saying, “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose!”
- Instead of clapping for each other while grilling the government in Question Period, now the entire Tory caucus blows vuvuzelas.
- The Progressive Conservative Party is rumoured to be vacating their current office space because the rent is too damn high.
When asked in a scrum why he thinks these ostensibly compromised servers would be of any interest to police, he simply answered, “I’ve got a feeling.” However, when subsequently asked how Atcon ranks against previous Tory government scandals like the orimulsion fiasco and Atlantic Yarns and Fine Yarns, Fitch interrupted.
“Yo paparazzi, Imma let you finish but Atcon is the best political scandal of all time… of all time!”