MPs in the House of Commons have been told that a not-insignificant number of their colleagues are “wittingly assisting” foreign governments. What’s more, although the Trudeau government knows who these MPs are, it is refusing to reveal their names.
To simulate what it’s like to go to work in a national parliament secretly housing foreign agents, the National Post presents a tongue-in-cheek instruction manual to play this group game: Who’s the Parliamentary Traitor?
WHAT YOU NEED TO PLAY:
- One large writing surface, such as a chalkboard, whiteboard or flip chart (THE ORDER PAPER)
- 20-70 note cards
- A timer
SETTING UP PLAY:
Gather at least five of your closest friends and have them sit in a line facing the ORDER PAPER. They will be divided into two categories: The WITTING AGENTS and the CREDULOUS NAIFS.
To choose who among them will be the WITTING AGENTS, prepare a stack of IDENTITY CARDS equal to the number of players. On every fifth card, mark the symbol for the Chinese yuan (¥). In the case of five players, mark a single card, for 10 players, mark two, etc.
Shuffle the IDENTITY CARDS and distribute them among the players. Anyone receiving a “¥” is now a WITTING AGENT.
Set aside another stack of note cards to serve as MANDATE LETTERS. The text for each card is below. Shuffle the MANDATE LETTERS and place them face down.
RULES OF THE GAME:
Each round begins with a CANADA IS NOT BROKEN phase in which all players close their eyes, put their thumbs in their ears and bury their face for two minutes (the elapsed time to be marked with a timer). During this phase, the WITTING AGENTS open their eyes, stride over to the ORDER PAPER and write down a piece of binding public policy that damages Canada to the advantage of a hostile government (suggestions below).
Once this act of treachery is done, the WITTING AGENTS return to their seats will pretend to wake up alongside them as if nothing happened.
Now begins the CONCERNED FOLLOW-UP phase. First, players must pull a MANDATE LETTER card that will determine conditions of discussion. Now, the parliamentarians must decide who among them is the foreign cat’s paw who has defaced their ORDER PAPER with disloyal policy. Uncomfortable questions are asked, accusations are made, and at the end of the round the players vote on who among them will be ejected as a traitor.
Only after the accused traitor is exiled will they show their IDENTITY CARD, revealing whether the accusations have been true, or whether they have been unjustly maligned.
Ejected players are then exiled to THE SENATE, a separated area of chairs where they are served port, ginger ale and black liquorice. They continue to participate in the CANADA IS NOT BROKEN and the CONCERNED FOLLOW-UP phases, but they no longer have a vote.
WINNING
The WITTING AGENTS are victorious if they can stay around long enough so that they represent one-third of the surviving parliamentarians. That happens to be the share of the popular vote that Justin Trudeau won in the last federal election, so there’s technically nothing in your way to stop you forming government! Congratulations, you savvy quislings.
The CREDULOUS NAIFS win if they manage to identify all the WITTING AGENTS before it’s too late. But in the time it took to identify all those traitors, they filled the ORDER PAPER with nationally devastating policy. So you didn’t really win, did you? You sort of just mucked around for years on end while foreign governments played you like a Cape Breton fiddle.
TEXT FOR MANDATE LETTER CARDS:
- Former governor general David Johnston has announced that all of this “foreign interference” talk is just media hype. Skip a turn: Players must immediately start a new round without voting out an alleged traitor.
- The prime minister has jetted off to France without making a single public comment whether his caucus contains foreign agents. In the interest of party loyalty, all treason discussion in this round must avoid using the words “you,” “us” or “traitor.” Any slip-up, and the round is over without anybody being expelled.
- Racism card! Have you considered that it’s *racist* to accuse fellow Parliamentarians of dual loyalties? As such, only non-white players are allowed to make treason accusations this round (although, in a pinch, white players can claim dubious Indigenous ancestry).
- Backwards round! All discussions must be conducted backwards because forwards language has been deemed exclusionary or bad for the environment or something. Eg: “Traitor the are you think I.” Get it wrong and the round is over without anyone being expelled.
- “Uh …” round. The players all stand up and say “Mr. Speaker, uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ….” The last player able to hold the word without taking a breath gets to unilaterally decide which player to eject.
- NDP round! Your solemn task this round is to loudly denounce foreign interference without doing anything about it whatsoever. Each player must deliver an expletive-laden rant about Liberal and Conservative perfidy. But then the round ends without anyone being expelled.
- Michael Chong round. The round proceeds as normal, but all players have to do their best to look 16 years old.
- Whoops; it turns out that all of you are Trudeau Foundation fellows. Before the press catches on, in this round you’re just going to expel the oldest player.
- Misinformation and disinformation round! Every single utterance by a player must include the phrase “misinformation and disinformation.”
- Fear round! Rather than attempting to find a traitor, the players simply accuse each other of wanting to ban abortion or electrocute gays. You still vote out an alleged traitor at the end, but without having conducted any useful investigation.
SUGGESTED PIECES OF BINDING PUBLIC POLICY:
- Self-destruct the entire energy sector as a noble example to others.
- Rename the St. Lawrence River to Ongoing Genocide River.
- Pledge eleventy-billion dollars to foreign automakers and get all huffy when people ask to see the terms.
- Combat the intergenerational stigma of auto theft by decriminalizing it.
- Declare that all new government hires have to identify as non-binary sapiosexuals.
- Require the entire RCAF to run on EV batteries by 2030.
- Retain Chrystia Freeland, Mélanie Joly, Steven Guilbeault, Sean Fraser and Marc Miller as cabinet ministers.
- Appoint an unpredictable astronaut as governor general.
- Ban traffic lights.
- Declare seagulls a protected species.
- Invite an embattled foreign leader to Ottawa and trick them into applauding a nonagenarian Nazi.