'Yes We Canada': Spoof party for president

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VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Sept. 21 (UPI) -- A comedy duo says neither President Barack Obama nor GOP nominee Mitt Romney, but an outsider -- Canada -- should win the U.S. presidential election.

"Who better to lead America than a country already leading America in so many ways," Canadian writer and filmmaker Brian Calvert says in an online video.

As he says those words, a list scrolls to the right of the screen listing healthcare, human rights, the unemployment rate, immigration control, hockey, crime prevention, lumberjack fashion, gun control, global integration, Bigfoot sightings, gay rights, income equality, barley production, human kindness and bear attacks.

Calvert and Chris Cannon, a former U.S. Marine Corps sergeant who worked in intelligence and counter-terrorism, started the mock Canada Party, whose presidential "Canadacy" is devoted to "restoring America to its former glory."

Its slogan is, "Yes We Canada!"

"Most of our followers are actually based in the States," Calvert tells the BBC. "Some are just sick of the political situation, and some of them just appreciate that there's a group there to laugh at the whole thing."

Cannon says: "People simply don't trust the media or politics anymore. Satire fills the hole and demonstrates the absurdity and the hypocrisy. Satire is basically speaking humor to power."

The party's manifesto -- outlined in a send-up book, "America, But Better," whose sub-subtitle is "An Intervention From Your Continental BFF" -- promises to balance "the doctrine of American exceptionalism with a dose of Canadian humility and common sense in an effort to secure Canada as the new leader of the free world, by proxy."

"Our promises: One gay couple will be allowed to marry for every straight couple that gets divorced," the manifesto says. "The phrase 'job creators' will be changed to 'job creationists,' and they will be given seven days to actually create some."

In addition, "Corporations will still be people, but if they can't provide a birth certificate they will be legally obligated to care for your lawn."

The party promises to close the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba and move the inmates to the Canadian arctic.

Calvert, the party's spokesman, says in a "Meet the Canada Party" video, which has nearly a million views on YouTube, that Canada understands the United States and is not perfect itself.

"Our oil sands are so dirty, it makes Texas look like a Greenpeace retreat," he says to the strains of the "O Canada" national anthem. "And we have the same problem you do, with illiterate foreigners invading our southern borders to steal our jobs.

"We have been known to club a baby seal now and then -- but we could just as easily waterboard 'em," he says.

"So instead of slitting your wrist this fall, why not vote for Canada," Calvert says, as his image dissolves to a full-screen picture of the American flag with 50 maple leafs instead of stars.

The book says if Canada wins Nov. 6, global warming would abruptly end "as the atmosphere's greenhouse gases are blown into space when the entire planet exhales a collective sigh of relief."