Ottawa - Have you ever gazed up into the stars on a warm summer's night and seriously wondered what man's place in the universe is? According to a recently released Statistics Canada document, the number of times this question has been asked has dropped dramatically within the past 15 years, and some legislators are already urging that something be done about it.
According to the report, man's place in the universe was questioned over 90 billion times in 1969, but only 15 billion times in 1984. This constitutes a reduction of approximately 90 per cent.
Other questions surveyed, including, "Why are we here only to suffer and die?" and "What lies in the future of mankind?", fared just as poorly. According to Statistics Canada, these questions have been replaced by, "What will happen in the next season of Dallas?" (see Chart 1).
CHART 1
1) "What is man's place in the universe?""I'm not worried about these findings," Prime Minister Brian Mulroney told reporters in a special news conference after the release of the report. "In a free and unfettered marketplace of ideas, it is up to individuals to ask whatever questions they desire. It is not appropriate for the government to interfere in this very natural process..."
"Besides," Mulroney added, "Statistics Canada's methods on this one are pretty suspect..."
Responding to allegations that the report wasn't statistically accurate, Sam Gamgee, one of the report's author's, angrily stated, "Our methods weren't bad...we had a tau of 7.9 and an accuracy of within 50 percentage points...
"You could say...umm, that we guessed. But, they were very good guesses. Very scientific."
Opposition members of Parliament were not as accepting of the 728 page report as the Prime Minister. Liberal Philosophy critic Jeff Greenblatt called the findings: "More evidence of the pathetic lack of vision of the Conservative Party." He insisted that a Commission be set up to study "this deplorable decline in the integrity of this country's philosophical musings."
The Prime Minister remained unmoved. "I do not think," he responded, "that the Conservative Party can or should be blamed for a problem which arose during the 20 years of Liberal rule..."
New Democratic Party leader Edward Broadbent had a different view of the affair. "It doesn't matter who is responsible," he apoplectically commented. "We must act now to protect the future of Canadian philosophical pensees. Obviously, Canadian philosophy is being flooded by cheap philosophy from across the border...
"There can only be one solution: a trade embargo on foreign philosophy!"
Mulroney said that he would adamantly refuse to put up barriers to trade in international philosophy. "In the end," he argued, "Canadian philosophical musing productivity would suffer. Our product would then be unable to compete on world markets." Such events, Mulroney said would have "catastrophic ramifications for every sector of the Canadian economy."
Of the dozens of people interviewed on the street for this report, 93 per cent responded: "So what?"
Farley Mowat, the closest thing we could find to a Canadian philosopher, was unavailable for comment.
