Take Newfie Humour Out Of Our Culture And We Fail To Have Any Unique Culture

Canada: talking like a normal person gets you fired


Even in Newfoundland:

In an interview, Ms. Pardy Ghent said her comment was a tongue-in-cheek response to an ongoing political furor over revelations that an opposition Liberal staffer had sent Mr. Williams’ communications director an e-mail asking whether the premier had mental illness or syphilis.

Instead of eliciting a laugh, Ms. Pardy Ghent got a call from a deputy minister earlier this month, telling her she was being let go from the Burin Peninsula Regional Council, a government advisory board she helped found in 2005.

That prompted the board’s chairman, Michael Graham, to issue a letter demanding she be reinstated, essentially arguing that making off-colour jokes is part of the province’s unique character.

(...)

Geoff Meeker, whose political blog appears on the website of the St. John’s Telegram, said this incident is part of a more worrying trend in the province, where people who call in to talk radio shows to air their complaints about the government end up getting calls from ministers or their deputies chastising them for their comments.

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Question:

Was the "Liberal staffer" whose bizarre email sparked this incident fired, too?

# Kathy Shaidle