Canadian television doesn’t have the nightly acidic drip of political comedians like Stephen Colbert. Instead, we must rely on our politicians to ridicule themselves.
The latest entry in this competition is Ottawa Centre MP Yasir Naqvi. His Canada Day constituent flyer encourages the citizens of central Ottawa to colour in a map of Canada that leaves out the Yukon and Prince Edward Island.
At first I assumed Naqvi was just another cringeworthy central Canadian MP who knew little and cared less about the farther reaches of Ottawa’s empire. Despite the Ottawa Citizen naming Naqvi as one of its “People to Watch 2010,” I had never heard of him.
But I began to wonder: why did the Citizen think we should watch him? Just for laughs? Or was there something deeper?
Then it struck me. Naqvi is trying to help Canadian television compete with the Americans!
With 94.9 percent of television watchers in English Canada choosing to watch something other than CBC these days, Naqvi is giving CBC producers ideas for shows people will actually want to watch!
I immediately realized his comedic genius. It wasn’t Stephen Colbert he was going after. He was helping us top Steve Carrell with a Canadian parliamentary version of The Office.
The Office: Cringeworthy MP Edition would open with the Yukon-less Canada Day map. Brilliant! Especially the symbolism of having the main character — let’s call him “Naqvi” for now — be the MP representing Parliament Hill itself.
Real-life Naqvi has since been in top form, generating new plot twists for the fictional Naqvi.
After the media spotted the gaffe, real-life Naqvi went on Twitter, occasionally known as X, and gave a satirical masterclass in what passes for accountability in Ottawa these days. He apologized to the people who really matter: the voters of Ottawa Centre, whom he needs to keep his job in next year’s election.
His apology pointedly did not include the Canadians in the regions he had so hilariously Control-Xed out of existence.
Great stuff! Then real-life Naqvi offered some darker humour ideas as he threw his staff under the bus. “My team and I apologize,” he said.
Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that said “The buck stops here.”
The sign on the fictional Naqvi’s desk will say, “The buck stops on the desk of that intern over there whose name I can’t remember.”
Real-life Naqvi gave the scriptwriters bonus Twitter posts for maximum laughs. He went on to post “Please think of it as an interactive map to teach our kids geography.”
The Naqvi character will try to squirm out of his screw up by claiming the map is not an offensive middle finger to the little people who don’t live in Ottawa. It’s a learning opportunity!
This prompts more screenwriting ideas. For example, fictional Naqvi’s non-apology on the map could spark an intern flashback where the boss was at an Ottawa ski resort and knocked over a child on the hill, shouting over his shoulder “Sorry! My bad! But you should teach your kid to look where they’re going!” He would then ski on to an apres-ski networking event.
Naqvi inspires such a vivid picture of the kind of boss this character would be. He would breeze into the office, shouting “Bonjour hi team!” to simultaneously seem bilingually cool while also covering up that he never bothers to learn anyone’s name. Then he would breeze out with a cheery “Keep up the bon travail!” Meanwhile he’s too cheap to replace the broken microwave in the lunchroom and is never around when the toilet needs to be unclogged.
The show’s interns are secretly pleased he doesn’t know them by name since then he can’t call them out personally when he “apologizes” for things on Twitter.
Cringeworthy MP will be such a fun, low-stress show to watch. It’s all harmless. He’s only an MP. If he was still a lawyer, he might be screwing up someone’s will.
A theme of the show would be the frantic quarterly deadline for the staff to finish all those junk mail flyers from MPs. Viewers would see 338 enthusiastic interns from every riding in Canada, so full of potential, excited to be working on Parliament Hill. Think of the antics as they snort caffeine and Adderall with the deadline approaching for next month’s edition of bilingual compost bin liners.
Despite the pathos of the episode’s closing scene where Naqvi’s map is already soaked with coffee grounds and wilted lettuce, the show would give the viewer deeper insights into our parliamentary system.
Some of these insights would be reassuring. At a time when Canadians are wondering if their representative is on the secret list of traitorous MPs in the pay of foreign powers, viewers would see fictional Naqvi in action. We don’t need the Chinese and Russian intelligence agencies. Our MPs can undermine confidence in Parliament all by themselves!
In addition, viewers would learn the value of shamelessness. Not enough Canadians really lean into this helpful trait, and are instead mortified when they make huge blunders at work.
But Naqvi will show you can just ignore your debacles and everyone will eventually get over it. The director could do a flashback to real-life Naqvi’s career in 2013. The National Post reported on a controversy where Naqvi was accused of endorsing a book on Islam that “says it’s OK for men to physically punish their wives.”
Naqvi told the Post at the time he “wrote a letter of support for the book two years ago, but says he didn’t read it.”
See? Shamelessness is so liberating. I can totally picture the scene where fictional Naqvi exclaims, “Of course I didn’t read the book I was endorsing!”
One scene could even show Naqvi suffering uncharacteristic pangs of guilt over the map episode while flying back in business class from the Europe-Canada Interparliamentary Group. He would then form a Canada-Canada Interparliamentary Group, actually leave Ottawa, and be astonished to discover there are also MPs from the Yukon and P.E.I.
You could also include some scenes from Parliament. This would be easy, since you could just steal dialogue already written by the Hill’s current comedy writers. I picked real-life Naqvi’s latest contribution to Parliamentary debate and it shows promise.
Some earnest MP asked real-life Naqvi how often Health Canada missed its target of 180-day approvals for new, potentially life-saving, therapies. Fictional Naqvi would look meaningfully into the camera and, like real-life Naqvi, say “I want to thank the member opposite for asking a really important question” and then not answer it.
You just have to insert the laugh track!
Kudos to real-life Naqvi for putting himself out there to help CBC’s satire writers. The Cringeworthy MP television concept has huge potential. We should invite him to the Yukon to do a stand-up comedy workshop on it. We’ll call the session “Blank maps in the mind of Nasir Naqvi” and see where it goes creatively.
Afterwards, we’ll get a History 12 student from F.H. Collins to take him to the MacBride Museum’s map room.
Keith Halliday is a Yukon economist and the winner of the 2022 Canadian Community Newspaper Award for Outstanding Columnist. His most recent book Moonshadows, a Yukon-noir thriller, is available in Yukon bookstores.