A Moment of Bureacratic Cheer at Christmastide

 

There's a delightful anecdote in a book I'm reading, Dark Paths, Cold Trails by Doug Clark (ISBN 978-0002000789) -- a discussion of the Canadian crimefighting system.  It says here on page 231of the trade-paperback edition that when the government issued Ontario's single-payer-plan health cards, 12 million cards were issued for the 10 million people in that snowy province.  The application forms had been sent out to people's house pets, among other small mistakes.  And as a little bonus, Ella Galligan, a 102-year-old Ontario resident who was the daughter of a former member of Parliament and the mother of a Supreme Court judge, was denied a health card because her claim was no good -- they called her a "refugee claimant," whatever that means. 

 

That made me smile.