Government website attracts far-out feedback
Aliens in Canada! JFK is the Antichrist!
It's a tabloid world for some out there
  
Jack Branswell and Ken Meaney
CanWest News Service
Monday, January 14, 2008


OTTAWA -- There are aliens in Canada. John F. Kennedy was healed and is ready to become the Antichrist. CSIS uses infrasonic -- whatever that is -- beams on at least one Canadian 24 hours a day.

These news tips come from the government of Canada's website ( http://www.gc.ca ) Contact Us link, which offers users the chance to give feedback on the site and ask questions.

About 200 pages of access-to-information documents obtained by Canwest News Service show the federal government gets an awful lot more than run-of-the-mill website feedback.

"They didn't tell us anything about aliens in Canada," one person wrote. "That the truth isn't out there, that aliens are real."

Another writer talked about Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, or was he?

"John F. Kennedy Sr. was healed and hidden and will step from hiding to become the beast, aka Antichrist."

The person being hit by those infrasonic rays insists that it was giving him or her the flu.

Of course, not all of the feedback, collected over six months, was zany; some people had some serious issues that needed immediate government attention, like the following message.

"Why is it when I watch the Weather Channel here in Prince George, B.C., I get the map at the beginning that shows Kelowna and other Okanagan locations?"

Then there were those who thought the federal government could help them get a job.

"Hello, I would like to work for Cirque du Soleil," said someone from Mexico, who needed a visa.

Canadians love to laugh at how ignorant Americans are about this country, but news flash: Canadians also need a bit of a tutorial.

"Please tell me what ID is necessary to travel between provinces by train and/or air?" one message asked.

Just like the rest of us, the government site isn't immune to spam; the feedback has lots of porn links and one guy who thought he would offer his limo service. But it's the government; they probably have enough limos.

Surprisingly, a lot of the feedback was actually on topic -- about how to improve the site -- and most of that was pretty negative. People complained about poor site navigation, a bad and slow search engine and a site design that made things hard to find.

And then there was this passport applicant.

"How is it that Radio Shack has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a TV cable from them back in 1997, and yet the federal government is still asking me where I was born and on what date. Do you guys do this by hand?"

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2008