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The April Fool

This morning, I woke up to an interview on CBC's Ottawa Morning with John McCallum, the Minister of National Revenue. He was promoting a new pilot project to be introduced during this year's tax season in Ottawa and the surrounding area: e-file or else. The interviewer asked him "Or else what?", and he arrogantly responded that since the majority of people in Ottawa work for the goverment, and their salaries are paid for by tax money, and they have computers at work that they're using for personal use anyway, Ottawa taxpayers should all be filing their returns on-line, and if they didn't, they could wait until at least Christmas for their refunds, and risk being audited.
Naturally, I was outraged. It's easy to get me outraged first thing in the morning (close relatives know this first hand), but this sent me right over. I quickly jumped out of bed, ran to my computer, and fired off the following e-mail:

----- Original Message -----
From: Saedigh
To: ottawamorning@cbc.ca
Sent: Friday, April 01, 2005 7:58 AM
Subject: e-file or else???

Does Mr McCallum realise that there are people in Ottawa who don't own a computer, don't work for the government, or don't have internet access for a variety of reasons? Does he realise that not all Public Employees rely on taxes to "pay their salaries" (i.e. cost-recover units like the passport office)? Does he also not realise that the employees of the CRA DO rely on taxes for their salaries, and that it's their JOB to deal with returns, however they may be filed? Does he plan to pay interest on the delayed refunds of paper filers, the way we have to pay interest on any money WE owe?
Does he even care about any of these questions?

Sincerely,
Saedigh
Ottawa ON

After breaking for the local news, the show came back with the listeners' response to the interview. Phone calls and e-mails had flooded in, mostly from outraged people like myself. One, however, had a slightly different sentiment:
"This is John McCallum. Happy April Fool's Day Ottawa!"

Indeed, I had been had. Thankfully, so had the majority of listeners. But I still feel like a nimrod.