Is our government smoking crack? Seriously, I really struggled with a headline for this story, because the insanity of what I'm about to relate defies any snappy encapsulation. KeeMay went to bed tonight in a shaking rage over it, and it all boils down to a bunch of kids who want to run a race.

Here's the thing: our annual Bluewater East Elementary Cross Country Championships are traditionally held at the Meaford Land Force Central Training Centre, a plot of stubbly land we affectionately call The Tank Range, and normally we just sign the usual permission forms and the kids board a bus and off they go and very often some youngster from Amabel-Sauble comes home with the big prize, only this year the permissions package contains an ominous new document that carries the doubly ominous bold and bordered banner warning

"Note: This document creates legal obligations for you once it is signed"

... and the legal rights it strips from the signers are not just sinister, they are positively frightening.

Now, I can almost justify the clause allowing spontaneous and unexplained personal search and detention, given we're at war, but just for example, and maybe I'm wrong here, aren't we here in the modern civilized world already indemnified from financial debts incurred by our parents? Didn't that go out with the Great Depression? Well, no, apparently it ain't so if your dad had been the unlucky young boy who strayed into our Government Land today ...

Binding Nature

"This release and indemnification will be binding on me, my heirs, executors, administrators and assigns"

Binding on my heirs??? Definitely crack. No other drug could make them so bold. This is, after all, a stock form presumably given to any Canadian citizen wishing to enter a 'Defense Establishment' that is, unless they see school children as some sort of special threat.

So, now, what exactly are we being asked to pay for so adamantly that the debt would outlive us and pass to our progeny against all protections of law?

Indemnification

"If, in the course of this activity (the Cross Country races by school children) I do something, or fail to do something, which results in, causes or contributes to a loss, injury or damage to Her Majesty persons or property, I will fully indemnify (reimburse) and hold harmless Her Majesty the Queen (sic), the Officers and Non-Commissioned members of the Canadian Forces and all her majesty's servants and agents, from any and all legal actions, claims and demands that may result."

This is after the earlier clause that waives, releases and forever discharges said folk from "all manner of legal actions, claims and demands".

It has to be crack. This document is to be signed and co-signed by a witness, or, presumably, the child will be barred from participation in the event.

only, it gets better:

"The applicant further agrees to supply proof of liability insurance to the authorized authority for the purpose of satisfying the above indemnification"

which I take to read

1. sending your child to a silly elementary track meet requires you to hire a lawyer and
2. if you don't, your child is barred from participating in the schoolboard event

Now, were it not for the clause that demands proof of my preparedness for being sued and my descendants being sued, which is in our case not possible and I really expect is not even possible for folks who have handy family insurance lawyers, and were it not for the bold and blocked banner clearly stating the dire seriousness of the document's intent I would be inclined to do as John Cage was told to do by Max Ernst, and "sign the papers and continue to spread joy and revolution everywhere!"

But those parts do exist, and here we are, stuck with this insane form and a child who really enjoys these cross country meets, and we're just stuck not really knowing what to do about it.

Before whirling her fists in the air and pounding them on the arms of her chair in frustration, I'd suggested maybe we simply ink out the absurd demands of this idiotic 'contract' and then sign the now mostly-blocked-out document to submit with the whole kit on the assumption that the average Canadian Forces administrative personnel have more intelligence than the cretins who wrote and legislated this form, and thus would just let the paper pass through as valid authorization of our boy's participation in the children's games, but then, when I was in the Forces, it was a different world, and that world was a long long time ago, and in that world no one would ever demand legal proof of indemnification from the threat of collateral damage from an eight year old boy.