Canada's Agriculture Minister is under fire from the public as well as from players of a satirical online game.

As reported by Canada.com, the minister, Gerry Ritz, outraged citizens after he cracked jokes about a deadly outbreak of Listeriosis, caused by tainted lunch meat:

The jokes were made during a conference call with bureaucrats held at the end of August to review progress dealing with the listeria crisis. During the phone conversation, Ritz said that, for the government, "it was like death by a thousand cuts - or, should I say, 'cold cuts?'"

 

Later, when told about another listeriosis case in P.E.I., he said, "Please tell me it's (Liberal agriculture critic) Wayne Easter."

By way of response, programmers at a Toronto web design studio created Cold Cut Cannon, a Flash game in which players "fire salami slices from your cold cut cannon over the skies of Parliament to defend the honour of Canada and the sensibilities of your fellow citizens!"

Of the satirical game, co-creator Roger Grant said:

Gerry Ritz made his comments and we were outraged. We feel that he should've been fired... We believe political satire plays an important role in voter involvement. We didn't want to make it a serious game or a serious site. We made light of it. We wanted to draw attention to it and that's why we put it the way we did it so people would look at it.

Unanticipated Consequences Dept: Ironically, the context-sensitive Google Ads on the Cold Cut Cannon site are primarily for products such as lunch meat, hot dogs and Canadian bacon.