The Canadian PM: An Aid to Plot Development

Prime target: Canadian PM assassinated in video game

Joel Kom, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Friday, March 31, 2006

Prime Minister Stephen Harper should hope life doesn't imitate art.

A new top-selling video game kicks off with a bang -- a few bangs, actually -- with the assassination of the Canadian prime minister, sparking continental turmoil that only an elite group of soldiers can undo.

The kicker? The fatal shots are fired as the prime minister meets the Mexican and American presidents at a landmark summit in Mexico -- the same place the real-life Mr. Harper wraps up a meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox today.

In the game, the continental chiefs are in Mexico City to sign the North American Joint Security Agreement (softwood lumber didn't make the agenda).

Things are going smoothly until Mexican rebels storm the leaders' rendez-vous and kidnap the American and Mexican presidents, assassinate the prime minister and leave it up to the game player to save the day.

The other leaders had to live to keep the game's tension high: Mexico's president needed to hang around to allow conflict with the rebels, while the U.S. president had remain alive because the elite group of soldiers charged with the rescue are American.

"Basically, for the game, the Canadian guy was the only one that we could actually sacrifice in the story," he said. "We weren't being malicious or anything like that."