I applied online for a Canadian work visa. Moments later I received an email from Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC). It consisted of only four lines. The first line was:

This message is intended for your e-mail address.

Why bother telling me this? If you're sending me this email, presumably you wanted me to read it? It's a philosophical nightmare! Plato would be tearing his hair out, if he had had any.

Does the CIC even know how email works? Maybe they think emails just float around for a bit until they find an email address they like the look of? Or maybe the CIC purposely sends email to the wrong people, in which case they could have wrote:

This message is intended for someone else, but we sent it to you anyway, because we thought you might find it interesting.

If I stretch my imagination, I can think of a scenario where I'm checking my emails, and I realise that I'm actually logged into someone else's email account. A bit like how I sometimes go to work and then realise that I'm doing someone else's job, and that I'm not an obstetrician named Helen in Slough, but I'm actually a taxi driver in Kenilworth called Dave, but it's too late because I'm already elbow-deep in blood, shit and vagina.

Next, the CIC follow-up their first line with this deadpan statement:

If this message does not concern you, discard it.

It's so short and brusque - THIS DOES NOT CONCERN YOU. If someone said that to me, I would feel hurt and ashamed and perhaps cry a little.

And what does "discard" means exactly? I assume it means "delete". But hang on - if the email is important, then the very last thing I should do is delete it! (Actually, the last thing I should do is go to the CIC headquarters and take a shit on manager's desk - but that would actually be the first thing I'd do). What I should do is make sure that the person it's actually for sees it. Whereas deleting the email would be like accidentally opening someone else's bank statement, but then secretly burning it in a fire so it can never be read by anyone ever again, and then washing my eyes out with hydrochloric acid for good measure.

And the CIC are a suspicious lot - always assuming that other people are reading my emails! I can assure them that my email are mainly adverts for Viagra and of little to no interest to anyone (except men with erectile dysfunction who want to buy dodgy Viagra). If a Nigerian hacker was reading my emails, then would telling him to stop reading make him stop? I think it would only make the email more interesting, and that he would continue reading, probably eventually stealing my identity and morphing in to me, like the fly, from The Fly.

The final part of the CIC's email is:

You have a new message(s) in your MyCIC account. To view your message, log into MyCIC.

Why not just show me the message here, and save me time?

And when I did go to MyCIC account, which takes me 6 clicks, 11 keystrokes, and 39 seconds, I find I have to download this miserable message as a fucking pdf file!

And this message is simply:

This confirms that your application has been received by Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

I already knew this when I sent the application! I was there when I sent it to you! I WAS THERE! IT WAS ME WHO SENT IT!

Why this much security? Granted, this is immigration related, but I doubt even Osama Bin Laden would have had this much trouble if he had tried to get into the US with with hand luggage full of grenades.