Response to questions from the Canadian Secular Alliance

I received this questionnaire and have placed my responses in the text.

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I am writing to you on behalf of the Canadian Secular Alliance - a national and non-partisan non-profit organization whose objective is to advocate for church-state separation and government neutrality with respect to religion.

We have prepared a short questionnaire regarding issues relevant to our mandate in Ontario. We would greatly appreciate if you could complete the questionnaire and send your responses to president@secularalliance.ca.

We understand that some of the questions reference propositions that might be complicated to implement, but we are looking for your position on the principles they embody. The responses we receive will be posted, without modification, to our website and circulated to our members. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration and best of luck in the election.

Question 1. Do you support saving the province a minimum of half a billion dollars every year by amalgamating the public and Catholic school systems into a single, secular taxpayer funded school system for each language?

David McGruer: Such a question can only arise in a society where government has forced students into state-run schools and forced citizens to pay for it, and further implies that such a coercive arrangement is desirable. In a free society, individuals establish schools that offer what they believe parents want in an educational institution, parents choose among the schools offered, competition between all such institutions requires them to remain relevant and productive, and so families obtain the educational services they want, not what is dictated they must have by those in central command.  I am in favour of a free education system, meaning all participants are free to choose, instead of the current one.  Using more force to reduce existing choice in schools can only make things worse and validates the use of force in education.

Question 2. Is it acceptable to allow religious leaders of any denomination to conduct prayer sessions on public school property during school hours?

David McGruer: Again, such a question can only have meaning in a society where citizens are subject to government force in educational.  The moral role of government is to protect the rights of citizens – that’s all – and so I am in favour of the separation of religion and state.  Thus, in the current non-free state-run schools there should be no religious component except for the study of religion, if individual parents and students so choose.  As a small step towards such separation, prayer sessions should not be permitted during school hours.

Question 3. Should students in publicly funded Catholic schools be allowed to form Gay-Straight Alliance groups?

David McGruer: In a free society, citizens are permitted to do, join or form anything that does not cause or promise physical harm to others.  Thus, students should be free to form any group they wish, as long as it does not violate another’s right to liberty or property.

Question 4. The Ministry of Education took two years filled with extensive public consultations to create a current, relevant, and appropriate sex-ed curriculum. Do you support implementing the recommendations that the provincial government proposed in 2010?

David McGruer: Such a question can only arise when government operates a monopoly in education and effectively forbids and outlaws parental choice in educational institutions and curriculum content.  Sex education is a sensitive subject for many people and curriculum content should be subject to parental choice.  I am not in favour of having the government force any particular content upon students, so there is no way to objectively answer this question, just as there can be no way to answer a question about any item in the curriculum unless it is about my children’s education.  In a monopoly system, curriculum content is determined by political pull instead of parental choice, and all of it necessarily is a violation of rights.  I am in favour of restoring parental freedom in education and removing government coercion from this crucial industry.

Question 5. Do you support amending the Assessment Act to remove the requirement that municipalities must grant full property tax exemptions to religious organizations, even though other charitable organizations are entitled only to a 40% rebate?

David McGruer: In a free society all contracts and exchanges are voluntary and property ownership is absolute. Thus, I am opposed to the use of government force against citizens through coercive property taxation.  In the current system there is little relationship between the actual use of services and the property tax paid.  In the current mixed economy, if there is to be a property tax then it should be applied objectively and as fairly as the system permits, at least approximating the services used, and there should certainly be no discrimination between institutions based on religion.

Question 6. Do you support eliminating all religious invocations at the start of legislative sessions?

David McGruer: In a free society, religious beliefs are a matter of individual choice and are neither imposed on nor denied to anyone.  This implies a complete separation of religion and state and so, by extension, religion should not play any part in government ceremonies.

Regards,

Greg Oliver

President

Canadian Secular Alliance

president@secularalliance.ca

416-591-7378

Most parties skirting details on health care

From the September 18th Ottawa Citizen:

Experts say no matter which party wins, Ontarians should brace for more hospital bed closures, staff layoffs and, potentially, the shutdown of emergency rooms at some rural hospitals.
“We can expect to see a worsening of overcrowding at hospitals,” said Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, an advocacy group backed by labour unions.
“We can expect the wait lists for long-term-care homes will continue to number 20,000 or more. And there will not be an increase in home care sufficient for the population need ... so you could see more people join the 10,000 Ontarians who are already on waiting lists for home care.”

From the 2011 Freedom Party of Ontario election platform:

Ontario once had a health care system that focused on making our sick and injured well. On October 1, 1969, Ontario's Progressive Conservative government banned that system.

The Progressive Conservatives set up a tax-funded government monopoly called Medicare. Medicare has been in crisis ever since.

Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments have told us, year after year, that the taxpayer has to pay more to keep the system afloat. Health care already consumes over 65% of all Ontario tax revenues, and it is taking over a growing percentage of the budget every year.

Yet, every day, we hear stories that Ontario's sick and injured are suffering, and even dying, as they wait in growing line-ups for dwindling health-care rations.

To find out why, consider the words of the Father of Canada's Medicare system, Reverend Tommy Douglas, which he gave at a 1979 conference in Ottawa titled "S.O.S. Medicare" (even as early as 1979, Medicare was in crisis):

"I am concerned, as many people are, about Medicare. Not with its fundamental principles, but with the problems which we knew would arise.

"And those of us who talked about Medicare back in the 1940s, and 50s, and 60s, kept reminding the public that there were two phases for Medicare. The first was to remove the financial barrier between those who provide health services and those who need them. And we pointed out, repeatedly, that that phase was the easiest of the problems we would confront. In governmental terms, of course, it means finding revenue, it means setting up organizations, it means exercising controls over costs. But, in the long term it was the easiest problem.

"Phase number two would be the much more difficult one. That was to alter our delivery system so as to reduce costs and so as to place the emphasis on preventive medicine. But I think what we have to apply ourselves to now is the fact that we have not yet grappled seriously with the second phase. We must now move increasingly toward group practice. Whether it's community clinics, co-operative clinics, clinics set up by the doctors themselves. But the need for group practice so as to make possible the practice of preventive medicine. Only in that way are we going to be able to keep the costs from becoming so excessive that the public will decide that Medicare is not in the best interests of the people of this country."

In other words: setting up a tax-funded government health care monopoly was expected to be easy.

However, if the Medicare system was not ultimately to be rejected by the public, it would be necessary to control costs by switching the focus of health care. A tax-funded government monopoly could not focus on making the sick and injured well because that focus would result in unsustainable costs and in the rejection of Medicare. So, instead of focusing on making the sick and injured well, Medicare would focus on preventing the well from getting sick or injured.

Forty two years later, we still see Ontario's Medicare system focusing on preventive medicine. Most recently, the Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty has used taxpayer dollars to fund 220 or more group practices including not only physicians, but a range of professionals - including, for example, social workers - whose primary focus is not making the sick and injured well, but keeping the healthy from becoming sick and injured. In our schools, the government has banned junk foods, mandated exercise, and targeted trans-fats. The government has funded a growing range of vaccinations to reduce the probability the Ontarians will become sick and become a drain on the healthcare system. The government has taken increasingly aggressive steps to ban cigarette smoking, in an effort to reduce the occurrence of serious illnesses that would place even more economic pressure on the sustainability of Medicare. In short: in an effort to keep Medicare from bankrupting the province, the government has been focusing on the healthy, instead of on the sick and injured.

Not surprisingly Ontarians who are not seriously sick or injured are more likely to think that Medicare is working well. They trust that, when they become sick or injured, the Medicare system will be there to help them. However, Ontario's countless sick and injured have a different view: they believe, rightly, that Medicare is failing them.

Read the newspapers, and listen to talk radio and, almost every day, you'll hear about someone waiting months or years for a doctor, then months or years for a specialist, then months or years for diagnostic tests, then months or years for surgery or other treatments. You will read or hear of people sitting in Hospital emergency waiting rooms, with very serious sicknesses or injuries, suffering for hours or even days as they wait to been seen by a physician. In fact, you will read of people literally dying as they wait for service in our hospitals. There are reports of patients being placed in beds in make-shift spaces in ambulance parking lots. There are patients left in the halls of our hospitals, with little or nothing to separate them from the public walking past. In London, Ontario, emergency patients wait in ambulances outside the hospital, such that there is sometimes only one vacant ambulance available for the entire city. At a major hospital like St. Michael's, in Toronto, there are days of the week in which only one operating room is open, such that the hospital can perform only one surgery at a time.

A case in point: Freedom Party leader Paul McKeever's own brother waited for days, almost dead on an I.V. drip, as he waited for serious emergency surgery at St. Michael's hospital in Toronto. Suddenly, after a surgery for another person had been completed (a surgery that took over a day) assistants rushed into his room to transfer him to a gurney so as to rush him to the operating room. They were too slow, so nurses, knowing the life or death nature of the situation, rushed into his room and rolled the entire bed down to the operating room. The nurses later explained that getting into the operating room was a case of "first come, first serve" so they had to rush him into the operating room before someone else was rushed into it. McKeever's brother lived. It is not known if someone else died waiting while he was being operated upon.

Ask yourself: is this an example of a system that is working well for the sick and injured?

A healthy lifestyle is a good personal choice. However, Freedom Party of Ontario believes that making the sick and injured well should be the top priority for Ontario's health care system. Accordingly, a Freedom government will restore the health care choices that the Progressive Conservatives banned in 1969.

Candidate quiz from an undecided Blackburn Hamlet resident

My name is _______ and I live in your potential riding of Ottawa-Orleans. I am completely undecided as to which candidate in my riding is best suited to represent Ottawa-Orleans at the Provincial level. Please help me decide who is qualified to work for the Province by taking just a few minutes of your time to answer a short questionnaire on issues that concern the people of Ontario. If the choices provided are insufficient please feel free to write in your own responses. The candidate who has the best vision for the future of Ontario wins my vote!

            Any candidate who does not respond or who simply refers me to their party’s platform will not receive my vote as they have chosen not to represent themselves and therefore, will fail to represent the constituents of Ottawa-Orleans. This questionnaire in no way constitutes a quote or stated opinion but instead, is intended as a gauge of the candidate’s general vision for the future of Ontario and suitability for Provincial office.

Thank you for your time. Sincerely, _____________ (Blackburn Hamlet)

Ontario MPP Candidacy Quiz

1. The placement of large electricity-generating wind turbines within 500 metres of homes and schools is:

a) Unacceptable

b) Unavoidable- it is progress

c) Not a matter of provincial concern

David McGruer: None of the above. I believe in the protection of each individual’s right to peacefully pursue her goals in life so long as she does not violate the rights of others.  In a free society, if it can be objectively determined that such a turbine has violated an individual’s right to life, liberty or property, then the court must provide redress. 

2. Ontario Tobacco laws are:

a) Excellent

b) Insufficient

c) Something I am unfamiliar with

David McGruer: None of the above.  I believe in the right of each person to choose her own way in life, so long as she does not violate the same rights of others.  Notwithstanding that I was a physical education teacher and triathlete and truly despise smoking, considering it to be a self-destructive and dirty habit, I would defend the right of a person to smoke as much as she wants, so long as she does no harm to others.  In a free society, if it can be objectively shown that the typical exposure a person may have to second-hand smoke in the normal course of living represents a health hazard, then I believe the courts may provide redress to the person so harmed.

3. Provincial Arts Funding is:

a) Sufficient

b) Insufficient

c) Should be the responsibility of municipalities and the private sector

David McGruer:  None of the above.  I believe each person is responsible for her own life and cannot be morally held responsible for the life of another. In a free society all economic transactions are mutually beneficial, voluntary and not done by coercion, especially government coercion.  As such, funding of the arts is morally in the domain of each individual’s choices in life and it is immoral for government to interfere in the arts industry. If people wish to support the arts they must do so with their own funds and must not use the coercive apparatus of the state to cause other people’s money to be transferred to artists.  If an artist is truly appreciated by patrons, they will be willing to pay to enjoy it.  I attended a play at the Shaw Festival in August, and paid a very hefty price for the tickets.  No one else should be required to subsidize my ticket buying choices in any way.

4. Do you support a public inquiry into the conduct of the OPP in regards to the Douglas Creek Estates land protest and settlement?

YES

David McGruer:  This story is one of the clearest failures of the government to protect the right of citizens to life, liberty and property.  The safety of their persons was both threatened and at actual risk, their freedom to move about was clearly restricted unlawfully and their property was seized in defiance of laws.  The paralysis of the OPP and Ontario government is a clear indication of how a morality based on collectivism and altruism leaves individuals with no protection from the very entities (government, police) whose very purpose is to protect citizens.

5. When negotiations at the Provincial level over First Nations land claims settlements result in a stalemate should the Federal Government step in to resolve the issues?

c) The court system should decide an outcome and the OPP should enforce and uphold the decision of the courts.

David McGruer:  In a free society, objective law of property must be used to resolve such conflicts and the initiation of force is punished by the state.  Before the coming of European settlers and their legal systems, I do not believe first nations had any concept of property nor any legal system to recognize property.  Contracts properly signed should of course be honored.

 

6. I would support development and funding for a rapid transit railway upgrade in the Windsor-Toronto-Ottawa corridor.

Yes and No

David McGruer:  I would encourage any entrepreneur or group of them to consider such a project and proceed if they find it to be profitable.  In a free society, government has absolutely no role in such a project except to protect property rights and contract law.

7. The best way to increase tourism in Ontario is:

a) Through international marketing campaigns

b) Through local advertising and coupons/incentives

c) Other (please specify)

David McGruer:  None of the above.  In a free society the government has no moral role to play in tourism.  If the government would protect rights then the economy of the province would flourish beyond imagination and this would attract industries of all type and description, including tourism.  There is nothing special about the tourism industry that distinguishes it from any other industry.  None of them should receive any money taken by government from citizens.  It is properly the role of businesses benefitting from tourism to individually, or acting together, to advertise and promote their businesses in whatever way they see fit, using and risking their own money and no one else’s.

8. The measures enacted by the Ministry of Natural Resources to protect endangered species are adequate and appropriate:

b) Disagree

David McGruer:  Animals and plants are not reasoning beings and so do not have rights as do homo sapiens.  In a free society, if any group of people believes a species is endangered and wishes to protect it, they are free to use their wealth to do so and to encourage others to do likewise.  They are not free to use the force of government to compel others to agree with them or act as they wish.

9. The growing problem of childhood obesity should be dealt with:

a) By parents. It is not the Province’s responsibility.

David McGruer:  Children are not the property of schools or of government.  It is the responsibility of parents to raise their children.  Children should only be removed from parental custody or the parent-child relationship disturbed by government if it can be objectively shown that harm is being done to the child. Providing excessive food or providing what some people believe to be an unhealthy diet is not sufficient grounds for interference.  Given the importance of the parent-child relationship, interference is only justified in extreme cases and must be decided on an individual basis.  Once a child is able to reason for herself, she may choose to each more nutritious food, exercise and reduce caloric intake.  Almost no children are malnourished, so after the age of fourteen or so, any child who wishes to do so can attain a healthy weight within a few years or less.

 

10. The Province of Ontario’s employment strategy:

a) Should focus on immigrants.

b) Should focus on retirement and the rising health care costs of Baby Boomers.

c) Should focus on helping college and university graduates find full-time employment.

d) Attracting more manufacturing plants to Ontario.

e) Supporting small businesses.

David McGruer: None of the above.  The province should not have any employment strategy at all except to remove the thousands of employment barriers they have put into place.  As a simple example, consider that they have made it illegal to work for less than a particular wage (minimum wage laws), thus cutting off many people from entry level or temporary positions they could otherwise obtain.  In a free society there is full employment for anyone who wishes to work, since there is always some work to be done at some price. The current collectivist philosophy of government in fact harms the very people it pretends to help, those whose work currently has the least value and who desperately need an entry-level opportunity to work so they can learn, improve and advance.  In a free society immigrants and residents alike are not prevented from working by government, health care is not a government monopoly, education is free of government interference and small businesses are left free to pursue their own business strategies and hire anyone they want for any compensation to which an employee voluntarily agrees.

Concluding remarks: I note that most of your questions contain collectivist assumptions: that it is proper for the will of an individual who is peacefully pursuing her values in life to be subjugated to the will of such non-entities as "the public", "the majority" or any group able to influence the coercive powers of the government.  I encourage you to challenge such assumptions and to discover the full meaning and principles of individual rights, limited government and objective law.  It is upon these principles that only the Freedom Party of Ontario is based. The basics of these can be found at this web site. Our party web site has information on our platform, which shows 18 of the first steps we would take towards a free society and also our policies and constitution which are unlike any of the other parties.

Response to Mayor Watson's election questions

Questions:

A.     The Ottawa River Action Plan has been partially implemented. Phase III remains to be completed. This Phase will see the construction of large holding tanks that will prevent sewage overflows into the Ottawa River. The cost of this Phase is estimated to be approximately $150 million. The funding for this Phase of the project will be supplied by all three levels of government on an equal basis, as with the first two phases.

1.      Do you personally agree that the Province of Ontario should provide its 1/3 share of the funding to complete the ORAP project?   No

2.      Does your political party support the funding?  The Freedom Party does not have an official position on this specific business question.

Additional Comments: The question contains false premises that need to be addressed.  In a free society, the treatment of water, like any other economic activity, is morally the role of individual entrepreneurs and the businesses they build, who compete on a free market for business from customers and are therefore driven by competition to provide the desired service or else go out of business.  Instead of using the force of government to create monopoly powers, if government would instead fulfill its proper and only moral role and act to protect rights, especially property rights in this case, the polluters of water would be subject to legal action if it is proven to harm anyone’s property.  I believe the provision of clean water and the treatment of sewage are businesses that should be divested by the City in order to protect the rights of citizens and improve the quality of service.  In this case, government is both the self-appointed polluter and properly the rights protector, so any solution it comes up with is wrong and necessitates the violation of rights of citizens and the owners of potential water companies.

B.     Light Rail Transit (LRT) is a project that is vital to the future transportation needs of the City of Ottawa. LRT is a shared-cost program with all three levels of government participating. The provincial share will be $600 million.

1.      Do you personally agree that the Province of Ontario should provide this $600 million to help finance the LRT project?  No

2.      Does your political party support the funding?  The Freedom Party does not have an official position on this specific business question.

Additional Comments: Again, the question contains false premises that indicate the incorrect moral position of collectivism.  In a free society, the business of transportation is conducted by entrepreneurs and the businesses they create.  They are driven by the requirements of competition to constantly improve their service or else their more efficient competitors will take over their market share.  The moral role of government is to protect the rights of citizens to act in their peaceful pursuit of values so long as they do not initiate force against others. This is accomplished by enforcing objective law through the police and court systems. 

Light rail transit is not vital to anything.  The ability of citizens to move freely and efficiently is what is vital.  A government monopoly transit system will always have, by its very nature, a large lack of efficiency, a shortage of innovation and large numbers of dissatisfied citizens.  By removing the provision of transportation from the free economy, government eliminated the individual consumer’s right to vote with their pocketbook for the most desirable competitors.  Instead, pressure groups vie to take control of politically driven transit decisions, fighting for control of the levers of monopoly power that never ends.  The rights of people wanting transit are violated, the rights of taxpayers who are forced to pay for the transit of others is violated, the rights of all possible competitors is violated – yet you expect this to be a good system and think it is moral?  I am in favour of ending the transit monopoly and requiring government to protect the rights of citizens.

C.     The Federal Government and the Provinces announced the $1.4 billion Affordable Housing Framework 2011-2014 on July 4, 2011. This will be a shared cost program and it is expected that the City of Ottawa will derive approximately $25 million over the next 3 years from this program.

1.      Do you personally agree that the Province of Ontario should provide these funds necessary?  No

      2.      Does your political party support the funding?   The Freedom Party does not have an official position on this specific business question.

Additional Comments: Once again, the question assumes that collectivism is the moral way to organize society. In a free society there are no barriers to affordable housing.  All the existing barriers have been created by the immoral action and involvement of government in the economy.  We have zoning laws, building codes, labour laws, material standards laws and myriad other interventions that greatly raise the cost of everything.  When applied to the vital goal of individuals to have affordable housing, the complex of regulations effectively makes it illegal to have affordable housing.  Consequently, to make it affordable again, still more interventions are undertaken and still more rights are violated: the tax system is used to force hard-earned money from the people who exchanged part of their life to earn it and give it to those who did not earn it.  When the rights of both the productive and the unproductive are constantly violated, how can we expect to work within such a system to create any long-term solutions?

3.      Would you support a longer term affordable housing strategy be delivered after these funds expire? Yes

Additional Comments: Absolutely.  The only truly moral and also the most efficient and practical way to enable affordable housing is to protect the rights of citizens to build, buy and own any building they choose.  By removing the use of government compulsion from the housing industry and replacing it with only the mutually agreeable and cooperative business agreements (capitalism) that are inherent in a free society, no one’s rights are violated and all parties benefit from every single transaction.  Government intervention in housing and the economy has created the shortage of affordable housing and only the removal of it will fully solve the shortage.

D.     The Province of Ontario began “uploading” approximately $1.5 billion in social service costs in 2008. This program has been partially implemented and saved the City of Ottawa $25 million in this year alone. The program of “uploading” will not be fully completed until 2018 and will also include the uploading of certain police service costs.

City of Ottawa long-range budget planning encompasses annual additional anticipated uploaded dollars of approximately $2.765 million in 2012; $5.205 million in 2013; $5.155 million in 2014; $5.340 million in 2015; $5.545 million in 2016; $6.150 million in 2017; and $6.065 in 2018. This does not include additional funds of approximately $5 million for police services, which provide a final annual total savings of $40- $41 million by 2018.

1. Do you personally agree that the Province of Ontario should complete the implementation of this uploading as planned?  No

     2. Does your political party support the completion of this uploading program? The Freedom Party does not have an official position on such questions because they are inappropriate in a free society.

Additional Comments: In a free society all citizens are responsible for their own lives and the consequences of their decisions.  Free individuals neither sacrifice their values for others, nor ask others to sacrifice for them.  They certainly do not use the power of government to violate the rights of others.  In a free society all transactions are voluntary and mutually beneficial.  In a free society the law prohibits the use of government force against innocent citizens who simply wish to peacefully pursue their goals in life and are not harming others.  The existence of social services by government is a clear breach of the moral role of government and violates the rights of individual citizens.  Such programs rest on the philosophy of collectivism, well expressed by Karl Marx and others, that treats individuals as their brothers keepers and thus disposable parts of a larger whole known as “society”.  But society is not in fact a living entity and is only a group of living individuals.  In a society where justice is the rule and rights are protected by the state, any men may voluntarily pool their efforts for any cause they choose, but they cannot be forced to do so.  In a free society, the minuscule percentage of citizens that are truly unable to care for themselves can easily be helped through voluntary charity.

E.      The City of Ottawa has formally requested the province permit approximately 20 gaming tables for the Rideau Carleton Raceway Slots on a two year pilot project.

1.      Do you support proceeding with this pilot project later this fall? No

2.      Does your political party support the funding?  No official position on this specific business question.

Additional Comments:  There can be no moral answer because so many false moral premises are implicit in this question that I find it ridiculous.  For example, it assumes that:

a)      gambling is immoral if conducted among consenting individuals;

b)      gambling becomes moral if conducted using the force of government to create a monopoly and then exploit citizens;

c)      the specific type of gambling makes any difference to the issue;

d)      money should be taken by force from citizens for government purposes;

e)      this money should be used to support monopoly gambling establishments;

f)        a “pilot project” on this subject will provide any intelligible data;

g)      it is proper for any group of voters to lobby for political power to affect any decisions related to the business of gambling.

Your Name: David McGruer

Riding: Ottawa-Orleans

Political Party: The Freedom Party of Ontario

10% off your energy bill? - 22 days until election

Thanks to the Liberals I received a flyer telling me they are taking 10% off my energy bill!  Magical!  Why 10% and not 20% or 50%?  Why not add 20%.  The truth is they have no idea which choice would be best because government has prohibited a free market for energy and thus the price is always wrong.

The reality is that only a free market, where millions of individuals set their own priorities in life and spend their wealth accordingly can establish the right price.  Every other situation distorts reality by forcing an artificial price upon everyone. 

Just for fun, consider the following historical steps:
1. Individual (private) scientists discover electricity.

2. Private industrialists invest and risk their wealth to discover ways to produce electricity.  Fierce competition drives steady improvements in efficiency and economy of production.

3. Private industrialists invest and risk their wealth to discover ways to distribute electricity and again, competition inexorably drives down the price and raises productivity.

4. The productivity of all citizens is improved as electricity makes their work more efficient and their lives safer and more enjoyable.

5. Individual consumers freely choose in ever growing numbers to buy electricity from its producers and distributors.

6. Electrical production and distribution becomes central to all aspects of the economy, vastly increasing the quality of life for all.  Anyone is free to produce it and anyone can compete for distribution.

7. Government siezes control of the industry and creates a monopoly, claiming it is in the public interest and that private companies will overcharge the public. 

8. The industry becomes locked in a virtual stasis, with innovation only occurring slowly and due to ideas created outside the government.  Since no individuals own the company or its assets, there is no incentive to innovate, create efficiency, or any need to compete, since competition is forbidden.  Assets deteriorate.

9. The company is directed to do inefficient and even stupid things by politicians who think they know better than individual citizens how to produce and distribute electricity.  Very inefficient and undesirable giant windmills are constructed against the wishes of nearby residents, consumers and municipal governments.  Hugely inefficient solar installations are built that suck wealth from the population.

10. Prices are subject to the whims of politicians who know nothing of business or free market economics.  Punishments and rewards are meted out seemingly at random, but are in fact used to buy political favour and votes.  A 10% price cut is accomplished by borrowing money.

11. When problems become too much to bear, the cry is for someone to "do something" and millions or billions are wasted on inefficient changes done at the point of a gun. 

12. The standard of living of all individuals is reduced because of the lack of competition and artificially high prices, creating system-wide inefficiencies.

13. Because the whole electrical system is a monopoly, poor decisions have enormously harmful and widespread effects.  In an industry with many businesses competing, one or several can do poorly and their market share is inevitably picked up by their more efficient competitors.  In a monopoly everything fails at once and there is no backup.

14. Politicians lacking even a fundamental understanding of free market economics claim that they know better than other politicians how to run an enormous, impossibly complex industry.  They engage in a war for votes, each promising to do better by spending taxpayers money instead of allowing individuals to each spend their own money.

15. The electrical monopoly and the government enter a spending and debt spiral that can only be relieved by restoring the freedom of individual scientists to experiment and discover, of individual industrialists to produce and individual consumers to choose their purchases.

What is required is a free market and the protection of individual rights.  This will certainly not happen under the Liberals, PC's, NDP or Green Party.  Only the Freedom Party of Ontario promises to start the move in the right direction.

More about tax credits for immigrant employers - 22 days until election

More ado has been made of the Liberal proposal to provide up to $10,000 in tax credits for employers who hire recent immigrants.  The PC's oppose it because it gives preference to immigrants over long time residents.  The NDP say preference should be given to others.  None of them is cognizant of the fact it is immoral for government to be involved in employment issues at all.

The moral role of government is to protect citizens from the initiation of force, to protect their life, liberty to act and ownership of property.  When government intervenes in economic decisions made by freely acting citizens, it initiates force against them and so becomes the  wrongdoer.  Further, once government steps into the free exchange of values between citizens, no matter what the justification, there is no end to the interventions that can and will be justified.  This is how politics becomes a war between various interest grops to control the levers of power for the benefit of themselves or their pet causes.  All of these levers necessitate the violation of the rights of some or even all citizens. 

Only the Freedom Party of Ontario has a platform based on the moral right of man to peacefully pursue his own happiness so long as he does not violate the right of others to do likewise, and understands that a strong government is required to protect this right.

I hear a steady barrage of tragic stories about our decaying health care system.  The story of Nicole Nasrallah seems entirely too typical.

1. Her family doctor retired and she cannot find one willing to take on a new patient - they are all too overwhelmed.  Since the government created a monopoly on doctor certification doctors are naturally in short supply, as are all services under a monopoly.

2. She has had the old run-around from other doctors, who made a series of excuses and refusals her most common experience.  Under a monopoly system, this is entirely expected since accountability to the customer is made unnecessary.  Further, since it is essentially illegal for pateitns to pay doctors for treatment, doctors have no incentive to help people and expand services.

3. She tried to obtain prescription painkillers to reduce her suffering while she struggled to obtain proper care yet was refused at various points.  This illustrates how a monopoly creates people who wish to avoid responsibility and accountability for decisions - "not my fault" is the rallying cry.

4. When she complains that the sytem is dysfunctional, she is referred by its political masters back into the system - a web site no less - to find a doctor.  One doctor scolded her for not having one and told her to look harder.

All this is so unnecessary and so immoral.  By removing
a) the rights of doctors to conduct their practice as they see fit (medical services are massively regulated and rationed),
b) the right of people to become doctors in the first place (the supply of doctors is rationed by government)
c) the right of patients to seek doctors of their choice, negitiate for services and agree on contract terms (doctors are not free to contract, patients are not free to contract).

In a free country, the state would have no role in health care, nor in any other aspects of the economy.  We once had a mostly free economy but it has been replaced by an increasing number of collectivist interventions in the last hundred years.

Cities and Rinks - a bad combination

As part of the debate about the City budget a few years ago, City staff had floated the idea of increasing fees for indoor ice rink time, almost doubling it for kids’ activities and a 26% increase for adult activities. One online petition garnered about 6,000 signatures.  I have two kids in competitive ringette and such an increase would no doubt cost me hundreds of dollars per year.  You would think I’d be firmly in favour of holding the price of ice time at the current level - but you would be wrong.  After brief second thoughts I decided I was totally in favour of changing prices – but with one big caveat.

The City of Ottawa has a near monopoly on indoor ice in Ottawa.  A few private rinks like Minto and U of O can be found, along with a couple of now notorious “public-private partnership” (P3) experiments at the Bell Sensplex and the Ray Friel Centre.  The P3’s have turned out to be a mild disaster for all involved.  The company running the two new rinks at Ray Friel could not compete with City-subsidized rinks and the rinks were handed back to the City.  The Sensplex deal is at present a marginal exercise.  Sports groups in Ottawa regularly complain of the lack of available ice time and this shows no sign of changing.  How could it change when most rinks are City-owned and the City is constantly under financial duress? 

The root of the ice shortage can be found in the economic concept of monopoly power.  A monopoly can only endure when the coercive power of government is used to support it. In a monopoly the supply is suppressed and the price distorted.  With regard to rinks, the government covers their operating costs through a mix of taxes (coercive force) and user fees (voluntary).  Under these conditions users pay less than market rates and so are naturally reluctant to pay a fair market price for the limited private ice time.  Instead, they lobby politicians to do something about the shortage of artificially low ice time.  Many taxpayers naturally object to having to pay higher taxes for things they don’t use, and so there is a struggle between political pressure groups over control of tax revenues.  Rinks generally deteriorate and remain in short supply.  The same can be said of most services run under the monopoly power of the City.

There is a simple solution to the shortage of ice time: free the market for ice time from government control – sell all the rinks to the highest bidders and they will have to compete with other rinks to offer the best service at the lowest price.  If there is demand for rinks then entrepreneurs will meet that need until there is a balanced market – just like they do for houses, cars, hockey equipment, groceries, computers, clothes and everything else the government does not monopolize. Without a free market who knows how many rinks are actually wanted or how efficiently they can be run?  I suspect all sorts of innovative arrangements would be created to meet the large variety of demands for ice.  If a family cannot afford much ice time you or any charity would be free to lend a hand, and certainly fundraising is possible.

Now for the caveat. The same thinking applies to almost everything the City does.  For you to have enough money to pay for the likely higher ice fees, your property taxes would have to be drastically cut so you are no longer paying for the myriad of programs you don’t use.  The City would operate police, fire and roads.  Only when the price of what you buy is clear and the provider is accountable to you can true efficiency be reached.  That’s why the Mayor efforts to contain costs is doomed to fail.  The demand for the government to run a program is a demand to defy reality – to operate outside of economics and obtain something for nothing.  “Someone else will pay for it, not me.”  Today, your property taxes are subsidizing my kids’ recreation.  Given the choice, I’d let you decide how to spend your own money (you will do it better than the politicians) and I’d choose how to spend mine.  The package deal of City-run rinks is a long-range recipe for certain disappointment.

Tax support for immigrant jobs is wrong - 24 Days until election

While the Liberals propose to give up to $10,000 of money taxes from taxpayers to companies that hire recent immigrant, the PC's call it money for "foreign workers" while thousands of Ontarians are unemployed.  They squabble over who has the better subsidy ideas while ignoring that all subsidies are immoral.

It it not a proper, moral role of government to take money from some people by force and then distribute it to their preferred groups.  It is, however, a natural consequence of the mixed economy, where pressure groups attempt to seize political power to change laws, reduce competition and direct other people's money in their favour. 

Unless and until government returns to its proper and moral role as the protector of individual rights instead of its current role as the primary violator of rights, which party is currently in power has little impact on the overall political scene - it is just a matter of whose gang is in power and whether they will take away more of your rights or perhaps deign to pull back slightly from doing such intense harm.

Only the Freedom Party of Ontario offers a platform based on a fully integrated philosophy that protects individual rights.  While it will certainly take some time to withdraw government interference in the economy, it is about time we started moving in that direction instead of the wrong direction.

Beauty and change in nature's climate cycles

At the end of the Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones movie “Men In Black” we see the camera back away from New York City until the planet Earth is visible from space, then the solar system and then the Milky Way galaxy come into view before we finally see that our whole galaxy is inside a marble ball in a game played by alien beings.  Part of the plot in the movie was the mission to prevent a galaxy that was inside a charm attached to a cat’s collar from falling into a bad-guy alien’s hands.  While light-hearted, this vision of the massive scale of reality recently hit home for me while I dedicated second thoughts to a fascinating book I had just read, “The Cooling Stars” by Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder (Icon Books, 2007).

Recent years have seen more climate research than in all prior years combined.  Prompted by prophets of doom like Al Gore, David Suzuki and the politicos on the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), serious scientists have been steadily breaking new ground.  Henrik Svensmark (Danish National Space Center) and others like Jan Veizer (geologist, University of Ottawa) and Nir Shaviv (astrophysicist, University of Jerusalem) have achieved a remarkable insight.  Since geological records on Earth show climate cycles of 135 million years alternating between icehouse (present) and hothouse, and this corresponds with no known phenomenon, it had to be caused by something outside Earth and our Sun.  They discovered a remarkably high correlation between cosmic rays reaching the Earth and global climate – so high this one critical factor explains 75% of temperature variation over the last 500 million years.

Cosmic rays matter because Svensmark’s theory and experiments have shown that when they collide with particles in our atmosphere and strip them of electrons, the ions thus created cause water droplet formation.  These droplets create low-level clouds, making the Earth whiter and reflecting more sunlight back into space.  More cosmic rays mean a cooler planet.  Two factors determine the level of cosmic rays reaching Earth: the strength of the Sun’s magnetic field (deflects rays) and our position in the Milky Way galaxy.  When the Sun burns more brightly there is naturally more sunlight reaching Earth, but it also deflects more cosmic rays, meaning there are less clouds – a reinforcing effect on global warming.  As our solar system travels around the galaxy, the spiral arms that are richer in the cosmic rays of the exploded suns of the galaxy are also spinning.  As we alternate between times within dense arms and relatively sparse spaces in between, the Earth cools and warms. 

So it turns out that almost all the variation in Earth’s climate can be explained by our varying orbit around the Sun, the cycles of the Sun’s radiation, and the travels of the Sun through the Milky Way galaxy.  Carbon dioxide has at best a very minor role to play in all this yet has been the focus of the most massive fear-driven propaganda campaign in history.  Veizer and Shaviv say that a doubling of CO2 would result in a temperature change of 0.75 degrees, matching the real-world satellite data of the last 30 years.

After reading Svensmark and Calder’s book, I closed my eyes and visualized the beautiful swirling spirals of the Milky Way galaxy for a minute, imagining them slowly rotating over hundreds of millions of years.  Next, I pictured a tiny solar system far away from the galactic center, its Sun pulsing like a faint firefly against a star-filled sky in the country, slowly making its way around the galaxy, visiting a star-rich spiral arm before spending time in relatively empty space between the arms.  Around that Sun is the tiny planet Earth, orbiting in a varying ellipse.  As the Earth’s orbit, tilt and wobble change, as the Sun’s light pulses and as it wends its way through the Milky Way the cloud cover waxes and wanes, cooling and warming the Earth and prompting species migration, adaptation and extinction.  Eventually the Sun will explode and send cosmic rays into the galaxy, sparking climate change on unknown worlds. 

To me it is a vision of beauty and wonder with the climate change cycles we worry so much about only minor notes in a very long symphony.  The more I learn about nature’s cycles the clearer I hear the symphony.  You might want to try lying back and listening too, as you emit much maligned carbon dioxide with every relaxed breath.

Why government bailouts don't work

Governments implemented massive programs they say are designed to save the economy from ruin, prevent job losses and heal the wounds of the so-called financial crisis.  While the claims associated with these effort may sound noble, second thought shows them to be not just empty rhetoric but counter-productive.

In 1988 noted economist Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992) wrote “The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism” based on principles identified decades earlier.  The book’s basis is that governments strong enough to protect individuals against the violence of their fellows make possible the evolution of an increasingly complex order of spontaneous and voluntary cooperation" (page 32).  Such a complex order is the hallmark of a free people and a free economy.  Those favouring central planning of the economy see this as chaotic and think things could be better organized – if only they had the power to control people’s decisions!  In truth, a free economy is an almost infinitely complex arrangement of cooperation among billions of people through the mechanisms of price and currency.

 Hayek believed that since history only retains records of the activities of governments many people mistakenly think it is government and not markets that set the destinies of humanity.  "The powerful state is not the culmination of cultural evolution; it as often marked its end."   Powerful governments are not conducive to the spontaneous improvement typical of a free people.  Hayek believed that "sooner or later governments tend to suppress the freedoms they had earlier secured in order to enforce their own presumably greater wisdom and not allow social institutions to develop in a ‘haphazard manner'."

Consider the auto industry.  Governments are gave billions taken from the most productive people and businesses and subsidize the weakest among them.  Consumers had already voted explicitly en masse with their choice of auto purchases: they are not willing to pay a price high enough to the likes of GM and Chrysler to allow them to make a profit and keep the business alive.  The profit signal is the surest and clearest signal consumers can send to suppliers.  The existence of profit signals a demand for more of a product or service, yet central planners are preparing to go against the wishes of buyers by giving their money to the companies they favour least, have the weakest business models and lose the most money.

The same type of thing is being implemented in many parts of the economy.  The weakest and poorest managed of the banks asked for the most money.   Resource companies asked for their piece of the pie.  Housing advocates want a slice of the action.  Some want money to be taken from people who are still employed and given to those who are not.  Insanity.  Maybe we should construct bridges, buildings, roads or something else?  What industry and business cannot claim to act as a stimulant of the economy when in fact they all are – so long as they produce without first taking the product of others.

What about the idea governments can ride to the rescue by spending money?  Well, where are they going to get this money?  There are only three sources and they all come from the pockets of citizens: current taxes, borrowing (and repaying with future taxes) and printing new money (which devalues all existing and future money).  So you see all government can do is use its power to force citizens to change their otherwise freely chosen pattern of economic activity.  All such force must produce less effective and desirable results than people would choose on their own – I trust you to decide how to run your own life infinitely more than I trust the self-proclaimed big-brains of central planning.  We should have learned this by now.