Communities work best when neighbours know and help each other

The Ice Storm of December 2013 was a real test for many of Thornhill residents, as well as for several hundred thousand citizens in southern Ontario. In its aftermath, the cleanup has progressed slowly – partially because we are all waiting to see which level of government funding will gets stuck with the $125 million “hot potato” the represents the bill for cleaning up the remaining debris and items requiring repair. Almost all of this work, of course, is being done by the high cost, unionized labour that is employed by the government.  

Meanwhile, in the middle of the storm and since its passing, our citizens have worked to clean up their own properties - often with the help of their neighbours. What struck me most about the past month is the extent to which citizens were ready to help their neighbours. This “spirit of giving” reminds me of the stories told by my mother and father about life in their youth when knowing and helping your neighbour was  “the norm”. It makes me wonder how much “quality of life“  we have forfeited by replacing the community spirit of a bygone era with the impersonal, expensive and less responsive services of various levels of government that most citizens rely upon today.

I was born in 1951 and have always lived in southern Ontario. It seems to me that the psychological shift from citizen self-reliance to state-reliance began to accelerate during the Trudeau years and spread like a virus to other levels of government. This modern “turn-to-the-government-for-every problem-or-desire” mindset is now so pervasive that most of our citizens can’t even imagine life without the government taking charge of virtually every aspect of our lives.

What is particularly mind-blowing is that people with this mindset rarely inquire about the true cost of everything that our governments provide. When someone mentions to them that our provincial debt currently exceeds $260 Billion and is steadily growing, this number is so difficult to comprehend that the typical response is a somewhat blasé “so what?”

The Ontario Libertarian Party envisions a province that can, one day, return to community living where all citizens are self-reliant to the best of their ability, and when they need help, they can turn to, and receive from, family and community members who know and care about them. If all else fails, there is a role for government services but this role should only be invoked after all else fails. The result will be stronger, more caring and productive communities with a government “safety net“ which is much smaller, less bureaucratic and significantly less costly than exists today.

An even better scenario would be one whereby many of our existing state-supplied  services be replaced by local entrepreneurs with  a range of innovative business services that can satisfy market demand at competitive levels of price and quality.

I believe that many retirees in Ontario remember the “good old days” of their youth when their neighbours were friendly, helpful and made time to get to know each other. When these seniors visit the by-election polls on February 13 in Thornhill and Niagara Falls, I hope they understand that the Ontario Libertarian Party is the only party that genuinely aspires to bring back the best aspects of the “good old days”. In so doing, it will be for their sake as  well as for every taxpayer in Ontario.

Top down or bottom up? The #1 election question

The February 13 bi-elections in Thornhill and Niagara are about choice. This essay is about the most fundamental choice of all: how do you wish your provincial government to serve you in the future?

The Ontario Provincial Debt is currently rising rapidly from it existing level at CDN $ 261,558,481, 679 (January 20, 2014 ~ 8 AM). Each Ontario citizen’s share of this debt is $19,255. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that something is wrong. What’s more, the 2013-14 Ontario Budget ‘s Expense Plan is for $127.6 Billion while the Revenue Plan is $116.8 Billion leaving a Deficit Projection of $11.7 Billion. This explains the rapid rise in the deficit.

We can point fingers at current and past governments for this fiscal mess, but that is counterproductive and only invites people to back into their ideological corners in a defensive posture. Since we can’t change the past or “wish-away” the problem, its far better that we acknowledge that it exists and decide who has the best vision and commitment to correct it.

So, something is wrong, but what is it? 

To me, a businessman with over 40 years of work experience mainly in the private sector (only 6 months in a government job), I believe that the core problem relates to the Service Delivery Models that are employed within the province for sectors that include Transportation, Health, Education, Energy, Spirits, and others. 

Allow me to explain.

The public sector delivers its services using top down, monopoly Service Delivery Models. Characteristics of these models include:

·      Central Planning.  To achieve an ‘equality’ mandate, these type of models require delivery of the same products and/or services to everyone. This “one size-fits-all” approach does not provide much incentive to innovate for the sake of the consuming public.

·      Non-transparent Pricing. The services are allegedly “free” because consumers don’t pay on receipt of said services. In reality, the services are paid through taxes and there is no way to find out the actual prices of the individual services provided because this information is buried in the tax bill.

·      Benefits of competition are non-existent. Wherever the products or services entail the payment of a fee, such as the purchase of a bottle of rum or the supply of electricity to your home, the rates paid by the consumer are “monopoly rates” because competition cannot exist by government fiat.  There is no way of knowing what these rates might be if the market was freely competitive.

The private, for profit business sector must operate using bottom up (customer focused), innovative Delivery Models in order to survive. Characteristically, business entrepreneurs in small and large enterprises must adhere to some fundamental competitive principles in order to build and sustain a viable business:

·      Innovate or perish. All businesses start with an idea that is generally followed by a trial and error process to expand and fine-tune its offerings in order to establish a viable business. The tuning involves experimenting with pricing, service levels, quality, sales/marketing strategies, technology investments, value-added service offerings, business partnering, demographic and location considerations. All of these efforts are focused on one thing: how to find the winning combination of all of the above to keep the paying customer coming back again and again – i.e. customer loyalty.

·      Pricing is a critical piece of the “success puzzle” because it provides direct customer feedback to the business professional. If prices are too high, fewer customers will return; too low, and the margins may not be enough to make the business profitable. This information, and the profit margins that are manifest, will determine where, when and if the business owner will make future investments (technology and hiring, for example) or cut operating costs or even close shop.

·      Always know your competition. All business professionals know that they cannot take their success for granted. There will always be new entrepreneurs arriving in the economy with a “better mousetrap” or a service delivery model that is superior to existing ones. Nowhere is this more evident than how the Internet has transformed competitive shopping.

Let’s play “make believe” for a minute. Let’s imagine that the Spirits sector were to be made open-for-business for private sector business operators. This would mean 2 things:

1.     The LCBO would no longer be granted the monopoly rights for this sector.

2.     All government regulations that currently exist which provide a market advantage to the LCBO would have to be removed so that a truly level competitive playing field would exist.

The following is what would likely occur in such a scenario.

Entrepreneurs among our citizens, possibly even existing LCBO employees, would see a business opportunity and envision a business model that they believe to be potentially viable. Each entrepreneur would seek capital to fund the business startup and, thereby, take on the necessary risks to achieve success. Employees would be hired depending of the size and scope of his or her business vision and startup capital.

Every individual entrepreneur’s creativity and dream about his or her business would differ. Some may offer a “no frills” operation to serve the “Price Shopper” amongst us. Others may chose to locate near a dense population to attract “Convenience Shopper” who is willing to pay a little more than the Price Shopper for shopping close to home. Yet another entrepreneur may anticipate a market for the “Adventure Shopper” who enjoys sampling different products in a social setting and who would be willing to pay a premium for these ‘vale-added ‘ services.

Clearly the above bottom up (customer focused), innovative approach would result in a much greater variety of choices for Ontario consumers as well as new customers for banks and employment opportunities. It would provide career opportunities for any citizen with the vision, creativity and drive to succeed.

The above example is what Libertarians mean by being the party of choice.  By voting for a Libertarian government, you are voting for a smaller government that requires less tax revenue from you, your family and your friends so that you will have more disposable income to meet your own consumption needs. Furthermore, smaller government also means less control over our lives and the choices we able to freely make for ourselves.

It’s a contradiction to me that our government leaders insist that we are wise and mature enough to vote but not wise and mature enough to decide where and when it is safe to cross the road.

I am running as the Ontario Libertarian Candidate for Thornhill in the February bi-election not because I want a government job and all of its entitlements, but because I do not accept that Ontario is a true democracy until every voter has the choice in every election to vote for less government.

All the major parties aspire to balancing the budget but their actions speak volumes about their commitment to do so. Every household is expected to live within its means. The Ontario Libertarian Party believes that the Ontario Provincial Government should set this example within its own “household” instead of consistently adding to a “do as I say, not as I do” track record.

Its time to elect leaders for whom “balanced budgets” are not just election talking points but represent the core of their political vision.

Vote for free choice. Vote Libertarian

Is a public intervention needed to address our widespread government addiction problems?

As Glen Hodgson correctly pointed out recently in the National Post's  FP Comment, habitual use of any addictive substance can lead to serious consequences for the user, and by applying "exceptionally strong doses of monetary policy by the world's major central banks", the Rx has evolved from a palliative prescription to a painfully risky one. As bad as the monetary morphine problem is, folks, this is not the only domain of growing government dependency. 

OPM (as opposed to the chemical variety known as 'opium' ) - Other Peoples' Money - [aka tax receipts] has proven to be yet another relentless government addiction problem. The evidence?  - the current and unprecedented levels of public sector debt at all levels.  

This problem has been festering especially since the early 1900s, and has since multiplied and metastasized to its modern scale of 'full-blown epidemic".   Its hard for me to imagine that there was a time in Canada when income taxes were not levied. When they were forts introduced, they were proclaimed as 'temporary'. Its too bad no one thought to ask about the length of the term 'temporary' - did those political leaders think  in terms of months, years, decades or centuries? I guess we'll never know because once they left office, the issues surrounding the income tax "strain of OPM" was no longer their problem, nor has it been the problem of any of their successors who have all measured the terms of their responsibilities in chunks of  4 'temporary' years between elections.

Being Canadian, I am a compassionate man and believe that we must protect our political leaders from themselves. God forbid that Kathleen Wynne and her Red Brigade should succumb further to this swirling, viciously-addictive and fatal vortex. 

My appeal to all of you compassionate Canadians in reader-land? - let's collectively place  a politically-impregnable lock on the public purse and supply it with a feeder tube that supplies just enough OPM to meet our needs. In this way, we can protect all of our political leaders from another internationally-embarrassing, media-enabled spectacle of yet another 'partying' public servant stoned on either 'monetary morphine' or OPM.  

Are you with me on this?  Vote Libertarian in an election near you!

Labour monopolies

The main difference between public sector unions and private sector unions is that the former operates within government imposed monopolies and the latter must respond the competitive, free-market forces that will ultimately make all union demands accountable to a business model that must adjust to market forces in order to survive.  

The perfect private sector "case in point" was the closure of the 2011 Caterpillar plant in London Ontario where the union was told to make adjustments or lose 160 union jobs. The union leaders "played chicken" with Caterpillar at the risk of losing 160 jobs. The result? There are now 160 new jobs in an Indiana (a "right-to-work" state)  plant  and none in London. 

By comparison, some 75% of all workers in the Ontario Public Service are under union contract which is back-stopped by OPM-addicted politicians who claim to "have their back" when union-funding issues arise. How did we ever allow our government to award such an abuse of power to public sector labour leaders? 

Monopolies are illegal in the "for-profit" portion of the economy BUT are the only model employed by governments everywhere.   How can anyone justify this double-standard morally, rationally or ethically? A Public Services union is a labour monopoly and, hence, exists at the pleasure of the State for the state's own purposes which are frequently at odds with large swaths of the public.

Since I am not a shareholder of CPR, a private sector conglomerate, then it is none of my business how they choose to implement their business model - labour unions or not.  But I am a taxpayer, and this is why I aggressively attack the excessive powers that have been granted to union leaders in the Ontario Public Service.

Decentralization of power makes for fairer democracies.

Like a moth to a flame, special interest groups are drawn to centers of political power. If powerful political families are wont to abuse power by trading their influence for more personal or political gain, then clearly such a political dynasty is not good all for those Canadians who are forced to pay for the 'wins' of special interest groups from which they will not personally benefit. 

Decentralization of power makes for fairer democracies.