After leading the dinner in the party’s long-standing toast to freedom, Freedom Party officer Robert Vaughan led with speech about the troubling state of laws and law enforcement in the Province. He explained that we increasingly are reversing cause and effect. Increasingly today, he explained, the results of civilization – including the mass production and duplication by millions around the world of things invented by a tiny few – too often are thought, erroneously, to be the cause of civilization. With numerous examples of failures by Ontario police to enforce objective laws, he explained that if we do not do a better job of making and enforcing objective laws in Ontario, we will suffer a fall from civilization, into an increasingly barbarous society.

Freedom Party president Robert Metz followed with a look at Ontario’s political parties. He likened the Ontario Liberal, NDP, and Progressive Conservative parties to red, orange and blue balloons. If one chooses to ride in the baskets of any of the three, Metz explained, one will quickly discover that despite the differing colours of the balloons, all three balloons will be blown in the same direction by a Red wind: leftward. In contrast, he said, freedom has no colour: it is clear, never obscuring the facts of reality. Freedom Party, he said, was like a great train, which the Red winds can never blow off of the rails – the philosophical principles – that guide it to a free society. Even if that train moves only an inch in an entire year, he explained, at least it will always have moved in the right direction, rather than being blown miles away in the wrong direction.

The party’s leader, Paul McKeever, wrapped up the talks with his Red Alert speech. He argued that Ontario is in the middle of a political war with two sides: the Reds, and everyone else. The Reds, he said, are those who resent the fact that nature requires an adult to expend effort, thinking and acting rationally to produce the material and spiritual values that make his survival and happiness possible. The Reds see everyone else accepting the facts of reality, and expending the effort, and decide to find ways to make the productive assume the role of parent, providing the Reds with a relatively effortless, childlike existence. McKeever warned against being a “Red for freedom”. He explained that just like cars, and homes, and rockets to Mars, freedom is a value that must be produced and maintained with a commitment always to exert rational thought and effort to support a political force for freedom. And, he said, if you do not make the earning of freedom as high a priority as the earning of cars, and homes and the like, you will soon discover that the Reds won’t allow you to keep those material goods for long. He asserted that whenever pessimism about the prospects for freedom creep into ones mind that one should not use that pessimism as an excuse to do nothing but, instead, should redouble ones support for Freedom Party.

Following the speeches, Metz awarded McKeever with a “Freedom 200″ pin, a gold pin featuring Freedom Party of Ontario’s first logo. Awarded only at Freedom Party dinners, the pins are given to distinguished members, supporters, and others who have contributed to freedom and to Freedom Party. McKeever then assisted Metz in awarding 13 more “Freedom 200″ pins to a number of distinguished guests, especially including the many who have served as Freedom party candidates in past provincial elections: Mary Lou Ambrogio, Andrew Brannan, Franz Cauchi, Brian Goodwin, Christopher Goodwin, Erin Gorman, Ted Harlson, Tim Hodges, Charles Olito, Matthew Oliver, Wayne Simmons, Andy Stivrins, and Douglas Thom.

Fourteen attendees received
the Freedom 200 Pin

McKeever then called upon attendees Gary McHale, Mark Vandermaas, and Bjorn Larsen to assist him in presenting Freedom Party’s own Mary Lou Ambrogio with Freedom Party’s “Free Speech Award”. McHale and Vandermaas have become well recognized for their efforts to call for just law enforcement in Caledonia. Vandermaas is also recognized for “Israel Truth Week” events that he spearheaded in response to the anti-Semitic, anti-freedom “Israel Apartheid Week”. When activists such as McHale and Vandermaas have found themselves being silenced by violence or wrongful arrest, or ignored by the media, Ambrogio’s efforts have connected them with sympathetic media such as Metz and Vaughan’s “Just Right” radio program, and with sympathetic organizations such as the International Free Press Society and Freedom Party. Ambrogio has been instrumental also in giving a voice in Canada to such controversial figures as Geert Wilders, Lars Hedegaard, Lars Vilks, and Ann Coulter. On behalf of Freedom Party, the Free Speech Award was presented by Mark Vandermaas, who read the plaque’s inscription aloud: “For her dedication to the promotion and defence of freedom of speech.”

Photographs and mingling followed the speeches. Many guests were not only impressed by the speeches and award presentations, but by the range of distinguished guests. It was a wonderful and memorable night for all.

The entire event was recorded on video. Freedom Party soon will be featuring highlights of the event on its popular youtube channel.

Ontario NDP leader said changing the posted limit is not, for her party, a priority. Progressive Conservative (PC) MPP Frank Klees explained that he generally drives at the speed of the flow of traffic, but his party is not backing the call for a change to the posted limit.

Yesterday, in response to that call, Ontario Transportation Minister Bob Chiarelli shot down the idea (see here, here, and here). He didn’t explain why, other than to claim that there “is not a groundswell” of support for the change. Instead, he claimed that he sticks his car in cruise control at the posted 100kph when he is on Ontario’s 400-series highways. The flow of traffic on those highways normally moves at 120 kph to 130 kph. He called such blocking “courteous” driving.

Chiarelli did not respond to a number of invitations extended to him to speak about the issue on NewsTalk 1010 (CFRB AM – Toronto), with Friendly Fire hosts Ryan Doyle and John Downs. However, Freedom Party leader Paul McKeever did call in to the show to speak to the issue briefly (you can listen to Friendly Fire’s June 13, 2011 extended discussion with Paul McKeever, about Freedom Party’s speed limits idea, here). However, over the course of the show’s one hour discussion of the proposal, Doyle commented on the sheer volume of calls and text messages the show was receiving, which belied Chiarelli’s claim about there being no groundswell of support.

You can listen to the full April 18, 2012, one-hour Friendly Fire segment (commercials removed) by clicking here.

April 4, 2012 Toronto – With today’s gasoline prices in the range of $1.40/litre, Freedom Party leader Paul McKeever is encouraging Members of the Ontario Legislature to make a revenue-neutral tax tweak that would shave $8.46 off of the price of a 60 litre tank of gasoline. The full particulars are set out in Freedom Party of Ontario’s 2012 Opposition Budget (available here). However, one of the budget proposals in the Freedom budget is that Ontario’s small-revenue consumption taxes be eliminated, and that the revenue from those taxes be completely recouped by raising the HST rate by 2.4 points to 15.4%. A calculation demonstrating the effect of that proposal on the price of gasoline today is set out below.

“Freedom’s 2012 opposition budget provides this government with a pain-free, revenue-neutral way to lower the price of gasoline by approximately 14 cents per litre”, explains Freedom Party of Ontario leader Paul McKeever. “The proposal is one that I think the Liberals, NDP, and PCs could and should support.

“When we choke off transportation with high fuel prices, we choke off economic activity. Reduced economic activity impacts all tax revenues negatively.

“Ontario’s MPPs are in the midst of budget negotiations at a time when the need to address gasoline prices is critical. This is the right time for all parties to support rolling the consumption taxes into the HST. Moreover, it will reduce collection costs and help fight the deficit, because the cost of collecting the HST is borne by the CRA, not by the Ontario Ministry of Revenue”.

At $1.40 per litre (the approximate price of gasoline in the GTA on April 4, 2012), a 60 litre fill-up costs $84.00.

Of that $84.00, federal excise tax (10 cents/litre) is $6.00, leaving $78.00

The $78.00 represents: (gasoline price + Ontario gasoline tax) + 13% HST thereon.

Therefore, gasoline price + Ontario gasoline tax = $78.00 / 113 * 100 = $69.03

Ontario’s gasoline tax is 14.7 cents per litre. Therefore, on 60 litres, the total Ontario Gasoline tax is: 60 litres x $0.147 = $8.82.

Therefore, the price of 60 litres of gasoline today (before taxes) is: $69.03 – $8.82 = $60.21. The per litre price at the pump: $60.21 / 60 litre = $1.004 per litre.

Were Ontario’s consumption taxes rolled into the HST, as proposed in Freedom Party of Ontario’s 2012 Opposition Budget – i.e., were Ontario to eliminate the other consumption taxes, including the gasoline tax, and to increase the HST by 2.4 points to recoup the revenue lost from the elimination of the other consumption taxes – then the price at the pump today, instead of being $1.40 per litre, would be:

$1.004 x 1.154 (HST) + $0.10 (federal excise tax) = $1.259

In short: gasoline would be approximately 14 cents per litre less expensive, simply by rolling Ontario’s other consumption taxes into the HST. A 60 litre fill-up would cost $75.54 instead of $84.00: a savings of $8.46 on a tank of gas; a savings of $8.46 / $84.00 x 100 = 10%.

For further details, contact:

Paul McKeever, Leader – Freedom Party of Ontario
e-mail: pmckeever@freedomparty.on.ca

Part I: The Essential Problem

Part II: Non-Solutions

Treating Health, Education, and Welfare as Untouchables

Erroneous Proposals to Eliminate ABCs

“Eliminating Waste” and “Cutting Red Tape”

Health Care: the Key Expenditure

Why Balance the Budget in 2012?

Part III: The Opposition Budget

Overview of the Opposition Budget

Competition & Choice, Not Privatization

Federal Funding Implications of Ending the Government Health Care Monopoly

Budget Implications of Ending the Government’s Health Care Monopoly

Federal HST Windfall Transfer

Ministry of Revenue, Welfare Recipients

Balancing the Budget

Conclusion

Ontario is currently running a $14B deficit. Ontario’s government is operating on a plan that it submits will balance the budget by 2017-18 without making cuts to education or health care. As recently as March 20, 2012, the premier opined that the province’s current $214B debt is acceptable because, he explained, the federal government did not remedy its debt crisis until its debt to GDP ratio was 67%, whereas Ontario’s ratio stands at 35%. There is mounting evidence that Ontario’s March 27, 2012 budget will fail to take serious steps to balance the budget any time soon.

Yet, on February 15, 2012, the report of the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services (a.k.a. the “Drummond Report”) submitted that, far from achieving a balanced budget in 2017-18, the government’s plan has Ontario on a path that will give it a $30.2B deficit in 2017-18, together with an accumulated debt of $411.4B. The government has rejected the adoption of the Drummond Report’s two key explicitly quantified expenditure cuts: elimination of the $1.5B full-day kindergarten program, and elimination of the $1.0 Ontario Clean Energy Benefit.

Meanwhile, the two opposition parties having seats in Ontario’s Legislature are nigh mute when it comes to proposals for balancing the budget. Little wonder, given that both parties campaigned in election 2011 on the Liberal government’s promises: a balanced budget by 2017-18 without cuts to health care or education. All indications suggest that members of the opposition parties will support the government’s budget because their respective parties have insufficient funds to finance a successful election effort. However, their silence on the government’s plan is not borne only of a desire to avoid an election. It is actually the case that both the NDP and the PCs, were they currently to hold a majority in the Legislature, would not have any more inclination to balance the budget than have the governing Liberals. In terms of both philosophy and policy, little exists anymore to distinguish the three parties currently holding seats in the Ontario Legislature. The common sense that prevailed in some earlier governments appears to have been entirely abandoned by all three of those parties.

Ontario does not merely deserve better. We need better, and we need it now. Ontario both deserves and needs a counter-proposal to the anticipated government budget, which it appears will make no serious effort to avoid saddling Ontario taxpayers with crippling debt, hence higher taxes, hence an undesirable locale for business, jobs, and earning. Ontario needs an adult, responsible, rational proposal for balancing the budget in the immediate term, without further undermining the quality of the one service most important to all Ontarians: health care. Ontario needs a voice of opposition to the coming budget, not a blue and orange rubber stamp.

This, Freedom Party of Ontario’s Opposition Budget, is an answer to the call for that voice. It provides a framework for achieving a balanced budget in 2012, and for thereby avoiding the fiscal calamity about which the Drummond Report has warned the province. Moreover, it provides a solution that will take Ontario off of its current trend of ever-increasing expenditures by remedying fundamental economic and medical problems inherent in the current system of delivering health care.

Before considering the Opposition Budget set out in Part III, it is important to take a clear look at the fallacies inherent in the alleged solutions typically proposed by opposition parties. The fiscal situation in Ontario is too critical to play make believe with easy-sounding non-solutions.

Table 6 of the November 2011 Ontario Economic Outlook and Fiscal Review (hereinafter referred to as the “Outlook“) provides the following “Actual” 2010-2011 Revenue, Expense and Deficit figures for the 2010-2011 year (the most recent year for which “Actual” figures have yet been published by the Ministry of Finance):

Total Revenues: $106.7B

Total Expense: $120.7B

Deficit: $14.0B

There are four areas of expenditure that are considered by some to be politically Untouchable: health care, education, welfare, and debt service. Table 8 of the Outlook provides the following Actual totals for Untouchables in the year 2010-11:

- Health and Long Term Care ($44.085B)

- Health Promotion and Sport ($0.385B)

- Training, Colleges and Universities ($6.501B)

- Education ($21.850B)

- Community and Social Services ($9.148B)

- Interest on Debt ($9.480B)

The total expense for the 6 Untouchable items is $91.449 B. Therefore, after removing the cost of Untouchables from the provincial government’s $120.669 B total Actual expenditures for 2010-11, total Actual expense for all other ministries (i.e., the 24 remaining “Touchable” ministries) combined is only $29.22B.

As noted above, the “Actual” deficit in the same period is represented, in the Outlook, to be: $14B. Therefore, if one seeks to balance the Ontario budget in 2012 without making cuts to Untouchables, 47.9% of the total expenditure on Ontario’s 24 Touchable ministries must be eliminated. To get a better sense of just how large that reduction would be: the government would have to eliminate entirely an average of 11.5 Touchable ministries to balance the budget in 2012 if it refused to reduce Untouchable expenditures. Gone would be such government functions as justice, children’s services, finance, revenue, tourism, transportation, aboriginal affairs, citizenship/immigration, energy, environment, etc..

Clearly, if the budget is to be balanced we cannot rule out changes to health, education, or welfare. Nothing can be treated as an Untouchable.

It is sometimes suggested that, without making cuts to health care or education, the budget could be balanced first and foremost by eliminating any Ontario agency, board, or commission (the so-called ABC’s of government) that cannot justify its existence. For several reasons, that argument cannot withstand serious scrutiny.

First, the ABCs are funded by provincial Ministries. For example, the operating budgets of the Assessment Review Board, the Ontario Municipal Board, the Ontario Human Rights Commission, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, the Human Rights Legal Support Centre, and the Law Commission of Ontario totaled approximately $43M for the year ending March 31, 2010, and all of that money was provided by the Ministry of the Attorney General out of its own budget. Therefore, eliminating an ABC to eliminate its associated expenditures would have no effect on the budget unless the budget of the Ministry that funded the closed ABC were reduced by the same amount.

Second, many of Ontario’s ABCs receive their funds from the health and education ministries. For example, the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care not only funds 14 Local Health Integration Networks (the “LHINs”), but also funds administrative support to: the Ontario Review Board, the Consent and Capacity Board, the Health Services Appeal and Review Board, the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board, and the Ontario Hepatitis C Assistance Plan Review Committee. Similarly, the Ministry of Education funds the Ontario Education Communications Authority (a.k.a. TVO). If one were on the one hand promising not to make cuts to health care and education, and promising on the other hand to eliminate ABCs that cannot justify their existence, then even if one were to eliminate all ABCs funded by the Untouchable health and education ministries, there would be no actual decrease in expenditures.

Third, the vast majority of Ontario’s ABCs have budgets so small that they do not even need to be reported in Ontario’s Public Accounts. Even if one were to eliminate all ABCs, including those funded by the Untouchable ministries, one could not come close to eliminating Ontario’s $14B budget deficit.

It is sometimes proposed that the budget can be balanced by “eliminating waste” or “cutting red tape”, without making cuts to health care or education. However, if no reductions were made to the budgets of Untouchable ministries, the government would be left trying to find $14B in “wasted” government expenditures in the $29.22 B spent on Ontario’s 24 Touchable Ministries. In other words, it would have to be true that an incredible 47.9% of all of the money spent by all Touchable Ministries is pure waste.

In fact, even if health care were treated as the only Untouchable, and waste were also sought in education and welfare files, 18.4% of the resulting $76.23B touchable expenditures would have to be waste. Even that percentage stretches plausibility.

It might well be argued that “waste” includes paying public sector employees wages that are higher than that paid to people who do the same kind of work in the private sector. And, given that wages account for a large percentage of all government expenditures, one most certainly could significantly reduce the deficit by bringing public sector wage rates down to market rates. However, those who are currently speaking of eliminating waste and cutting red tape do not include above-market wages in their definition of “waste”. If above-market wages were excluded from the definition of “waste”, it is highly doubtful that the government would be able to identify as waste 47.9% of the budgets of Touchable ministries.

HEALTH CARE: THE KEY EXPENDITURE

According to the Outlook, the Actual 2010-11 cost of health care in Ontario was $44.47B, which figure represents 36.8% of all provincial expenditures in the same period. Actual health care costs for 2010- 11 represented 41.7% of total provincial revenue from all sources, and consumed fully 62.5% of Ontario tax revenues. Numerous credible reports warn that escalating health care expenditures will increasingly undermine Ontario’s fiscal health.

The Drummond Report stated that were no changes made to Ontario’s policies, programs, or practices, “…the deficit would more than double to $30.2 billion in 2017–18 and net public debt would reach $411.4 billion, equivalent to just under 51 per cent of the province’s GDP” (p. 2). It explained that, to balance the budget, “most of the burden of eliminating the $30.2 billion shortfall in 2017–18 must fall on spending” (p. 2).

An April 2011 Fraser Institute report titled “Canada’s Medicare Bubble: Is Health Spending Sustainable without User-based Funding” cites 19 other reports opining that the current growth in health care spending simply is not sustainable. The Fraser Institute elsewhere has projected that health care spending will consume 75% of provincial tax revenues by 2019, and 100% of provincial tax revenues by 2030, unless Ontario significantly restructures health care (Fraser Forum, February 2010, p. 10).

A February 2, 2012 report by the Conference Board of Canada titled “Ontario’s Economic and Fiscal Prospects: Challenging Times Ahead” reported that if Ontario’s health care expenditures were increased more slowly than they currently increase, such that they would account only for an aging population and the effect of price inflation, health care spending would grow an average of 4.7% per year. The report concluded that, under that scenario, the provincial government would be unable to balance its budget even by 2031. The report also concluded that if Ontario instead were to keep health care spending in line with what it said was an historically-observed annual 5.6% rate of increase, Ontario’s budget could be balanced by 2017-18 by increasing the provincial portion of the HST from 8% to 15%: a staggering 54% increase in the HST burden of people living in Ontario.

The Drummond Report also submitted that:

“Adjusted for age, Canada definitely has one of the most expensive systems.” (p. 154)

It continued:

“The high cost of our health care system could perhaps be forgiven if the spending produced superior results. It does not.

Canada does not appear in a favourable light on a value-for-money basis relative to other countries.” (p. 155)

And concluded:

“The clear danger is that if we do not seize the opportunity to begin creating a more efficient system that delivers more value for the money we spend on health care, one or two decades from now, Ontarians will face options far less attractive than the ones we face today. Unless we act now, Ontarians will be confronted with steadily escalating costs that force them to choose either to forgo many other government services that they treasure, pay higher taxes to cover a relentlessly growing health care bill, or privatize parts of the health care system…” (p. 202)

However, despite the recency of some of these reports, and the recency of Ontario’s most recent double- digit deficit, it would be a mistake to conclude that ever-increasing health care costs are a recent phenomenon, or that they are due only to an aging population (or to price inflation). In point of fact, Ontario’s health care system has been said to be in “crisis”, or to be “under-funded”, every year since 1969, when Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government banned private health payments, and instituted a tax-funded government health insurance monopoly, OHIP.

The essential, perennial economic problem is that the current tax-funded model for health care eliminates any direct economic connection between the health care provider and the patient. There is no personal cost to the patient for choosing to obtain health care services, so each patient’s decision to request health services utterly disregards any consideration of the affordability of the services requested. The demand for health care is virtually unlimited.

So long as demand is not limited by considerations of personal affordability, either tax revenues must rise to whatever level of demand is desired by health care recipients, or demands must be met with denials of health care services.

Increasing tax rates results, ultimately, in reduced economic growth. Reduced economic growth reduces potential tax revenue growth. It simply is not feasible to continue raising tax rates at the rate of increase in health care costs. Continuous increases of annual tax rates amount to an increased disincentive to the production of goods and services in the province and, ultimately, to a reduction in the provincial tax revenues upon which health care currently depends.

The other alternative – denial of health care – is not truly a means of maintaining Ontario’s health care monopoly. A good or service that becomes denied (e.g., that is de-listed, or that is delayed until the patient no longer can benefit from the good or service) ceases to be a part of Ontario’s health care system: service denial, in its various forms, is a cannibalizing of the government’s health care monopoly, not a means of maintaining it.

Denial of health service takes two forms. Where a denial of service results in the good or service being made available in the private sector (e.g., de-listed eye examinations), Ontario essentially is privatizing that part of the system. Where, instead, the province maintains a monopoly on the payment for and provision of a good or service, yet denies the service to those who need it (e.g., by way of delays that render the service no longer to be of any benefit to the patient because the patient has recuperated, has deteriorated beyond the point at which treatment is effective, or has died) the government is rationing, and the cost of that rationing is the health, physical comfort, mobility, or even the life of those waiting for care.

Privatization is not a method of preserving Ontario’s health care monopoly: by definition, privatization is the opposite of maintaining a government monopoly. Moreover, neither privatization nor rationing are intended to be ways to maintain or improve the health care provided by the government health care monopoly: both privatization and rationing are simply intended as means by which the government attempts to prevent the province’s health care monopoly from pushing Ontario’s budget into bigger deficits.

The take home message is clear. The spending side of Ontario’s budget deficit problem is attributable primarily to rising health care expenditures of the Untouchable health ministries, not to the expenditures of Touchable ministries. To balance the budget, health care must be the focus of the effort.

Ontario must decide whether its goal is to provide for the health of the government health care monopoly, or to provide for the health of patients. If the government wishes save patients, it can no longer make saving the current system its priority. Tax revenues cannot be expected to rise sufficiently to afford the soaring costs of saving patients within Ontario’s health care monopoly. The monopoly, and its taxfunded, single-payer implications, must be ended if patients are to be well served, and if the budget is to be balanced.

WHY BALANCE THE BUDGET IN 2012?

The 2011 budget set out a plan alleged to have Ontario balancing its books by 2017-18. The Drummond Report submitted that the government’s most recent plans would not allow it to balance the budget by 2017-18. And the aforementioned Conference Board of Canada report suggests that, without a staggeringly high tax increase, Ontario will not even manage to balance its budget by 2031, due to the cost of the government’s health care monopoly.

Though such reports differ in their conclusions, the reports make one thing abundantly clear: all talk of balancing the budget five or nineteen years hence is ultimately the stuff of pure speculation about future revenues, together with overly optimistic assumptions about health care and other costs going forward. In other words: they are all based upon speculation about the future state of the economy.

Given the fact that planned future budget balancings founded on speculation may never be realized, and given the various budgetary problems associated with allowing the debt to climb in a period of limited economic growth, there is no justification for waiting for the right time to balance the budget. The right time is now.

Fortunately, there is a way to balance the Ontario budget now. Moreover, it can be done now in a way that actually improves health care while keeping its cost within an economically feasible range.

What follows is Freedom Party of Ontario’s Opposition Budget for the year 2012. We acknowledge from the outset that some of the associated changes required might take many months to implement, but we regard the commencement of that implementation to be something done pursuant to a 2012 budget.

OVERVIEW OF THE OPPOSITION BUDGET

The Opposition Budget makes 10 recommendations in respect of the 2012 Ontario provincial budget, which are discussed in greater detail in the remaining sections of Part III:

1. Take health care off-budget – discontinue tax funding for health care – thereby reducing annual immediate budgetary expenditures by $44.47B, and thereby insulating the Ontario budget from any future increase of health care expenditures.
2. Set up a Crown corporation, funded by OHIP insurance premiums, to administer OHIP. Premiums initially to be set for all insured individuals at the approximate $3,600 per annum per capita cost of health care for 2012.
3. Repeal Ontario’s production taxes, so that Ontario residents have the money they need to purchase their choice of health care payment options: OHIP, private health insurance, or cash/credit payment.
4. With the exception of the HST, repeal Ontario’s consumption taxes.
5. Impose a 2.4% increase in the HST rate to fully offset the revenue lost from the repeal of Ontario’s other consumption taxes.
6. Secure from the federal government the $2.617B federal portion of the HST windfall that will result from repealing the aforementioned production and consumption taxes.
7. Collapse Ontario’s Ministry of Revenue for a savings of $0.9B. Earmark the $0.9B savings for ensuring payment in full of the OHIP premiums of Ontario’s 250,000 welfare recipients.
8. Eliminate all-day kindergarten ($1.5B per annum) and the Ontario Clean Air Benefit ($1.0B), as recommended by the Drummond Report.
9. Impose an overall budgetary spending reduction of 7.5% as compared to 2010-2011 expenditures on non-health items.
10. With respect to reducing budgetary spending by 7.5%, focus upon bringing public sector wages in-line with average private sector wages paid for similar work via a Public-Private Pay Equity Act.

COMPETITION & CHOICE, NOT PRIVATIZATION

Ending the monopoly does not require privatization of OHIP. It requires the restoration of competition, and a re-establishment of the economic link between the provider of health care services, and the purchasing decisions of the patient. Competition does not imply that the government should cease to offer insurance (i.e., OHIP) for health care services. It means that patients should be able to choose alternatives to OHIP, such as private insurance or cash/ credit payments. It means that health care should cease to be funded by tax revenues; that it should be an off-budget expense of Ontario residents. That implies that taxes currently collected to pay the cost of health care must be reduced or eliminated so that Ontario residents have the money they need to purchase the health care or health insurance of their choice. It means that those who choose to continue to be covered by OHIP will pay OHIP directly for that insurance, rather than paying for OHIP through taxes. It means that those who choose to be covered by another insurer will pay that insurer for the insurance, and that those who choose not to purchase insurance will be free to save their money and pay health care providers directly for the services they obtain, when they obtain them.

Nor does ending the government’s monopoly necessarily imply discontinuing the practice of providing free health care to those who produce little or no income. Recent estimates of the number of people in Ontario receiving social assistance place that number at between 230,000 and 240,000, all of whom are entitled to free health care from Ontario’s health care monopoly by virtue of their Ontario residency. The per capita cost of health care in Ontario is between $3,500 and $3,600. Assuming the number of people receiving social assistance is currently 250,000, the annual cost of providing free OHIP health insurance to all 250,000 would be approximately $0.9B (assuming premiums of $3,600.00 per policy).

FEDERAL FUNDING IMPLICATIONS OF ENDINGTHE GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE MONOPOLY

Owing to early 20th century fiscal arrangements between the federal and provincial governments respecting the jurisdiction to tax income and respecting the federal government’s adoption of central planning, the federal government to this day transfers federal revenues to Ontario’s provincial coffer. Currently, the federal funds are categorized as transfers relating to health, education, and welfare (i.e., the Untouchables). According to the Outlook, one such transfer – the Canada Health Transfer – amounted to a $10.184B contribution to the provincial coffer in 2010-11.

The Canada Health Act (“CHA“) is a federal statute. Two common fallacies – promoted by proponents of a government health care monopoly – continue to fog the path to a sustainable system of health care. One fallacy is that the CHA limits the legislative discretion of the provinces in respect of health care. That is false because Canada’s constitution dictates that the making of health care legislation falls exclusively within the jurisdiction of the provincial Legislature. The other fallacy is that allowing such things as private sector health insurance, direct payments by patients to health care providers, or the elimination of tax-funding for government health insurance would violate the CHA and cause a reduction in Ontario’s portion of the Canada Health Transfer. As explained below, that assertion is equally false.

Section 15 of the CHA permits (but does not require) the Governor in Council to order a reduction in the Canada Health Transfer to a province that lacks a “health care insurance plan” meeting the five conditions or “principles” set out in sections 8 through 12 the CHA.

Subsection 8(1)(a):

“In order to satisfy the criterion respecting public administration, the health care insurance plan of a province must…”

Section 9:

“In order to satisfy the criterion respecting comprehensiveness, the health care insurance plan of a province must…”

Section 10:

“In order to satisfy the criterion respecting universality, the health care insurance plan of a province must…”

Section 11(1)(a)/(b)/(c):

“In order to satisfy the criterion respecting portability, the health care insurance plan of a province must…”

Section 12(1)(a)/(b)/(c)/(d):

“In order to satisfy the criterion respecting accessibility, the health care insurance plan of a province must…”

In each partial quotation above, the phrase “health care insurance plan” has been italicized because to know what sort of health care system satisfies those five conditions requires one to take note that the five conditions apply only to what section 2 of the CHA defines as a “health care insurance plan”:

“health care insurance plan” means, in relation to a province, a plan or plans established by the law of the province to provide for insured health services (emphasis added)

That definition makes it clear that, throughout the CHA, the term “health care insurance plan” does not refer to a plan that is not “established by the law of the province”, and it does not refer to the provision of health care services, to private health insurance plans, or to private cash payments for health care services.

A proper interpretation of the CHA requires a recognition of the fact that:

1. the CHA neither states nor implies that the “health care insurance plan” of the province” be the only health insurance plan in the province;

2. the CHA neither states nor implies that the province prohibit the purchase and sale of for-profit or non-profit health care insurance that is administered and operated by private persons; and

3. the CHA neither states nor implies that the province must compel individuals to pay for, or be covered by, the province’s “health care insurance plan”: the CHA does not require that all Ontarians be covered by OHIP. Rather, section 12 (“Accessibility”) of the CHA requires only that the health care insurance plan of a province “…provide for payment for insured health services in accordance with a tariff or system of payment authorized by the law of the province.” The CHA is crafted to be compatible with a wide variety of payment models. Nothing in the CHA requires the province’s “health care insurance plan” to be paid for with provincial revenues (e.g., tax revenues). Even a voluntary payment of premiums by only those who choose to participate in a province’s “health care insurance plan” constitutes a “system of payment” that could be “authorized by the law of the province”.

In short, the CHA does not require Ontario to have a tax-funded government health insurance monopoly, or to prohibit health care providers from receiving their pay from patients or their respective private sector health insurers. Accordingly, the discretion given to the Governor in Council in section 15(2) of the CHA would not be triggered by allowing private sector payment alternatives to OHIP (e.g., private health insurance or cash payment), or by allowing health care providers to accept payment not only from OHIP but also directly from patients or from their private sector insurers. Ending Ontario’s governmental health monopoly would not give the Governor in Council the discretion to reduce Ontario’s Canada Health Transfer.

BUDGET IMPLICATIONS OF ENDING THE GOVERNMENT’S HEALTH CARE MONOPOLY

As explained in Part I, the broad budgetary picture is as follows. Based upon the most recent “Actual” budget data set out in the Outlook (i.e., data for 2010-2011):

Total Revenues:	$106.7B
Total Expense:	$120.7B
Deficit:	$14.0B

Ontario health care spending is chiefly comprised of:

Health and Long Term Care	($44.085 B)
Health Promotion and Sport	($0.385 B)

Making OHIP the responsibility of a Crown corporation funded by insurance premiums rather than tax revenues would remove this spending from the budget, leaving a net budgetary expenditure of $120.7B – $44.47B = $76.23B.

The Harmonized Sales Tax (“HST”) is a consumption tax administered not by Ontario’s Ministry of Revenue, but by the Canada Revenue Agency (“CRA”). In 2010-11, Actual revenue from the 8% provincial portion of the HST was $18.813B.

In 2010-11, the remaining Ontario provincial taxes, which are currently administered by Ontario’s provincial Ministry of Revenue, raised the following revenues (in Billions), respectively:

Consumption Taxes

Gasoline Tax………………………………….	2.358
Land Transfer Tax…………………………..	1.247
Tobacco Tax…………………………………..	1.160
Fuel Tax………………………………………..	0.702
Beer & Wine Taxes…………………………	0.397
Electricity Payments-in-Lieu of Taxes..	0.321
“Other Taxes”…………………………………	0.562
	_____
Sub-total……………………………………….	6.747

 

Production Taxes

Personal Income Tax……………………….	23.624
Corporations Tax……………………………	8.383
Education Property Tax…………………..	5.913
Employer Health Tax………………………	4.733
Ontario Health Premium………………….	2.934
	_____
Sub-total………………………………………	45.587
	_____
Total Revenue from Provincial Taxes other than HST…………………..	52.334

It will be noted that Ontario’s health care expenditure of $44.47B is paid for entirely by production taxes totaling $45.587B. This indicates a further disadvantage of our single-payer, tax-funded model of health care funding: it accounts almost entirely for a regime of taxes that discourages production, earning, and saving in the province.

This Opposition Budget recommends that Ontario’s Consumption Taxes and Production Taxes, listed above, be repealed, leaving HST as the sole source of provincial revenue. The $52.334B revenue no longer collected through the repealed Ontario Consumption and Production taxes will thereby be left in the hands of the taxpayer. Those funds will be used to purchase goods and services, which will be taxed by the HST. Accordingly revenues from the HST will increase. Given that the HST revenue increase will be attributable to the repeal of Ontario’s production and consumption taxes (other than HST), there can be no justification in a $52.334B x 5% = $2.617B federal windfall. The 5% federal portion of the HST windfall is rightly payable to the province given that the windfall will be the result solely of tax restructuring at the provincial level. It is therefore recommended that the province demand an annual federal HST Windfall Transfer of $2.617B indexed to the rate of inflation.

The Ontario Ministry of Revenue’s $0.9B annual cost of administering Ontario’s taxes (not including the CRA-collected HST) will be eliminated by repealing those taxes. Apart from tax collection activities, revenues collected by the Ministry of Revenue for fees and licensing in 2011 totaled only $1.722M in 2011. Accordingly, it is recommended that Ontario’s Revenue ministry be eliminated and that its role in collecting fees and licenses be absorbed by an already- existing ministry, such as Finance. Without making other provisions, taking health care off-budget would leave Ontario welfare recipients without the free health care they currently have. Recent estimates place the number of individuals currently receiving welfare at under 250,000 individuals. Ontario’s 2010-11 Actual per capita health care expenditures totaled just under $3,600. Accordingly, to provide for the transition to off-budget health care, the $0.9B saved from collapsing the Ministry of Revenue should be set aside for the provision to welfare recipients of free OHIP coverage.

Based on 2010-11 Actual figures set out in the Outlook, the HST raised revenues of approximately $18.813B. The aforementioned $52.334B in tax savings realized by taxpayers would be spent by taxpayers on goods and services, such that total provincial revenues (including the federal HST Windfall Transfer) would be increased by virtue of the application of the 13% HST to those expenditures: 52.334 x 13% = $6.803B. Taking $44.47B in health expenditures off-budget, repealing $52.334B in Ontario taxes, and increasing provincial HST revenues by $6.803B changes the budget picture as follows:

Current Total Expenditures…….		120.700B
	minus Health Expenditures….	( 44.470B)
		________
	Net Expenditures	76.230B
Current Total Revenues…………		106.700B
	minus Ontario Taxes…………..	( 52.334B)
	plus additional HST revenue..	6.803B
		________
	Net Revenues…………………….	61.169B
	Surplus/(Deficit)……………….	(15.061B)

The following recommendations would reduce the $15.061B difference noted above to the point of balancing the budget:

1. As suggested by the Drummond Report, eliminate all-day kindergarten ($1.5B) and Ontario Clean Energy Benefit ($1.0B).

2. Increase in the HST rate sufficiently to offset the $6.747B in revenues lost from the repeal of the aforementioned Consumption Taxes. After taking into account additional HST revenue realized from the repeal of Ontario’s Consumption and Production Taxes, the 13% HST (excluding the federal HST Windfall Transfer) would provide Ontario with $18.813B + $6.803B – $2.617B = $22.999B. The provincial portion of the HST being 8%, each percentage point would account for $22.999B / 8 = $2.87B. Accordingly, a 2.4% increase in the HST rate would result in an HST revenue increase of 2.4 x $2.87B = $6.888B.

3. The two recommendations above would leave a difference of $15.061B – $2.5B – $6.9B = $5.661B. It is recommended that the remaining $5.661B be addressed through an additional overall budgetary spending reduction of 7.5% as compared to 2010-2011 spending on non-health budget items: 7.5% x 76.230B = $5.717B. The reduction would leave a small surplus of: $5.717B – $5.661B = $56M. It is recommended that that surplus be earmarked for the costs of transitioning to a competitive, off-budget health care system, including the creation of a crown corporation to administer OHIP.

CONCLUSION

This Opposition Budget provides a means of balancing Ontario’s budget in 2012. It strikes the right balance between spending restraint and tax rate increases.

This Opposition Budget also provides a fix to the economic flaw inherent in the single-payer, tax-funded government monopoly system of health care delivery currently in place in Ontario. By re-establishing the economic link between patient and health care provider, and restoring competition, market forces will act to control health care costs while maximizing the per-dollar quality of health care provided.

If implemented, this Opposition Budget will stimulate economic activity in the province by providing North America with a jurisdiction having a low tax burden, and low tax administration burden. In fact, Ontario will be one of only 4 Canada-US jurisdictions imposing no tax on personal and corporate income (the other three are Texas, Wyoming, and Nevada). It will position Ontario as North America’s preferred centre for production, earning, saving, investment and innovation. With an aging population, the opening of health care to competition will make Ontario the site of a growing health sector.

As leader of Freedom Party, I hereby heartily recommend a serious consideration of this Opposition Budget by the honourable members of the Ontario Legislature, and by those who dutifully report on their actions…and omissions.

All of which is hereby respectfully submitted this 21st day of March, 2012.

______________________________________

Paul McKeever, B.Sc.(Hons), M.A., LL.B.
Leader, Freedom Party of Ontario

On behalf of Freedom Party of Ontario, an officially registered political party in the province of Ontario, I submit to you, for your consideration, Freedom Party of Ontario’s 2012 Opposition Budget.

The Opposition Budget proposes a distinctly different – and better – course of action that that which we anticipate will be proposed in the government’s March 27, 2012 budget:

• a balanced budget in 2012 and thereafter;
• competition and efficiency in health care insurance and delivery;
• major individual and corporate tax relief;
• merging Ontario’s many consumption taxes into the CRA-collected HST;
• health care protection for those of lesser means; and
• creation of North America’s #1 jurisdiction for earning and production.

I respectfully request that you consider its content, so as to put into broader and more useful context a consideration of the pros and cons of the government’s forthcoming budget.

Regards,

Paul McKeever, B.Sc.(Hons), M.A., LL.B.
Leader, Freedom Party of Ontario

The long-awaited 2012 report of the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services (a.k.a. the “Drummond Report”) has been delivered. Ontario’s official opposition, and almost all journalists, are speaking about the report as though it is tough medicine that now must be swallowed if Ontario’s budget is to be balanced in 2017-18. Though the report does finally put to rest the nonsense – nonsense spouted by both Liberals and Progressive Conservatives until now – that Ontario is on course for a balanced budget in 2017-18, the report is not medicine at all. Ontario’s budget cannot be balanced by 2017-18 or any other year by attempting to implement the Drummond Report’s 362 recommendations, even could they all be deciphered and concretized. Consequently, all of the arguments you will hear among PC, Liberal, and NDP MPPs over the coming months – about how and how quickly the report should be implemented, and to what extent – will serve only to ensure that the action needed to solve Ontario’s fiscal woes never gets discussed.

In what follows, I first explain why all of the news reports about the Drummond Report being smart and good medicine are malarkey and why the Drummond Report utterly misses the mark. I then explain errors in government decision-making that must be ended if the government of Ontario is to get off of its current self-destructive course. Finally – not wanting to be only an eraser, but also a pencil – I offer up 7 broad policy ideas that should be the focus of the Legislature’s efforts if Ontario is to regain global competitiveness and, thereby, to balance its books more reliably, and without lowering Ontario’s standard of living.

THE COMMISSION’S MANDATE

The Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services (the “Commission”) was handed a 5-item mandate:

1. Advise on how to balance the budget earlier than the 2017–18 fiscal year;

2. Once the budget is balanced, ensure a sustainable fiscal environment;

3. Ensure that the government is getting value for money in all its activities;

4. Do not recommend privatization of health care or education; and

5. Do not recommend tax increases.

Nobody seems to have noticed, but the Commission did not comply with item 1 (i.e., the essential part) of its mandate. Its excuse: “Given the deterioration in the economic outlook since the 2011 Budget, we believe it is neither practical nor desirable to set an earlier official target for balance.” The Commission provided no explanation of why balancing the budget sooner than 2017-18 is impractical and undesirable, or of why 2017-18 is somehow a year in which a balanced budget suddenly becomes both practical and desirable. One can conclude only that – both the governing Liberals and the opposition Progressive Conservatives having promised during election 2011 that they would balance the budget by 2017-18 without cutting health care or education expenditures – the Commission felt that its recommendations would be less unpopular if it recommended less spending restraint based on what it believes will be higher 2017-2018 revenues.

THE COMMISSION’S ANSWER: IMPOSE SPENDING TARGETS

The Commission asserted that if the growth of spending continues as it has under the McGuinty government, Ontario would be running a $30.2B deficit by 2017-2018. Assuming as it did that Ontario would not fall into recession between now and 2017-18, and that the economy and revenues would continue to grow until then, the Commission’s overall recommendation was to impose five restraints on spending:

“Recommendation 1-1: We recommend the following annual changes in program spending out to 2017–18:

Health care — plus 2.5 per cent;

Education (primary and secondary) — plus 1.0 per cent;

Post-secondary education (excluding training) — plus 1.5 per cent;

Social services — plus 0.5 per cent; and

All other programs — minus 2.4 per cent. As in the example cited, this would imply an even bigger cut for everything except the fixed items referred to earlier; in this case, the cut would be in the order of 4.5 per cent.” (p. 106)

The Commission characterized its spending targets in political terms:

“In the 1995 election, the Progressive Conservatives under Mike Harris won power after running on a platform called the “Common Sense Revolution” (CSR)…With the exception of health care, spending was reined in; the two most dramatic moves were a 22 per cent cut in social assistance rates and a downloading of program responsibilities to municipal governments…Strong economic and revenue growth after 1995 helped the province balance its budget by 1999–2000, by which time spending had begun to rise again. Although the Harris government retains its reputation as one that made deep and lasting spending cuts, the reality is rather different. From its 1995–96 peak, program spending fell by only 4.1 per cent and stayed below the peak for only three years…just to meet the government’s goal of a balanced budget seven years hence, the government will have to cut even more deeply from its spending on a real per-capita basis, and over a much longer period than the Harris government did in the 1990s…” (p. 112 and p. 121)

Clearly, the intent of comparing the Commission’s spending targets to those of the Harris government was to create the impression that the medicine it was prescribing would taste awful. The psychological effect for some will be Buckleyesque: to convince the reader that the prescribed medicine could work because it would taste awful. For others, the psychological effect will be an increased willingness to embrace tax increases so as to avoid tasting bad medicine.

MEETING THE TARGETS: 361 VAGUE RECOMMENDATIONS

With the exception of a few de minimis recommendations for raising more revenue (e.g., charging for parking at GO Train stations), the balance of the Commission’s report was comprised of recommended ways of controlling spending and meeting the five spending targets set out in Recommendation 1-1 (see above). However, for numerous reasons, the recommendations were of questionable usefulness.

Few if any of the 361 implementation recommendations state how much money the recommendation will save or raise. That is perhaps understandable (which is not to say forgivable), given that the recommendations themselves are in most cases little more than utterly vague suggestions peppered with mind numbing iterations of words and phrases like “streamline”, “integrate”, “leverage”, “rationalize”, “consolidate”, and, of course “find efficiencies”: the buzzwords common to countless other commission reports collecting dust in the government archives.

Some of the recommendations are worse than vague, altogether off-loading to others, in the future, the role of the Commission. For example:

“Recommendation 5-104: Establish a Commission to guide the health reforms. The scale of reform we propose is vast, dealing with organizational, clinical and business issues….Given that the scale of reform being proposed in this report extends well beyond hospitals, a new commission should be established to guide the reforms, drawing from a broad range of stakeholder communities, including providers and citizens/patients.” (p. 172)

and

“Recommendation 11-1: Government needs to publish an “economic vision” for Ontario.” (p. 302)

and, in an homage to Sir Humphrey Appleby:

“A steering committee should be established [that would be]…the focal point for the government-wide work necessary to develop implementation proposals for specific reforms and for cross-cutting measures addressing themes that touch on multiple sectors…The steering committee would direct ministers and their ministries to develop proposals and implementation plans, and provide a schedule for reporting these proposals to Cabinet. The steering committee would also guide a number of working groups created to conduct research and analysis of the major cross-cutting issues: labour and compensation; overlap and duplication; new delivery models; and optimization of assets. These groups would be a resource both to the steering committee and to ministries as they develop specific transformation proposals that have implications for other ministries, as many of them will. The steering committee could also commission independent research to inform the working groups on key areas of analysis.” (pp. 140-141)

In other words, to control costs, the Commission recommended the formation of commissions or committees – some having subcommittees that each commission independent researchers – to find ways to eliminate overlap, duplication, and inefficiency. One wonders what, exactly, the Commission thought its role was.

Many of the recommendations – especially the longer-winded ones – are downright mealy-mouthed. For example:

“Recommendation 5-70: All Family Health Team physicians must begin engaging in discussions with their middle-aged patients about end-of-life health care…Having a clear understanding by all parties of patients’ wishes regarding end-of-life care offers the ability to put in place a plan to provide the care necessary to meet the patients’ needs and provide the services in a timely manner when the need arises…Informing people about the importance of using an advance health care directive (also known as a “living will”) as opposed to the last will and testament as the legal document to express one’s end-of-life care wishes is essential.” (p. 190)

The unwritten meaning of Recommendation 5-70 is that people who have earned assets and savings should not get the tax-funded health care that is extended to those who lack assets and savings. Those who have should be encouraged to use up their own assets and savings to pay for their care rather than leaving their assets and savings to their heirs. Also, the Commission is implying that it is “essential” to encourage as many people as possible – while they are still healthy, middle-aged, and feeling immortal – to draw up Do Not Resuscitate instructions (“DNRs”) so that if they end up in a situation where their continued existence depends upon the provision of life support, the government can just let them die and save the expense.

Other recommendations were more blunt about wealth redistribution. For example:

“Recommendation 5-88: Link the Ontario Drug Benefit program more directly to income. Almost all of the cost of prescription drugs for seniors is now covered by the provincial government….A minimal step would be to make the portion of pharmaceutical costs paid for by seniors rise more sharply as income increases. The other, preferred, option is to sever the link to age and instead link the benefit to income only.” (pp. 195-196)

In other words: fewer or no publicly delivered drugs should be given to those who pay for them (with taxes), and more such drugs should be given to those who do not pay much if anything for them. Or: those with more money should buy their drugs in the private sector, but should also pay for drugs delivered by the government to those with less or no money.

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the report merely echoes previous commission reports to take money from the productive, and then leave them to fend for themselves. In fact, the report amounts to a proposal for rationing across the board. Perhaps the most dramatic example of this is the report’s brief reference to further changing, and corrupting, the role of the physician and the physician’s relationship to the patient:

“Recommendation 5-86: Medical schools should educate students on “system issues,” so they better understand how physicians fit into the health care system; for example, how to deal with patient needs efficiently and effectively, but using fewer resources by connecting different parts of the health care system.” (p. 195)

and, putting it more bluntly:

“Physicians’ primary goal should be prevention and keeping people out of hospitals.” (p. 24)

In other words, the physician is to be trained and required to focus on keeping health care costs low, as the physicians “primary goal”. Helping the sick and injured is to be merely secondary.

Of course, the idea that physicians first and foremost should be guardians of the public purse is not entirely new: implicitly, that has been the physicians’ primary goal since the payor-payee relationship between patient and physician was severed by the Progressive Conservatives in 1969 with the banning of private health insurance and payments, and the establishment of a tax-funded government health insurance monopoly, OHIP. The physician-as-rationer model is entirely in keeping with the economic reality of socialized health care, which was recognized by its proponents before the government monopoly was imposed. Speaking in 1979 at an “S.O.S. Medicare” conference to the issue of the spiraling costs of providing “free” health care to all residents on demand, Tommy Douglas explained:

“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.”

To that end, the McGuinty government has been encouraging physicians and other health care providers to enter into group practice and has been increasing efforts to keep the healthy healthy, by such nanny-state measures as offering or requiring a broader range of inoculations, smoking bans, eliminating junk foods in school etc.. The Drummond Report essentially recommends more of the same, implying that the whole socialist health care monopoly will fail if the province cannot – through increased preventive measures – reduce the number of sick, injured, and dying. Of course, the Drummond Report comes up with no explicit proposals for how to make people immortal, so as to avoid the inevitable medical costs associated with the last few days, weeks, or months of dying. Hence the Commission’s “Logan’s Run” inspired focus on such things as DNRs: literal sacrifice of the patient to save the system.

Some of the Commission’s recommendations have a disturbingly Orwellian quality:

“Recommendation 5-17:…identify each LHIN’s high-use population on an annual basis, including their specific demographic, socio-economic, diagnostic and procedural characteristics. [...]” (p. 180)

Note that this particular recommendation is not about keeping track of individuals’ respective rates of use of medical services. Rather, it is about assigning individuals to various collectives defined by their “demographic” (Race? Sex? Sexual orientation? Religion? Place of birth?) characteristics, and by how much money or political power they have, and then determining which collectives, so created, are “high use”. There can be only one policy conclusion resulting from creating collectives and deeming all members of a collective to be “high use” because some individuals within the collective use a lot of medical services: giving different rations of services to individuals depending upon which collective they belong to. In other words, assigning different rations to people on the basis of such things as their race, sex, sexual orientation etc., notwithstanding the particular medical needs of any given patient. Recommendation 5-17, if implemented, ultimately will allow health care to be allocated along racist, sexist, and similar “classist” lines, all in the service of a something-for-nothing, envy-enraged, de-humanizing cultural Marxism. In fact, the process has already begun with the quiet expansion of Community Health Clinics (“CHCs”) that exclude people who do not satisfy certain genetic, national, or linguistic criteria from using their medical services.

THE FLAWED PREMISE OF THE REPORT

The report correctly identifies the fact that the rising Canadian dollar and the relatively inexpensive cost of labour in Asia has encouraged businesses to minimize losses and maximize profits by leaving Ontario and producing in Asia the goods and services we consume in North America. However, the report is silent about the governmental decisions that leave Ontario unable to cope with a high dollar and unable to compete with Asia as a locale for the production of goods and services. Instead the report essentially proceeds on the deeply flawed, fundamental premise that Ontario will remain unable to compete with Asia and other low-cost jurisdictions. That premise leads the Commission to the conclusion that, as a result, Ontario will suffer from relatively small growth for the foreseeable future. Implied in that premise of permanent uncompetitiveness is a value judgment: that Ontario should not alter the status quo even if it would allow Ontario to compete with Asia; that Ontario should remain a high-cost jurisdiction. Willing to remain uncompetitive within the globe so as to preserve the current government-influenced allocation of winners and losers within the province, the report focuses narrowly on the question of how a systemically uncompetitive Ontario can remain uncompetitive and produce relatively little yet balance its budget.

The commission’s flawed premise of uncompetitiveness leaves the report powerless to guide government policy in a way that will restore and maintain Ontario’s fiscal health. Even if all of the report’s recommendations can be deciphered, concretized, and implemented, and even if the budget is balanced and somehow remains balanced, Ontario will find itself continually whittling down health care and education rations as revenues dry up and borrowing ceases to be an option. Addressing Ontario’s deficit by way only of spending cuts or tax increases is, and will remain, akin to applying a tourniquet to slow the bleeding from a self-imposed wound. If the wound – Ontario’s legislated global uncompetitiveness – is not operated upon soon enough, the patient will die from the blood loss.

The quantitative measures set out in the Drummond Report fail because the essential cause of Ontario’s fiscal woes is not quantitative. It is qualitative. Specifically, the uncompetitive status quo results from flaws in the way the Ontario government is determining facts and evaluating potential courses of action.

FLAWS IN FACT IDENTIFICATION

The facts of reality, and the approach used by the Ontario government to identify facts, lie at the base of all governmental activity. At this most fundamental level, the Ontario government is failing. The result is that government resources are too often allocated to the solution of problems that do not exist, and too often allocated to ineffectual solutions to problems that do exist.

Too often, the Ontario government operates as though all facts of reality are or can be dictated by what one decides them to be. Too often, crime is said to be a growing problem not because crime rates are actually up, but because people think they are up or feel as though they are up. Economic calculations and planning often erroneously take into account aggregate measures of “confidence” in the economy, giving such confidence the status of proof of the actual status of the economy, akin to reports on actual, demonstrably provable indebtedness, crumbling physical infrastructure, cash flows, et cetera.

The reality is that some facts – metaphysically given facts, as opposed to man-made facts – cannot be altered by, and are not the product of, anyone’s thoughts or feelings or opinions. In all of its operations and departments, Ontario’s government needs to focus exclusively on the facts, and not upon polls or reports about what people – by way of ignorance, unwarranted emotion, or whim – believe the facts to be. In short: the government must accept the primacy of existence, and reject practices founded upon the erroneously assumed primacy of consciousness.

Even where the government recognizes that wishing does not make it so, the Ontario government, perhaps tainted by a paralyzing radical skepticism, too often gives to arbitrary claims the status of facts. As one crucial example, the “take home message” of the SARS Commission report was that the government embrace the “precautionary principle”: the idea that something should be considered harmful unless and until it is proven to be safe. Since the issuance of that report, the government has implemented the principle in many or all ministries. The precautionary principle now pervades and corrupts all government decision-making. Pursuant to this principle, the government of Ontario now is liable to take action in response to virtually any fear that takes hold in the population, from the alleged harmfulness of WiFi networks, to the fear that human productive activity will cause catastrophic climate change, to the fear that a mix of pesticides will be harmful to health, etc.. In these and other cases, the government irrationally is outlawing various forms of productivity (e.g., bans on pesticides approved by Health Canada for which there is no compelling evidence of harm to humans), and committing Ontario residents to massive expenditures (e.g., forcing Ontario residents to pay above-market rates for “green” energy) not because it has evidence of harm, but because it has no evidence of safety. The precautionary principle raises any arbitrary assertion of harm to the equivalent of a demonstrably proven fact, demanding that government prove the null hypothesis, or else impose regulations, bans, taxes and fees, monopolies, and other endeavors costing in some cases billions of dollars. In truth, the precautionary principle has been adopted as an epistemological excuse for public sector empire building, but it is utterly irrational and anti-scientific. To the extent it continues and spreads as a guiding principle, Ontario’s government will continue to dedicate resources to combating non-problems, leaving it with fewer dollars to address problems that can be proven, with physical evidence, to exist.

As another example, consider that the Ontario government has embraced such things as the funding of faith-based efforts aimed at reducing crime rates. In practice, this amounts to giving tax revenues to private religious organizations, which then independently and unaccountably divvy up the money among affiliated churches, allegedly for the purpose of encouraging youth find a god, obey the god’s divinely communicated commandments, and thereby decide against engaging in criminal activity. Leaving aside the obvious impropriety of using taxpayer dollars to finance religious activity, there is no scientific evidence of any positive correlation between being encouraged to believe that a god exists and requires obedience, on the one hand, and complying with man-made laws on the other. Indeed, there are several spectacular examples in recent memory suggesting a negative correlation, including terrorist activity, honour killings, and the like. Decisions to fund these efforts are founded not upon a rational consideration of evidence, but upon feelings or faith. As with the precautionary principle, faith offers up the unprovable as fact. Logic and science rightly bar from consideration such appeals to authority as arbitrary claims. If government continues to regard faith as a means of deciding what is and what is not – and of deciding what will work and what will not – the government too often will commit resources to non-problems and non-solutions, leaving it with decreasing funds to address demonstrably provable problems with demonstrably effective responses.

Such mysticism has also crept into enforcement. A few years back, government resources were spent investigating an allegation that a young autistic school girl was being sexually assaulted by a man living in her home. The investigation was commenced because a public school teacher, a principle, a school board, and a Childrens’ Aid Society thought it appropriate to act upon a mystically-derived tip from a psychic. No man even lived in the house. A family was essentially terrorized by a state mechanism that, so far, refuses to disregard mystical bull when making decisions about investigations and enforcement. The McGuinty government has done nothing to set evidentiary standards or guidelines, despite the revelation of such irrational waste and injustice.

The epistemological take-home message is clear and obvious. Government must begin to discard from consideration any claim not verified with physical evidence. Without an understanding of the mechanism by which a harm is being caused, it must take no steps to intervene. Correlation must not be accepted in lieu of causation. Claims about supernatural signs, fears, whims, faith and consensus should be given no more regard in the policy making process than they have in the scientific process. A failure to consider only demonstrable facts, as determined by physical evidence scrutinized solely by a logical process of thought, will lead to an unlimited array of foolish and wasteful government expenditures.

FLAWS IN THE EVALUATION OF POSSIBLE COURSES OF ACTION

Properly identifying facts, and discarding from consideration all falsehoods and arbitrary assertions is a start, but Ontario’s government must also establish proper criteria to act upon the facts. Those criteria must be founded upon the essential nature of human individuals.

Every such set of criteria implies underlying assumptions about the nature of human beings. However, at present in Ontario, those assumptions are being founded not upon fact but upon falsehoods or arbitrary assertions.

The Ontario’s government’s essential flaw in this regard is an implicit assumption that adult human beings are not capable of independent rational thought and action concerning themselves and their dependents. Their nature, it is assumed, is akin to that of a child or, worse, a beast whose actions – if left unchecked – would be guided by destructive physical instinct. Accordingly, human nature is treated not as a thing to be facilitated, but a thing to be overcome through threats of fines and imprisonment. The Ontario government has accordingly taken on the role of shepherd or nanny, applying carrot or stick to have the governed act contrary to what it believes is human nature.

However, the demonstrable evidence is to the contrary of the government’s current conception of human nature. It is demonstrably provable that human beings lack the instincts upon which other animals’ survival is largely dependent, and that human beings must properly identify facts, and act upon them in ways that, in both the immediate and long term, will ensure their survival and allow them to achieve the values – not only material goods but relationships and other spiritual values – upon which the achievement of their own happiness depends.

This is not to say that every individual chooses to act consistently with human nature. Some fail or refuse to distinguish fact from falsehoods and arbitrary assertions, leaving them unable to know what decisions and actions they should take. Some assume in a social setting criteria for action that, were they alone and not saved by others, would undermine their survival and happiness. But, in the vast majority of cases, such people so err because they have chosen to do so, not because human nature condemns them to misery and death.

By confusing human tendencies (e.g., in particular, the tendency to choose to act according to ones nature, or the tendency to choose not to do so) with human nature, the government has been left with policy criteria ill suited to the actual needs of human beings living in accordance with human nature. Taking on a maternal role to save those adults who fail or refuse to choose to live as human nature requires them to live, Ontario’s government has left a growing percentage of the population with a decreasing need to take on the role and responsibilities of thinking, productive, adults. It has thereby also increasingly converted a peaceful and society of consensually interactive, productive and responsible adults into a family of siblings; siblings functioning not as adults, but as children. Seeing themselves and their neighbours in that way, everything possessed by ones neighbour increasingly is being perceived as a gift conferred on a preferred sibling by mother government. At a time when mother government’s budget is widely known to be in trouble, every such sibling is viewed as another mouth for mother to feed, hence a threat to ones own survival. Xenophobia, envy, hatred, and violence naturally will result, as will calls for mother government to take more from those who produce, to give more to those who do not, and to crack the whip ever harder and ever more frequently to ensure that all mother’s children obey the rules pursuant to which mother government allocates goods and services.

Children – human beings whose every need is provided to them by their parents – do not engage in the inventive and productive efforts that give rise to an economy and to the creation of the valuable goods and services upon which Ontario’s standard of living depends. To the degree that a society views itself as a family of dependent children, its economy will be a failure, and the fiscal situation of its government will be in jeopardy. Ontario must stop relieving healthy and able-bodied adults of the responsibility to think, to choose, to produce valuable goods and services, and to assume responsibility for their personal survival and happiness. It must stop infantilizing the governed.

Ontario also must also do a better job of creating the conditions necessary for adults consensually to exchange goods and services for their own mutual benefit: it must do a better job of preventing everyone -whether in the private sector or in the public sector – from taking another person’s life, liberty, or property without his consent. Policing cannot concern itself – as it currently does – only with keeping the peace. It must begin more seriously to fulfill its responsibility of defending private property holders from prohibited uses of their land and other property.

Without an environment of personal responsibility, in which relations among producers and consumers are consensual, and in which the lives, liberty and property of all is defended effectively and justly, Ontario will undercut its desirability as a place for the production of goods and services consumed on this globe. As the Drummond Report points out, time is of the essence. The longer we remain uncompetitive, the greater the obsolescence of our physical and intellectual capital. If our natural and human-made physical resources and the skills of our residents are not to wither to the point of valuelessness, the Ontario government must begin limiting itself to a consideration only of fact, and to action criteria founded not upon the tendencies of some, but on the human potential of each.

With respect to policy, the government must be prepared to gore sacred cows, and to step over lines in the sand. For the good and future of each and all, it must prepare for vested interests to express outrage and must ready itself to deal justly, swiftly, an effectively with any opponents of change who resort to violence and destruction in protest. In short, Ontario must choose to win, rather than merely choosing to cope with the fiscal fall-out of maintaining the uncompetitive status quo. To that end, and to begin the dialogue, the broad outline of a number of bold and necessary policy changes are set out below.

THE BIG 7: RESTORING A GLOBALLY COMPETITIVE AND PROSPEROUS ONTARIO

Establish a mechanism for Public-Private Pay Equity: The single biggest cost of government – hence, to taxpayers – is the wages and benefits paid to public sector workers. When defending decisions to pay the leaders of the province’s public agencies, boards, commissions, or crown corporations large six or seven figure salaries, the Ontario government normally claims that salaries and benefits offered to public sector CEOs need to match the rates being paid in the private sector if qualified talent is to accept public sector posts. Inexplicably, that argument is absent wherever it is found that wages and benefits paid to public sector workers exceed the wages and benefits paid to private sector workers doing the same kinds of work. If the principle applying to public sector CEO wages and benefits is sound, attracting qualified workers to fill public sector positions should not require public sector jobs to pay more than their private sector equivalents. Accordingly, Ontario should introduce a Public-Private Pay Equity Act to impose caps on government salaries and benefits based on the average salaries and benefits paid for similar work in the private sector.

Eliminate Government-imposed Labour Monopolies: Ontario labour laws are preventing Ontario residents from competing with workers in other jurisdictions. The result has been a flight of jobs from Ontario (the most recent example being the loss of hundreds of jobs at the now-closed Electo Motive plant in London, Ontario). Ontario’s Labour Relations Act, 1995, gives the members of labour unions the exclusive right to bid for and obtain certain jobs. In practice, even if they are unable to come to terms with an employer, nobody else is allowed to do so, with the effect that jobs too often move to another jurisdiction.

Where an employer and employees see mutual benefit in collective bargaining as opposed to introducing individualized contracts between the employer and each employee, the law certainly should set out policy to ensure that such bargaining is carried out in a procedurally just way for all involved. However, labour monopolies no longer should be imposed by law. Every individual in Ontario must be made free to offer his or her services at rates competitive with those demanded around the globe, whether or not a union of employees has chosen to withhold its services as a bargaining tactic (i.e., to strike for some period of time).

Allow Competition with the Government’s Non-Enforcement Ventures: Some functions of Ontario’s government concern themselves solely with purely governmental functions, such as policy research and law enforcement. Such positions, by their nature, require the employer to be the government. They are roles akin to the referees of a game, not akin to the players. However, Ontario currently involves itself as a player in numerous areas previously the sole domain of the private sector, including health care insurance, education, liquor distribution and retailing, gambling, and electricity production and distribution. In some cases (health care, gambling, liquor) the government has banned competition. In other cases (e.g., education) the government has tilted the playing field in its favour by requiring consumers to pay taxes for government services even if the consumer would rather purchase the same service from a private vendor. Privatization of such segments of government endeavor are not necessary. However, allowing and facilitating fair competition with such government services will ensure that government involvement does not introduce wages and prices that are not globally competitive. To that end, the government must take steps to eliminate barriers to fair competition from the private sector in all such areas of endeavor. Among the required steps: eliminate government monopolies on health care, liquor, and gambling; eliminate tax funding to government ventures that are in competition with private sector suppliers; provide subsidies to neither public nor private sector suppliers of the same good or service; restore the consumer’s role as payor, so that public and private providers of the same good or service will attempt to win the business of the consumer by better meeting the needs and demands of each consumer.

Eliminate the Minimum Wage: Ontario’s minimum wage law makes it illegal for an employee to work for less than the rate set by the government of Ontario. The effect is that the government of Ontario literally sends to other jurisdictions all work having a value, on the world labour market, of less than that set out by the minimum wage law. The government should not be in the business of sending labour opportunities abroad. It should repeal the minimum wage and allow Ontario workers to compete with those living everywhere else on the globe.

Tax Consumption, Not Production: A primary benefit of taxing consumption is that earners can save and invest any unspent earnings in wealth-producing endeavors paying interest or dividends. As the old saying goes: You can’t take it with you. Returns on money so invested ultimately will be used to buy goods and services and those transactions can all be subjected to a single transactional tax (i.e. a tax on the purchase of goods and services). More money saved and invested will lead to more production and higher tax revenues without tax increases.

Replace Goods and Services Welfare Provisions with Monetary Payments: There is no advantage to consumers, or to the economy, or to those who do not provide fully for themselves (i.e., the underproductive), of providing the underproductive with goods and services instead of with the money they need to buy goods and services. Provisions of governmental assistance should take the form solely of the provision of money to recipients. The government should not be building, owning and operating houses, transportation systems, daycare facilities etc. and providing them to the poor at below-market rates. Assistance currently given in the form of such goods and services should be monetized and provided as money to recipients who can then allocate their financial assistance in accordance with their needs. This will reduce the likelihood over over-assistance, and reduce the size and cost of the government’s welfare administration.

Reduce, Focus, and Redefine the Role of Municipal Government: All authority held by municipal governments is delegated to it by the province. In practice, the provision to municipalities of broad by-law making powers has led to a province-wide patchwork quilt of irrational and, in some cases, arguably unconstitutional by-laws, such as laws against camping and barbequing on ones own land, against cutting down ones own trees, against parking ones car on ones own land, against using ones house as a place of business, against selling children squirt guns (see Port Perry) et cetera. Whatever the reasons in each given municipality, it is clear that irrational laws are most prevalent at the municipal level. The Ontario government should reduce the breadth of the law-making authority it grants to local governments, leaving municipalities primarily an administrative role, rather than a legislative one.

CONCLUSION

The Drummond Report essentially recommends that the budget be balanced by increasing the efficiency with which the government does just about everything it currently does. The Commission, our Liberal, PC, and NDP MPPs, and almost all of Ontario’s journalists think that implementing all of the recommendations will or would balance the budget by 2017-18. The reality is that if the Ontario government were actually to become more efficient at doing what it does, it would do more of what it does. It would make Ontario even more uncompetitive. Yes, the budget must be balanced, but – even if it could be balanced by implementing the Drummond Report – the result would be an ever-decreasing standard of living, and an ever-less globally competitive Ontario. Socialism got us into this mess. Better socialism will only get us into a worse one. It’s time to try capitalism, for a change.

Mr. Hudak (paraphrased): “It’s only money. Other peoples’ money. The government should take $8.4B from those who earn it, and build an underground railway owned by the government. That way, the government can continue to undercharge riders, and run the railway constantly into the red. But don’t worry, we can go back to the earners, year after year, and loot them a bit more so that we can pay the ongoing costs of the new rail line. Don’t forget: voters want this…especially the ones who will ride the line daily, paying only a fraction of the freight.”

Dear Sun readers: A choice between two socialist parties – the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives – is a choice between death by electrocution and death by lethal injection. We’re in the middle of an economic crisis. We’re running record deficits. Ontario’s credit rating is being lowered, as a result. And here we have both liberal and conservative socialist party leaders thinking that blowing $8.4B to subsidize *some* peoples’ travel is appropriate. Tell that to the majority of Ontarians, who will never, ever, travel on that line. Try to tell that to earners in Windsor, Cochrane, and Ottawa. Heck: try to tell it to most of the people living in London, Burlington, Brampton, Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, Oshawa and Bowmanville.

Put this in context. $8.4B would buy enough fully-serviced MRI machines to put many – more than enough – in every significantly-sized community in Ontario: about 8400 manned machines. Now, of course, that would mean more people being able to prove, in a timely way, that they have a need for immediate surgery or other treatments, so I sincerely doubt the advocates of our government monopoly on health care would want such accelerated diagnoses (death of waiting patients, together with delaying diagnoses until operations and treatments would come too late to save the patient: these are, after all, significants parts of the Ontario health care system’s cost control plan). But it does show you how entirely warped are the priorities of the governing socialists and the opposition socialists. You die, so that the taxpayer can subsidize the cost of Jimmy’s travel on the reds’ “rocket”. Sound like a good deal? Just what you, as a taxpayer and voter, are demanding? Somehow, I doubt it.

If you are a member of the liberal or PC parties, isn’t it time you took out your membership card and put it in the shredder?

The next time you pull out your cheque book to help a political party, and the next time you are in the voting booth, consider choosing not to sign up for additional spending, debt, and taxes: http://www.freedomparty.on.ca

Thank-you for your time.

Regards,

Paul McKeever, B.Sc.(Hons), M.A., LL.B.
Leader, Freedom Party of Ontario

LCBO Monopoly

On May 17, 2011, Freedom Party released its election plank on the LCBO. It argued, in part, that the LCBO’s government-imposed monopoly gives it the power to ban the sale of products for reasons of political correctness, and that allowing competition would allow other stores to carry even products that the LCBO decides not to offer on its shelves. Freedom Party highlighted two examples. Dan Aykroyd’s Crystal Head Vodka (a premium vodka, made in Newfoundland, that comes in a clear glass skull-shaped bottle) had been refused an LCBO listing in 2010.

On March 25, 2011, the Flying Monkey’s Brewery in Barrie, Ontario informed readers of its facebook page that the LCBO had refused to carry their Smash Bomb Atomic India Pale Ale.

The LCBO refused to sell these products due to their alleged death and violence themes.

On May 17, 2011 Freedom Party of Ontario released a three-part commercial on its YouTube channel that informed the public about the situation and about Freedom Party’s LCBO election plank.

The plank got traction on major talk radio in Toronto. The Jim Richards Showgram (NewsTalk 1010 AM, Toronto) highlighted the plank in May of 2011. Two months later, the LCBO quietly announced that it had ended its ban on Smash Bomb Atomic IPA, and would slowly spread its distribution through LCBO stores over time (I noticed it on my local LCBO’s shelf only last week).

Freedom Party continued to promote its LCBO plank during the September/October 2011 election – the party even ran commercials on Sun TV – that brought the party a lot of headlines, including coverage specifically about the party’s LCBO plank.

On October 7, 2011 – one day following the Ontario election vote – Ryan Doyle and John Downs continued to tackle the issue on their program Friendly Fire (NewsTalk 1010 AM, Toronto). On October 18th, 2011, the Globe and Mail reported that the LCBO had finally reversed its decision on the ban of Crystal Head Vodka. Crystal Head’s Dan Aykroyd said that his company did not lobby the LCBO to end the ban. He explained the cause of the LCBO’s reversal as follows:

The public basically started a kind of letter-writing and Web campaign to ask why it was not available. The consumer really pulled it through for us.

Look for both products in an LCBO near you soon, if they aren’t there already.

What do the LCBO’s policy reversals on these products really mean? Freedom Party stood (and still stands) alone in calling for the LCBO to be exposed to private sector competition. Clearly, by banning the products, the LCBO made it possible for Freedom Party to turn public opinion against a monopoly, and in favour of allowing competition for the LCBO. The LCBO has listed these products so as to give the likes of Freedom Party fewer ways to justify its demand for an end to the LCBO’s monopoly status. Freedom Party was able to push an elephant with a pen, simply by crafting the right message, and it will continue to do so until a free market for liquor distribution exists in Ontario. Congratulations to all who helped make that the case, including FPO’s candidates, and the media.

Incandescent Light Bulb Ban

On April 18, 2007, the McGuinty government announced that it was banning incandescent bulbs starting in 2012. That ban was released as part of a misguided “Flick Off” campaign to discourage electricity use during a time when industry had not yet been chased out of the province, such that Ontario sometimes had power shortages.

Then Liberal Environment Minister Laurel Broten introduces Ontario’s
$500,000.00 contribution to the vulgar “Flick Off” campaign (April 25, 2007).

The power shortages were due to 4 years of foot-dragging by the McGuinty government, following decades of mismanagement by the provincial Progressive Conservatives. Rather than admit that it had bungled the energy file such that power shortages now made rationing necessary, the McGuinty government – and even the federal government of Conservative Stephen Harper – told the public that they were banning the bulb in 2012 so as to reduce CO2 emissions to fight “global warming”.

In February of 2011, Freedom Party released its 2011 election plan on ending the 2012 incandescent light bulb ban. On April 16, 2011, in the middle of the Canadian federal election, the Harper Conservatives promised to delay the 2012 incandescent ban until at least 2014. During the September/October 2011 election, Freedom Party of Ontario continued to promote its plank concerning the ending of the ban, including commercials on SunTV.

Finally, just two days ago, on December 21, 2011, Ontario’s Energy Minister announced that the McGuinty government was delaying its ban of the incandescent bulb to 2014 (See coverage by: CTV, Toronto Star, and Sunmedia).

As with the LCBO issue, Freedom Party had stood alone in opposing the incandescent bulb. However, with the help of those who contributed money, time, and effort to the party, we were able to bring enough pressure to bear that both Canada’s and Ontario’s incandescent bulb bans have been delayed. Time will tell as to whether the bans will survive in 2014, but Freedom Party will keep up its opposition to the ban until the ban is gone for good.

In conclusion: take some time this holiday season to bask in the warm yellow light of an incandescent bulb, and to raise a glass of your favourite beverage in cheer as you look back on 2011 with the knowledge that Freedom Party and its supporters had an impact in 2011.

Liberals have socked us with the two biggest tax hikes in the history of the province — the health care levy and the HST. And now they’re crying poor? They created this mess. We’re just paying their bills.

Given her message, the column’s headline (which Blizzard probably did not write) is a knee-slapper of hypocrisy: “Stop blaming and start restraining“. I agree with the sentiment of the headline, but it sure as heck is not the case that the PCs are somehow any better than the Liberals with respect to Ontario’s health care system. In fact, pinning the blame on the Liberals smacks of revisionist history. So I got to work writing a comment to the column on the newspaper’s web site. Of course, my comment has to pass Sun “moderation”, so there is a chance it will not get posted. So, for the record, here is the comment I submitted:

In point of fact, the Progressive Conservatives “created this mess” in 1969. They banned private health insurance, instituted a provincial health care monopoly, and imposed a new tax – the provincial income tax – to pay for it. Within the very first year, the system was in crisis, because patients were no longer required to pay their physicians for the services they received. The system made doctors care not about satisfying patients, but about satisfying bureaucrats. Today, as a result, we have a system that is by far the single largest provincial cost…so large that the provincial income tax doesn’t bring in enough to pay for it. So, now, we have health care payroll taxes, a health care “premium” (that one WAS McGuinty’s – a tax founded on a 2003 broken election promise not to raise taxes one penny – yet Hudak’s PCs are unwilling to repeal it). Socialized health care is THE biggest reason why we are $16B in the hole, annually, and that number will continue to skyrocket as the population ages, works/earns less, and consumes more health care. Yet the PCs stand side by side with the Liberals and NDP in defence of keeping the government health care monopoly in place, without any competition from private health insurance or patient-pay alternatives.

It gets worse. In an effort to reduce use of health care resources, PC, then Liberal, then NDP, then PC, then Liberal governments have imposed a growing number of restrictions on anything that increases the likelihood of using the system: crackdowns on riding without a helmet, on fast food in schools, massive intrusion of alleged health inspection armies into farming and health food production (i.e., government agents killing the family farm/business, in the name of health, so as to benefit large agricultural companies and pharmaceutical companies with patents that are worthless so long as one can grow homegrown medicines, almost for free, in ones garden), smoking bans, any number of restrictions on sports…etc.

It gets even worse. By making health care a tax-funded business, it has been made possible to fund political activism through the health care system. Check out the little known “CHCs“: clinics, spread across the province, that exclude all except some key demographic. Don’t speak French: you’re not permitted to use the Cornwall CHC. Not “a black woman from the islands”: you can’t use one of the CHCs in Toronto. Not a “native Canadian”?: your not permitted to use a Natives-only CHC. There are 10s of these units across the province. How do they spend their money? I’ll tell you:

- movie nights for the poor.
- campaigns against violence against women.
- outreach on the basis of sexual orientation.
- campaigns for social justice.

Get the picture? All of this stuff gets called “health care” and is funded, by the taxpayer, as a CHC health clinic that serves people defined exclusively by their race, sex, sexual orientation, etc.

Get this: I investigated a CHC in London a few years back. Unlike some of the other CHCs, it wasn’t clear which “at risk” (or whatever was their Orwellian terminology) group that CHC was exclusive to, but it *was* saying that it was for only that “at risk” group. I called the CHC and asked who the clinic was for. The answer? “Which organization are you with?”. I told her, honestly, that I am the leader of Freedom Party of Ontario. Her answer: click. So I called the Ministry of Health, and ultimately got to the political/policy strategist/rep: someone with direct access to McGuinty. I asked her who that clinic was for. Her frank answer: “illegal aliens”. Shocked, I asked her to clarify, and she repeated that it was for people who are in the country illegally.

The simple fact is that, by socializing health care, the government was able to create a system in chronic fiscal crisis. That crisis – combined with historical revisionism about socialist health care being the major part of the Canadian identity – has made it politically possible to continue pouring billions of additional dollars, and possible to raise existing taxes and impose new ones, without the voter kicking the Liberals, PCs, or NDP out of office.

The saddest part is: relatively few people realize how bad the service is, until it’s too late. But the pro-socialist health care politicians don’t worry about those people: the dead don’t speak, and the dead don’t vote.

In closing: don’t take my word for it. Watch this 4.5 minute video, featuring none other than the socialist health care poster child, Rev. Tommy Douglas…and pay particular attention to the last thing he says, about health care costs soaring unless health care’s mission was switched from making the sick well, to keeping the well well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp3bk4QQt54

To those prepared to read what I’ve written above, and to understand that the government health care monopoly must end, I wish you a Merry Christmas, and a happy and prosperous New Year.

Regards,

Paul McKeever
Leader, Freedom Party of Ontario

e-mail: pmckeeverfreedomparty.on.ca
web: http://www.freedomparty.on.ca
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fpontario
twitter: http://www.twitter.com/fpontario

According to the AG, when the LCBO decides to stock a new product, it puts out a “needs letter” to suppliers. For each type of product, the needs letter tells suppliers the range of prices at which the LCBO would like to sell the product. That price is not based upon supply and demand. It is based on pure whim (which might explain, at least in part, why the Lagavulin I used to be able to buy for forty some odd dollars now costs well over $100 per bottle, only a few years later). Don’t stop reading: it gets worse. Much worse.

According to the AG, the LCBO has a “fixed markup structure”:

Markup rates vary by product category. However, within each category, the markup is the same for all products (examples are shown in Figure 3).

According to Figure three, the “vodka, whisky, rum” class of products has fixed markups of 141% (domestic products), 148.1% (imported products from the USA), and 148.0% (other imports). For “table wine” the markups are 65.5% (Ontario wines) and 71.5% (other domestic and imported wines).

Because the markups are fixed, the more a supplier charges the LCBO for its product, the higher the revenues of the LCBO for that product. For example, were a U.S. whisky company to sell a bottle of whisky to the LCBO for $15 (including federal excise tax, federal import duty, and freight), the LCBO markup would be $15 x 148.1= $22.212. However, if the LCBO has the same company charge $20 for the same bottle, the LCBO’s revenues from the sale of that bottle increase: $20 x 148.1 = $29.62. Those markups are not the total price charged to the consumer: they are the profits gained from the sale of a bottle of whisky.

According to the AG:

“If a supplier’s cost quote results in an amount that does not match the agreed-up retail price, the LCBO will ask it to raise or lower the wholesale cost of the product. We found examples both where the supllier’s intial cost quote had been raised and where it had been lowered…”

Get that? The LCBO literally has been telling its suppliers, in some cases, to charge the LCBO more for its product. The reason: the LCBO will reap a higher per bottle profit, as a result.

Hence the AG’s statement:

The LCBO’s fixed-pricing structure gives it no incentive to negotiate lower wholesale costs – doing so would result in lower retail prices and, in turn, lower profits…

The AG’s first recommendation is that the LCBO do a better job of telling the public how it sets prices:

“Although some of this information is disclosed on the LCBO website under the “Contact Us” section, it would not be easy for the public to find this information or use it to fully understand how beverage alcohol prices are set.”

That, most certainly, is to say the least. The public should be outraged that not only does the LCBO not seek the lowest price from suppliers, but that it actually colludes with them to raise the wholesale price, so that the LCBO can reap higher revenues. There is only one word for what the LCBO is doing: scandalous.

The implications for the AG’s findings in respect of LCBO pricing cannot be understated. No longer can public sector unions (see here) and academics (see here and here) oppose private liquor sales on the basis that the LCBO’s monopoly allows it to benefit from “economies of scale”. Clearly, it is utterly false that the LCBO is using its monopoly to get the lowest possible price from suppliers, so as to “pass the savings along to you, the consumer” (as the popular phrasing of that notion goes).

The finding also raises an important question. Specifically, there is no obvious reason why the LCBO must limit its margin by specifying a fixed margin (e.g., 148% on imported spirits). If the LCBO wants to sell a bottle for $42, it can do so whether it paid the producer $16.94 for the bottle, or paid the producer much less (e.g. $10.00 for the bottle). The only party that obviously benefits from fixing the margin is: suppliers. If the LCBO cannot raise a price without paying suppliers more for the product, this policy is essentially a gift to producers/suppliers. Now, ask yourself: what supplier would be opposed to a government monopoly that required suppliers to increase prices (hence profit margins)? What hooch-maker would not oppose competition for the LCBO? As ever, there is a corrupt private sector motive to oppose exposing the LCBO to private sector competition: private buyers would never pay suppliers the above-market prices that the LCBO pays suppliers.

In closing, I can only repeat what I, as Freedom Party of Ontario leader, proposed during the October 6, 2011 election: get rid of the pricing structures and make the LCBO compete with private sector stores.

[Paul McKeever can be reached for comment at 905-721-9772; or via e-mail: pmckeever@freedomparty.on.ca]

November 15, 2011

Dalton McGuinty, Premier
Legislative Building
Queen’s Park
Toronto ON M7A 1A1

Dear Premier:

Re: Toronto District School Board Plan for Africentric Secondary School

On January 25, 2008, I wrote to you asking that you intervene to deny public school boards the power to create race-focused schools. At the time, the issue was the opening by the Toronto District School Board (“TDSB”) of an “Africentric” elementary school. Although you condemned the idea of the school, you refused to make any legislative or regulatory amendments to deny public school boards the power to open up alternative race-focused schools. Facing opposition neither from your government nor from the opposition parties in the Legislature, the Africentric elementary school opened.

I am writing to you now because the TDSB is resuming discussions aimed at the opening of an Africentric secondary school in Toronto. On March 29, 2011, when the idea was first publicly floated, the TDSB faced such strong and passionate public opposition to the idea that the TDSB dropped the plan. Now, just 8 months later, the TDSB is nestling the same proposal in a group of proposals for 9 other relatively benign schools (e.g., sports-focused, choir-focused), presumably hoping to imply the falsehood that race-focused schooling is similarly benign. A public meeting will be held at TDSB headquarters on Wednesday, November 16, 2011, and will include the Africentric secondary school proposal.

There are a number of red herrings argued by each side of the Africentric schools debate. Most proponents argue that students get good grades in the school because of its racial focus, but nobody is objecting to the school on the basis of students’ grades. Some opponents argue against the Africentric schools on the basis that it is segregation, but proponents are correct to reply that the school is not technically segregating people because it is open to all (regardless of genetic make-up) and nobody is required to attend it. Each of these arguments misses the essence of the problem associated with schools like Toronto’s Africentric school.

The Africentric school is, in essence, one of any number of potential genetics-focused schools. Central to any genetics-focused education is an environment and curriculum infused with history and culturally-related elements (paintings, clothing, music, etc.) of a collective defined by its phenotypical make-up (skin tone, the typical shapes and sizes of its body parts, hair colour, eye colour, etc.). Because genetic-focusing carries with it some horrific historical predecessors, the genetic-focusing of such a school is normally masked by instead referring to the school as being focused on something correlated with phenotypes, such as the countries or continents in which such phenotypical traits are more commonly found. It is for this reason that the de facto genetics-focused elementary school in Toronto prefers to refer to itself not as something like “black-centric” but as “Africentric”. It is the exact same obfuscation used by “white” racists, who have often tried to mask their racism by saying that they are merely “Eurocentric”, and proud not of their genetics, but of the place from whence their families hailed.

A genetics-focused school is, by its very nature, pro-collectivist / pro-tribalist. On its face, it seeks to have students identify with a collective defined by a group of phenotypical traits. The aim is to have individual students see themselves not just as “human beings”, but as “black human beings”, or as “white human beings”, or as “Asian human beings” etc.. A genetics-focused school is opposed to color-blindness, instead making “race” a lens through which every aspect of education is to be viewed by the student. The student is thereby encouraged to see himself or herself as a part of a “racial” collective.

Nature does not impose collectives: ill-intended humans do that. Every child, by birth, is an individual, free of any de facto membership in any collective, “racial” or otherwise. Yet race-focused schools aim to make children believe the opposite: that they are members of a tribe defined by their genetic make-up; that their value or potential as a person is somehow related to the value or past achievements of others in their collective; that their self-esteem is the result not only of personal effort, but of a communal pot of achievements made by anyone who happens to share some of their phenotypical traits.

Such genetic collectivism is the essence of racism. There is no difference between that sort of thinking, and the thinking that says white, blue-eyed, blonde-haired Germans are somehow great or evil because some white, blue-eyed, blonde-haired Germans did something great or evil in the past. To imply that one should be proud of ones genetic make-up because someone with similar phenotypical traits won an Oscar or a Nobel prize also implies that one should be ashamed of ones genetics because someone with similar phenotypical traits committed genocide, has never yet been Prime Minister, or lives in poor neighborhood. To imply that one has intellectual potential because one has the look of a famous genius is to imply that one has limited potential because one has the look of a famous moron. It also is to imply that the sins or successes of the father are the sins or successes of the son. The proponents of race-based schools know this, and that is precisely what they want.

For the proponents of the Africentric schools (or other race-focused schools that the proponents are sure to propose in the near future) the end-game is a society full of individuals who see themselves not as independent human beings, but as racially-defined members of a racially-defined collective. Those promoting the Toronto Africentric schools seek to create a population that sees itself as being made-up of racial collectives. In such a society, all differences in wealth, influence, office, etc. can then be blamed upon racism, which will then serve as the excuse for government intervention. If racial collective A has a higher average income – or holds a higher percentage of CEO positions – than racial collective B, adults educated to be racial collectivists will be eager to blame all such differences upon racism, and to call for a government-imposed redistribution of wealth, political influence, jobs etc. among the racial collectives. By training children not to be color blind, but to see everything from math to language to art through a racial lens, the proponents of race-focused schooling aim create a population of adults so obsessed with race that they champion socialism – wealth redistribution, hiring quotas, etc. – as an alleged cure to the racism upon which they will blame every shortcoming. The proponents of race-focused schools are not truly concerned about students, grades, self-esteem or even genetic make-up. They are, at root, socialists using race to turn people against one another so as to foster the popularity of socialism.

In Ontario’s public schools, children – all children – need to be taught what they should value in themselves and in others: a knowledge of scientifically-discovered facts of nature; the indispensable necessity of strictly logical thought for the purpose of obtaining knowledge; the virtues of honesty, productiveness, integrity, justice, independence, pride and rationality in general; a society in which all relations with others must be consensual. These things are indispensable for the success of each child, regardless of his or her genetic make-up. It is these things that should be the focus of a child’s education if he or she is to succeed and to achieve his or her own happiness and self-esteem.

Accordingly, I am again asking you to introduce legislation that will remove from all publicly funded educational organizations the authority to set up schools that – as I have described above – foster racial in-fighting, racial collectivism, unearned and unwarranted pride or guilt based on how one looks, and socialism. And, at the same time, I am asking that you take steps to cause our tax-funded schools to do a better job of explaining to children that there is only one race – the human race.

Sincerely,

Paul McKeever
Leader, Freedom Party of Ontario

c.c., TDSB, Laurel Broten, Tim Hudak, Andrea Horwath

At the November 13, 2011 meeting of the Freedom Party of Ontario Provincial Executive, FPO Provincial Councillor Tim Hodges was elected to the Provincial Executive, and now serves as an Officer of the party. As such, he becomes a guardian, as it were, of the party’s guiding principles and policies. Congratulations, and thank-you, Tim!

To all members and supporters, I will just add: we are all very lucky to have Tim. Be sure to send him your best wishes and congratulations.

Regards,

Paul McKeever, B.Sc.(Hons), M.A., LL.B.
Leader, Freedom Party of Ontario

On November 20, 2010, the party I lead – Freedom Party of Ontario – held a pre-election dinner for the October 6, 2011 election. As party leader, I gave a speech to the attendees in which I explained Freedom Party’s strategy for this election. Our strategy was (and is) based upon my predictions about the fate of the Progressive Conservatives in this election.

Did my predictions pan out? Judge for yourself. To get to the meat of my argument, skip ahead to about 11mins, 30 seconds (click here):

October 3, 2011 Toronto – Freedom Party leader Paul McKeever announced today that, if a Freedom government is elected on October 6, 2011, its proposed changes to the price and availability of beer, wine and liquors will take effect on November 25 (the biggest North American Christmas shopping day of the year, known to some – e.g., in the USA – as “Black Friday”). Those changes will include: elimination of the beer tax and wine tax; allowing convenience, grocery, and other private stores to sell wine and beer in competition with the LCBO and Beer Store; and ending the ban on the purchase and sale of products deemed by the LCBO to be politically incorrect.

“My message to Ontario’s adults today is plain, simple, and positive”, says McKeever. “Cast your vote for your Freedom Party candidate this Thursday, October 6th, and you will have lower prices, greater convenience, and wider selection in time for Christmas shopping.

“There will be no beer tax, which alone will knock as much as $5.76 off of the price of 24 beer. Private liquor, wine and beer stores will be able to open and compete with the LCBO and Beer Store. There will be no minimum price regulation for beer, wine or liquor, so competition quickly will bring the prices of beer, wine and liquor down significantly. Competition will allow smaller wine and beer producers to find shelf space for their products that currently they cannot get affordably at the LCBO or Beer Store. In addition, competition will ensure that products not sold by the LCBO for reasons of political correctness – such as Dan Aykroyd’s premium Crystal Head vodka can still be sold by the LCBO’s competitors.

“Adults will be able to purchase their wine or beer where they buy their vegetables or milk. Twenty-four hour convenience and grocery stores will be allowed to sell beer or wine even when the LCBO or Beer Store are closed, which will be of great convenience to shift workers and those short on time.

“The last vestiges of the early 20th century’s prohibition era will be swept away.”

Freedom Party is currently airing 12 election commercials on television, around the clock, which can be viewed on the party’s YouTube channel. One concerns beer and wine in convenience stores, and another concerns the repeal of the beer tax.

For further details, contact:

Paul McKeever, Leader – Freedom Party of Ontario
e-mail: pmckeever@freedomparty.on.ca

September 27, 2011 Toronto – University students or graduates may find their chances of being accepted to medical school doubling, starting with admissions to the 2013 first year class. That is just one of the implications of Freedom Party’s proposal to restore to Ontarians the health care choices they had before 1969, when the Progressive Conservatives banned private payment options and established a government health care monopoly.

“Since 1993, Ontario’s provincial NDP, PC, and Liberal governments have tried to contain ballooning health care costs by limiting the number of physicians in Ontario. In other words, they have tried to ration health care by limiting the number of health care providers. What we now call the doctor shortage was and is intentional. The provincial NDP, PC, and Liberal parties continue to support doctor limits to this very day.”

Through conditional funding arrangements with Ontario’s medical schools, NDP, PC, and Liberal governments have limited the number of medical school students so as to limit growth in the number of Ontario-trained physicians. At the same time, tall barriers have been put in the way of foreign-trained physicians, so that they cannot significantly increase the number of physicians available to serve Ontario’s sick and injured. In short, the government has tried to contain costs by rationing health care services. The result has been long waiting lines of sick and injured; delaying diagnostic measures so as to remain wilfully blind of the need immediately to provide expensive health care services; and focussing on keeping the healthy well, which is of no help to those who are already sick or injured.

“A Freedom government will eliminate the Progressive Conservatives’ 1969 ban on alternatives to OHIP”, says McKeever. “Those who want to have OHIP coverage will continue to have that option. It will continue to be illegal for OHIP to deny anyone coverage at the same affordable cost as everyone else. However, those who want to pay for a plan offered by the private sector – for example, a low-cost plan that covers only very serious injuries or illnesses – will be free to buy that plan instead. Those who choose not to have any coverage will be free to pay for health care services as and when they receive them.

“With multiple payors, limiting the number of medical mouths to feed will no longer be necessary or desirable. Physicians will be free to accept payments from all payors, public and private. As the number of physicians is increased, the increased supply of physicians will drive down prices where many physicians are competing for patients. Competition will also encourage physicians to seek-out patients in currently under-serviced parts of the province.

“At present, medical schools are paid directly by the province. Increasing the number of students does not increase the amount paid by the province, so there is little incentive for medical schools to increase their enrolments. In effect, the province thereby caps the number of physicians. A Freedom government will tie already-existing provincial payments to students on a per-student basis, not to schools. Medical schools seeking to obtain the same amount of money from the government will have to double their current enrolment.

“A portion of the per-student money will be allocated to the student’s tuition, in the form of a conditional grant. It takes approximately 7 years to train a physician in this province. Accordingly, new physicians will have to serve Ontario patients for at least seven years before moving to another jurisdiction. For those who do not serve patients in Ontario for at least seven years, the grant portion of the per-student amount will become a debt owing by the physician, repayable in full.

“My take-home message for university students: if a Freedom government is elected, your chances of becoming a doctor will be doubled, so write the MCAT this year and apply to begin medical school in 2013. My take-home message for Ontarians: if elected, a Freedom government will ensure that access to timely and affordable health care will be greatly improved.”

For further details, contact:
Paul McKeever, Leader – Freedom Party of Ontario
e-mail: pmckeever@freedomparty.on.ca

September 26, 2011 Toronto – Freedom Party leader Paul McKeever will face off against Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty in blogger Zach Bussey’s “Sexiest Election Candidate” poll. By 12:01 AM on September 26, voters had preferred McKeever over former Sault Ste. Marie Liberal MPP David Orazietti, leaving McKeever and McGuinty as one of four pairs of men left competing in round 3 of the entertaining online poll. Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak lost to Liberal Energy Minister Brad Duguid in round 1. Duguid lost to Liberal Karl Walsh in Round 2.

“I think this sort of poll has the potential to increase awareness that an election is underway”, says Freedom Party leader, Paul McKeever. “And, at a time when Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives are rightly regarded as nothing more than Liberals in blue, if this fun little poll helps voters to understand that voting Freedom is the only effective alternative to the McGuinty Liberals, that’s a good thing. Let’s face it: Freedom is sexy.”

Round 3 pits voters in the riding of Elgin-Middlesex-London (McKeever’s riding) against voters in the riding of Ottawa South (McGuinty’s riding). “Elgin-Middlesex-London is ready for the challenge”, says McKeever.

For further details, contact:

Paul McKeever, Leader – Freedom Party of Ontario
e-mail: pmckeever@freedomparty.on.ca

Freedom Party’s election platform can be viewed here.
An iPhone/iPod compatible Audiobook version of the platform can be down loaded here.
Freedom Party’s 12 television advertisements all can be viewed here.

It is fully expected that, if Orazietti wins round two, McGuinty will have an easy win in round three, being the Liberal party leader. However, if those opposed to a McGuinty win vote for McKeever in round 2 and 3, McGuinty can be denied the title of Ontario’s sexiest candidate.

So, whether you’re a Freedom Party supporter, or a PC supporter, or a Green or NDP supporter, get out and vote for McKeever in round 2 and 3! Just go here: http://swingcatproductions.com/blog/ontarios-sexiest-election-candidate-2011/ and scroll down to cast your vote. The system allows everyone to vote again every few minutes, so vote early, and vote often!

Note: PC leader Tim Hudak is no longer in the race, and NDP leader Andrea Horwath is competing only with other women in the contest.

September 25, 2011 Toronto – Freedom Party leader Paul announced that, if a Freedom government is elected on October 6, 2011, the planned November resumption of Islamic prayer services at Toronto’s Valley Park Middle School will be canceled. Freedom Party’s 2011 election plank promises to separate organized religious practice from Ontario’s secular public school system.

“Protests over Valley Park Middle School’s prayer services have been ignored by Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals and Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives”, says Freedom Party leader, Paul McKeever. “Both Dalton McGuinty and Tim Hudak have refused to do anything about this improper use of our public schools, saying it is up to the Toronto District School Board. And, in the case of Tim Hudak, it has become apparent that he actually wants to turn some of our public schools into taxpayer funded religious public schools, so we will not see Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives taking steps to shut down these prayer services.”

“To everyone in Ontario who is concerned about what is happening to our public schools in the name of alleged religious accommodation, to the TDSB, and to the Principle of Valley Park Middle School, I make this promise. If elected on October 6, a Freedom government will take immediate steps to ensure that organized prayer services are no longer carried out in Ontario public schools. Dalton McGuinty’s new prayer-in-public-schools policy will not be permitted to spread to the rest of the public school system across this great province. The Valley Park Middle School plan to resume prayer sessions in November will be canceled immediately after a Freedom government is elected.

“In the meantime, I am calling upon those who have been protesting outside the TDSB or who plan to protest outside of the school to stop doing so and, instead, to focus on getting out the vote for Freedom. There are Freedom Party candidates running in 23 of Toronto’s 24 ridings, and in 57 ridings across Ontario. Simply placing an X in the circle next to your Freedom Party candidate’s name on the ballot is the most effective way of taking charge and putting an end to organized religious practice in Ontario’s public schools.”

One of the 12 Freedom Party election commercials currently airing on television, around the clock, is the party’s commercial on prayer in our public schools. It can be viewed on Freedom Party’s youtube channel, here.

For further details, contact:

Paul McKeever, Leader – Freedom Party of Ontario
e-mail: pmckeever@freedomparty.on.ca

Freedom Party’s election platform can be viewed here.
An iPhone/iPod compatible Audiobook version of the platform can be down loaded here.
Freedom Party’s 12 television advertisements all can be viewed here.

Have you ever been asked something to the effect: “Sounds great that FP is going to cut all these taxes, but what services are you correspondingly going to slash? What’s your hidden agenda?”

How would you address that?

Secondly, any general advice (other than stick to the planks) when it comes to doing interviews with media etc? What to avoid, emphasize, etc.?

I’ve had some amazingly positive responses from people re: FP. Even the partisan PC guy cleaning his gun was keen and interested in FP.

I replied as follows:

Hi [Candidate]:

Re: tax “cuts”, there are two parts to the answer. First, the three taxes we are proposing to eliminate bring in only a small percentage of the province’s total ($109B) revenue: the beer tax brings in about 1/4 of a billion, the gasoline tax brings in about $1B, and the Health Premium brings in about $3B. There are costs associated with collecting each of those taxes: people who process forms, payments, inspections, enforcement, collections, etc.. In all likelihood – we don’t have the figures – the amounts paid to enforce the the Beer Tax are a considerable percentage of the amount brought in by the beer tax: in other words, to a considerable extent, it’s just a make-work project.

Second, providing choice in health care would remove a substantial part of health care costs from the public purse, because some people would cease to use OHIP to pay for their health care. Health care currently consumes over 65 cents of every ONTARIO tax dollar (but not over 65% of total revenues, because the federal government gives the province a considerable chunk of federal cash). We cannot know the number of people who would opt-out of OHIP, so the savings cannot be known for sure, but in Germany, approximately 30% use private insurance instead of burdening the state health insurance system.

When it comes to health care, one of the key things to emphasize is: the government-created doctor shortage. We have a shortage for two reasons. First, beginning in 1993, to limit health care expenditures, the government imposed (and continues to impose) limits on the number of doctors by imposing a limit on medical school enrollments, and making it almost impossible for most foreign-trained doctors to practise in the province. Second, many of those enrolled in Canadian med schools will leave the country, because – to limit health care expenditures – the government places a wide variety of limits upon how much it will pay physicians for the work they provide (the situation was so bad that McGuinty imposed the $3B health premium for the sole reason of giving doctors a raise). In other words, in a failing attempt to contain the government’s health care expenditures, the government decided it would decrease the number of mouths (i.e., doctors) it had to feed. The result, of course, is that health care services are rationed: people have to wait, often suffering or dying while they wait, because the government limits the available number of doctors (and therefore limits the amount of health care service available at any one time).

Because Freedom Party would allow choice in payment options (OHIP, private insurance, or pay-as-you go), there would be no reason to limit the number of doctors. To the contrary, a Freedom government would want as many people training to be doctors as possible. There is no shortage of intelligent university students who want to train to be physicians. So one of the most important differences people would see with a Freedom government is this: the doors to medical schools would be opened full throttle. We want a dramatic increase in the number of medical school students and – as soon as those extra students finish their training – a dramatic increase in the number of doctors. That will have the effect of ensuring that patients have doctors – their own doctors, who know them and monitor their condition over time, rather than a drop-in clinic – and that they get the health care they need and want, when they need and want it.

When speaking about what our platform offers, it is best to mention aspects of one or two of the big-issue planks (e.g., increasing med school enrollments; instituting electricity based on getting clean energy at the lowest price instead of energy policy based on fighting climate change) in balance with some of the smaller, more easily understood changes we are proposing. Among the smaller changes: mention also a number of the tax eliminations (eliminate the beer tax [up to $5.76 off of a case of 24 beer] and the gasoline tax [which will knock 16.6 cents per litre off of the price at the pump]). Depending upon the interests of the audience, you might also mention our pro-democracy/anti-theocracy planks (e.g., no organized religious practice in our public schools, no having prayers to Allah and numerous other gods as part of the official opening of the Legislature), our anti-nanny-state planks (eliminating the light bulb ban/pesticide ban), or our other automobile planks (e.g., raising the speed limit to 120 km/h on our 400-series highways).

Avoid speculation about other matters that do not appear in our platform. You can tell the media the simple truth: that we have identified our priorities for improvements to the governance of Ontario over the next four years, and they are the priorities set out in our 18-plank platform. If something is not in the platform, we have no plan to change the status quo on that something. However, a Freedom government will of course respond to unexpected situations as they emerge, committed strictly to rational responses at every turn, rather than making irrational decisions based on fear and ignorance, or the popularity of a bad idea.

Finally: as a general rule, it’s probably best for a politician to leave a man to himself when he’s cleaning his gun. Just sayin’.

Regards,

Paul

September 18, 2011 Toronto – Freedom Party leader and No Tax for Pan Am Spokesperson Paul McKeever is condemning PC Leader Tim Hudak for his too-little-too-late open letter of September 18, 2011 to Dalton McGuinty concerning cost over-runs in Toronto’s hosting of the 2015 Pan Am Games. Freedom Party formed a No Tax for Pan Am Games committee on August 24, 2009 to oppose taxpayer funding for Toronto’s bid to host the games, and has continued to oppose and document cost over-runs on its notaxforpanam.com web site.  Until today, Hudak and the PCs have been utterly silent, and have offered up no defence of the taxpayer with respect to the 2015 Pan Am Games.

In the summer of 2009, McKeever and the committee managed to spark opposition to taxpayer funding for the games both in print and radio media.  Noticeably silent throughout was any opposition by Her Majesty’s loyal opposition, the Tim Hudak PCs.  Freedom Party has, in the past, condemned Tim Hudak’s neglect on the Pan Am file, arguing that the PCs dropped the ball when strong opposition was needed to the Liberal government’s agreement to make taxpayers the guarantor for cost over-runs of the Toronto games.  McKeever has predicted that the original $1.7B estimate for the games will result in a bill as high has $11.6B, based upon the size of over-runs from other international games events, such as the 2010 Olympics.

“I have one question for Tim Hudak and the PCs”, says an outraged McKeever “Where the heck have you been?  At every key point in this scandalous Liberal plan to soak the taxpayer, the Hudak PCs have utterly dropped the ball and remained silent.  Until today – almost two years after Toronto won the bid – Tim Hudak has been silently sitting and sleeping on the bench while the Liberal government has continued to allow the taxpayer to be body-slammed with cost over-runs.  Now, falling behind in the polls, Hudak suddenly wakes up and thinks he sees an election issue.  Well, it is an election issue – a big one – but Hudak’s PCs, by their neglect, actually have been co-conspirators in the Liberal Pan-Am Panhandling Scam.  An after-the-fact letter from Mr. Hudak, complaining now about long foreseeable cost overruns is, in this case, worse than hypocritical.

“Mr. Hudak, in his letter, state that ‘Warning signs of problems came earlier this month…”  Earlier this month?  The signs were all over this project since well before Toronto won the bid, years ago.  If Mr. Hudak has failed to see where this was all going until just last month, the Ontario voter should be very concerned that Mr. Hudak lacks sufficient knowledge and foresight to make long term decisions regarding the future fiscal health of this province.

“This growing Pan Am scandal is proof positive that it is time to show the McGuinty Liberals the exit door.  However, the gross fiscal negligence of the Hudak PCs, in failing to oppose taxpayer funding for the Toronto bid, renders the Hudak PCs unfit to be the chosen replacement.”

February 10, 2011 – Ontario Needs a 2015 Pan Am Games Lotto Now: Click here to read the full media release.

February 10, 2011 – Radio Interview: Paul McKeever, leader, Freedom Party of Ontario (John Oakley Show, AM640, Toronto – February 10, 2011).

February 1, 2011 - Pan Am Panhandling Must End: Click here to read the full media release.

March 10, 2010 – Paul McKeever’s blog: Toronto’s 2015 Pan Am Games to Cost Taxpayers $11.6B?

March 10, 2010 - Radio Interview: Paul McKeever, Spokesperson for No Tax for Pan Am Games (Ryan Doyle Show, CFRB 1010 AM, Toronto)

March 10, 2010 – Radio Interview: Paul McKeever, Spokesperson for No Tax for Pan Am Games (John Oakley Show, AM 640 AM – March 10, 2010)

October 23, 2009: “Cancellation of Tax-Funding for Pan Am Now a Pressing and Obvious Necessity”: Click here to read the full media release.

August 26, 2009: Radio Interview Re: No Tax for Pan Am Campaign: Paul McKeever, Spokesperson (Talk 820 AM, Hamilton)

August 25, 2009: ‘Splinter’ group campaigns to halt Pan Am funds (Hamilton Spectator) – Click here to read.

For further details, contact:

Paul McKeever, Leader – Freedom Party of Ontario
e-mail: pmckeever@freedomparty.on.ca

September 15, 2011 Toronto – Nominations closed at 2 PM today in Ontario’s provincial election and, for the first time, the Freedom Party of Ontario is running candidates in enough ridings to form a majority government.  Ontario has 107 ridings.  Fifty-four (54) MPPs are required to form a majority government.  Freedom Party has nominated candidates in at least 56 ridings.  Freedom Party is running candidates in all 24 Toronto ridings, giving it a full slate in the province’s most vote-rich region.

“Today marks the beginning of a new era for Ontario voters” says Freedom Party leader, Paul McKeever.  “Ontario voters can now vote for Freedom candidates with the full confidence that Freedom Party is one of the five parties capable of forming a majority government in Ontario.

“The implications are huge.  The alternative to Ontario’s red Liberals is no longer Ontario’s blue Liberals, the disappointing Hudak Progressive Conservatives.  Now, a real alternative to Dalton McGuinty’s style of governance is within the grasp of the voter. 

“Voters who want to be able to buy wine or beer in convenience or grocery stores now need only vote for their Freedom candidate to make it a reality.  By voting for their Freedom candidate, Ontario voters can now vote for fair auto insurance; for one hundred and twenty (120) km/h speed limits on Ontario’s 400-series highways; for the elimination of the health premium, the gasoline tax, and the hidden beer and wine taxes; and for electricity policies that make low prices the priority, instead of fighting climate change at taxpayer expense with expensive wind turbines, solar panels, and nuclear stations.  For the first time since 1990, Ontario can vote to eliminate the Liberal/PC/NDP government limit on medical school enrolments and to make doctor shortages a thing of the past. 

“So far, this election has lacked any particular defining issue.  Now, with Freedom Party in a position to form the next government, Freedom Party’s refreshing ideas become tangible possibilities for Ontario, and the stuff of serious election discussion.”

[September 16, 2011 - UPDATE: Freedom Party received official notification from Elections Ontario on September 16, 2011 concerning the final status of nominations. One of its 24 Toronto candidates was unable to complete the nomination process by the 2PM deadline. Nonetheless, Freedom Party has 57 nominated and endorsed candidates (not 56)] running in this election.

For further details, contact:

Paul McKeever, Leader – Freedom Party of Ontario
e-mail: pmckeever@freedomparty.on.ca

As a scientist-in-training, I applaud your party’s commitment to reason and in particular your suggestions to separate religious practice from schooling. However, I take issue with your party’s stance on pesticides.

There are two problems I have with this. The first is that it’s one thing to let people expose themselves to whatever toxic substance they wish, but nobody has a solid wall around their property that blocks windborn movement of pesticides, or insects (whose good health is important to birds, pollination services, and many small mammals). Consider it like having a neighbour blaring loud music at all hours of the day: their right to play loud music doesn’t override your right to be able to enjoy your property (including having a good night’s sleep).

The second I have is an issue of onus. While you argue that it is irrational to ban something that hasn’t been proven to be unsafe, I would argue the opposite: the onus is on government to regulate items that are not necessary (and really, a green lawn is not particularly necessary to one’s survival, ability to hold down a job, or have a family) that cannot be proven to be safe and impact everyone around them. Think of it like recreational drugs: I think it’s any one person’s (of age) choice to take recreational substances, but I don’t think people have the right to smoke indoors at their workplace where other people are forced to also consume that drug.

Toxicology is an immensely complicated science (and I’m appalled at the difficulties researchers in that field have with obtaining funding). And the tricky part about it is that testing on pregnant women or small children is unethical. But I think just because something hasn’t been proven to be safe, doesn’t mean it is. And we need to balance the benefits that item brings us versus the potential costs–I don’t think a green lawn is really more important than our health.

Anyway, I’m happy to hear what you think!

I replied as follows.

Hi K:

Thanks for writing.

The key sentence in your letter is this one: “But I think just because something hasn’t been proven to be safe, doesn’t mean it is”. I agree with you, but the point is: nothing can be proven to be safe.

Things can only be proven to be harmful. And, until there is evidence that something is harmful, fines and imprisonment are not warranted.

A rational government does not spend any time or money defending against a harm that is not yet detected. There is, in fact, an infinity of such undetected harms. As one example, we do not know that an alien race of aggressors is not heading to earth to destroy us. But it would be irrational for governments to spend time and money setting up defence systems to protect us from space aliens. I’m not mocking your position on pesticides. I’m just trying to demonstrate that the principle upon which your opposition to the pesticides in question is based – the precautionary principle – is not a rational basis for governing (or for living, for that matter). When there is evidence that your neighbour’s use of lawn care products is harming your health, that is when fines or imprisonment might be an acceptable consideration. Not until.

Think of it in terms of scientific research. It is irrational – and unscientific – to pluck an assertion out of thin air (e.g., drinking water and eating Italian sausage causes thoughts of a trip to Tahiti), and then conduct experiments to prove or disprove the assertion. Instead, scientists start with knowledge – things they already know; things for which there is already evidence – and make inferences based upon the things that are already known/proven. So it is with governance.

Regards,

Paul

=========

Paul McKeever, B.Sc.(Hons), M.A., LL.B.
Leader, Freedom Party of Ontario

The truth of the matter is that government is an organization that does not create wealth. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing: the same is true of all law enforcement, including the military, the judiciary, etc.. My point is that none of those organizations performs the role of creating wealth. A government primarily stops people from doing things…preferably, only from doing bad things. Specifically, a government, when it is doing its job well, prevents anyone from taking your life, your liberty, or your property without your consent.

In truth, government is capable only of decreasing the number of jobs that people create: it is capable of job destruction. Government can destroy jobs in either of two ways: using its influence when it shouldn’t, or failing to use its influence when it should. In other words: governmental errors and omissions destroy jobs.

Government errors include (but are not necessarily limited to):

• preventing some people from competing with others (e.g., monopolies, licences, professional guilds, closed-shop unions, limits on school enrolments)
• taking from producers some of the wealth they create (e.g., taxes and fees)
• forcing people to follow irrational rules concerning the production or delivery of goods/services (e.g., regulations based on the precautionary principle)

A purely hypothetical example: Imagine there is a shortage of electricity, such that there is a market for more power generation (that is not currently the case in Ontario, but it will be once our current facilities wear out). The government outlaws any form of power generation that uses coal as fuel, because coal is unpopular and unpopular things prevent elections and re-elections. The government taxes the population, and gives one company the tax revenues so that the company can afford to build trendy wind turbines that cannot produce electricity at a profit. The government also passes laws requiring people to buy wind-generated electricity at very high (higher than market) prices.

Had those taxes not been collected, and had the government not arranged for wind turbines to be built, and had the law not prohibited people from building, for example, a coal gasification plant (which has exceptionally clean exhaust), then – if the coal gasification plant could have sold inexpensive electricity at a profit the jobs that were created in building wind turbines would instead be jobs created in building and operating a coal gasification plant. In other words, the government did not, by paying for wind turbines, create jobs that would not otherwise have been created.

Had the government not erroneously backed wind and shunned competitors, people would have been able to spend less on electricity, and more on goods and services. With the government’s wind project, fewer goods and services will be purchased. Fewer purchases means there will be less demand for employees to make those goods and provide those services. There will be fewer jobs in the provision of those goods and services.

Imagine, also, that a school teacher gets on the radio and says children at her school arrive happy, and leave feeling sick, or tired, or blue. Not willing to think that maybe that has something to do with how the children are being taught, she assumes that the school’s wireless router is emitting radiation that is making the children ill (and it’s also making bored little Jimmy put gum in Sally’s hair). The public are frightened. No, it’s not that there is any science to prove that wireless routers turn happy healthy children into sickened, mischievous people. It’s that “we just don’t know that the radiation is not causing children to get sick and to misbehave”. In the absence of knowledge, the government passes workplace legislation requiring the turbine company to provide all of their workers with special $2,000 suits that prevent wifi radiation from hitting their bodies (there’s no demand for such suits in the market, so the government subsidizes a company to make them). There are 200 employees, so that is going to cost the turbine company a cool $400,000.00. The company will now have to raise its prices (such that energy consumers will have less left-over money to buy other goods/services), or pay its workers less (leaving those employees with less money to buy goods/services), or lay off some workers. All three options involve a decrease in employment.

The law gives unions a monopoly on the provision of labour. The turbine workers form a union and go on strike for higher wages. The turbine company is prohibited, by law, from hiring non-union employees who are willing to do the work for less. While on strike, the worker’s aren’t being paid (in effect, they lack a job). The strike, and the law against hiring non-union employees, in effect means temporarily job losses and a temporary bar against employment. The company agrees to pay more. It then either hikes electricity prices, or reduces its work force. See above for how that decreases other employment in the provision of other goods/services.

I could go on and on with the ramifications, but you get the picture. Government cannot create jobs. At best, its errors in the use of government force can merely have the effect of picking winners and losers. At worst, it can destroy jobs.

Government omissions include (but are not necessarily limited to):

• failing to police violations of individual’s property rights (e.g., failing to prevent/punish trespass on land, copyright violations, theft, vandalism, etc).
• failing to defend individuals’ liberty (e.g., failing to clear the way for vehicles or individuals who are trying to enter a workplace to work, when they are being occluded by protestors; imposing laws that punish people for engaging in the peaceful trade of goods or services even when such trade, goods, or services do not involve the violation of a person’s life, liberty, or property)

A purely hypothetical example: A band of thugs begin terrorizing a suburb. They burn down or vandalize houses. At gunpoint, they force people in the neighbourhood to pay “tolls” to drive out of their driveways and onto the road. Back at thug headquarters, they make knock-offs of popular blu-ray movie disks, which they then sell at 20% of the cost of the real thing. They do mandatory “pat-downs” on women who venture out of their houses. The police do nothing about any of this.

The houses in the neighbourhood become worthless: nobody can sell them, so there is no need for moving trucks, classified ads, real estate agents, etc.. The population is afraid to go to and from work: after a few late arrivals or no-shows, they lose their jobs.

The thugs become quite successful at their knock-off business. The movie company cannot make any money on its movie because nobody is buying its disks. The movie company goes out of business. The artists have no work. The *legitimate* disc manufacturer lays everyone off and eventually has to close. The truckers who took those disks to video stores are no longer needed. The video stores – unable to get people to buy their disks at 500% of the cost of that charged by the thugs – lay everyone off and likewise go out of business. All of those people – the artists, the disc manufacturers, the truckers, the video store employees – have no money with which to buy goods or services. Other goods and services providers sell less, make less…and hire less.

The Answer: Govern Correctly

The government can stop causing job losses by governing correctly. Specifically, it can lower taxes, it can eliminate monopolies and special advantages that it grants to some players and not to others. It can also do a better job of recognizing and protect property rights.

Some of these improvements to governance can be seen in Freedom Party of Ontario’s 2011 election platform. As examples:

• The government can lower taxes (e.g., the health premium, the beer tax, the gasoline tax) so that people have more money to spend on jobs-creating goods and services;
• The government can make price and free market competition – rather than fighting global warming with subsidies to business and Green Energy Act fiascos – top priority in the provision of clean electricity, so that people have more money to spend on jobs-creating goods and services;
• The government can eliminate subsidies and monopolies (e.g., the LCBO/Beer Store monopoly) so that prices can come down, so that jobs in competing businesses can be created, and so that people can have more money to spend on jobs-creating goods and services;
• The government can do a better job of defending every individual’s property rights (e.g., by refusing to allow international political events like the G20 from being held in places like downtown Toronto, where the inevitable result will be vandalism (i.e., the violation of property rights, which devalues property), the shutting down of businesses (which negatively impacts employment, and traffic congestion (which, similarly, has a negative impact on employment).

If you want to say that such improvements to governance “creates jobs”, that’s fine for electoral purposes, but it is technically incorrect, and an inversion of the truth. As difficult as it may be for people to understand or believe, the truth is that such improvements are simply ways for the government to stop killing jobs.

September 7, 2011 Toronto – Freedom Party of Ontario today released its 2011 election platform as an iTunes audiobook.  The party is breaking new ground with its bid to bring a political platform to a population that has less time to read, and more time to listen. 

“This may be the first time ever, anywhere, that a political party has offered its election platform in iTunes audiobook format”, says Freedom Party of Ontario leader, Paul McKeever.  “Political platforms are read by a dwindling number of voters.  However, in my view, there is not a dwindling interest in politics.  There is simply a decrease in the amount of time available to use ones eyes to read.  Commuting is increasingly common in Ontario, and the need to keep ones eyes on the road for longer and longer periods of time has made it infeasible for a growing percentage of people to sit down and read a 30 to 60 page election platform.  By releasing Freedom Party’s 2011 Election Platform in audiobook format – as well as in writing online – voters will gain convenient access to a platform worth voting for, one plank at a time, one chapter at a time.” 

The Freedom Party election platform is comprised of 18 planks, and the election platform audiobook dedicates a separate chapter to each plank.  Freedom Party’s election platform can be downloaded here: http://www.freedomparty.on.ca/platform.m4b

For further details, contact:

Paul McKeever, Leader – Freedom Party of Ontario
e-mail: pmckeever@freedomparty.on.ca

September 7, 2011 Toronto – Ontario’s election writ will be dropped today, and Freedom Party of Ontario is targeting like-minded voters with an edgy TV election commercial campaign on the popular new SunTV news channel. 

“On radio and TV, political commentators are expressing concern that Ontario’s Hudak PCs are running on a platform substantively indistinguishable from that of the McGuinty Liberals”, says Freedom Party leader Paul McKeever.  “Liberal-Tory, same old story.  However, for the first time in our party’s history, the Freedom Party is running enough candidates to form the next government of Ontario.  Our ads will show Ontario voters that Freedom Party is the one party willing to deliver the changes that they have been demanding for years, but that neither the Liberals, nor the Progressive Conservatives, nor the NDP are willing to deliver upon.”

The Freedom Party’s commercials pull no punches. The first volley of commercials, aired this week, deal frankly and boldly with the changes that Ontario voters are demanding, including:
 

• Affordable Electricity (Clean, inexpensive electricity, not fighting climate change)
• Scrapping McGuinty’s Health Premium
• Eliminating Ontario’s 14.7 cent/litre gasoline tax
• Beer & Wine in Convenience and Grocery Stores
• Eliminating the current system of multiple prayers in Official Legislative Proceedings
• Separating PUBLIC Schools and Organized Religious Practice
• Increasing the Speed Limit to 120 km/h on Ontario’s 400-series Highways
• Fair Auto Insurance (ending the no-fault experiment: only at-fault driver pays)
• Canceling McGuinty’s 2012 Ban on Incandescent Light Bulbs; and
• Ending McGuinty’s Pesticide Ban

The commercials will begin airing on September 7, 2011 on SunTV’s 6:00AM to 5:00PM news rotation, as well as on Ezra Levant’s “The Source”, Michael Coren’s “The Arena”, and Brian Lilley’s “Byline”.

 
For further details, contact:

Paul McKeever, Leader – Freedom Party of Ontario
e-mail: pmckeever@freedomparty.on.ca

Mary Lou Ambrogio (photo) is the Freedom Party of Ontario’s candidate in London North Centre.  Mary Lou is a former President for federal conservatives’ constituency association in London West.  She was the federal Conservatives’ candidate in London-Fanshawe in 2008.  Most noteworthy is the fact that she was the campaign manager for the provincial Progressive Conservatives’ London North Centre candidate in the Ontario provincial election of 2007.  “Frankly”, explains Ms Ambrogio, “the Progressive Conservatives have sunken to the point of mimicking the provincial Liberals in everything except party name and party colours.  The McGuinty Liberals have to go, it’s true.  But Ontario cannot afford to replace the McGuinty Liberals with Tim Hudak liberals in blue cloth”.

Tim Hodges (photo) is the Freedom Party of Ontario’s candidate in London West.  A long-time supporter of the federal Conservatives and, formerly, of the provincial Progressive Conservatives, he has been taking the Freedom Party’s message of lower taxes and common sense election planks to London West doorsteps for months.  “What I’m hearing”, says Tim, “is that people are not looking for Liberals in Progressive Conservative clothing.  When I tell them about the Freedom Party’s election planks – like affordable electricity, eliminating the gasoline tax, and allowing people to buy wine and beer in grocery and convenience stores – I get a very warm welcome.  One lady was literally visibly shaking with excitement at the news that our promise to eliminate the gasoline tax would take 16.6 cents per litre off of the price at the pump, taking into account also the HST that is charged on the gasoline tax”.

Dave Durnin (photo) is the Freedom Party’s London-Fanshawe candidate.  “The Freedom Party continues to take a responsible stand on the big issues like electricity prices, education, and health care”, explains Dave.  “But we are also offering a considerable variety of fixes to several of the smaller problems that only the Freedom Party is willing to fix, such as eliminating Dalton McGuinty’s ban on Health Canada-approved pesticides, and eliminating the hidden beer tax, which would reduce the price of 24 beer by as much as $5.76.”

Freedom Party leader Paul McKeever (photo) is the party’s candidate in Elgin-Middlesex-London.  Former Liberal Speaker of the House Steve Peters has decided against running again in this election.  The 15 year employment lawyer is the principal author of the Freedom Party’s 18-plank election platform which promises, among other things, that a Freedom government would make price – rather than fighting climate change – priority one in electricity policy; that a Freedom government would make driving more convenient and affordable by eliminating the 14.7 cent/litre gasoline tax, allowing only at-fault drivers to suffer an insurance premium increase, and increasing the speed limit to 120 km/h on Ontario’s 400-series highways; that a Freedom government would allow beer and wine to be purchased in grocery and convenience stores, and eliminate the hidden beer and wine taxes introduced in 2010; that a Freedom government would eliminate organized religious practice in our public schools and legislature; etc..  “For the first time ever, the Freedom Party will be running candidates in so many ridings that it is capable of forming a majority government”, says McKeever.  “There is a great deal of disappointment with the fact that the Progressive Conservatives have devolved into being just a blue copy of the McGuinty Liberals.  But there is hope.  The Freedom Party is offering common sense solutions to the various problems facing Ontario that no other party is willing to address.  The time to vote Freedom is now.”

For further details, contact:

Paul McKeever, Leader – Freedom Party of Ontario
e-mail: pmckeever@freedomparty.on.ca