Bulletin Winter 2006

If libertarianism has saints, then on November 21 we lost a saint. We undeniably lost a hero: long-time Libertarian Kaye Sargent.

Kaye discovered us in the 1979 federal election (when we ran a 'paper candidate' in Oxford) and joined soon afterward. In the 1980 campaign, she decided that "it was my turn to do something," and stepped up as the candidate herself. The year after that, she formed the Oxford Libertarian Association (OLA) and ran in her first provincial campaign. Her drive and energy caught the attention of Party Chairman Bob Cumming, who encouraged her to serve on the provincial executive; she ran and won as Member-at-Large in 1981, on a platform of making us "more than just a Toronto party." To that end, she organized a booth at the Woodstock Fall fair in 1982, and a Libertarian float in the spring parade in 1983 - both became highly successful annual outreach events. She also organized and hosted our 1982 Convention in Woodstock, at which she was elected Vice-Chairman.

At the 1985 Convention, Kaye narrowly defeated Jim McIntosh for Party Leader, making history as the first woman leader of a registered political party in Ontario. She led us in the 1987 campaign, ran in a 1986 by-election, spoke at numerous events throughout the province, continued her role in the OLA, and even found time for a regular Bulletin column. She kept up that pace through the 1988 Convention, when she lost another hard-fought contest, this time against three contenders.

An anecdote from that Convention speaks volumes about Kaye's character. She and I were in the habit of greeting each other with a kiss on the cheek. However, as a leadership candidate, I had planned to avoid the other candidates, including Kaye, until the debate. My plan held good for perhaps ten minutes; as soon as she saw me, Kaye marched over and demanded: "Well, George; where's my kiss?" Which shows her priorities: She always put people above politics (as many of her political opponents have graciously acknowledged). For Kaye, politics was important only for the sake of libertarianism, and libertarianism only for the sake of people and their relationships; she was always clear on what was more important.

Which is why, after her loss, Kaye stayed as active as ever. She accepted a position on the party Ethics Committee, and transferred her leadership skills back to the OLA. New outreach initiatives, a newsletter and library, were launched; existing ones, like the fair booth and parade, were continued and expanded. Most importantly, Kaye continued to run in every federal and provincial election - always with her husband Cliff beside her, cheerfully serving as her chauffeur. (Kaye never drove.) She gradually built an impressive public profile; the media began calling her for comment on all sorts of political issues. Kaye was seldom if ever at a loss for comment.

Kaye also found time to organize and host the Party's 1991 and 1994 Annual Meetings in Woodstock. At the latter, she was awarded the Marilee Haylock Award "for long-term commitment to the Ontario Libertarian Party and the cause of freedom."

Kaye rejoined the Party Executive as Deputy Leader in 1999, and has held that position since. She also continued as our 'perennial' candidate in Oxford; Cliff's death made it harder, but Kaye soldiered on. Her last campaign, in 2005, set another record: Kaye became the first and only Libertarian to have run in every federal and provincial campaign f(in which the Libertarians ran candidates) or more than 25-years.

It is only fitting to give Kaye the last word. While she wrote these words years ago about Ayn Rand, I find them equally applicable, today, to Kaye herself:

"She will top the list of one of the greatest losses in our society today. Hopefully, her works and philosophy will continue to flourish, and may the flame never be extinguished."

Milton Friedman 1912 - 2006

Milton Freidman described his political views as libertarian and considered himself a classical liberal. A few quotes from his extensive writing will illustrate this.

A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.

I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.

I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal.

Annual General Meeting—November 4, 2006

By Jim McIntosh

The Party’s Annual General Meeting was held at the Ramada Hotel Toronto Don Valley near highways 404 and 401 on Saturday November 4, 2006. George Dance chaired the meeting.

The meeting began with reports of Officers, several of whom provided written reports, included elsewhere in this newsletter. Kaye Sargent, Deputy Leader, was unable to attend in person, but gave her report by telephone.

The first speaker was Pierre Desrocher, Assistant Professor of geography at University of Toronto at Mississauga. He has written over 100 op-eds and columns in a variety of outlets, including the National Post and the Globe and Mail. He has also published dozens of articles in environmental and economics journals, and won the top environmental paper award by Britain's Emerald Management Reviews. Pierre is a fellow at the Montreal Economic Institute (www.iedm.org) and on the faculty of www.aBetterEarth.org.

The subject of his muti-media presentation was “The Environmental Responsibility of Firms is to Increase Profits.” Since the Industrial Revolution, firms have been looking for ways to improve their profits by finding uses for waste by-products. Pierre asks why ‘greedy’ business men would waste any resources. They would rather turn them into useful products. For example, slag is turned into building blocks and used in asphalt . Even Karl Marx recognized that waste was not profitable.

Pierre points out that property rights put legal pressure on polluters and motivates them to convert pollutants to an innocuous form. Unfortunately, today’s green program is like that of the USSR; less efficient, more polluting and causes greater environmental destruction. A market economy is ruthless on inefficient firms, while government subsidizes and promotes inefficiency.

According to a forest cover case study, “Global Chainsaw Massacre,” 90% of all deforestation occurred before 1950. Pierre reports that less developed countries use as much as 90% of wood cut from forests for fire (heating, cooking). In advanced economies forests are increasing, thanks to wood substitutes like plastic, to increased productivity from crop lands, to use of sawdust and other lumber waste in engineered lumber, and to increased yields from tree plantations.

Stefan Molyneux was our second speaker. Stefan is a prolific writer and blogger on liberty and libertarian philosophy. He has over two dozen articles published on www.lewrockwell.com and many more on his own web site – freedomain.blogspot.com. He has over 470 shows on his podcast site, www.freedomainradio.com. These Libertarian shows are downloaded over 70,000 times per month. Stefan has also written for Bulletin, and has even written several novels.

Continuing our theme, Stefan’s topic was “Protecting the Environment Without Government.” He noted that there have been a number of environmental alarms in the past, such as global cooling, acid rain, DDT (the banning of which is responsible for about 60 million deaths).

Many people believe that government can solve environmental problems, If this is true, then the more power a government has, the better the environment should be. Stefan believes the USSR demonstrates this is not so. In fact, government agencies tend to be the worst polluters.

British common law held that if you damage my property, you must make it right again. This motivated businesses to look for ways to reduce or eliminate pollution. It also motivated them to look to the state for protection or exemption from these law suits. They argued that many jobs would be lost (along with tax dollars) if they had to close the polluting factory.

Stefan pointed out that most homeowners want clean air and may be prepared to pay for it. He suggested that an organization he calls a DRO (for Dispute Resolution Organization, a lot like an insurance company) might be prepared to guarantee a certain level of air quality for a reasonable monthly fee or premium. If the air quality falls below the specified level for more than a certain period of time, the DRO would pay, suggests Stefan, one million dollars. The DRO now has an incentive to do whatever it can to ensure there is little air pollution. It would install air quality monitors. It might purchase land upwind and lease it to businesses that will not pollute, or that will install pollution control equipment. In the worst case, it could offer to install pollution control equipment in an offending factory.

Stefan admits he has no patent on the future. This is one possible way creative people might deal with the problem of pollution in the absence of the state. He also agrees this is a simplified model, and there would be many competing DROs that would cooperate for the benefit of their clients, much like cell phone companies do today.

The third presentation was a documentary video titled Charter Schools: Alberta’s Best-Kept Secret. In Alberta, charter schools are funded by the government so while not a libertarian solution, they do demonstrate the benefit of competition. The charter schools receive per-student funding, but are free to set their own curriculum and hire their own staff, including non-union teachers! They have complete freedom over how to spend their money. Facilities are provided by the local school board, usually abandoned schools in disrepair.

The documentary visited three different charter schools in Edmonton. One was an all girls school, and one specialized in science. They interviewed students, teachers and parents who all considered the charter schools a significant improvement over the normal schools. All had long waiting lists.

Unfortunately the DVD from bureaucrash.com, Crash-O-Vison 2004, was incompatible with our DVD player.

Next came elections. Members-at-Large serve for a term of one year. Philip Bender and George Graham were elected. They have no assigned duties but are expected to represent the members at the executive meetings.

The Ethics Committee consists of six members, two of whom are elected each year to serve for a term of three years. Peter Cuff and Jean Serge Brisson were elected in 2003 and their term expired with this meeting. Only one member, Robert Shapton, was elected in 2004. Jan Narveson and John Shaw were elected in 2005. As a result, there were three positions to be filled. Jean Serge Brisson, Alwyn Weiss and Zork Hun were elected. The one with the fewest votes is deemed to be the senior member with the shorter term. Since both Alwyn and Zork both received 11 votes (Jean Serge received 12) a second ballot determined that Zork was the senior member.

Vice Chairman’s Report – Heath Thomas

This last year has been both rewarding and challenging for our Party. Some of our highlights include:

While these are significant accomplishments, we also face many challenges in the year ahead as an organization:

Nonetheless, despite our current challenges and recent accomplishments, it is my sincere belief that the work of the last two to three years of the Executive will begin to finally bear fruit in small and big ways. One major initiative in the next year we believe will make a major difference is a ‘Candidate’s Toolkit’ that will help those running for office be effective candidates for our Party. Also, our re-designed website should increase interest and membership in the long run and more effectively spread the Libertarian message in Ontario.

I would like to conclude by saying I am looking forward to working with the new Executive and hope that the next year will be a prosperous one for the OLP. I would also like to thank the Executive for its efforts over the last year and it has been a pleasure serving with you.

Recording Secretary’s Report – Alan Mercer

The main responsibility of the recording secretary is to record and publish the minutes of Ontario Libertarian Party Executive meetings. I appreciate the opportunity this role has given me, and the chance it has given me to help promote the principles of the Libertarian Party, and how it has allowed me to meet some very positive and idealistic people. I would like to encourage other OLP members to run for Executive positions, or volunteer their time and skills to assist current members of the Executive, or to run as candidates.

As a member of the Executive, I have also been working on a list of local Riding Contacts which has been published on our website. At the moment, we have representatives for 29 ridings. I would like to ask members to please consider putting their names forward as contacts or representatives for their riding. This role simply involves helping new people get in touch with the LP locally in their area and helping with communication between existing members. I am hopeful that this may help the OLP to locate candidates for the next election.

Also, I drafted the current Ontario LP Environment policy which has now been published, and although I think it contains the basic ideas Libertarians need to put forward regarding the environment, I am sure there is room for suggestions and improvement.

In addition, as a member of the Executive, I have been managing press releases and acting as Communications Director for the OLP. First, I would like to say that we would like to make releases shorter and more frequent, and our goal is to respond to as many issues – events and legislation – as possible.

In conjunction with my other position as President of the federal LP, I am happy to report that it looks like I have found another volunteer in Ontario to help write press releases in addition to Jim McIntosh and Marty Gobin who are often very busy. (Marty ran for local office in Whitby by the way, and Soumen Deb ran in Toronto). Also, currently Toronto member Magda Hanebach is scheduled to appear this month on www.IChannel.ca to represent Libertarian Party positions, and I’m hopeful that Magda will be able to help us with the media in future. I would like to ask for more people to come forward to help in media communications.

I would like to especially acknowledge the hard work of volunteer Jean-Christophe Roux, (formerly a journalist in France), who has set up a second website (not the main one) that facilitates our collaborative effort in producing press releases. And I want to thank him for helping us write them, and for his contributions in developing a potentially very effective strategy of focusing on opposing the frequent and ever-growing government attacks on freedom and personal sovereignty, and on presenting the alternative view which people so desperately need to hear – the Libertarian view that supports self-ownership and property rights. Many will listen to us, because there are many who might understand, who are just like us - and we are just like them. We need to assert the principles of liberty, and to defend even the remaining freedoms that are being taken away from us, that are under threat as we speak, and then the words we express as a Party and as individuals become the words of resistance.

Treasurer’s Report – Jim McIntosh

As Treasurer I am responsible for managing the finances of the party. I deposit all donations and other funds in our bank account. The membership list and record of individual donations are maintained on a spread sheet. A new requirement this year is to report all contributions of over $100 (cumulative by person for the year) to Elections Ontario within 10 days of depositing them. These are then posted on their web site. I prepare and send out Official Tax Receipts to all our donors early in the new year.

The Executive approves the budget for regular expenses at the beginning of the year, and special expenses, such as for by-elections, on individual motions. Two members of the executive must sign every cheque issued. Elections Ontario requires a complete accounting for all income and expenses, including 15 supporting schedules, to be audited and submitted by May 31 of the following year. I use Quicken to record all deposits and expenses and to facilitate preparation of these reports. Our Financial Report for 2005 was submitted on time and approved by Elections Ontario.

My familiarity with Elections Ontario requirements helped me to serve as Official Agent (Treasurer) for Alan Mercer in the Scarborough-Rouge River By-election on November 24, 2005 and for Marty Gobin in the Whitby-Ajax By-election on March 30, 2006. I also served as Official Agent for 4 candidates in the Federal General Election on January 23, 2006, preparing and submitting the required Financial Reports (17 pages, over half do not apply to us) to Elections Canada. All were accepted and deposits were refunded.

I also was the Libertarian Candidate in the Parkdale-High Park provincial By-election on September 14, 2006, attending 4 All Candidates meetings and distributing 4500 pamphlets with help from several members.

As owner of the membership list, I added 65 new names on our mailing list and sent them inquiry packages. Seven have joined and five others have made a donation. Eighteen of these new names came from our Operation Politically Homeless booth at the Aurora Street Festival on June 4, 2005. Seven came from our Web Site.

I also use the membership list to address envelopes for mailing Bulletin. We published and mailed four issues of Bulletin to our mailing list of over 330 names (300-320 addresses).

Paolo and I attended the Tobacco Farmers’ Protest in Delhi in Late March were we distributed pamphlets. I also attended the Ontario Landowners meeting in Bethany on the “Clean Water” Act (Bill 43) in early June. Subsequently I helped to prepare a media release and (in late August) made a written submission to the Standing Committee on Social Policy with arguments against the Clean Water Act. I submitted an article to The Landowner Magazine encouraging landowners to support the Libertarian Party (published in the fall Bulletin).

Having some spare time as a retiree and some technical skills, I assumed responsibility for maintenance of Ontario Libertarian Party Web Site in August.

	2006	2005
Bank Balance	$18,948.36	$17,967.84
Contributions Year to Date	$3,721.00	$3,045.00
Expenses Year to Date	$5,794.04	$5,372.01

Remembering Kaye Sargent

Milton Friedman

Annual General Meeting

Vice-Chairman's Report

Recording Secretary’s Report

Treasurer’s Report