Bulletin Vol. 24 No. 2
Winter 2003
Doug Burn, Editor
Congratulations to our five dedicated Libertarians for spreading the word.
Davenport Nunzio Venuto 233 (0.9%)
Oxford Kaye Sargent 317 (0.7%)
Scarborough East Sam Apelbaum 280 (0.7%)
Simcoe-Grey Philip Bender 412 (0.8%)
Trinity-Spadina Judson Glober 753 (1.9%)
Well, we’ve overcome the ‘you couldn’t get your candidate elected dogcatcher’ hurdle on the political front. Jean-Serge Brisson, leader of the (soon to be re-registered) Libertarian Party of Canada, was elected to the Council of Russell Township in the Ontario municipal elections of November 10.
Readers may recall that he came close to winning in 2000 but his campaign was derailed when, a week before the election, Justice Jolicoeur sentenced him to 105 days in prison for non-payment of fines for driving without a seatbelt. This was no oversight on Brisson’s part. Brisson has refused on principle to wear a seatbelt and pay the related fines since the late 1980s.
Russell Township, for those of you unfamiliar with Eastern Ontario, with a population of 13,500 is located 30 minutes southeast of Ottawa and is comprised of the villages Russell, Embrun, Marionville and Limoges. Brisson runs a radiator shop in Embrun.
In a field of 10 candidates, Brisson came third with 1,639 votes (700 votes behind the first place finisher) to win one of the four positions on Council. It should be noted that former Councillor Michael McHugh was elected mayor with three less votes than Brisson.
Congratulations Jean-Serge!
Traffic on the website exploded during the recent provincial election campaign and remained well above year-earlier levels in the weeks following the election. There were over 15,000 unique visits to the site in September and in October over 10,000. Compare that to July/August when unique visits averaged about 1,400. Now the challenge is to provide content to maintain that interest.
While servicing existing members is one function of the page it is also one of the key ways to widen the group and I noted that interest from ‘new’ people also soared with the e-mail traffic going from an average of one or two per day in July/August to dozens and some days to over a hundred. Many of the enquiries were the obvious like ‘Hey there is nobody listed in my riding’, but there were also many enquiries about the libertarian view on various issues of the day.
The level of interest has tripled since the previous election campaign, perhaps because people are starting to realize just how little choice there is among the other parties. For me, the most significant development has been the level of interest in the weeks following the election – it didn’t (as in the past) drop off the cliff. Throughout the month of October there was still significantly higher traffic than in the same period last year.
They won’t continue to come, however, unless we can provide content. After all, a website is no more than a reflection of what is going on in an organization.
We are looking to build a Constituency Association (CA) in Peterborough. There used to be one here, but over the years it just some how faded away. However, with your help, that is about to change.
We are looking for any Libertarians that are interested in spending 2-3 hours a month on the Libertarian cause. If you think you would be interested, or just want more information, please give us a call.
We already have a few ideas of things we’d like to do. Check them out on the OLP web site at www.libertarian.on.ca/ptboca.htm. But we are definitely open for more suggestions. Even if you do not live in the Peterborough Area, but would like to join, please do so.
We look forward to rebuilding the Peterborough Constituency Association and with your help this will be a very easy task.
Contact me, Mike Yurick by calling 705.745.9958 or e-mail me at
It started at Peter Jaworski’s Summer Liberty Seminar. I was chatting with Kathy and Jamie Hamilton of Marmora, a small town east of Peterborough. They were active in politics and on the organizing committee for the Marmora Agricultural Fair. We agreed to run an Operation Politically Homeless both at the fair and John Shaw and Mary Lou Gutscher volunteered to help out over the three-day Labour Day weekend.
About 150 people took The World’s Smallest Political Quiz. 30 of them gave us their names and addresses to add to our mailing list. Not bad for three days work!
Our first challenge in operating the both was to engage passers-by. Our catch line was “A penny for your opinion” as we extended a box with a number of pennies in it. That usually caught their interest and we would point to a sign that asked, “Does the government do a good job?” Below it were four jars with labels MOST, SOME, SELDOM and RARELY. If they put a coin in MOST or SOME we would thank them and assume they were not potential libertarians. If they put the penny in SELDOM or RARELY we invited them to take the quiz.
Occasionally someone would say that we didn’t have his or her jar. In that case we pulled out a fifth jar with the label NEVER, smile and say, “Is this the jar you want?” No one asked for ALWAYS.
When they had completed the quiz, we would show them where they sat on the political map and ask if we could put a sticker there with their initials. We would explain how the map measured the two dimensions of economic freedom and civil liberty. If they were in or near the Libertarian region, we would invite them to fill in their contact information on the back of the quiz. As indicated, 30 did so. We gave them a Fraser Forum reprint of “Politically Homeless? Find Your Niche” by Karen Selik and our Party’s “Your Choice” brochure.
I have mailed out an inquiry package to all of these leads. At some point, we will call these people and invite them to some event in Marmora and find out how much interest they have in our ideas and activities. If there is enough interest, we may form a constituency association in the area.
If there is a fair in your area where we could run Operation Politically Homeless, let us know 3-4 months in advance.
The Ontario Libertarian Party Annual General Meeting was held on Saturday, November 1, 2003, at the Travelodge Toronto Yorkdale Hotel.
Party Leader Sam Apelbaum expressed his disappointment that we had only five candidates in the general election. He had hoped to find 20 willing candidates as this would have given us more exposure and attracted more libertarians to the Party. He asked us all to find new members and supporters for the Party. He also plans to encourage more local action and constituency associations.
Treasurer Jim McIntosh provided a financial report that showed contributions to the end of October totalled $7,050 and expenses (including the election) were $5,891, giving a surplus of $1,159. The bank balance at October 31 was $15,116. He noted that the party has signed up 18 new members so far this year, one of whom - Judson Glober - ran as a candidate in the election.
Web Master and Member At Large John Shaw reported a sharp rise in web site visits during and since the election (see his report in this issue). He also is looking for someone to find speakers and promote the monthly dinner meetings.
During the Candidates Panel Sam Apelbaum noted that he got good media attention during the election. Kaye Sargent, Deputy Leader and spark plug for our one existing Constituency Association, was very busy during the election with ten All-Candidate meetings. She gets a lot of good press and was well received at the high schools. Party Secretary Nunzio Venuto spent about 35 hours distributing a thousand pamphlets and attended three All-Candidate meetings where he focused on the “one size fits all” solutions offered by the other parties.
Adrian Mak, spokesperson for The False Memory Foundation, spoke on “The Menace of Rediscovered Memory.” His son falsely accused him of molestation. He explained how many basic principles of law have been modified in order to protect victims of sex crimes and as a result, have eroded the protection of the accused.
Following a buffet lunch, Party member Dr. Paddy McQuade, spoke on “Psycho-babble,” reinforcing Mak’s observations about false memories. Amazingly, he reported that Freud, the father of Psychoanalysis, admitted that most of his case studies supporting his theories were fictional!
The final activity of the AGM was the election of members to fill vacant positions on the Executive and Ethics Committees.
|
Your Executive
Committee
Leader
Deputy Leader Kaye Sargent
Chairman
Vice-Chairman Thomas Heath
Secretary
Recording Secretary Vacant
Treasurer
Campaign Director Vacant
Member at Large
Member at Large
|
Your Ethics
Committee Six members, two elected each year for a term of three years.
3 years
Jean Serge Brisson 2 years
Vacant 1 year Paddy McQuade Robert Shapton |
Greetings to my fellow Libertarians! I want to take this opportunity to introduce myself to you, to give you information on my background and explain my plans for the next year as vice chairman of the OLP.
I started in politics at the age of 19 when I became a member of the Ontario PC Youth at Scarborough College. My involvement with the PCs deepened in the provincial election of 1987 when I joined the party’s Scarborough Centre team as a full time volunteer going door to door for the local candidate, distributing leaflets and speaking to voters.
In 1989, I was elected policy chairman of the Toronto and District PC Youth, where I helped to develop some policy ideas. A year later, I became first vice president of the Toronto and District PC Youth in charge of organization. I eventually left active politics to pursue a career in business after graduating from UofT in 1993.
My transformation began when I began working in the real world.
You may be wondering how did I become a Libertarian considering my background in the PC Youth. My transformation began when I began working in the real world - paying taxes, dealing with the Government,
and watching people suffer financially and personally due to irresponsible and repressive government.
I gradually came to see that the solution to our political problems was to deal with the power of government. Unfortunately, conventional political parties exist solely for the pursuit of power, which is the natural enemy of liberty. They could no longer provide me with any real answers that would satisfy my desire to create a better nation. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that the only way out of our current malaise is liberty, that is, each person should be free to live their lives as they please with little or no interference from government or other people.
I was helped along to theses truths I hold dear thanks to several chance meetings with Sam Apelbaum between 1998 and 2000. I joined the OLP in 2003 and served as his campaign manager in the recent election where he asked me if I would join the party executive. I gladly accepted his invitation and here I am, your vice-chairman,
Initially, my main priority will be developing a viable youth wing of the Party. I also hope to make a contribution in the creation of viable riding associations, and helping the Party to grow organizationally and numerically.
I will need your help to achieve these goals and look forward to hearing from you over the next 12 months. If you wish to reach me, you can call me - Heath Thomas - at 416-542-2562 or e-mail me at libertymaximus(at)yahoo.com.
The just completed Ontario election was a mixed experience for me. Due to the resignation of our campaign director for health reasons, I had to take on the dual role of party leader and campaign director. The first two weeks of the election campaign were primarily spent dealing with disappearing candidates. There were moments when I felt like quitting. I persevered, however, and once I became resigned to the small number of candidates, I started having a good time.
I was pleased with the amount of media attention received both as party leader and candidate for my riding of Scarborough East, but much more publicity would have been garnered had we fielded more candidates. It was frustrating to receive media inquiries from ridings where we had no candidates and many opportunities were thereby missed.
The election outcome confirmed to me there is nothing to be gained by diluting our message for election purposes. We are doing the right thing by being the only political party in Ontario clearly and explicitly advocating the complete dismantling of the welfare state and all its manifestations. The public is not ready for our message at the moment, but at least we offer a clear choice for the future.
When all is said and done, the excitement and energy around the election campaign were rejuvenating and I feel encouraged to continue battling for the cause. The organizational weakness, however, diminished our credibility and left us fielding only five brave candidates. That is unacceptable. So much more would have been accomplished if we had a stronger political organization.
It now seems to me our growth as an effective political party has been stalled. It is time to make important changes to strengthen our party and grow it to a higher level. They are as follows:
1. Due to the small number of available activist libertarians, we have suffered from warm body syndrome whereby anyone capable of fogging a mirror and volunteering to be on the party executive has wound up there. From now on, only capable and committed people need apply. Better to work with a smaller executive than one in which non-performers bring down the standards. In this regard, I am delighted to welcome two excellent additions to our executive, namely our new Vice-Chairman, Heath Thomas, and Member-At-Large, Mike Yurick.
2. We must found a youth wing for the party - independent of the main party - to serve as a training ground for young people. In the past, warm body syndrome has caused us to immediately draw young volunteers into the main party where they soon lose interest and drift away. A youth wing would engage them in activities they enjoy while developing experience and leadership skills. Some, I expect, will want to become involved with the main party. In this regard, we must follow the proven experience of the successful mainstream political parties.
3. We must do all we can to encourage the formation of constituency associations, particularly outside the Toronto area. Finding and supporting election candidates is best done through functioning constituency associations. They would also serve as centres for libertarian activism in areas distant from Toronto where people could not otherwise participate.
4. Each of us must take responsibility for spreading the word and making others of like mind aware our party exists and that they have a home with us. In particular, we members of the party executive must become more sales oriented, that is, speaking up, taking advantage of opportunities to promote our party and not prejudging the reactions of others.
5. We need to completely review all our activities and decide whether each of them produces measurable benefits for our party. We should not be engaging in activities that do not meet that criterion.
I welcome your comments and suggestions.
Ontario politics have entered a new era: "The Age of the M’s." It began in October, when Dalton McGuinty won the premiership with a convincing 46.5% of the vote. A month later, David Miller took 43.5% of the vote to become mayor of Toronto. Finally, Paul Martin, with 94% of the vote, became federal Liberal leader and (eventually) Prime Minister.
A student of our politics could be forgiven for initially confusing the three. For one thing, they always seem to be cross-promoting - McGuinty and Martin phoning Miller with congrats on his win and Miller publicly thanking them, Miller and McGuinty hanging out at Martin’s coronation, Martin and McGuinty schmoozing at the Grey Cup, and so on. For another, whenever any of them opens his mouth to orate, what comes out sounds, uncannily, like one and the same speech:
"We believe in our government and all of its programs, and our top priority is to preserve them just as they are. But we realize that we can do better, and will revolutionize things to give a better, fairer deal to all levels of government (especially our cities). And we are fiscal conservatives who will not increase your taxes or run deficits (but that’s only to make our governments stronger, not to constrain them in any way)."
In honour of the three, we can call the ideology behind these sentiments "M ideology," and all those who voted for it "M’s". M ideology is nothing new: it has dominated Ontario politics federally for over a decade. What is new is its capture of all levels of government simultaneously. We have to conclude that, judging by the numbers, M stands for Mainstream; among Ontario citizens M’s are clearly the dominant political group, but not a majority, nor even the largest group.
For those numbers omit one particular bloc of citizens, the Non-Voters (or N’s). Adding them, a different picture emerges. In the Ontario election, 45% of citizens were non-voters, while only 26% voted for McGuinty. In Toronto, where voter turnout was only 40%, less than 18% of eligible voters chose Miller. Martin has yet to be tested (except by his convention vote, and over 99% of us were N’s for that!). When he does, I predict, the N’s will still outnumber the M’s.
All that has important implications for us. The conventional wisdom from these elections is that political success comes from adhering to M ideology and wooing the M vote. But by digging deeper, we can see that there is a much larger group of electors, the N’s, and simple logic dictates that we can win elections by appealing to the largest group.
We know little about N’s, save that: (1) they are not motivated by M ideology - they reject it, just as we do; and (2) there is no political alternative (that they can see) that does motivate them. Few of them know of us; this is not just a challenge, but also an opportunity. We know next to nothing about what would motivate N’s to vote, but that is something we can discover and learn; which again is both challenge and opportunity.
Our principles alone give us reason to reject M ideology; common sense tells us that M’s will be similarly repelled by our ideology; and now realpolitik tells us that we shouldn’t be wasting our time on M’s, anyway. The road to our success lies elsewhere.
I believe I have always supported the Libertarian Philosophy, even before I knew there was such a thing. Sure, I may have been confused into supporting socialist or conservative values in my early years but I value personal freedom more than anything. I believe people in general know what is best for them, not society and especially not the government.
Five or six years ago, I took the “World’s Smallest Political Quiz” online and discovered I was as “Libertarian” as you can get but I didn’t know what to do with this insight and over time the term slipped from my mind. Since then I have grappled with the differences among the major political parties and concluded there is none. I did more research and re-discovered my Libertarian roots, found the Ontario Libertarian Party on the Internet, read through the platform and principles and was thrilled to find a party with simple and logical policies.
This time I decided to take action and attended a dinner meeting at Scruffy Murphy's pub. I met some great people and decided to put my name in for a position on the executive. At the November AGM I was elected to be a Member At Large.
In my new role, I plan to help develop some transitional documents for the party. I believe these documents would be helpful to the general public in explaining how we can go from our current form of government to a Libertarian society. As well, I am in the process of putting together a Constituency Association for the Peterborough area. This should be a fun exciting year ahead for me.
“The Future and Its Enemies” presents some powerful and original arguments for individual liberty and is well worth the $19.25 price for the 265-page paperback. Virginia Postrel, former editor of the Los Angeles-based and libertarian-leaning Reason Magazine goes beyond the standard political labels in defining those forces that are forever stifling the will of individuals to think and act beyond the mainstream.
Well, she does identify one group as ‘reactionaries’ but within the category we traditionally associate with religious conservatives she adds the anti-globalists and anti-technology environmentalists. These populists, she notes, would hold only momentary sway over government agendas without a second group – the technocrats at all levels of government. Similarly, the technocrats could not set policy without the political legitimacy offered by groups of ‘concerned citizens’ from the reactionary milieu.
By defying the standard left/right labels, Postrel is able to appeal to a broad audience. She also portrays a diverse selection of groups that suffer from the often well-meaning but nonetheless stifling attempts of neighbourhood, municipal, state and national governments to curb their creativity, enterprise and progress. Hair stylists, software developers, reggae musicians, Cambodian/American doughnut shop operators and Hindu/American religious congregations have all fallen victim of the “But we like things the way they are,” attitudes of reactionaries and the ‘But that isn’t allowed in the official plan” responses of technocrats.
Admittedly the book is almost entirely based on American examples and, being four years old, tends to seem outdated with its pre-dot.com bust enthusiasm for Silicon Valley success stories. That said, Postrel’s book illustrates in telling anecdotes and well-drawn characters the universe of spontaneous order, creative destruction, and other principles rarely noted beyond the worlds of academia and political discussion groups. Libertarians can glean some real world examples to make their case and better yet, lend the book to sceptical classmates, kids, parents and friends.
Postrel’s second and latest book “The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness,” was released in August 2003.
Doug Burn
In a society in which it is a moral offence to be different from your neighbour your only escape is never to let them find out. --- Robert Heinlein