Volume 19, Number 4 Summer, 1999

Imagine a week of libertarian heaven, that you helped create! That's the opportunity facing each of us with the announcement that the International Society for Individual Liberty (ISIL) will be holding its 19th Annual World Libertarian Convention at the University of Western Ontario in London July 23 to 28, 2000.

These ISIL conferences draw libertarian philosophers, economists, business people and activists from around the world, all of whom are eager to share their knowledge and experience with each other. Participating individuals come away energized, and full of ideas and strategies for building their own libertarian organizations locally.

A conference of this size can attract speakers who might otherwise be unaffordable for local meetings. Speakers already committed include Terence Corcoran of the Financial Post, award-winning writer George Jonas, George H. Smith, Tibor Machan, Barbara Branden, author of "The Passion of Ayn Rand", Dr. John Hospers, the first USLP presidential candidate, Frances Kendall and Leon Louw, Nobel Peace Prize nominees from South Africa, Marc Emery, publisher of Cannibis Culture Magazine, and Walter Block, author of "Defending the Undefendable".

You are encouraged, not only to attend the conference next year, but to volunteer as organizers and to join and support ISIL in its work around the world. Planting and nurturing the seeds of liberty through education is a necessary pre-requisite to political success.

A project of this scope requires a solid team of organizers - people willing and able to carry out the responsibilities of marketing and promotion, financial management, program development, speaker coordination, database management, registration and communications.

There are also a multitude of tasks including research, writing articles, correspondence and phone contacts, administrative and clerical functions, database entries, arranging transportation and other important details.

To volunteer now, or to put your name on the list for a later date, contact Conference Coordinator Mary Lou Gutscher at 416-250-1564 or by e-mail MLGutscher(at)compuserve.com. Mary Lou is a former OLP chair, and an advisor to libertarian activists in North America, Europe, the former Eastern Bloc, and Latin America, and has been active in organizing ISIL conferences since 1994, see their website for more information.

Let's get behind this project and help make it the biggest and best ISIL convention in its 20-year history!

For more information about the International Society for Individual Liberty, its news magazine Freedom Network News and its highly acclaimed pamphlet series, contact ISIL at

836-B Southampton Rd. PMB#299, Benicia, CA 94510. Tel: (707) 746-8796; Fax (707) 746-8797; E-mail: isil(at)isil.org; Web Site: www.isil.org.

May 16 was a sunny and breezy, a beautiful day for a barbecue! And John Genser's home, a few miles north of Schomberg on Highway 27, was a great location; lots of open space and rolling hills to enjoy. Sixteen Libertarians (assuming Bruno Conzelman's wife and two young grandsons are libertarians) had a good time chatting, reminiscing, and eating hamburgers, hotdogs and watermelon.

Two former Chairmen, Mary Lou Gutscher (our Constitution does not use the term "Chairperson") and John Shadbolt were present. As an added bonus, Vince Miller, President of the International Society for Individual Liberty (ISIL) was visiting Mary Lou and came out to enjoy the festivities and promote the ISIL convention next year in London, Ontario. Vince, now located in California, was very active in the Libertarian Party of Canada for many years.

Graham Hearn, a new member who found us on the Internet and became our youngest candidate in this election, came all the way from Espanola. He was in Toronto to participate in "Reach for the Top", a high school competition. He brought along two friends who joined the Party at the party.

With our party convention scheduled for November 6^th, now is an appropriate time for me to reflect on what has been achieved since I became party leader in October 1996. As usual there are things I can say have gone right and things I can say have not quite gone right. Thus the headings that follow.

In general, I am satisfied with our progress. We have no choice but to continue advancing. Otherwise we will wither and die. I intend to seek re-election as party leader at our convention. I believe the interests of our party would be best served by my continuance and I enjoy the work. If you disagree with my admittedly biased assessment, I invite you to throw your hat into the ring for the leadership position or any of the other positions that interests you. My goal is to be surrounded by leaders.

There are many reasonable explanations why we take no action in life around things that are important to us. One of these is that this is not the right time. If that is your reason I would ask you to consider that the "right" time will never come. Events will happen with or without you and your failure to exercise your skills and

There are a number of position to fill at our convention which are noted elsewhere in this Bulletin. I am now busy rounding up candidates for these positions and will be happy to hear from you. The more involved people we have, the more fun we can all have in pursing our mutual libertarian goals.

Convention chairman John Genser is working to arrange an interesting one-day convention. We would like to see you there. You will be in the company of like-minded libertarians and if you want to go beyond that and participate in our work, then this will be an excellent opportunity to let us know.

One memorable sound-bite from the last election was Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty's kickoff press conference, on emergency medical care, in front of a Toronto pizzeria. McGuinty made only one tired, though scary, point - that emergency care in Ontario is becoming less accessible, with patients waiting hours in hospital emergency rooms for treatment, and consequently riskier to our health. Yet he made it in a novel, clever way.

His cleverness was to contrast emergency care delivery with pizza delivery. Almost all of us in Ontario can buy a pizza anytime, and have it delivered to our home in a guaranteed 30 minutes; why should we tolerate lower standards in a matter so much more important to our lives? Why can't we have medical care as quickly and conveniently as pizza?

Answering that question means discovering the reason for the disparity: what difference or differences between the services accounts for the different service level. One way to determine that is to look at what would happen if the pizza business were run like the health care business.

Suppose the government adopted a system of free, universally accessible pizza insurance. Citizens would no longer have to pay directly for pizza; in fact, it would be illegal for them to do so. All pizzas would be paid for by one government-run insurance plan. Ability to pay would no longer play a role in pizza consumption: so much so that the plan would not even charge premiums, instead being funded from a special tax on employers, the "rich," or some other third parties.

If pizzas could be obtained for free, one would expect demand for them to rise almost infinitely, and for costs to far outstrip what the special tax could finance. The government first would pump more money into the plan, subsidizing it from other taxes or the deficit (as they have done for health care, and as welfare liberals like McGuinty promise to continue doing). Subsidies, though, cannot increase infinitely; governments cannot increase taxes or the deficit at will. At some point, they would have to start controlling costs, leading to closings and cutbacks.

Suppose government made further adjustments on the supply side. American-owned pizza chains would be banned; Canadian chains would be allowed, but forbidden to make a profit. (The government would subsidize their losses, or even open its own chain if the "free market" couldn't meet the demand.)

Individual pizzerias would be allowed, but their number would be controlled through licensing. Government would decide how many to allow, and where. As the sole payer, government would decide what types of pizzas could be sold, and at what prices. In return, pizzerias would get the new sources of income that come with a monopoly: for instance, it would become illegal to purchase frozen pizza, or even any pizza ingredients, without a prescription from a licensed pizzeria.

For cases of dire need, government could set up Emergency Restaurants (ER's) where the truly needy could receive free pizza without appointment. Hospital cafeterias could easily be turned into ER's.

It is easy to see what these reforms would lead to: pizzas much harder to get, with a limited selection sold only by appointment, ER's crammed with consumers at all hours, government frantically trying to cope with declining service and rising costs. If we want pizza as available as health care, we know what reforms to adopt. Conversely, if we want health care as available as pizza, we know what reforms to abolish.

	Libertarian			Total		Small Parties and Independents
Riding	Candidate	Vote	Share	Candidates	Votes Cast	Vote	Share
Algoma Manitoulin	Graham Hearn	424	1.32%	4	32,111	424	1.32%
Davenport	Nunzio Venuto	82	0.31%	8	26,099	764	2.93%
London West	Gayle Remisch	135	0.27%	7	50,674	810	1.60%
Oxford	Kaye Sargent	322	0.75%	7	42,670	1,712	4.01%
Parkdale-High Park	Doug Burn	325	0.78%	8	41,878	1,304	3.11%
Scarborough East	Sam Apelbaum	369	0.88%	7	41,746	1,166	2.72%
Vaughan-King-Aurora	John Genser	756	1.43%	5	52,724	1,253	2.38%
Averages Vote	All Candidates	345	0.70%	6	41,129	1,062	2.58%

My often-expressed view about elections is that they present a good opportunity to spread libertarian ideas but they are not the sole focus and only reason for the existence of our party. I believe our party has a far more important role in the much longer time periods between elections to educate and enrol ever more people into examining libertarian ideas and becoming actively involved in promoting libertarianism.

Our party, or any other libertarian party for that matter, will not be winning elections until there is a broad based underlying desire for fundamental political change. I have no doubt that this will happen. The only unanswered question is whether the movement will be toward authoritarianism or toward liberty. Our opportunity and challenge is to allow liberty to prevail and humanity to benefit. If we do nothing, others will create our future.

That being said, I have mixed results to report about the June 3^rd election campaign recently concluded. As usual, the three old-line major political parties dominated, with the Conservatives winning the majority of ridings. In terms of vote count, none of the minor parties made any impact whatsoever. In this respect, we did just as well as anybody. However, I am disappointed to report that, including myself, we only had seven candidates who did what they had to do in order to run as candidates for our party.

Since the beginning of this year, I have devoted considerable time and effort to arrange for as many commitments as possible from prospective candidates and there were fourteen people who answered the call and made the commitment to run. Of these, seven people chose not to walk the talk. For that we are all the poorer, as they are all good people who are capable of making a difference.

Without making excuses for those who failed to honour their commitments, as a party we did not offer them sufficient support before the election call to help them meet those commitments. As party leader, I must bear ultimate responsibility for that.

On a more positive note, all seven of us who did in fact run as candidates are agreed that we had great fun. In fact, we had so much fun that we find it hard to understand why anyone would turn down an invitation to be an election candidate. An election campaign is a few short weeks in which libertarians do not toil in total obscurity. Suddenly the media, which has ignored you completely for the past four or five years, takes an interest in what you have to say. Your willingness to do something about what you believe by being an election candidate gives you credibility as being something more than a mere complainer.

As well as being psychologically rewarding for those of us who stepped forward as candidates, the election campaign has also resulted in the possibility of several new people becoming actively involved with our party. This was, in fact, our primary objective.

In conclusion, I wish to take the opportunity to once again thank our election candidates and congratulate them all on a job well done. I have no personal regrets. The election campaign served its purpose and I look forward to the continuing growth in the effectiveness of our party.

We continue to maintain a healthy bank balance, thanks in part to our reduced rent and telephone expenses. As a result, the modest interest earned offsets the Bank Charges.

Election expenses included printing of 3,000 brochures and the costs of the barbecue. We could have spent more on the election, but we lacked volunteers to do the work.

Our Audited Annual Report for 1998 was submitted to the Election Finances Commission on May 28, 1999, and approved without any questions on June 23, 1999. We must submit an audited campaign report covering election contributions and expenses by December 3, 1999. Many thanks to Greg Bruni of Bruni, Valenti in London for donating their services to perform our audits for the past several years.

BANK BALANCE 31-DEC-98		10,569.95

Contributions:	5,510.00
Out of Province members fees	20.00
Bank Interest	48.11
TOTAL INFLOWS		5,578.11

Election Expenses	963.66
Bank Charges & VISA Fees	108.55
Bulletin printing (Spring Issue)	171.35
Dinner Meeting	200.00
Office Rent	749.00
Office Supplies	303.59
Postage	382.22
Web Site & Services	3,980.40
Telephone	478.49
TOTAL OUTFLOWS		7,337.26

BANK BALANCE 31-JUL-99		8,810.80