Trust and Respect go hand in hand. The poor handling of Covid has poisoned the reputations of public officials, elected leaders, legacy media journalists, Big Social Media censors, as well as many publicly-funded researchers and their “official reports”.
Relationships between friends, neighbours and family members have also soured owing to horrible pandemic messaging. Endless fearmongering -- augmented by incompetent fact-checkers, biased content censors and loads of misinformation-- has sown a level of suspicion and division into society from which we may not recover for a generation or more.
DEMOCRATIC REFORM
For Lasting Accountability
Since trust and respect are earned, public policies to regain what has been lost requires careful consideration. The Ontario Libertarian Party will:
- Enact Recall legislation to hold politicians accountable for their election promises.
- Assign a Sunset Clause to new and existing legislation to be reviewed and voted upon again in 5 years.
- Require a Public Referendum for certain types of legislation, such as new levels or types of taxation.
- Eliminate Government funding for political parties including subsidies and tax credits.
- Create legislation to place an impenetrable barrier between journalism professionals and government officials. This shall prohibit all forms of illegal and unethical monetary exchanges (bribes, payoffs)and/or political sinecures.
PROPERTY RIGHTS
Essential to Human Flourishing
The right to life is the source of all rights -- and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave. ---- Ayn Rand
Human flourishing is dependent on many forms of ‘personal property’ in our modern world. While our homes, land holdings, vehicles and the clothes on our back may come readily to mind when the topic of ‘property’ is raised, an individual’s personal attributes are often overlooked.
One’s ability to acquire and sustain an employer-employee work relationship is dependent on each person’s unique skills, knowledge, productive capabilities and personal attributes such as strength – creativity – knowledge – attractiveness – interpersonal skills, and more. As personal custodian of our own ‘person’, the care and nurturing of these attributes are every bit as valuable to individual human flourishing as our material assets. We defend and protect both dimensions as crucial to our potential to survive and thrive.
Inspired by the words of Ayn Rand, some Ontario Libertarian Party goals are to:
- Withdraw all special privileges that Government agents have under the Ontario Trespass Act. Ensure that Conservation Authorities, or any other Department or Agency, shall have no jurisdiction over privately-owned property. Too many business owners were forced to close shop on the edicts of Covid officials who faced no such personal losses.
- Repeal the Municipal Bylaw that authorizes inspectors to have uninvited ‘right of entry and inspection’. A judge's order will be required by law.
- Reduce the Ontario Land Transfer Tax to be a flat fee of $275 instead of the current fee that is based on the property value.
- Make the Ontario Building Code Act voluntary. The rising cost of housing is due in part to government taxation and regulation policies. The Code could be used by property owners and builders for guidance but never to constraint the supply of affordable and well-built housing units, or to restrict off-grid solar installations.
- Stop mandatory registrations with the College of Trades. Apprenticeship relationships between master builders and junior workers has worked well in the past. In addition, checking employment references is standard practice in the majority of private sector trades, which makes the College of Trade an unnecessary burden on taxpayers.
