Private individuals fill the void of public sector garbage strike in Toronto

Toronto is suffering from a city wide union strike that includes the public garbage collectors. With no one to clear out the city's garbage the smell and pollution is getting worse and worse. Union leaders are holding the health and comfort of the people of Toronto hostage.

This is exactly the sort of situation that advocates of free enterprise always say brings out the entrepreneurs in people. And I am glad to say that we have not been disappointed.

A website called Garbage Help is putting Torontonians in touch with people who are willing to collect their garbage for pay. Toronto is proving that individuals acting for self interest and mutual benefit can be a powerful force to get things done.

Mayor David Miller is not a fan of individual entrepreneurship or of personal liberty. He has threatened a $5 000 fine for anyone who is not approved to pick up garbage by the state. All these people are doing is trying to fill a vital need that has been vacated. The people of Toronto surely desire this service. So if the city is unable to provide it, what right does Mayor Miller have to prevent others from stepping into the void?

My interview with Road Kill Radio

Last Tuesday I did an interview with a BC radio show about the PC leadership race. I had a migraine and I could barely hear what they were saying, but otherwise I did alright.

It is in the beginning of part 2.

Defend capitalism

Gerry Nicholls wrote an excellent article encouraging entrepreneurs to defend the free market.

Entrepreneurs must stop apologizing -- Report Magazine

In Ayn Rand’s famous philosophic novel, Atlas Shrugged, leading entrepreneurs and businessmen go “on strike” as a way of protesting socialism.

Eventually this strike causes the economy to collapse which in turns causes politicians to finally understand the true value of those who actually create wealth and prosperity.

It’s a good story, but alas it’s only fiction.

In real life, the majority of politicians, and for that matter most of the general public, have virtually no understanding as to how capitalists and entrepreneurs, when allowed to operate in a free market, benefit society.

In fact, if anything an anti-entrepreneur bias permeates our culture. Or least it permeates our popular culture. Just consider, for instance, how in movies and TV shows, successful business people are inevitably portrayed as “greedy” or “corrupt” or “heartless.”

Indeed, these days the prejudice against the free market and those who make it work, has reached a near hysteric level, as pundits, politicians and others seek to pin blame for the current economic slowdown on what they like to call “corporate greed”.

What these critics don’t understand, of course, is that the same free market system they like to rail against is also the same system which has made our society the most prosperous in history.

And besides being the most efficient way to create wealth, the free market system also happens to be morally superior to it main economic alternative -- socialism.

Free markets are based on choice; socialism on compulsion.

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Ignatieff tries to win the west by demonizing Calgary

Michael Ignatieff has long been a proponent of the Liberal Party reaching out to western Canada. I remember in the first leadership race that he ran in, he would often say that the party should do more to bring westerners into the Liberal fold. In a recent Globe & Mail article Michael Ignatieff had this to say:

“The big issue for me is I don't want to be a party of Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto, which is what this party is,” Mr. Ignatieff said in an interview. “Because you can't be a good prime minister unless you represent all Canadians.”

This is true. The great weakness of the Liberal Party is that they have become the urban party. They even elected an urban intellectual elite as their leader (I hope to become an urban intellectual elite one day), though Mr. Igantieff had a response to this:

“Frankly,” he said, “I think it's condescending to westerners that being a so-called intellectual is some big liability. People out here are as devoted to the life of the mind, and the life of culture, as anybody else in the country. So I don't think that's going to fly. It's just stupid.”

This at the very least shows that he doesn't think of all westerners as dumb rednecks. He sees that there is an intellectual life beyond Toronto and Montreal.

He is even willing to put down the anti-oil sands 'stick':

“I think sometimes we tried to establish our environmental bona fides by running against the oil sands,” he said. “And I just think: This is a national industry. It's pumping something like $8-billion into the federal treasury. So it's slightly bad faith to beat the goose that lays the golden egg over the head with a stick."

Then he said this:

“The alternative [Mr. Harper] is a politician formed and shaped in the radical conservative ideological world of Calgary and Calgary think tanks,” Mr. Ignatieff said.

I don't really understand the political strategy of trying to win over a region by bashing one of its major centres. Of course Calgary is not the be all and end all of all there is in western Canada, but as an outsider to the region is it really such a good idea to take such pot shots? He is demonizing Harper because he comes from a western city, is that really the way to gain new western support? It makes the rest of his fine words ring rather hollow.

Put this together with the recent Liberal activity to prevent a vote to abolish the gun registry. I think Mr. Ignatieff needs to realize that if the Liberal Party is going to have any success west of the Great Lakes he needs more than fine words. He needs to change his and his party's attitudes.

The Ontario PC Party goes 'right' but that isn't enough

The Toronto Star and other Liberals have delighted in the last couple months in accusing the PC Ontario Party of 'moving to the right.' Perhaps this is an accurate description, though it doesn't have the negative connotation that the Star seems to think that it does. Christine Elliott was hailed as the moderate candidate and she was promoting massive tax cuts in the form of a flat tax. That is to say, the moderate candidate was 'right' of Stephen Harper.

Tim Hudak has definitely claimed the mantle of 'blue Tory.' He has invoked Mike Harris time and time again. Which is a remarkable change from the previous leader (who once introduced Bill Davis as the greatest living Premier). Indeed if the results of this election tells us anything it is that the grassroots desire a more conservative party.

I despise labels such as 'right' and 'left.' They are the tools of dim witted journalists and intellectually lazy academics. I try to avoid using such terms as much as I can, though I admit I am sometimes trapped into the habit and ease of simplifying political discourse into a two dimensional spectrum.

So it is not enough for me to say you are 'right wing' or to invoke Mike Harris or Ronald Reagan as your personal heroes. We don't need a 'right winger' we need someone who is dedicated to shrinking government, cutting taxes, and desisting the constant state interference in our personal choices. If you want to call that 'right wing' then so be it, but you can't just say it you have to do it.

That is my message to Tim Hudak, the new leader of PC Party of Ontario.

Anyone who has been reading my posts know that I wasn't a fan of his candidacy. I found his rhetoric to be disheartening and many of his policies were adaptations of Harperian big government ideas. But now I think that I will reserve judgement. I want to see how he acts as Leader of the Opposition and which of his policies make it pass the cutting board.

My vote has to be earned, but I do hope that Mr. Hudak earns it.

Ontario PC Leadership Race: 3rd round and final results

Here it is the final results

Hudak: 5606 (55%)
Klees: 4643 (45%)

Congratulation to all those that worked on Tim Hudak's campaign. I'm going to reflect upon this for a while and come back with an analyses.

Ontario PC Leadership Race: John Laforet comments on Liberal tactics at the convention

John Laforet is a Liberal Party activist that I met when I attended the University of Toronto. I found him to be a well meaning liberal without an overly partisan attitude. He demonstrates this in a video posted by United and Strong:



Here is the press release that he refers to.

*update*

I have been told that he is no longer a member of the Liberal Party, but he was active in the Liberal Party a couple of years ago when I knew him.