The English-speaking democracies, among others, have not yet awakened to the realization that a policy of wholesale accommodation to the conflicting customs and beliefs of all people, especially tribal people, is only working in one direction: it is dissolving traditional Western customs, standards, and values (for this, read: Christian values, and in the case of North America, and other democracies spawned by England, the entire historical framework of morality, custom and law inherited from a thousand years of Anglo-Saxon history). Whether allowing Turbans and Kirpans for Sikhs, or polygamy and shari’ah law for Muslims, or the outrageous land-claims and law-breaking of native peoples, this giving-way policy has the potential to erode the standard of toleration itself: watch for a vicious backlash from people frightened to see their cultural and moral standards disappearing forever, replaced by alien ones. And note also the recent publication - long overdue, and very close to the mark - of the book, "Liberal Fascism," which makes the case that despite the public promotion of differences, we are today half-slaves to massive egalitarian welfare states under which we put up with overbearing levels of control and regulation.

           What is unusual historically, and not a little puzzling, is to see all this top-down control mixed with such a fawning official accommodation of different cultures. The question is: How do we make sense of the fact that the liberal-democratic nations of the West have thrown themselves so completely into what seems the contradictory project of tolerating all differences even as we standardize, equalize, and over-regulate our citizens. How can we have both?

             The explanation, I believe, is that we are in the midst of a universalist revolution that began in the late 1960s and is continuing, powered by the idea that egalitarianism must be made to work not only within nations, but among all people's of the world. That is why Canada's former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said (and I disagree) that "it doesn't matter where the immigrants come from." But it actually matters a lot, because the underlying belief systems of different cultures are often so fundamentally opposed on basic moral, legal, economic, and theological principles that they cannot survive as different cultures once their core beliefs are eroded. The result is that under the egalitarian ethos – especially one in which all cultural differences are publicly funded - they discover too late that they have been thrown into a competition with each other and against the host culture for cultural dominance on every front.

             So it is tempting to conclude that the extreme cultural toleration shown today by our own core liberal culture is actually its last gasp. But in reality it is a strategic process for grooming citizens of the world for the egalitarian utopia by attempting to equalize, and thus neutralize, their real differences. Which is to say, it is a strategy for making everyone a liberal by first equalizing cultural and moral differences, making all differences equally valid, so that in the end we will have only a single people obedient to the same culturally-neutral regulations, controls, codes of human rights, etc., etc.

              That is why the first step for the dominant culture is to weaken its own "hegemonic" power.  Among the tools required for this, is the trivialization of historical, cultural, religious, and ethnic symbols and practices. The long-term aim is to strip people of what are deemed their barbaric cultural affiliations, religious exclusionism, customs, laws, etc., and end up with a universal mass of citizens equally tolerant of each other, simply enjoying, but no longer worshipping or venerating, their own cultures. We are to have a world in which the usual symbols of culture, nation, people, custom, and the like, are no longer powerful motivating forces that citizens would happily die to protect, but rather, they have become transformed into something portable, that can be put on or taken off at will, for the moment. Cultural symbols are to become so interchangeable, so mixed together, and so varied that they lose their psychological and religious hold. The cross, the moon, the turban, the yarmulke, the dreadlocks, and so on, will be fascinating cultural trinkets, embellishments, or decorations, up front and highly visible at malls and other popular gathering places where citizens of the world may enjoy Western sausage and pancakes for breakfast, Arabic cous-cous for lunch, and a Thai salad for dinner, all just another choice on the menu of life, items for consumption. Window-shopping is energetically encouraged, as long as there is no intent on buying.

             From another perspective what we are witnessing is in large measure the fallout of international capitalism spewing forth from its cornucopia a smorgasbord of commodified cultures for easy consumption. But deep underneath is the force moving it all: moral relativism, a visceral repugnance for religious thinking, and hence a near fanatical secularism, widely evangelized, which, while it seems at first to be anti-western, is nevertheless rooted in a core Western ideal: the Christian ideal of accommodation of the enemy.

            So from an even larger perspective, the sort of international secular tolerance now preached by all the liberal democracies is really a negative form of aggression; it is a philosophy of cultural disarmament for everyone, that is nevertheless promoted on distinctively Western universalizing terms: let us all lay down our cultural arms and follow radical secularism, egalitarianism, anti-theism, moral relativism, modern liberalism, “multiculturalism,” and so on. In other words, what is presented as a policy of universal cultural tolerance is in fact an aggressive policy aimed at defanging our opponents by asking them to remove the particulars of their own warring cultures, and accept the universalizing generalities of our own.

         When we were a sincere faith civilization, that was a clever strategy – you love the enemy in order to win him over. But in a secular age, especially when the enemy has no intention of surrendering to your way of life, when he prefers real theism to a secular religion, it amounts to handing over your weapons.

The speech below is about America. But I am posting it because I think it is a stirring reminder of the feisty spirit we have lost in Canada, too. I love the gutsiness of it. It seems like the writer has caught the voice of ordinary citizens, and so I give thanks to the www., because if "there is a change a comin'," passing around such heartfelt comments to each other, instead of waiting around for the sanctimonious dictates or prohibitions of socialist academics, leftie judges, and self-important media types, is what is going to make it happen. So do your part 
                                                         

                                                                                                    ~

I don't think being a minority makes you a victim of anything except
numbers. The only things I can think of that are truly discriminatory
are things like the United Negro College Fund, Jet Magazine, Black
Entertainment Television, and Miss Black America. Try to have things
like the United Caucasian College Fund, Cloud Magazine, White
Entertainment Television, or Miss White America; and see what
happens...Jesse Jackson will be knocking down your door.

Guns do not make you a killer. I think killing makes you a killer. You
can kill someone with a baseball bat or a car, but no one is trying to
ban you from driving to the ball game.

I believe they are called the Boy Scouts for a reason, which is why
there are no girls allowed. Girls belong in the Girl Scouts! ARE YOU
LISTENING MARTHA BURKE?

I think that if you feel homosexuality is wrong, it is not a phobia,
it is an opinion.

I have the right 'NOT' to be tolerant of others because they are
different, weird, or tick me off.

When 70% of the people who get arrested are black, in cities where 70%
of the population is black, that is not racial profiling; it is the
Law of Probability.

I believe that if you are selling me a milkshake, a pack of
cigarettes, a newspaper or a hotel room, you must do it in English! As
a matter of fact, if you want to be an American citizen, you should
have to speak English!

My father and grandfather didn't die in vain so you can leave the
countries you were born in to come over and disrespect ours.

I think the police should have every right to shoot you if you
threaten them after they tell you to stop. If you can't understand the
word 'freeze' or 'stop' in English, see the above lines.

I don't think just because you were not born in this country, you are
qualified for any special loan programs, government sponsored bank
loans or tax breaks, etc., so you can open a hotel, coffee shop,
trinket store, or any other business.

We did not go to the aid of certain foreign countries and risk our
lives in wars to defend their freedoms, so that decades later they
could come over here and tell us our constitution is a living
document; and open to their interpretations.

I don't hate the rich I don't pity the poor

I know pro wrestling is fake, but so are movies and television. That
doesn't stop you from watching them.

I think Bill Gates has every right to keep every penny he made and
continue to make more. If it ticks you off, go and invent the next
operating system that's better, and put your name on the building.

It doesn't take a whole village to raise a child right, but it does
take a parent to stand up to the kid; and smack their little behinds
when necessary, and say 'NO!'

I think tattoos and piercing are fine if you want them, but please
don't pretend they are a political statement. And, please, stay home
until that new lip ring heals. I don't want to look at your ugly
infected mouth as you serve me French fries!

I am sick of 'Political Correctness.' I know a lot of black people,
and not a single one of them was born in Africa; so how can they be
'African-Americans'? Besides, Africa is a continent. I don't go around
saying I am a European-American because my great, great, great, great,
great, great grandfather was from Europe. I am proud to be from
America and nowhere else

And if you don't like my point of view, tough...

I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG, OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND
TO THE REPUBLIC, FOR WHICH IT STANDS, ONE NATION UNDER GOD,
INDIVISIBLE, WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL! And what about
CANADIANS-We feel the same. Bravo for the Canadians too!!!

I was asked to send this on if I agree or delete if I don't. It is
said that 86% of Americans believe in God. Therefore I have a very
hard time understanding why there is such a problem in having 'In God
We Trust' on our money and having 'God' in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Why don't we just tell the 14% to BE QUIET!!!

If you agree, pass this on, if not delete.

"It is a cowering population that lives in fear of punishment for speaking freely, and it is no country worth the name that accepts the idea that free people are permitted to say out loud, or to write, only what the government will like."

                                                                        ~

A few days after I posted the above comment complaining about censorship, Ezra Levant was dragged before a Human Rights Commissioner in Alberta to defend himself for having published the Danish Cartoons.

I reprint his opening remarks here, which are bold and stirring. Keep it. Read it to your children, and your grandchildren while we are still permitted to read and write such things! 

You can see the entire Orwellian videotape of this Interrogation at his website, at www.ezralevant.com

Opening remarks by Ezra Levant, at his Interrogation by the Alberta Human Rights Commission

January 11, 2008 – Calgary

 My name is Ezra Levant. Before this government interrogation begins, I will make a statement. When the Western Standard magazine printed the Danish cartoons of Mohammed two years ago, I was the publisher. It was the proudest moment of my public life. I would do it again today. In fact, I did do it again today. Though the Western Standard, sadly, no longer publishes a print edition, I posted the cartoons this morning on my website, ezralevant.com. I am here at this government interrogation under protest. It is my position that the government has no legal or moral authority to interrogate me or anyone else for publishing these words and pictures. That is a violation of my ancient and inalienable freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and in this case, religious freedom and the separation of mosque and state. It is especially perverted that a bureaucracy calling itself the Alberta human rights commission would be the government agency violating my human rights. So I will now call those bureaucrats “the commission” or “the hrc”, since to call the commission a “human rights commission” is to destroy the meaning of those words. I believe that this commission has no proper authority over me. The commission was meant as a low-level, quasi-judicial body to arbitrate squabbles about housing, employment and other matters, where a complainant felt that their race or sex was the reason they were discriminated against. The commission was meant to deal with deeds, not words or ideas. Now the commission, which is funded by a secular government, from the pockets of taxpayers of all backgrounds, is taking it upon itself to be an enforcer of the views of radical Islam. So much for the separation of mosque and state. I have read the past few years’ worth of decisions from this commission, and it is clear that it has become a dump for the junk that gets rejected from the real legal system. I read one case where a male hair salon student complained that he was called a “loser” by the girls in the class. The commission actually had a hearing about this. Another case was a kitchen manager with Hepatitis-C, who complained that it was against her rights to be fired. The commission actually agreed with her, and forced the restaurant to pay her $4,900. In other words, the commission is a joke – it’s the Alberta equivalent of a U.S. television pseudo-court like Judge Judy – except that Judge Judy actually was a judge, whereas none of the commission’s panellists are judges, and some aren’t even lawyers. And, unlike the commission, Judge Judy believes in freedom of speech.

It’s bad enough that this sick joke is being wreaked on hair salons and restaurants. But it’s even worse now that the commissions are attacking free speech. That’s my first point: the commissions have leapt out of the small cage they were confined to, and are now attacking our fundamental freedoms. As Alan Borovoy, Canada’s leading civil libertarian, a man who helped form these commissions in the 60’s and 70’s, wrote, in specific reference to our magazine, being a censor is, quote, “hardly the role we had envisioned for human rights commissions. There should be no question of the right to publish the impugned cartoons.” Unquote. Since the commission is so obviously out of control, he said quote “It would be best, therefore, to change the provisions of the Human Rights Act to remove any such ambiguities of interpretation.” Unquote.

The commission has no legal authority to act as censor. It is not in their statutory authority. They’re just making it up – even Alan Borovoy says so.

But even if the commissions had some statutory fig leaf for their attempts at political and religious censorship, it would still be unlawful and unconstitutional.

We have a heritage of free speech that we inherited from Great Britain that goes back to the year 1215 and the Magna Carta. We have a heritage of eight hundred years of British common law protection for speech, augmented by 250 years of common law in Canada.

That common law has been restated in various fundamental documents, especially since the Second World War.

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

The 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights guaranteed, quote

1. “ human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely,

( c ) freedom of religion; ( d ) freedom of speech; ( e ) freedom of assembly and association; and ( f ) freedom of the press.

In 1982, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guaranteed, quote:

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

a) freedom of conscience and religion;

b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;

Those were even called “fundamental freedoms” – to give them extra importance.

For a government bureaucrat to call any publisher or anyone else to an interrogation to be quizzed about his political or religious expression is a violation of 800 years of common law, a Universal Declaration of Rights, a Bill of Rights and a Charter of Rights. This commission is applying Saudi values, not Canadian values.

It is also deeply procedurally one-sided and unjust. The complainant – in this case, a radical Muslim imam, who was trained at an officially anti-Semitic university in Saudi Arabia, and who has called for sharia law to govern Canada – doesn’t have to pay a penny; Alberta taxpayers pay for the prosecution of the complaint against me. The victims of the complaints, like the Western Standard, have to pay for their own lawyers from their own pockets. Even if we win, we lose – the process has become the punishment. (At this point, I’d like to thank the magazine’s many donors who have given their own money to help us fight against the Saudi imam and his enablers in the Alberta government.)

It is procedurally unfair. Unlike real courts, there is no way to apply for a dismissal of nuisance lawsuits. Common law rules of evidence don’t apply. Rules of court don’t apply. It is a system that is part Kafka, and part Stalin. Even this interrogation today – at which I appear under duress – saw the commission tell me who I could or could not bring with me as my counsel and advisors.

I have no faith in this farcical commission. But I do have faith in the justice and good sense of my fellow Albertans and Canadians. I believe that the better they understand this case, the more shocked they will be. I am here under your compulsion to answer the commission’s questions. But it is not I who am on trial: it is the freedom of all Canadians.

You may start your interrogation .

Read carefully. I never thought I would see the day that we had thought police in Canada, of the infamous kind that have preceded the eventual complete shut down of so many basic freedoms in every totalitarian regime and dictatorship in history, such as Red China, North Korea, or Cuba.  But they are here in force.

It used to be the case that ordinary Libel and Slander laws protected us from damage to our reputations or livelihoods due to intentional false statements or accusations by other citizens. But the simplistic idea that the State has an official position on free verbal expression of any kind, or that free citizens are no longer permitted to state openly that they dislike or disapprove of or find antithetical to our common way of life a culture, a religion, an ethnic or language group, or a human behaviour, is unprecedented in recent times and offensive in the extreme to human liberty. We may not like what others say, but within the bounds of proven harm to reputation mentioned here, we ought to defend to the death their right to say it.

It is a cowering population that lives in fear of punishment for speaking freely, and it is no country worth the name that accepts the idea that free people are permitted to say out loud, or to write, only what the government will like.    

                                                                                          ~

Canada's Thought Police

Celebrated author Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before two Canadian judicial panels on charges linked to his book “America Alone."

The book, a No. 1 bestseller in Canada, argues that Western nations are succumbing to an Islamist imperialist threat. The fact that charges based on it are proceeding apace proves his point.

Steyn, who won the 2006 Eric Breindel Journalism Award (co-sponsored by The Post and its parent, News Corp), writes for dozens of publications on several continents. After the Canadian general-interest magazine Maclean's reprinted a chapter from the book, five Muslim law-school students, acting through the auspices of the Canadian Islamic Congress, demanded that the magazine be punished for spreading “hatred and contempt" for Muslims.

The plaintiffs allege that Maclean's advocated, among other things, the notion that Islamic culture is incompatible with Canada's liberalized, Western civilization. They insist such a notion is untrue and, in effect, want opinions like that banned from publication.

Two separate panels, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and the Canadian Human Rights Commission, have agreed to hear the case. These bodies are empowered to hear and rule on cases of purported “hate speech."

Of course, a ban on opinions - even disagreeable ones - is the very antithesis of the Western tradition of free speech and freedom of the press.

Indeed, this whole process of dragging Steyn and the magazine before two separate human-rights bodies for the “crime" of expressing an opinion is a good illustration of precisely what he was talking about.

If Maclean's, Canada's top-selling magazine, is found “guilty," it could face financial or other penalties. And the affair could have a devastating impact on opinion journalism in Canada generally.

As it happens, Canadian human-rights commissions have already come down hard on those whose writings they dislike, like critics of gay rights.

Nor should Americans dismiss this campaign against Steyn and Maclean's as merely another Canadian eccentricity. Speech cops in America, too, are forever attempting similar efforts - most visibly, on college campuses.

In fact, New York City itself has a human-rights panel that tries to stamp out anything deemed too politically incorrect.

Since 9/11, Americans have been alert to the threat of terror from radical Islamists. But there's been all too little concern for a creeping accommodation of radical Islamist tenets, like curbs on critical opinions.

That needs to change.

The gist of the memo was that teachers-in-training must avoid teaching about any religious celebrations in the month of December, teaching only about cultural diversity, etc., etc., because the stated hope of the Institute was that teachers and administrators would “become more aware of the real issue: the pain suffered by students and parents with minority religious views.”

Oh, the pain, the pain!

Gee, I had always thought that the real issue at the heart of all genuine religious celebration, regardless of type, or time of year, was the worship of God, the sincere expression of gratitude, love, generosity, and so on, and that’s what students ought to learn about. Somehow I missed out on the pain bit, how it’s all about me, and so on.

So I wrote the student back a brief note, as follows:

“When societies are bent on self-destruction through immolation of their own core values and traditions, not much can be done. Multiculturalism is not a culture. It is a flight from culture. It presents culture as a T- shirt; something to put on or take off at the right time. But real cultures do not operate this way; they are soul-embodying realities. Any nation that fails to sustain itself by teaching a core culture (around which other cultures may rotate, so to speak), will eventually fragment and pass away. Before that time comes it will transform from a common home into a kind of motel, with each in his or her own space which they can check into or out of at will without relating to anyone else. In this motel the only common interactions will be pragmatic, commercial, and legal.”

In the next few days you will find a half dozen translations - into French, Polish, Slovak, and Portugese - of the "Declaration on Marriage" that has been available in English here for over a year. 

There will also be two essays posted that have already been translated into French (and published in the Quebec journal Egards).  The first is a translation of "The Paradoxes of Freedom," and the second is a translation of of "Abortion and Slavery" (thanks to my translator, Richard Bastien, of Ottawa).

Call For Translations - You Can Help!

Pick any essay

If you feel, as I do (quite apart from my vanity) that certain essays on this site ought to be available in other languages, you may be able to help get the word out.

Your Name Will Be Posted As Translator

Just translate any essay on this site into another language and send it to me, and I will post it with your name attached as the translator.

I hope some visitors will help out in this way, and I thank you in advance for your help

William

However, I am happy to say that there is new life on three fronts:

1) A New Book

I have just signed a contract with McGill-Queen’s University Press (MQUP) for the publication of my latest effort,

                                                      The Book of Absolutes

                                                                         A Critique of Relativism

                              and a Defense of the Universals and Constants of Nature, and Human Nature

During a meeting with the publisher in September, I was told enthusiastically, “We want to make this the lead book in our Fall Catalogue.”

This was exciting news, even though it means the book will not be available until September 2008. The head of the Press said he could do it as a spring book but that in his opinion, “it is an important book” and their Fall books get a longer marketing and promotional push from the Press. Also, about 80% of sales at MQUP are foreign sales, and as this timing coincides with the most influential European Book Fairs, we are hopeful of lots of foreign sales and translations.

Advance Purchasing

By January 2008 I expect to have worked out an arrangement with MQUP that will enable visitors to this site to click an Icon and place an advance order for the book at a discount price.

2) Announcing The Re-Publication of:

The Trouble With Canada, The War Against the Family, and The Trouble With Democracy

These three books, unavailable through normal channels since Stoddart’s demise, are being re-published in a new format by BPS Books, and will be available very soon.

Once we have worked out the details, visitors will be able to order all these books directly from this site, or from any bookstore.

They are being produced through a Print-On-Demand system which is rather amazing. Once the books are uploaded digitally, as mine now are, the printer (Lightning Source) can print one copy, or a hundred, at the push of a button. The book appears at the other end of a gigantic printing machine, bound, cover and all, and is shipped to whomsoever pushed the button. This high-tech “Print-On-Demand” system avoids all the old hassles of second-guessing market demand, warehousing stock, and so on. It’s like instant publishing. So stay posted.

3) Best Blogs to be Published as a Book

I am also happy to announce that a small book (about 140 pages) of the best blog pieces published on this site in the last year and a half will be available in regular book form by BPS Books by January. Visitors will also be able to purchase the book directly from this site or from bookstores.

And … I am still looking for a good title for this book, so if there are any suggestions out there, I’d be pleased to receive them.

So that is the news for the day. The General Publishing bankruptcy (of which Stoddart was a division) was a disaster for hundreds of writers, designers, editors, and many others who went unpaid or were put out of work, as General was Canada’s largest publisher at the time.

So I feel like my writing life has been re-born, and it is a good feeling.

At a recent conference at McGill University I was asked to participate with four others on a panel to discuss “Religion, Sex, and the City.” We each got five minutes to deliver a few opening remarks, and to answer two questions: Does pluralism mean the end of public morality? And if not, what role, if any, ought religion to play? The discussion went from there. Here is my five minutes worth. At the end of the hour, there was some discussion of Charter-type paper documents that (I argued) nations seem to invent and then impose on their people as a kind of substitute for the absence of a genuine common moral bubble (this metaphor explained below). This led to some comments on the effect of Canada’s Charter on our status as a self-governing people, which I have added at the end.

********************************************************

I would like to begin by looking at the meaning of the City held dear by almost all who have come before us. Then I want to contrast that to the current view of the modern city, and offer some thoughts on what this means for religion and sex.

We know that the ancient city -called “the polis” by the Greeks - rested on at least four convictions:

1) Everything has an end, or good, toward which it aims for its fulfillment.

2) The city is an organic whole greater than the sum of its individual parts, the end of which is the flourishing of all. As the seed is to the flower, the citizen is to the city.

3) Citizens live under a common moral bubble of shalls and shall-nots sustained by moral and religious conviction and debate.

4) The most fundamental rule is that the good of all comes before my individual good.

However, the modern city - which we can date from the middle of the nineteenth century - stands as the complete and even proud repudiation of all that I just said, and for that reason I describe it as “the anti-polis.” In such a place –

1) There is no particular vision of the good that is considered better than any other, and so the idea of a common good is off the table.

2) The anti-polis is a collection of individuals, and it can never be a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

3) Each citizen lives in a private moral bubble, strictly off-limits to the uninvited.

4) And finally – and this is the key equation of the anti-polis: if all individuals follow their freely-chosen ideal of the good, then society will also end up good.

Needless to say, this notion of the City as a ship without a course, a rudder, a larger purpose, is unique in human history, and we have arrived at it via our embrace of what I call “hyperdemocracy.” This is a modern political form in which the idea of sovereignty, formerly vested in rulers above, after descending into the hands of “the people” for a century or so, has ended up vested, as we like to think, in autonomous individuals.

At the end of such a fateful journey, all questions about the proper ends of Man and the City, become non-questions. They cannot be answered because although they may be asked of you, or of me (as at this conference) they can no longer be asked of us, for there is no longer any corporate body in the name of which we feel moved to respond.

From this brief sketch, we can now ask:

* Does “pluralism” (which is really just a feel-good cover-term for the disunity of a people) mean the end of public morality?

Seen from the hinterlands, of course it does.

But if you are a citizen of the new anti-polis, where the very term “public morality” is considered retro, the answer is a firm no, simply because pluralism is itself the formalization and sanctification of the “anti-morality morality” I have described.

* Does religion have a role in public morality? I think we should face the fact that in the modern democracies, even before we surrendered our common moral bubble, the Christian religion (in Canada, at least), had not played a forceful role for a very long time, and whenever fresh opportunities have arisen to demonstrate moral outrage and religious fortitude – such as during the recent betrayal of traditional marriage – it has been weak beyond words.

* On the question of sex, I would simply say what everyone knows: In a secular and materialistic society purely spiritual purposes are diminished in principle, and this leaves sex - which was unlinked from biology some time ago – as something pretty close to the highest human joy. In its current free-floating pansexual form it has become a substitute for spiritual bliss and is now worshipped as such in the public square.

                                                                                                       ~

                   The invention of a Charter of Rights and Freedoms was a backward step that returned Canadians to the kind of political condition they endured under their British masters during the colonial period. Let me explain. At that time those who governed the separate colonies in what was to become Canada were officials of the British Crown and were not responsible to the people but to the legislators, judges, and courts of Great Britain. So for decades Canadians fought hard to bring about “responsible government” - a term which in Canadian political history came to mean that government must be responsible to the elected representatives of the people. They were granted bits of this by the mid-1840s, and by Confederation in1867 the principle of fully responsible government was institutionalized in Canada. Accordingly, the laws made by their representatives in Canada’s Parliament were considered an expression of the will of the people and hence the supreme law of the land. (It bears noting, however, that the founders both of Canada and the United States of America considered even the will of their elected representatives supreme only with respect to new statute laws; to their minds, even statute laws were subordinate to the inherited legal rights, customs and traditions of the English speaking people since Magna Carta).

But this happy 115-year tradition was radically altered in 1982 with the introduction of a Charter that was declared “the supreme law of Canada,” and thus a law over and above the laws of Parliament and all other inherited and customary forms of law . The result has been that since then the will of the Canadian people as expressed in Parliament has been subordinated to and must now conform to interpretations of the law of the Charter. In short, the ultimate authority over the meaning of all existing laws and especially over any new laws made by Canada’s legislators is once again, as in colonial times, held by officials the people did not elect, who cannot be removed by the people, and who are not responsible to the people in any direct way.

In response to this charge, Canada’s judges maintain that parliamentarians still hold the ultimate authority because they can make and re-make laws. However, any balanced scrutiny of the record since 1982 will show an abdication, if not a judicial suppression of legislative freedom and responsibility: Parliamentarians are so fettered by the threat of actual or potential Charter scrutiny that they repeatedly defer to past court decisions or to anticipated Charter rulings prior to creating new legislation. The emphasis since 1982 has shifted from the question of what laws the people wish their elected representatives to make, to the question of what laws their judges will allow them to make.

 

 

                                                                                      ~

Is the Earth Warming or Cooling?

                 The consensus now seems to be that some cooling as well as warming has occurred in the last century, and on balance, slightly more of the latter than the former. But I don’t think anyone knows for sure, because on a daily basis the “temperature” of Earth (here, you must specify land surface, ocean, mountain, or atmospheric temperatures) never stays the same. On the sunny side of the globe the sun’s heat at some hundreds of degrees Celsius is intense and is fortunately for us prevented by our thin atmosphere from boiling our blood. On the night side the same atmosphere (thanks to its greenhouse effect) traps the heat raised in the day and, combined with the warmed up soil, water, rock and foliage, prevents cooling that otherwise at minus hundreds of degrees C would freeze us solid by morning. So the entire planet is rolling from exposure to extreme heat to cold every 24 hours. The result is that it is either warming or cooling in millions of different places all the time, night and day. And so, despite what we hear from political agencies such as the “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” (IPCC) that there is definitely “global warming,” not all climatologists agree. Some of those who disagree most energetically, such as Dr. Richard Lindzen, and those who participated in the BBC’s “Great Global Warming Swindle” show of March, 2007 were themselves contributors to the latest IPCC report. They say the science in that report is unreliable at best “because there is considerable uncertainty in current understanding of how the climate system varies naturally.” As a result, they conclude, “current estimates of the magnitude of future warming should be regarded as tentative and subject to future adjustments (either upward or downward)” (National Post, Dec. 22, 2006).

So What Is the Future of the Planet?

                     On this entire question it is wisest to take the long view. Throughout its geological history of some 4.5 billion years the earth has gone through at least 25 very long ice-age cycles, each involving about 90% cold weather, and about 10% warm weather. The six major periods of refrigeration have each lasted about 50 million years. Over the past 850,000 years ice ages have dominated the earth’s climate, interrupted by a few warm periods that have rarely exceeded 12,000 years. It is now about 11,000 years since the last ice age ended abruptly, and in a mere 50 to 100 years produced a climate much like what we have today. Talk about climate change! With so much fear-mongering (which may be a species protective instinct) it is easy to forget that in the early 1970s, in reaction to a short period of cooling from about 1940 to 1970 there developed a widespread “global cooling” hysteria, and a new ice age was widely predicted. Here are some quotes from that time:

* “the cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people in poor nations… if it continues it will cause world famine, world chaos, and probably world war, and this could all come by the year 2000 (U.S. Senator Claiborne Pell, cited in Lowell Ponte, The Cooling, 1976).

* “…the threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind” (Nigel Calder, International Wildlife, 1975). * “Once the freeze starts, it will be too late,” (Douglas Colligan, “Brace yourself for another ice age,” in Science Digest, Feb 1973).

* “According to the National Academy of Sciences report on climate, we may be approaching the end of a major interglacial cycle, with the approach of a full-blown 10,000-year ice age a real possibility” in Science, March 1, 1975).

* “I believe that increased rapid air pollution, through its effect on the reflectivity of the earth [sending heat back into space instead of absorbing it] is currently dominant and is responsible for the temperature decline of the past decade or two” (Reid Bryson, “Environmental Roulette,” in Global Ecology, 1971).

What Are Greenhouse Gasses?

                 The label “greenhouse gasses” was first used in the 70s to create the impression that man was fouling the atmosphere with industrial gasses that were “trapping” heat on earth that would ordinarily escape into the upper atmosphere and dissipate into space. But the fact is that most of the heat-trapping on earth (without which we would not have a habitable climate at all) is done by natural water vapour found in the air, especially in clouds, and also by carbon dioxide. Without this natural atmospheric “greenhouse” (relatively speaking, about the thickness of one layer of paint on a basketball) we would sizzle to a cinder by day and freeze solid by night. Oxygen and Nitrogen, the two other major atmospheric gasses, do not trap heat. And although Carbon Dioxide now has a bad name (I think a lot of people confuse it with Carbon Monoxide, a deadly gas) it is actually a richly life-enhancing substance (see below) without which there would be no organic life possible on earth. Indeed, all biological and plant life on earth is “carbon-based.” On this score, the current consensus is that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has indeed been increasing over the past century, and that the earth’s temperature has also risen about a half a degree Celsius in the past century (after accounting for ups and downs). However, a major point of conflict in the search for the cause of this rise has to do with confusion over cause and effect. Some, such as Al Gore infamously link the rise in temperature to the prior rise in CO2 that he claims is due to increased industrialization and the burning of fossil fuels (said to be man-made, or “anthropogenic” causes). But others argue that it is just the reverse. Natural temperature increases are due to normal causes such as solar radiation cycles, ocean current changes, and so on, and are followed by a natural rise in CO2 levels, and not the other way around. The simple evidence for this is the fact that there have been many far warmer periods in the history of earth when there was rising temperature followed by rising CO2 but no industrialization whatever.

How Is Climate-change Measured?

                 There are many methods. But first, ask yourself: if you were given unlimited funding and reliable instruments, how would you measure the climate of “the globe”? Where should your measurements be taken, and at what time of day? Weather systems and temperatures are always local, so how would you average or blend all the readings to get a reliable number? After all, the oceans of the earth are huge heat and cold reservoirs, and are millions of square miles in extent, as are the vast deserts and ice-fields of earth. Antarctica alone is 12.5 million square miles in extent. So where do you place your thermometers? On which mountain? In which valleys? Where on, or in, the oceans? Clearly the vastest areas will be the least studied for the obvious practical reasons of inaccessibility. As it happened, earnest climatologists placed lots of thermometers at airports and outside urban areas many decades ago and have been peeking at them ever since. By now about 70 million readings have been accumulated. Unfortunately for their “science,” however, most of these instruments have been overtaken by urban sprawl and now sit in so-called “heat islands” caused by encroaching buildings, roads, plazas, and parking lots. So temperatures from these, the most numerous such stations on earth, have had to be “adjusted” to compensate for urbanization. Satellite measurements are apparently quite accurate, but they have shown either no change at all in the past 50 years since they came into use, or in many cases the degradation of these delicate instruments from cosmic radiation (or the decay of the orbits of the satellites themselves) has again called for “adjustment” to readings. An even more damaging if very human problem with readings from surface temperature stations is that data is often taken only monthly, the time of day of such readings is often not known, and data from stations where readings are interrupted, or where the time of the reading is not known (someone got sick? Ran out of snowmobile gas? Too many blackflies to go into the bush today?) … are often thrown out of the mix, thus biasing the data. One study of an entire century of readings reported that after adjustments for such omissions and gaps only 18.4% of the earth’s surface was covered by what was published as a “global” sampling (Michaels, et al, 1998).

                     More damaging to current global warming theory, which predicts the warming of earth’s surface and therefore also a warming of the upper atmosphere, is that satellite readings by NASA (accurate to 3 one-hundredths of a degree Celsius!) show that atmospheric temperatures are cooling over the past twenty years, not warming. So why, contrary to theory, are surface temperatures rising a little, but atmospheric temperatures falling? No one knows. When other methods of tracking temperature changes are tallied such as from glacier ice-coring, tree-ring growth, coral layers, and so on (though all have been disputed in terms of accuracy) the weak consensus is that there was a twentieth-century warming from 1900 to about 1940 (of almost half a degree Celsius - long before most human greenhouse gasses were created), then there was a cooling from 1940 to about 1970, and then a warming trend again to the present (perhaps). The upshot is that even if we can agree that “on average” there has been a half a degree of warming in the past century, most of it occurred prior to the recent rise in CO2 levels. But seriously, of what significance is this, for the long history of the earth has shown a great number of “non-greenhouse” warmings and alternative coolings. For example, ice-coring and CO2 measurements from same show that some 135,000 years ago there was a cooling of about 8 degrees Celsius spread over a 20,000 year period, while CO2 levels which were at four times today’s levels did not lower at all (Rind, D., Nature, 363, 1992). More embarrassing for current greenhouse theory is that during the Ordovician Age 440 million years ago CO2 levels were ten times higher than they are today, and according to such as Al Gore this should have produced a lot of warming. However, that period was an ice age and vast ice sheets covered much of the earth (up to 30% of earth’s surface, compared to today’s 10%).

Are Climate Models Accurate?

                        Climate predictions are developed via a powerful computer program called a General Circulation Model (GCM). To put things in perspective it is useful to recall that most probability models can handle two variables (such as cloud change and wind change) accurately. But when a third is introduced (such as water vapour change), the math gets very tricky and the predictions sloppier. Add a fourth, such as solar radiation, absorption, and reflectivity from an ever-changing cloud cover, and within those clouds the changing volumes of vapour and particulate matter, and, and … Well, when we learn that today’s climate models are tracking about 5 million variables the heart sinks at the astonishing probabilities for large-scale error. This is not surprising as most weather predictions today, even with the advantages of satellite views and infra-red and radar imaging, often get the weather wrong for the coming weekend! Throw a few volcanic eruptions such as Mt. Pinatubo (erupted in 1991) or Mt. St. Helen’s (May, 1980) into the mix that can spew more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere in 24 hours than have been put there in 100 years of industrialization, and you get a good sense of the predictive unreliability at hand.  Mt. Erebus, which is on Ross island in Antarctica was estimated to have spewed over 1,000 tonnes of chlorine per day between 1976 and 1983, which is almost 2/3 of the entire world’s daily production of Chlorofluorocarbons (the major villain in erosion of the ozone layer). That estimate has been revised much lower since, and Erebus is much quieter now, at around 36 tons per day by 1991. But such variations give a sense of what Mother nature can do.  Further to this, all climate models rely on climate “parameters” programmed into the computer model and accurate assessment of so-called “feedback” mechanisms (what does the model say will happen if we double CO2?). Not much is known about real-world feedback, so whatever is used in such models comes from estimating. This produces a field day for computer geeks and catastrophists because you can model anything you want to see and then go around saying this is what will happen because the model says so. In their attempts to face this problem (in which the computer model is a kind of psychogram of the scientist’s imagination) serious climatologists who just want to guesstimate something close to the possible future outcomes, include adjustments for things like “heat flux.” But such “artificial flux tuning” can themselves introduce large biases in data, as can and do biases in calculation of water vapour levels, cloud cover, storm activity, ocean to surface interactions, and feedback from snow and ice cover. So a simple summary of this situation would be to say that there are a lot of fanciful computer models out there chasing elusive and fluctuating data.

What Is The Effect of Solar and Cosmic Radiation?

                     Scientists looking for the principal cause of rises in temperature that cannot be due to human activity (such as occurred between 1910 and 1940) point to the increased brightness of the sun. Obviously, all of earth’s energy systems are solar-driven, and so variations in solar radiation have a profound effect on our climate. The surface magnetism of the sun is measurable and shows a clear 11-year cycle during which brightness rises and dims according the rise and fall of solar-surface magnetism (from NASA satellite data). Records of the rise and fall of earth’s surface temperatures over the past 240 years track these changes in solar radiation very closely (though no one knows whether the influence of solar radiation is short (decades) or long term (centuries). Also, for unknown reasons, every two centuries or so (confirmed by radiocarbon tests and other means) the sun’s magnetism level and brightness drops significantly for a few decades (this is called a “Maunder Minimum”) as it did from 1640 to about 1720, during which period earth’s temperature went down 1 degree C. The “little ice age” that occurred then ended about 1860. Renowned climatologist Professor Tim Patterson of Carlton University in Ottawa warns that the next weak solar cycle will be hitting us about 2020, and we ought to be concerned because “no one is farming north of us.” (his quotes are from the Calgary Sun (!), May 18, 2007). He also states that things warmed up considerably after the Little Ice Age until about 1940 “with no help from carbon dioxide.” After that, cooling took place until about 1970 even though CO2 “was going up like crazy.” Patterson says “there is no correlation between warming and CO2,” and suspects that any warming not explained by solar radiation is due to patterns of cosmic radiation which constantly bombards earth. Cosmic particles tend to create more cloud cover and so more cooling. But when the sun is in a bright cycle as at present, solar radiation blows away the cosmic particles and we get warming (for now). One theory now given a good deal of credence is that earth's climate results from the combined effect of: the changing shape of the earth's orbit around the sun from circular to elliptical over a 100,000 year period (resulting in a varition of distance from or proximity to the sun of some 20,000 kilometres); the wobble of the earth's axis itself (the pole wanders in a circle over a 26,000 year period); and the difference in the earth's equatorial and orbital planes which varies a few degrees during every 40,000 years; and ... that these things combined correlate highly with the earth's ice ages.  On a final note, an observation that seems to support the solar and cosmic radiation emphasis is that Mars, the only other planet to show its climate secrets, has been experiencing a warming along with us, and its polar ice sheets have been visibly diminishing. Dr. Abdussamatov a senior member of the Russian Academy of Sciences says "Mars has global warming but without a greenhouse and without the participation of Martians” (National Post, Jan 6, 2007). The warming here and there, he insists, “can only be a straight-line consequence of …a long-time change in solar irradiance,” which explains the increased volume of CO2 emissions (due to a warming of the oceans and thus a release of stored CO2).  He explains that the common view that man’s industrial activity is the deciding factor in global warming “has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations,” and notes that heated man-made greenhouse gasses, which become lighter due to expansion, rise in the atmosphere and give their absorbed heat away. But the real news, he warns, is that the heating of earth’s oceans due to solar irradiation, which has now begun to fall, has reached its peak and is now also falling. This solar cycle will reach its weakest irradiance around 2040, after which there will be an inevitable deep freeze on earth lasting for about 50 years. Then, temperatures will rise again.

What Will Happen If Ice at the Poles Melts?

                        Most of the ice on earth is at the two poles. At the North Pole almost all the ice is floating in water. And from Archimedes’ Principle we know that anything floating in water displaces its own weight in water. So an ice-cube dropped into a glass of water will cause a little rise in the level of water in the glass because the cube has pushed the water up by displacement. But as the ice-cube melts, the higher level will remain exactly the same. It will not go up or down, because whether you add two ounces of liquid water to a glass, or two ounces of frozen water, the amount is the same. If all the ice at the North Pole that is floating in water – most of it - melts tomorrow, the sea-levels of the earth will not be changed in any way. Not one inch. Not a millionth of an inch. That can only happen if ice that is resting on land up there melts and flows as new water into the oceans. So much for the North Pole. The average annual temperature in the high Arctic is – 34 degrees C. On top of this, a 40-year record of Arctic temperature by Americans and Russians from 1950 to 1990 showed a cooling trend of 1.5 degrees C (Kahl, D., Nature, 361, 1993). In short, it is a little hard to fathom why a global rise of one degree down here in the next century would change much up there.

                          As for the South Pole, the massive amounts of ice there – most of the world’s store of ice – is indeed resting on land. But the average altitude of Antarctica is about 7,000 feet, in places exceeding 15,000 feet, and the average annual temperature is somewhere around - 50C. The ice has been sitting there for several hundred million years, is so large it forms its own microclimate, gets sunlight only at a narrow angle for only six months a year, and like other major ice sheets is remarkably resistant to melting. There is no known mechanism that could melt such a mass of ice. A warming of earth, even if it occurs at levels of a few degrees Celsius will not change much on a continent that is averaging -50C. As for the alarmist photos of “shelf” ice melting at Antarctica? It is already floating in water and so, as at the North Pole, the same amount of displacement occurs whether it sits in the water as ice today, or as melted ice (water) tomorrow. To top it off, studies have shown that Antarctica has actually been cooling recently. For the two decades prior to 2000, satellites recorded a cooling of 0.42 degrees C and land units recorded 0.008 degrees C (Comiso, 2000, and Watkins and Simmonds, 2000).

What Is the Connection Between Carbon Dioxide and Temperature Change?

                      It is disputed. In Al Gore’s very slick film An Inconvenient Truth the central case presented was that the clear rise in atmospheric CO2 is the cause of a parallel rise in the earth’s surface temperature (but this is not so in the upper atmosphere, as mentioned above – on which fact Gore is slickly silent). However – it bears repeating - many climatologists of high repute insist the relationship is the reverse. To complicate matters, there has been a general warming trend for the past 300 years since the little-ice age, and CO2 levels have tended to track this. What greatly frustrates the prophets of doom in our midst, however, is the truth of the so-called “Medieval Warming Period” – a centuries long period over 1,000 years ago when the earth was much warmer than today – about 2 degrees C - in the complete absence of any man-made greenhouse gasses except from gaseous cows, horses, and humans. That was when the Vikings settled Greenland, then withdrew when another cooling arrived. Even more embarrassing is the fact that scientists such as John Matthews from Canada’s geologic survey reported finding fossils of pine trees and even tropical vegetation and biological organisms in the high arctic, around Ellesmere island some 400 miles from the North Pole. And Ohio University’s Peter Webb the same year dug up 3 million year old roots and leaves of beech trees from a mountain 400 miles from the South Pole (Toronto Star, June 16, 1991). And … fossils of dinosaurs found in the high Arctic are plentiful and on display in many museums. The arctic sea temperature 55 million years ago was around 18 degrees Celsius and later during what is called the “super-greenhouse” period, sea temperatures there rose to 23 degrees C. For a reality warp, try to imagine Eskimos in bikinis! (National Post, June 1, 2006).

How Much CO2 Are We Talking About?

                  Amounts of CO2 (which amounts to about 0.07% of the entire atmosphere) are tallied in gigatons of Carbon (Gt C). A gigaton is a billion metric tons, or a trillion kilograms. The recent annual increase in global carbon attributed to man-made activities has been estimated at roughly 6.52 Gt C. But to understand what this means we have to ask how much natural Carbon there is to begin with, and where it is, and how fast it moves from place to place? Estimates are that the earth’s atmosphere contains around 750 Gt C; the surface of oceans contains about 1,000 Gt C; the intermediate and deep oceans about 38,000 Gt C; and the earth’s natural vegetation cover and other stuff lying around contains about 2,200 Gt C. And … Carbon moves naturally from one place to another: about 90 Gt C per year move between oceans and air; about 60 Gt C between vegetation and air; about 50 Gt C between marine life and ocean surfaces; and between surface and deep ocean levels about 100 Gt C. So great is the magnitude of these reservoirs of Carbon, and the rate of production and absorption between them that no accurate number can be placed on the amount of man-made Carbon present on earth. Nor can a source of the recent rise in atmospheric Carbon be determined. Reliable research tells us that in historical terms, concentrations of CO2 have varied widely over geological time, with peaks as much as twenty times higher than at present, and troughs at eighteenth-century levels. And incidentally, each human being exhales about 100,000 litres of CO2 per year, which (times the earth's human population) comes to about a third of the amount expelled by the 500 million automobiles on earth, and to that we have to add the 150 Gigatons  of CO2 from the breathing of the billions of animals on earth.

How Do Plants Respond to CO2 Enrichment?

                       Very favourably. Controlled Experiments with environments where plants such as orange trees and wheat are grown in, um, greenhouses, and force-fed Carbon at very high levels of enrichment, produce astonishing results – as much as tripling the rate of growth. In one experiment, sour orange trees had a growth rate 170% faster than normal and orange production was 127% greater. All plants seem to respond energetically to Carbon fertilization, especially trees, because carbon is a nutrient, or food for all organic life on earth, and not a pollutant or some evil gas as we tend to believe due to its recent bad press. Indeed, some reading around on this topic produces the feeling that the earth is presently carbon poor compared to its past, and that more of it would help feed millions of chronically hungry human beings.

Some Quotes on Climate Science From the Top

* Professor Willie Soon, Astrophysicist, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, and co-author of a major Harvard study of 240 climate studies showing warming and cooling variability long before the industrial age, says that policy makers should use “strong caution in finding a human fingerprint” in climate change (National Post, April 8, 2007).

* Professor Emeritus Antonino Zichichi, Advanced Physics, University of Bologna, and President of the World Federation of Scientists, complained of climate models in general, and of the IPCC report in particular, stating that models as were used in the IPCC report “are incoherent and invalid from a scientific point of view.”

* Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace: "It's a political activist movement," and anyone who disagrees with the anti-capitalist global-warming theory is considered "like a holocaust denier."

* Professor Reid Bryson, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Global Warming: Man made global warming "is a theory for which there is no credible proof." And on Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth: "Don't make me throw up. It's not science. It's not true."

Some Radical Green Ideas

                   Just listen to some of these anti-humanist sentiments I found in my files, from when all this was getting revved up around 1993. Here is David Bower, anti-population spokesman for Friends of the Earth: “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parent holds a government licence.” And here is Carol Amery from the German Green Party who says that she and her colleagues “aspire to a cultural model in which the killing of a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of six-year old children to Asian brothels.” Huh? I mean, that is a strange mind indeed: she does not imagine herself as one of those children. And hear also Stephanie Mills, a co-author of the book Whatever Happened to Ecology? who insists that “humanity is debased protoplasm.” Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd operation told the press that “humanity is the AIDS of the earth.” And finally, and perhaps the most rabidly anti-human of them all, was this bit from David Graber, a research biologist with the American National Parks Service:

“Human happiness [is] not as important as a wild and healthy planet. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the earth. Until such time as homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.” David seems to imagine himself surviving the virus he is wishing on the rest of us.

*********************

Sources: In addition to various articles and news sources in my files collected over the years, much of the data and insight in this piece was taken from publications such as The Fraser Institute’s Global Warming, A Guide to the Science (2001), as well as from the excellent scientific papers collected by the Institute in Global Warming: the Science and the Politics (1997), and also from various sources published by the Marshall Institute, USA, over the years.

Canada’s Vancouver-based Fraser Institute came up with the idea of calculating “Tax Freedom Day” during the Trudeau era when during the span of his 14-year regime this openly socialist Prime Minister (though no one dared call him that back then) oversaw one of the greatest per-capita increases in government spending ever witnessed in a modern nation. He raised Canada’s national debt from the16 billion dollars accumulated during the first 100 years of confederation to about 200 billion by the time he left politics. The average rate of interest applied to that amount since then gets us to the 550 billion dollars we carry today. That is the fiscal legacy of Trudeau’s socialism.

Some one once asked, “What would you be if the government took 100% of your annual income?” And the answer is: “a slave.”

So the next obvious question is, “What are you if the government takes half your income?” And the tempting answer is: “half a slave.”

No one except an anarchist would say that human society is possible with no taxes whatsoever. But many of us, myself included, would say, following Thoreau, that the best government is the least, and that a minimal tax regime servicing a culture of maximum personal responsibility is better than what we have, which is something I have gotten used to calling a regime of “libertarian socialism” under which the emphasis is on the freedom (mostly of a sexual and expressive nature) of millions of individuals, who are at the same time massively dependent on governments they hold responsible for many of the human and civic responsibilities individuals and communities used to handle proudly themselves.

For this illusion of freedom and this shirking of natural responsibility, how much of their income, each and every year, do Canadians fork over to their nanny state?

Below I reproduce an article on Canada’s Tax Freedom Day written by two researchers at The Fraser Institute. It is sobering to understand the concept and track it annually, which you can do by going to the Institute’s website (below). Tax Freedom Day answers the question: “At what point during each year do I stop working 100% for government, and start working for myself and my family?” The answer, this year, is – June 20^th. It is a little better than when Trudeau was around – but not much.

On another note, the authors suggest near the end of their piece that we should all ask if we are getting “value” for our money? My response to that suggestion is that it wouldn’t matter if governments were 100% “efficient” and we were all giggling with pleasure at what they are “giving” us. Because if you think about it, nothing could be more scary than a truly efficient government that knows your every move, and calculates your every need, expense, and pleasure. Efficiency does not excuse legal plunder. So let us never forget:

A government that can give you everything you want must first take everything you have.

                                                                                                   ~

This article was prepared by Niels Veldhuis and Milagros Palacios, economists with The Fraser Institute.

Nearly two months after the April 30th deadline for filing income tax, Canadians can finally celebrate Tax Freedom Day. This year, Canadians popped the champagne on June 20th. That is, Canadians worked until June 19 to pay the total tax bill imposed on them by Canadian governments - federal, provincial and local. From June 20 to the end of the year, taxpayers are working for themselves and their families.

The harsh reality is that income taxes are only about one-third of the total taxes Canadians pay. To get an accurate picture of their total tax bill Canadians must include property taxes, sales taxes, profit taxes, health taxes, social security taxes, alcohol and tobacco taxes, fuel taxes… the list goes on.

In 2007, the average Canadian family of two or more people earned approximately $83,700 in income and paid $13,500 in income taxes. When all of the other taxes are added, their total tax bill jumps to $38,992. In other words, the average Canadian family paid 46.5 per cent of its income in taxes.

Of course many Canadians happily pay their taxes to support the numerous government programs they believe are effective. On the other hand, many others are outraged at the level of taxation and the quality of government services they finance.

Therein lies the value of Tax Freedom Day: it gives Canadians the information they need to determine whether they are getting value for the money they send to governments.

While it is ultimately up to individual Canadians to determine if their taxes are too high and whether or not they are getting value for their tax dollars, some perspective might help.

Consider the findings of a 2005 study Public Sector Efficiency: An International Comparison led by economists at the European Central Bank. The study measured the efficiency of the public sectors in 23 countries, including Canada and found that Canada’s public sector was relatively inefficient. Specifically, the authors found that Canada should be able to achieve the same outcomes from government programs while using only 75 per cent of current resources. In other words, there is approximately 25 per cent waste in Canada’s public sector. And it’s not hard to see why.

Our health care system consumes nearly a quarter of total federal, provincial and local tax revenues. Only Iceland spends more than Canada to deliver universal-access health care to their population. Despite that high level of spending, Canadians experience comparatively poor access to technology and doctors, and comparatively long waiting times for surgery. It is quite clear that we are not getting value for money in government health care compared to other countries.

Similar patterns hold for education, social services and a host of other government programs. In most cases, money is not the problem. Through genuine reform, Canada could reduce the amount spent on many of these programs without reducing the benefits to Canadians.

In addition, our tax dollars are often simply wasted – think sponsorship scandal and the fiasco surrounding the firearm registry. Unfortunately, these are not isolated events. Canada’s Auditor General consistently finds case after case of waste, misrepresentation, incompetence, and self-interested public officials. In fact, a recent survey of reports from the Auditor General found 284 cases from 1992 to 2005 where taxpayer’s dollars were either wasted or program objectives not achieved.

Clearly, Canadian governments should be able to enact significant tax relief while achieving the same level of performance from their programs. If federal, provincial, and local taxes were reduced by 25 per cent (the suggested amount of government waste), Tax Freedom Day would arrive roughly a month earlier. In other words, Canadians would be celebrating Tax Freedom Day in mid-May rather than on June 20^th.

Individual Canadians must decide for themselves if, as taxpayers, they are receiving value for their tax dollars. Tax Freedom Day provides Canadians with a comprehensive, graphic measure of an average family’s total tax bill or the cost of their bundle of government services, to allow them the opportunity to do so. Our hope is that such understanding will lead to more pressure for real and meaningful tax relief for Canadians in the future.

Calculate your personal Tax Freedom Day at www.fraserinstitute.ca