BC Liberal Leadership Platform Briefing

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Accountability

I have watched politics and its outcomes for years; I can hardly remember a circumstance where the political process has generated a completely rational outcome. One recognizes the need for compromise among various constituents in the making of law, there should be no compromise in its functionality once it is put into practice. Accountability is sorely lacking, we must have clear and concise reporting on the outcomes of laws made, that is to say, every law must have a clearly stated mission, there must be a set of metrics established, they must be monitored and clearly reported to the public by an arm’s length actor. Until we do that, we will see public opinion swayed by constant exposure to smoke and mirrors rather than rationalized to real outcomes. 

Institutional Reform

It is the case that many of our institutions have lost the ability to adjust to the realities of the modern world as they have evolved into existence, in some cases they have evolved over hundreds of years – we need organizations that are DESIGNED to deal with the reality that we exist in, an environment where technologies morph daily. Institutions need to be adroit and have the absorptive capacity to utilize the mass of new technologies available now and technologies that are on the horizon. The majority of our government institutions are just too big and the institutional inertia they are experiencing is preventing them from responding to demands; efforts will be directed toward their long term financial sustainability, more adroit response to change, greater focus in their mandate, a drive to increase absorptive capacity, and better and more productive working environments for the people employed. Reforms will be effected by reducing the mass of large institutions, reconfiguring their organizational structures and introducing more opportunity for heuristics to come into play in the development of government organization. Stagnation is always a bad thing in an organization, there needs to be disruption to effect progress and improvement in the functionality of government organizations; this is especially true given the dynamics of the modern operational environment.   

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Education

Human Capital is the sub straight of the human endeavour, we all know it, we all say it, but the truth is, this value fails to find complete expression in our present governance. In order for British Columbia to excel relative to other jurisdictions, the development of Human Capital must be the primary focus of Government. I believe it is the case that, jurisdictions that facilitate the conversion of new knowledge into useable products and services are the jurisdictions that will prosper. We can readily quantify the benefit of the application of knowledge, that is to say,  we know the increased tax revenue garnered from dentist relative the norm for example. Government tax revenue is a direct product of any given jurisdiction’s population’s ability to generate income. Increase aggregated intellectual capacity and you increase government revenue.  Education should be accounted for under a WIP account as opposed to an expense account and a graduate student should be viewed as a capital asset - education is infrastructure spending of the greatest significance. We can afford to be generous here, the fact is, we would be remiss if we failed to invest heavily in education.

In many of our institutions, more money just means more spending – this is true to a degree with our educational complex. We have failed to take complete advantage of self-directed and technology driven delivery platforms for education.  Our educations systems are constrained by present structures and credentialization processes.  There needs be a focus on an increased velocity in the distribution of knowledge, so as to facilitate the province's prominence in the conversion of latent technology to marketable products and services, and perhaps most importantly, to compete with jurisdictions like China, India and others which are generating massive volumes of trained professionals every day.

Family Policy and Support

I will promote policy that generates family centred funding, gives priority to families having time together and supports them interfacing with society in a manner that is optimal for their specific needs. The British Columbian Family as an institution is quaking under the strain of post war societal trends and contemporary economic realities. I used to say, I paid to raise my children, this generation should pay to raise theirs. When I reflect, I could have used a culture of support and promotion of family from government and it was absent.

There is an alarming trend is society whereby, every aspect of our existence is institutionalized. We are born in government institutions, we are educated by government institutions, every aspect of our life is affected by government institutions and we die in government institutions. In this heavily institutionalized environment, the individual and the family are withering, and they are being replaced by a monoculture. Proper support of families is one policy initiative that can protect against the industrialization of child rearing, the destruction of the family and the social ills that fall out of it.

Fiscal Policy

I will seek to move the provincial growth to the top performing region in the G20 by aggressive use of region specific stimulative policies that seed entrepreneurialism and build the economy from the ground up. In British Columbia, like many western economies, we are ageing and with an ageing population comes economic stagnation. We are lucky as this is being mitigated to a degree by immigration, the fact remains, however, that many people are moving into retirement taking their productive capacity with them and they are seeking a safe place for their retirement funds. There is a massive amount of latent capital sitting in RRSPs generating very little good for their holders and failing to find their way to the people that really need capital, entrepreneurs.  This reality provides an opportunity to engage in a form of quantitative easing that benefits in a significant way the existing middle class and builds out a new group of good income earners.  If the government moves to the aggressive use of partially subsidized bonds to generate a localized increase in the velocity of the flow capital to startup companies and critical infrastructure initiatives, it will facilitate an immediate increase in economic activity and the medium and long term economic performance will be improved as well.    

Rural Revitalization

One is forced to accept there is a trend taking people away from rural areas to urban centres, one should never accept the many of our rural communities are mere shadows of their former selves. So rural revitalization will be pursued through improved utilization of crown land, high capacity internet infrastructure for remote areas and the productive cooperation of the First Nation Peoples. There is much opportunity in forest tenure reform, tourism, agriculture, crown land utilization reform and new industry to build out the rural regions of the province.

Environmental Policy

Finally, an aggressive environmental policy that is rationalized to realistic time lines, realistic assessment of risk versus reward, considers honestly where provincial policy can effect difference and is founded on science. It is my observation that much environmental policy or rather, obstruction to certain types of industrial activity, is founded on an errant map of reality. It is also the case the much environmental policy is corrupted by interested parties wanting to forward certain social agendas. There is a lot to be done in the way of conservation that government can help encourage, as well as, in the energy alternatives space and safe fossil fuel use space.

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Refugee Crisis - How many children have to pay the price.

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The recent politicization of the death of two young boys escaping a civil war has been a low point in Canadian politics; I’m unsure who introduced these boys misfortune into the mix first; they should be ashamed of themselves. Given that the Conservatives had nothing to gain from the assertions that Canada is AWOL on the refugee front, one can deduct then it was someone else.

Now that refugees are front and center on the campaign trail the topic is at hand and it presents an opportunity to point out where refugees come from. We have refugees because we have conflict and disruption, we have conflict because the world community has failed to manage the region effectively. Please look at the history of the Middle East and you will make the following observation, the pain incurred there by these people is a product of incomplete effort on the part of intervening nations in our contemporary reality and the fracturing of regional order as a result of European management post Ottoman Empire.

Click the Links below for more thinking on the subject

Prosperity is a better way forward for the Middle East

More Pain or More Solution in the Middle East

Afghanistan - thoughts from the past

Expand & Extend our efforts in the Middle East

Demographics and Foreign Policy

  

Russia attacked Afghanistan so they could have a fossil fuel transportation corridor to the lucrative Pakistani and Indian markets; the United States intervened by supporting Afghani warriors “freedom fighters” as they were called and they drove the Russians out, this gave birth to the Taliban.  The Taliban gave refuge to Osama bin Laden and a stronghold for al-Qaeda in the Pashtun region of the country. It then became necessary to bomb the al-Qaeda stronghold and invade the country. It is important to note that many in the United States governing body wanted to take a stronger presence in Afghanistan post the Russian occupation, had they done so the Afghanistan story would be much different – because of passive foreign policy however, in excess of a decade of war and hardship ensued. Even now, having been through the cycle before and post a trillion dollar military adventure, we (the west) are poised to make the same error in Afghanistan. We need to focus on effectiveness in the Middle East, on outcomes there and stop letting western election cycles and the whimsy of the populous politics determine our course.

Having seen this same process unfold several times elsewhere, we had to once again repeat history in Iraq. The Coalition took Iraq handily militarily speaking and then invested trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, millions of civilians killed, injured and displaced to win the peace, to effect a secure living circumstance for the country. This was a herculean undertaking with an unspeakable human toll, only to walk away to let the cycle unfold again, in was popular to take US troops out of Iraq – it was just stupid in the extreme. Granted there are other causal elements at play in the rise of ISIS, the “desert spring” and the collapse of several national orders in quick succession has played a role as well, the point is that had the US maintained military presence, there would be remaining a point where order exists. The two little boys who drowned were Kurds, “Kurdistan” or the Kurdish region of Iraq was beginning to prosper before the war do a degree and then gained momentum as the new order in Iraq took form; most of Kurd’s progress took place with just western air support. Had we (the west) exercised our obligation to protect, had we stayed the course, those two little boys would have opportunity to be living in a stable and prosperous place.

The generous country of Canada never killed those boys; a dismal circumstance and extended western neglect did. 

Click the Links below for more thinking on the subject

Prosperity is a better way forward for the Middle East

More Pain or More Solution in the Middle East

Afghanistan - thoughts from the past

Expand & Extend our efforts in the Middle East

Demographics and Foreign Policy

CLICK TO VIEW INVERINE CONSULTANCY'S SITE

 

Alberta & the NDP - Alberta?

I often say, “shake a tree at any post-secondary institution and a half dozen Trotskies fall out”, this is the brain trust of the Canadian socialist movement – the source of a regurgitated dogma, a dogma, when given cursory review, has in every instance ended in the few, running the many and with everyone having less as opposed to more – China, Soviet Russia …, even Sweden had to come back to the market economy to repair the damages caused by their pursuit of socialist policy. The pursuit of equality always ends badly, when equity is held as a priority and people can pursue their interests – people get more. Why, then, does a doctrine that drives policy that never works always seem to get another chance – bad government market policy that’s why. My Uncle taught me, it was bad conservatism that was the birth place of socialism; my observations have confirmed his assertion. Conservatism is seen as a fusion between market economy, fiscal restraint and social conservatism – in effect, market economy and good fiscal policy are falling prey to social conservatism – Canada is a progressive country, forget that and prosperity will die the same death that oppressive social conservative inclinations have.

There has never been a more prosperous civilization in the history of the world than the western modern economic complex; we are now at the apex of human existence. The two things that have driven the accent of prosperity has been the market economy, in concert with democracy. The constant competition for companies to provide a better product cheaper, has created a circumstance where people spend their entire day figuring out what I want, then making it, getting to me where I want it and finally at the cheapest price – disruption, creative destruction are the marvels that have given us so much. This stands in startling contrast to the monoliths socialist policies have generated – medical system that is failing us and an education system that is delivering services the same way it has for 5000 years.  I ran a fishing lodge for eight years, I took over in 1989 – I purchased a computer and automated guest interaction, accounting and all administrative aspects of the business. I stopped going to the doctor 7 years ago and then they still had paper files and I was unable to even communicate with the guy by email.  

So hold onto your hat Alberta, maybe the NDP will give you a few more monoliths to live with like ICBC, or maybe you’ll be lucky enough for the government to regionalise your already waning medical system. Alberta Farmers, just wait, the NDP may mimic the largest expropriation of land in history as the BC NDP did, in the manner they implemented the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR). The ALR has grown into its own industry here in BC, farmland is getting eaten up anyway, it is just that we have another byzantine hoop to jump through – you even have to go to the Agricultural Land Commission if you want to bring a belly-dump in to change the drainage or alter the topography on your own place. Oh, and when you want to put in a septic system on your place – it is going to cost you about $10,000 more to higher an accredited insulation company. The metaphorical horse shit is going to pile high and wide in Alberta now, the real stuff will have several inspectors with permit books and forms in triplicate to fill out – it will sit there longer now because you will be unable to do anything with it until a recent graduate from Resource Management, with the life experience of a lab rat grants permission to move shit around on your own place - enjoy. 

Everyone that believes in the individual, in enterprise, in prosperity needs to wake up and start making capitalism accessible. The socialist brain trust has feed the doctrine of envy, they teach people to hate the successful, they cut the heads off of the tall poppies and the tax initiative – we should be able to beat that pretty easy. What’s stopping us, we are, we are failing to be generous enough – we need to build a culture of facilitation, entrepreneurial adventurism. Alberta is the most prosperous jurisdiction in North America, when you go there, one sees many who are absent access to business and it fruits, doctrine won in Albert, the NDP has spun the molehill of inequality in to the mountain of societal injustice in the most prospers place on earth, exceptional political play. This standing in startling contrast as well, to the protectorate of the market economy, your bickering on the right – well enjoy. I hope for your sake, that this government takes the same tact as the Blair government, at least there, there was a grand bargain; OR you may sit down to a banquet of consequences, a bunch of redistributionist policy and a whole bunch more government.   

  

Is there Room for Libertarian Thought in Canadian Politics.

As issues evolve in the political world all parties oscillate along a continuum of what is typically described as the right and left, the libertarian perspective often finds solution anywhere between the two extremes. The common theme is the absence of coercion. The libertarian has the focus of thought which seeks to construct a society that expels all foreign influences over the individual; it is in this context that the absence of coercion ranks highest in all matters related to governance. The liberal also seeks to deliver free agency to the individual but seeks to do so by intervention and is willing to compromise free agency. The conservative seeks to maintain social stability through tradition and convention and is willing to compromise free agency in the process. The libertarian says “leave me alone to make my way” absent exploitive circumstance. The liberal says “there is an obligation to provide means”. While the conservative says “one needs to be reliant on one’s self and execute actions with strong adherence to convention”.

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The creep toward “collectivism” that is permeating the Canadian political liberal movement repels libertarians. Liberals in Canada have many of the same traits as Trotskyism, as expressed in strong redistributionist tendencies. The imposition of state on the actions of the individual is repugnant to a libertarian, so redistributionist policy is opposed by libertarians because it’s viewed as being coercive and taxing to the autonomy of the individual. While most libertarians understand and support the necessity of government as a means of facilitating human exchange, they seek to minimize the effect of the government on the actions of people. Libertarians seek neutrality and minimalism in government. Liberals are willing to forfeit autonomy by allowing the government to encroach on personal choice in the context of the collective influencing the choices of the individual. Conservatives find accord with libertarians in their inclination toward self-reliance and the constraint on the size of government but tend to lose accord on matters related to regulating the individual – particularly in the realm of conservatism as it relates to social issues. Libertarians seek to constrain the size of government in the interest of maintaining an autonomous sovereign individual and conservatives want to constrain the size of government in the interest of efficiency or to prevent overtaxing the individual and the liberals are more willing to allow the government to grow in the interest of effecting social equity.     

Sweden recently restructured its pension system from a generalised government pension plan to a plan that accumulated pension contributions attributed to the individual. The individual was then extended the choice to manage their own contributions or they could opt to let the government manage their contributions. The presence of choice for an individual to influence the outcome of their own resources is an element in the legislation a libertarian would look for; the forced and coerced contribution to the pension plan in the first place would be completely offensive to a libertarian, as a libertarian wants the choice to save when it is most beneficial and  as they see fit. A liberal views this intrusion as acceptable because there are people absent the discipline to save for themselves and it is just more practical to force them to save now than pay to keep them later. It is evident in the liberal acceptance of such policy that over time state paternalism will rise, as it has in Canada. Increasingly, the government in Canada is sacrificing personal choice for collective action; the question for people is how far do we want this trend to go?

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Libertarians find harmony with liberals on government’s actions as it relates to morality. Libertarians may be socially conservative themselves, but want that choice to be theirs and reject paternalist dictates from governments in this regard. Liberals are in the main “socially” liberal and less constrained morally. So while the genesis of thought regarding the direction of policy relating to morality may be different, the outcome often is the same. Conservatives are willing to encroach on the individual with respect to social issues, more so than the libertarians find palatable. Libertarians see contractual law focused on managing human exchange as valid, where laws related to morality or personal conduct are viewed as invalid – Libertarians favour free action in the absence of harm to others.

There is an absence of direct political expression of libertarian perspective, so finding a means to promote and preserve the sovereign person is difficult. There is a willingness throughout the political spectrum to encroach on the individual, the conservatives tending toward being morally paternalistic and the liberals tending to be generally paternalist. In the full spectrum of political thought, only libertarians are seeking to give the highest priority to the absence of coercion. When one examines our life in Canada, one sees governments’ influence in every aspect of their daily life, at some point the level of government involvement reaches diminishing returns socially and monetarily. It is apparent we have breached acceptable bounds of government involvement in many cases on both scores. What is more concerning in Canadian society is a cultural inclination to acquiesce to state authoritarianism. We are polite which is fine but, we’re too compliant – we need to introduce a higher measure of the individual into our culture.      

Marxism found is origins from the injustices of the sanctioned exploitation of the working class through the evolution of the industrial revolution. Governments, heavily controlled by corporate interests permitted, either through legislation or the absence of action, an extended period of exploitation to occur; people's basic human requirements left wanting in spite of dawn to dusk work day. Unflinching government commitment to business interests in the face of corporate coercion absent any mitigating influence is a blight on humanity - a testament to humans’ ability to subjugate “others” through separation; this reality is a persistent thorn in the side of those wanting to promote an enlightened capitalist perspective. It is important to recognise that the libertarian perspective seeks to generate a circumstance where people are at liberty, and so the circumstance of the working class coerced to subservience is precisely what libertarian thought seeks to curtail – the libertarian seeks the absence of all subservience. This is very likely the only point of commonality that exists between Marxists and Libertarians, the desire to see people absence exploitation through coercion. Where Marxists seek equality through government intervention, Librarians seek prosperity through government facilitation.

The legitimate fear of a generalised exploitive circumstance, similar to what occurred during the initial stages of industrialization, looms large in the psyche of the socialist movements. There is a cultural meme that remains constant from one generation to the next, which transmits this fear into an era where the breadth of influence renders it irrelevant and in fact harmful to progress.

There is, the world over, an overabundance of people to perform menial tasks, this reality results in labour being unable to garner sufficient remuneration for subsistence. This has been a chronic fixture of humanity for thousands of years. The ongoing observation of this reality perpetuates the Marxist doctrine as valid in the minds of many. The Marxist doctrine inappropriately directs blame for this circumstance on the misallocation of capital and hence the capitalists, when it is the fact that there is too much supply of labour relative to the capacity of the economy that is to blame. The Marxist response is to effect redistributionist actions in the pursuit of equality which results in the punishing of those who have found productive means to affluence. As someone who values the unfettered pursuit of self-interest, but recognises this chronic challenge, I would choose to find a means put a floor on human existence and allow the market to assign relative value to a given good or service. The floor on human existence would include the resources to subsist and a means to advance. As asserted in other places in this document, governments best way to contribute to the betterment of the individual and by extension society as a whole is the provision of education. Education requires little in the way of physical resources and builds the most critical element of society: human capital.       

The Marxist, Socialist and to a lesser extent Liberals are still holding on to equality as a focal point for governance. Equality is an errant pursuit for a host of reasons, where equity is laudable and achievable. The pursuit of equality, particularly at the point of actuation, has built into it so many disincentives to action that any society premised on equality has failed. Human beings are divergent creatures whose pursuits follow an infinite number of vectors, levels and outcomes; equality is a frighteningly stifling perspective when seeking the course that allows humanity to find its full expression. The hallmark of any society espousing equality as its primary focus for action has resulted in, firstly the emergence of a concentrated authoritarian government operated by “elevated” equals and then secondly it evolves to a plutocracy.  

While equality is desirable, when it is pursued, dynamics emerge that result in detrimental effects. The progressive tax structures typical of western societies generate an inhibition to the most productive in society to pursue vigourously their area of endeavour. The better you do the more you pay, the less you do the less you pay – the existence of this pressure impairs action in society as a whole, with the net result being less opportunity in aggregate and hence less opportunity for the impoverished to find their way to prosperity.  

The libertarian focus is to provide people with a circumstance that allows the populous to engage freely with its environment and let whatever relative outcome that emerges be commensurate with a given individuals production as it is valued by the society at large. One person may choose to cut grass, another to build rockets. Society will value their respective contribution and that value is expressed in the abstract representation of human action, commonly money. By allowing a variance in action to result in a variance value, ergo life outcome, more attention flows to what is important and or interesting for people. The libertarian perspective accepts the existence of inequality, it seeks, however, to prevent its entrenchment for a given individual or group - it is inherently disruptive and dynamic.  


                               More  Thoughts

Tax Policy - KISS - Keep it Simple Stupid
CANADA - ECONOMIC STAGNATION NATION
Thoughts on - Counter Cyclical Spending

Senate - Government Financial Monitor?

Government Resource Revenue Dependence

Government - Ensuring Optimum Size

Senate Spending & Restructuring

                       Government Scale & Accountability

                                         TRANSCENDENCE - WHY IT MATTERS