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Bob Metz:
Good morning London, I’m Bob Metz and this is Just Right on CHRW 94.9 FM where we’ll be with you from now till noon. Not right wing—that’s Just Right. And I want you to write this number down while we’re talking about writing. The number is 519-661-3600 if you want to join the conversation today. We’ll be talking about a number of things over the coming hour.

I don’t know if I’ll get every subject in and a few that will surprise us, I’m sure. But of course there’s been a lot of talk about gas prices still being high, gas price gouging. I want to talk a little about the Fraser Institute’s report on taxes that they released some time ago last week. I didn’t really have time to follow up on that. Are you a slave? Do you think you’re paying too much in taxes? Because that’s something we’ll be getting into a little later.

If you missed my last week’s show and you missed the orientation of what I mean by Just Right and what I mean by being right, basically I’m not going to go through the whole thing again as I did last week, but I will be covering that again at some time in the future. To make it very short, I think I’ll just use a simple phrase. On the right I’m talking about a government as referee. On the left you’re talking about a government as a player in the game.

Now last week, again, I just had to do a follow-up on the Gazette spoof and all the issues surrounding it. If you tuned in last week, you heard me going on my little diatribe for almost about 40 minutes about the spoof, people’s reactions to it, and some of the things about feminism and the feminist reaction. I did say at the beginning of the show, before I expressed all my opinions, that I had not as yet seen the spoof, and I promised everyone that I will take a look at it between that week and today, and I have seen the spoof now. After looking at all the reaction to it, I’ve got to say folks, holy smokes, get a life.

This whole thing, you have to look at it in context. This whole thing was a spoof issue of the Gazette. The front cover of the Gazette looks like some old monster magazine that I used to read when I was a kid. The story that seems to have offended all the feminists is just a nonsense little story. It’s a cartoon practically, talking about vaginas running around and stuff like this, and then the Free Press gets a hold of it and reports that there’s a rape of a student going on with a nightstick by the police chief.

Now, yeah, the police chief’s name appeared in there. He did do something with a nightstick, but he was chasing stick figures around as far as I could tell from everything I’ve read here. And with a loudspeaker, not a nightstick. I guess he was giving some running vagina a speech or something. But anyways, it was a spoof on Take Back the Night, Take Back the Night March, and they called it Take Back the Nighty March.

But when I look at the rest of the paper, I mean, there’s all kinds of articles that you could be offended by, and I know there were some complaints levied. There’s a full-page article here headed “A Playboy’s Mansion, Western’s Highest Roller,” Paul Davenport guides us through his palace of party, and they’ve got pictures of people, obviously, who have probably just had sex or snorted coke, they’re drinking booze. I mean, this is all satire and silliness. And if you can take it in the right spirit, it’s fun, and you can laugh at it. If you can’t, well, you can’t. But does that give you a right to go around telling the people who are having a little chuckle that they can’t say that?

Now, I know there’s people who are sensitive about the issues, etc., and what they regard as the key issues in this, and that it’s all about violence against women. That’s not what this is about. And as far as I can tell, no one was saying anything bad about violence against women or advocating it or anything of that sort.

And this explains, too, after I looked at it, why Joe Mattias so carefully worded his article: “the article contained content about London police chief Murray Faulkner raping a student with a nightstick.” Well, when someone writes a paragraph that says it contained content and isn’t more explicit than that, you can bet there’s some spinning going on and some interpretations, and to be blunt, there’s a campaign going on.

And let’s see who’s actually running it here. We find that there’s some 20 people from the Free Press, according to the Free Press, that complained to the Gazette about this spoof. And they seem to be very organized. I noticed in the Free Press, I got caught up on my newspaper clippings, and I see here, there are three letters that I noticed regarding it, two of them by organizers, Women’s Events Committee of London, Executive Director of London Abused Women’s Centre.

Now, I hadn’t seen these before, and I’ve really got to address a couple of the things that are in these letters. In particular one by Megan Walker that I hadn’t seen, and I know she said some of these things last week, even here on this station. Quote: “One in four women is abused by her intimate partner. In Canada, one woman or child is sexually assaulted every minute of every day.” Now, this is in her letter to the editor. Just do the math. 60 times 60 is 3600 times 24, 24 hours a day. That means 8,640 sexual assaults a day times 365. That means 3,153,600 sexual assaults in Canada per year times 10 is over 30 million. Is that even possible?

And then of course she calls those responsible for the… Now, this is how lobbyists play their game. They stick their issue in front of you and they say, oh, look here, violence against women, you can’t possibly feel bad about that. And then they go and attack a cartoon spoof using the sympathy for violence and the sympathy for victims of violence as their leverage point to get something else out of the people. So basically what she wanted was a public apology, people would be removed from their positions. I talked about all this last week, but I noticed that she also wants them to discontinue writing an April Fools edition. How petty can you get?

Oh boy, I didn’t know that she thought that she was everybody’s mother here on campus, but what can you do? And to adopt anti-hate guidelines. Well, as to that latter, I kind of almost hope that they do adopt anti-hate guidelines of some sort. Because would the feminist movement be allowed on the campus here if that were the case? If you heard the stuff I read out of a book called Take Back the Night last week, wasn’t that just hate literature? Wasn’t it just anger coming out and seething, just wanting to get back at everybody? I mean, one person’s cause is another person’s hate, and there’s people that actually do not agree with the basic feminist spin on this whole thing.

But anyways, this makes me think back to the early days when, in the 1980s, when I first got involved in political activity, and I was debating a lot of feminists at the time. And I remember one in particular who might be—this might be the thinking that causes these kind of statistical anomalies being created by feminists when they say one in four every minute of every day. Well, how do you define rape? There’s been some outrageous definitions of rape. I remember back in the 80s, again, there was a local feminist here by the name of Gail Hutchison who used to say that a woman was raped if she has sex with her boyfriend because he threatens to end the relationship otherwise. And according to her thinking, the woman’s freedom of choice would be threatened and therefore she has sex against her will. Well, not only have you thrown the concepts of freedom of choice and force and consent right out the window, you’ve belittled what a real rape is. And the whole concept of violence, and when you start calling every relationship a rape, something else is going on there.

I think some local people might know what that is in this case. But let’s face it, a woman who’s faced with the choice of sleeping with someone to continue their relationship, that person has an option. She can go or not. And if she chooses to, that’s called consent. And consent means that you agree. Whether you like it or not, whether you’re doing it for another payoff or whatever, there’s nothing in the nature of consent that says you have to like everything you consent to. And some people do things for the strangest of reasons.

In contrast, you’re talking about a woman who’s faced with a real rape situation. Now, she’s got no good option. She either surrenders to her attacker or risks physical harm. That’s not a choice. And that’s what should be called a real rape. I mean, feminists are really losing it when they go on this whole rape, anti-male, anti-porn thing is largely a factor of this.

And it’s funny when you look at society in general on issues of this nature, looking at the Free Press here, just to show you the difference in opinions that are out there with attitudes towards sexual literature and things like that. Article from the Free Press, February 8th by Jennifer Oarks under the Sex Files: “Adult entertainment is pornography enhancing or eroding your relationship?” “Ask your mate if the cheap thrills are mutual.” Now, that’s to me a little bit more of a healthy way of looking at the issue rather than going bonkers and trying to create political situations that have no bearing on the issues in and of themselves in that nature.

So again, I looked at this whole situation. We’ve been fooled again. I think, was this a tempest in a teapot? No, no tempest, no teapot, I’m afraid. But what we have seen is a very well-orchestrated lobby effort on the part of local women’s groups who seized an opportunity and capitalized on the guilt and anxiety and that super sensitivity that they’ve been so successful in calling in so many people. Not only did they not meet any resistance, which I find is very strange, but according to the Free Press, of course, they got a complete capitulation on the part of the Gazette over a complete non-issue, over a cartoon parody. And they’re going to lose their freedoms and their right to express themselves and to criticize in a legitimate forum all over this meaningless attack that didn’t libel anybody, there was no reality to it.

Now in the context of the other articles in the spoof edition, this parody was barely noticeable. So clearly a handful of feminists went out of their way to emphasize and highlight it in a completely misrepresentative way and with the help of the London Free Press, this utterly silly and funny piece of fluff. So, major lesson, in addition to being man-hating, anti-freedom, anti-capitalists—as I read those words directly from the book Take Back the Night last week—feminists clearly have no sense of humor and no sense of fair play. Feminist literature is so much of it that I see is just profoundly offensive and hateful and politically misguided in almost every way I can imagine.

But you won’t see me running to Human Rights Commission or forcing ethical codes about my sensitivity to their irrationality. Anyways, it’s too bad that this is all getting so much play. There’s a little more going on here. I’ll follow up a little more right after these ads. And when we return, I want to talk a little bit about what’s going on in politics with all this rampant sexism. Are our politicians going crazy? Back in a minute. Join us after the break.

We’re back. I’m Bob Metz. This is Just Right on CHRW 94.9 FM. And the number to call if you want to join a conversation, ask any questions, get involved in a debate is 519-661-3600. Just left the issue of feminism and what’s going on on campus and some things. But if we’re supposed to live in such a racist-free and sexist-free society, it’s remarkable how our politicians just don’t seem to see it that way. I just see rampant sexism in politics. All of our major party leaders literally want more women in the legislature because 25% doesn’t seem to be enough in certain cases.

And we’ve seen it with Dion. Stéphane Dion on the federal level wants to make sure he has more women in Parliament. And ironically, there’s a couple of local candidates who are vying for the Liberal seat. I think it was in London-Fanshawe who found they were kind of being left out of the process because they happen to be male. Same things going on provincially with the NDP and with the Conservatives. It’s like all parties are in on this madness that they think is not being sexist by literally picking one sex over another rather than over their qualifications.

Look, women have had the vote. Women are 50% of the population. If they’re not voting for women or if not enough women are running, this has nothing to do with sexism or discrimination or anything of that nature. It’s just the kinds of choices that people do make when they get into or not don’t want to get into politics. I tell you, I’m in politics myself and women generally do not want to get into politics as such. They’re not into the whole concept of politics. Some of them are and they have the freedom. And in fact, they get quite encouraged. They have an advantage over most people in terms of being moved through constituency associations. And there’s the associations and ridings and things like that because hey, it’s the in thing to do. It’s a fad. It’s kind of that kind of a thing. So there’s certainly no obstacles in their way. So we don’t have to push them in there, do we? Is that what being equal is all about? Is that what’s happening here? Anyways, enough of that.

I want to do a little follow-up too on, I didn’t mention this last week at all, which is kind of strange. And that’s, I guess I’ll call the intellectual fallout from the Virginia Tech murders. That’s what I call them. I call them just out-and-out murders. One guy went kind of nuts there, but some of the response to these things have been a little bit disturbing to say. It’s the same old issues always coming back. Everybody takes a tragedy of some sort and then they push their issues on it.

A couple that caught my attention. Listening into this same hour here on CHRW this past Monday, and I heard some discussion on this issue and it comes back to a theme that I keep coming back to. And that’s the fact that people are blaming objects for the behavior of individuals. I heard some of the folks talking here on the station that they’re asking the question, how do you balance the rights of a disturbed individual with the rights of society? And sort of believing that there’s been no way to discover to do that yet, and yet we have. It’s called property rights. You cannot prevent crime, but this guy was a walking sign of some sort. People should have had the right to disassociate from him, but apparently he felt he had a right to be there and no one was doing anything to stop him. I think that was just a mistake, an exercise of judgment.

I think they had the right to do something and people are just reluctant when they see someone in that state. You can’t predict a person’s actions. A person could be acting very strange and say strange things and never be a violent danger to people. And some guy that looks like, you hear it so often, hey, oh, he’s a nice guy who’s living next door, seemed a nice guy, had a nice family, and oh, I didn’t know he killed 94 people. That’s sort of the shock that people always get.

But of course the big issue that came out of it was, oh, gun control. Gun control would solve all of these problems. On a single issue in hindsight, you can say, well, if nobody owned a gun, this might not have happened. But how do you know? How do you really know it wouldn’t have been worse? How do you know in the absence of gun ownership this guy wouldn’t have gone out and built himself a little bomb or made one like those two guys did? Oh, how many years ago was that where they blew the front of a building off just using a fertilizer type of a bomb, to forget what they call those.

But if you’re really determined to do damage and you’re going at it, you’re going to do it. And I think it’s very unfair to the United States, both to its system, about, I heard Dr. David Spencer, who’s from the Graduate School of Journalism here on campus, saying that America is a society built on guns and blood. Wow. I don’t think so. I think America is a society built on the concept of individual rights and freedom. And if you want to look at societies built on guns and blood, I would look at almost every totalitarian nation in the world.

We are tremendously disturbed by the fact of random acts of violence, that seems to scare us more than having a country come down on you and the government itself doing damage to you. One of the first things I learned when I got into politics and started reading philosophy and history was that in the history of mankind, this might sound strange to you, but people are very—it’s not the common thing to be in danger by a foreign government and worry about invasion. The greatest dangers constantly to citizens and the most damage ever done to citizens has been by their own governments, through tyranny, through oppression, not through invasions and things like that. And that at the root of that understanding is what the right to ownership of guns is all based about in a free society.

And whether you like it or not, I’ve never owned a gun, never had one, don’t really like guns, but I do feel that I have the right to own one if I felt I should have one. But the fact is that people confuse random acts of violence with, as though it’s any different in the other countries. You’re not hearing what’s going on in England, in Europe, in some of the Eastern countries where you just don’t hear about it because it’s not in our news. And they have just as many issues and bombings and violence. And basically people are always getting hurt or disarmed.

So a really strange article here in the, I don’t know what paper I got this out of, I’m assuming this is out of the London Free Press, but written by Rachel Marsden out of New York. And again she says she’s opposed to the right to bear arms and uses some arguments that I have just heard so many times. And of course she’s saying the same thing about my argument, well I’ve heard yours so many times. But she says one of the things that she does not agree with is that this tragedy could have been avoided had other students been armed. And that may be true to a point, but it could have been minimized, couldn’t it?

And why do people think that way? I had a relative in Miami who used to own a handgun and it probably saved his life two or three times. Twice in his parking lot because he was being held up by somebody and one other incident. Never had to use it, but he was thankful he had it because if he hadn’t someone could have got hurt. Now here’s the point, that’s not going to be a statistic anywhere. You won’t be reading about that. How many people were protected by a citizen who had a gun? Because if the assumption is that everybody’s crazy, well then we might as well give it up from the beginning.

And when you actually consider the number of guns that are in existence, that are out there, whether you like it or not, and it’s not an issue of liking it we just got to deal with the reality of it. And if you are a free citizen you do have a right to self-defense and if somebody says you can’t have a gun, well guess what? Logic only dictates that the police can’t have guns either because that’s where they get their right to act on your behalf. That’s something that the government does with the consent of the governed.

So, and to me it’s not so much about being armed as having the right to be armed. And I think that’s a deterrent. If somebody’s coming at you they might not know that you’re armed, but if they even know that you have the right to, then that might give them a second thought. You might have a gun. It’s interesting, I remember John Stossel on 20/20 went around on this issue and he went into the prisons. People who were busted breaking into people’s homes using guns and stuff. And some of you guys are real professionals and unanimously they all agreed that they love going to those states where there’s gun control because that’s the place where they can get into homes and rob people and hold them up and be relatively assured of very little resistance. And of course the police can’t arrive in time.

And that’s what blows me away, this cold argument by a woman who I know has her heart in the right place and wants to think that making guns go away will just make everything better. But anyway, she says realistically the gunman will always have the benefit of planning and surprise and will have fired off a few rounds before any others can dig their piece out of their baggy jeans. Boy, what is that all about? Well think about it, it took over nine minutes for the police to arrive. And is she saying that somebody can’t pull a gun out of their baggy jeans? I think there’s a, I don’t know, maybe she has a fashion problem here. And they can’t do that in a nine-minute period? That’s absurd, you can just see the emotion here. I wish guns would go away, I wish guns would go away and in the emotion create a greater problem.

Because what happens too is when you make guns illegal and you just make ownership illegal, you just quintuple the number of criminals out there. You’re a criminal or at least a civil law breaker of some sort by just mere ownership. Even though you’re not a threat to anybody, even though you might only be collecting guns. Maybe you believe in a gun for self-defense, which I think is a rational and legitimate reason to want to have a gun. But don’t count on the police to protect you. Police are recourse, they come after you’ve been robbed, they come after you’ve been beaten, they come after the store’s been looted and stuff like that. They’re not going to be standing out there preventing something because they can’t predict it unless they already know something in advance.

So it’s not that simple and clear-cut a situation. Now here’s an argument I used to hear too, I can’t believe she used this again, this in the same article. She thinks rifles are fine, which is very interesting because there’s a lot of people in rural areas who are inaccessible to police. Again, she’s assuming that the whole thing’s all about how fast the police can get to a crime scene to protect you. Well, when it comes right down to it, ultimately you’re really responsible for your own protection and if something happens, thank goodness we do have a justice system. That’s what the police are here for.

To institute justice and in the long run one assumes that having seen justice enacted, that’s what ultimately reduces the crime and certainly the nature of people who are predisposed to committing crimes. But says Rachel Marsden, why stop at handguns? If my weapon of choice is a nuclear bomb or a rocket launcher, why can’t I keep some in my basement for the purpose of self-defense just in case the neighbor decides to get uppity? Well, of course that’s the silly argument that comes out at the end, to which I can only say that if your neighbor does have a bomb, then yeah, you should have one too.

Because it’s totally silly. A nuclear bomb is not a defensive weapon, but it can be. But not in the hands of an individual. It’s not, it’s just the power is too great in terms of an individual. The only thing an individual could use a nuclear bomb for is to really blow up his backyard or to do something quite offensive in terms of an attack on a great number of people. So, I’m just thinking in the future, I wonder if they’d ever license people to have something like that. But in any case, it’s a silly argument. And of course, if you could apply the argument, and if people did have a nuclear bomb in their basement, then yeah, you should have one too. Although, what a pointless argument. But trying to create, connect a nuclear bomb to a handgun. Let’s give it a break. People have a right to self-defense. I think that’s a fundamental freedom. I don’t think you can give that up and expect to live in a free society.

It has been my observation in history that whenever people give up that right, governments assume it and they continue to assume it. And a process begins, a process that’s almost not stoppable. Anyways, I’m Bob Metz. This is Just Right on CHRW 94.9. And we’ll be right back after these brief messages.

Good morning. It’s Bob Metz returning. This is Just Right on CHRW 94.9 FM. You want to call if you want to join in on the conversation. What’s the number here? Oh, I forgot the number. 519-661-3600. And if you want to join in the conversation, please do so. I thought I’d move on. I wanted to get into a couple other issues here. We’ve got a bit of time to go here.

Just a side issue first, I want to deal with this again in a larger way in the future. I did a whole show when I was sitting in for Jim a few weeks ago on the whole global warming and environmental issue. And of course, there’s a lot going on about this. This is going to be the driving issue of the time. And to really handle it properly, I should put a lot more time into that issue and do some other things. But there’s a fundamental principle in the whole environmental issue that I think is constantly being avoided. And it’s partially responsible because of the or caused rather by the type of language we use. We do it innocently.

I do it myself. I heard Jim Chapman a couple weeks ago when he was talking about cleaning up the environment. And that’s the term I’m talking about, cleaning up the environment. Everybody uses the term, not really realizing that there’s sort of a contradiction in there. And this is it. What I want to know is, when you’re cleaning up the environment, where do you put the mess? Is there any place on the planet or even beyond it for that matter that isn’t part of the environment? I heard Jim Chapman talking about cleaning up our landfill sites. What does that mean, really? You pick it all up and you move it over and put it in another landfill site? Or what do you do? You take it and you put a big pile and you burn it and then you’ve got a different kind of pollution. Or you keep using it, because when we talk about waste, it’s really funny. Waste always means something that you don’t need and that you don’t want. The same thing could exist if it is wanted and it’s not considered waste. And it depends, of course, upon the application.

It’s really funny with all the fuss about these light bulbs and stuff that they waste energy. I don’t really see it that way. I don’t think you get something for nothing. I’ve seen some of these high-energy light bulbs. The building I live in already has them in all the hallways. I’ve been there for a couple years now. And that makes sense to me because they’re on 24 hours a day. And if you’ve got a light bulb that’s running 24 hours a day, it makes sense that it be low energy, that it be high efficiency in terms of its lifespan.

But do I really need a high-efficiency light bulb in my closet? Does that make sense? Putting in a light bulb. Some of these light bulbs take quite a few seconds just to warm up and to click in if these are the ones I’m thinking about, to give you the kind of light you want. And by the time you want what you’ve got in that closet, you can walk in and out before the light’s even on. And I don’t call that efficient.

I can see a lot of people. Oh, and the other thing that people say is inefficient about incandescent bulbs is the fact that they give off heat. Well, that might be a disadvantage in some cases, but I found it to be an advantage. I found sometimes in my one study at home, I can heat the room just by having the lights on. I don’t have to turn the heater on. So I’m not wasting what’s coming off those light bulbs. I’m actually using the heat. And if I had cool bulbs in place, I could just see me turning the heater on to make up for the loss.

So again, it all depends upon application and where you’re going to use it. And what you mean when you say clean up the environment by waste and proper usage and it’s just ridiculous to what extent we’re going to with this whole thing when really what it’s all about is rationing. Our governments are incapable of producing the energy that we need. So they start going after the consumers, the household consumer to make sure there’s enough energy left over for industry. Light bulbs are by the way are on at night time, when industry isn’t going full tilt, when the demand on power is down, they’re generally not running all during the daytime. So again, except for like I explained in apartment buildings and things, because the hallways are dark day and night because they don’t have windows. So that just makes sense.

But it’s getting—I’m starting to wonder if the whole term cleaning up the environment is just completely a political term. And this kind of disguises the reality that the only way we can improve our environmental quality is through technology and wealth. And the irony here, of course, is that those are the two things that most environmentalists are completely opposed to. That’s actually the target of their attacks in so many ways. They’re attacking capitalism, they’re attacking free markets, they’re attacking investment.

And it’s funny, it’s really nice to be able to say you can go high energy or go low energy with high-efficiency bulbs. But somebody had to invent that first. All those processes had to be in place. And the marketplace kind of eases things in. Whereas when a politician sees something and he goes, oh, look at that, that would be good for everybody. I’m going to force it on everybody. And in so doing, not only possibly without knowing it, ruins what might have happened with that particular invention, but may have prevented a few others in the process. Because everything the government touches is petrified, it freezes, it doesn’t come back in the same way that anything the government touches. It’s not going to work.

So, really environmentalists, such as they are, and such as the issues being presented to us today, they don’t want us to really clean up the environment. They don’t want any mess in the first place. That’s really where they’re coming from. They’re not about cleaning up. It’s don’t make a mess in the first place. Don’t pollute. Don’t do this. And therefore, no production, no industrialization. Let’s go back to the farm. Let’s live like Luddites, and which David Suzuki is perfectly free to do. But I don’t think he has to drag the rest of us with him.

But that’s just some of my thoughts on the whole thing about cleaning up the environment. It’s just one of those catchphrases that is almost meaningless to me because I’m always thinking, well, where the heck are you going to put anything that you’re cleaning up?

Another issue. Change gears entirely. Yes, the price of gas is still up around a buck a litre, a little over that, I guess. And there’s a lot of complaints about it. I know there’s a few websites have been set up to boycott certain companies. I get a kick out of people that just don’t understand the law of supply and demand, or they think the marketplace has to work in some mystical way to give them what they think is a fixed price, absolute value of things.

We tend to forget that Canada is the largest exporter to the United States. And that, yes, there have been a few little disasters lately in terms of our refineries. The average person does not realize how close to the edge we are in terms of our production of oil. We are really dependent on foreign oil largely because we haven’t increased our production capacities here. Thanks again to environmentalist movements, restrictive trade practices, all kinds of things that have made not only finding oil, but alternate energy sources.

You think the oil companies only care about oil. Well, I’ll tell you, if they found something that was more efficient than oil and they could sell it, they’d sell it. They’re in the business of making profit, not of making oil per se. It’s really funny that when you have a low supply of something, the price has to go up. That’s just the way it works.

Something is not worth something just because it costs X dollars to make it. A number of people argue, for example, let’s say it costs $3 a barrel to get oil out of the ground, but they might charge $30 on the world market or $50 or $90 or $100 or whatever it might be going for. Because that’s the demand on the product. It might actually cost, let’s say, if it even only cost a dollar a barrel to get it out of the ground, that doesn’t take into account a gazillion other factors. That’s just the cost of getting it out. What about time? How many barrels can you get out of the ground at a dollar each? In what frame of time will that production rate meet the demand? And that’s where the problem is.

And it’s really funny that at the same time that people want us to cut back on energy and go green, the very people, the very left that is screaming that is the same one that wants to see oil prices and gas prices down and subsidized when they actually go up, which is one of the major things. That’s how you’re going to slow down usage is to raise prices, but the prices shouldn’t go up arbitrarily. That’s not an answer to anything. If the price goes up arbitrarily, you’re going to have all kinds of problems and shortages, which is what happens. And this is what the situation here is in Ontario right now.

So prices are going to stay high until the reserve levels get back up, till demand drops a little, and then they’ll go down again. And you won’t hear anybody complain about that part. I guarantee you, they just do not complain when the prices go down. But in the meantime, then there comes this other issue. Excess profits. When prices are higher, sure, it might still cost an oil company one, two, three, four, five bucks a barrel to actually produce it. But when prices go up, that’s not just to create excess profits. And I’ve tried arguing this to many people in the public and they just don’t get it. It’s to control the supply. You don’t want to run out of something.

This is why you often see gas stations on a corner. The price is going up and down on one corner, down on the other, and people don’t understand it. It could be a million things going on. For example, suppose you’re a gas station owner and your tanks are low, say they’re getting down to a quarter or an eighth and you’re figuring, well, I got about an hour, an hour and a half left on these tanks, given normal traffic. I don’t want to run out. I just got a call from my supplier in Toronto. His truck’s not going to be here for three hours. Well, that’s a problem. Price goes up. He doesn’t want to run out of gas. That’s the worst thing that could happen. You’d rather have a price high and still have that gas available when needed than not have it at all. And when the truck arrives, down goes the gas incrementally, perhaps.

But of course, there’s a general price that you can’t go below or above because that’s what the market dictates. And I got to make it clear. It is the market dictating. Oil companies cannot sell gas and oil at any price they want because, for the simple fact, we can’t afford it. So it’s in their interest to price something at a certain price that can make the most people possible afford it. And that’s what’s always going on in the marketplace.

Remember Terrence Corcoran writing an article not too long ago in the National Post describing how, yeah, there’s an oil company conspiracy. They’re conspiring to keep prices low. Sometimes even when they’re short, they have a shortage. They manipulate the price in your favour to keep you coming to the pumps. They don’t want you to start thinking about alternative energy sources quite yet unless they’re in on it. So they want to keep those prices low. And I think we tend to forget that right now our prices in Ontario are about what world prices have been for quite a while. You can expect them to go down again. I see them going down to around 80 cents a litre, maybe even a little less in the long term.

But you have to allow the market to do its thing. And that means production must be increased. And that’s what those excessive profits do. The quote excessive profits that companies make during shortages are the very profits they need to increase production because they have to invest that in something so that they can put out more of those barrels of oil per hour, per minute, per day, per whatever. But anyways, people want to believe that there’s a conspiracy. Nobody can control prices. It’s just not possible. You can ask anything you want. I mean, you could have a house. You could ask a million bucks for your house and be perfectly free to do so. But would you get a million bucks for your house? Unless it was worth that, of course. The answer is no.

And if people don’t have the money to buy your product, then guess what? You’re not going to sell very much of it, and then the price starts dropping again. So there’s two ways to make those prices go down. One is to increase the production of what’s being sold, and the other is to decrease the demand. And unfortunately, that’s the only thing governments are into. They want to ration. They want to decrease the demand because fundamentally, government is incapable of production, and that’s why we have production problems in any area very heavily regulated or controlled by government.

Anyways, we’ll continue on the other side of these ads. I’m Bob Metz. This is Just Right on CHRW 94.9, where we will be with you till noon. Back right after these few messages.

This is Just Right with Bob Metz on CHRW 94.9 FM. I’ll be with you for the next 15 minutes or so. 519-661-3600. Area code 519 if you care to call in. And comment about any of the subjects I’ve raised so far, coming into a new one now, and that is the Fraser Institute report on taxation that I heard about on April 16th. I guess that was Monday around Monday last week.

Some very disturbing statistics here in terms of taxation. First of all, they said that 35% of the average Canadian’s income is spent on food, clothing, and shelter. 35%. 45% of the average Canadian’s income is spent on taxes. I don’t know about you, but 45% come on folks. What kind of country do you want to live in? Do you really think you’re getting something for your money? Do you really think this is what’s giving you your standard of living? Because I’m telling you it’s not.

I used to think 20 years ago when I got into accounting and administration and business and taxes were a lot lower, although still ridiculously high, that 5-10% of taxes on anybody was outrageous to expect anybody to pay more than that for the basic services that government’s supposed to operate. Now 45%, that might sound good to some compared to what we’ve heard in the past, but does that include the debt, the deficits, license filing, registration fees, monetary inflation, and other certain taxes? I think it’s going to be a little higher than that once you take into account all the possibilities, but those are the most easily measurable ones.

I mentioned this before. If you’re spending half of your life working for the government and that everything you do for half of your life goes to the government, there’s a word that’s given to that and that’s against your choice and that’s called basically slavery. I mean that’s what it was called. Imagine if instead of paying taxes, every six months people were rounded up and taken someplace where they were forced to do some sort of hard labour like you see in Ben-Hur, one of those movies where you see slavery depicted in its most base and low form. Slavery, by the way, did not take that form historically. It took the form very much of what we’re doing today. It was caste systems, very certain classes of people where one class could never aspire to be above its own class and was subjugated to another, was forced to do certain work for the state, the government, or the elite. In some cases it was like almost an acceptable kind of a relationship but of course in many cases it was not and that gave birth to many things in the past from tax revolts taking the form of literal tax revolts or even if you go back into religious history you’ll find out that a lot of religious roots go back into the situations, going back to the Romans and all that stuff and the tax situation and the politics that was involved.

But anyways people are wondering like where is it all going to end? How are you going to be able to afford your house for example if as an article that I just saw in the Free Press April 19th it’s actually true and it says house prices to double in the next 20 years. Well if your price of your home is going to double, guess what? Your taxes are going to double on that home too and they’re going up unbelievably. The property tax on the average home was more and I was used to paying for a mortgage let alone for the few services the home gets and of course those taxes don’t go to the services for the home, they go to general services and so much of it is just taking from Peter to pay Paul. It’s not about hard services, it’s social services and things like that that I don’t think should ever come out of property and this is why briefly I just would like to go over some basic steps you’ve heard me in the past perhaps on Jim’s show perhaps here on why I advocate consumption taxes over property and income taxes.

I think property and income taxes should not exist in a free society and that we should stick with consumption taxes and if you’re wondering what I basically mean by consumption tax that could be a sales tax, it could be license, it could be filing, it could be a registration fee. Government does serve a lot of services for us that we need. Government is our witness of ownership of property. Government is our protector in many ways in that sense. So we do owe something to the government for that and of course government is our instrument of justice but of course people think well if you got rid of those two levels of taxes our sales taxes would have to go through the roof and well that’s not true. It’s true if you continue to spend the way we’re spending and keep robbing Peter to pay Paul for ridiculous social programs if you prevent people from paying their own health care, if you keep preventing people from paying their own education and of course if you’re going to lower taxes you’ve got to stop all that.

People are going to have to take it on themselves because guess what that’s where you’re going to be in five or ten years anyway and if you don’t believe me just look at the history of some of the quote third world countries that went our direction 10 20 years ago. When I was married I had a family and for example Trinidad and Tobago and I actually lived down there for a while and I saw a country that was 20 25 years ahead of Canada in terms of socialism where a road works project meant painting a white line around a pothole on the road so you could see it at night where the government was pretty well bankrupt all the time where people were being forced to pay all kinds of taxes for health care and education but even the poor and I mean the poor would go out of their way to send their kids to private schools and to private alternatives because it was just intolerable in the public system so what eventually happens is not only did you get your free ride at the end of the ride you have to pay for the ride plus pay for yourself again and that’s the danger we’re heading now

but very briefly just some points why would I pick property and income taxes or get rid of them and just have consumption taxes I know how people hate the GST and stuff but think about all the other things you could do away with let’s do a comparison here just quickly for example property and income taxes both they’re very personal they’re privacy violating they require the filing of intimate details about relationships your finances how much you make and all that kind of stuff I mean to me that’s like telling the government what your favorite sexual position is is that really any of their business whereas a consumption tax is impersonal it’s anonymous no one knows who’s paying how much and everybody knows that everybody’s paying something equal because you pay when you consume something

on the other hand again you look at property and income taxes they’re very discriminatory they’re discriminatory against owners and earners and even amongst owners and earners for example you have two owners or two earners paying different rates so that’s discrimination it’s not even if you’re going to have income tax I always thought it should at least be at a flat rate but we don’t have that either ironically the first level I guess the first tier is actually higher so poor people pay slightly higher than a slightly higher earning person I don’t know why they worked it that way but that’s just how it is property and income taxes are unequal they’re variable they’re unfair whereas consumption taxes are equal they’re flat they’re fair there’s only one rule and it applies to everybody how simple do you want it

and you’re not the one having to with property tax or income tax the government can come after you for doing nothing just for owning something you didn’t even have to act just for owning something you’re already in debt and that’s just an unthinkable concept to me in terms of living in a free society it’s the ownership that you’re paying for it’s not services if the government was only providing say a municipality a service to a house I wouldn’t call that a tax I would call that a fee of some sort just like you call your Union Gas bill an expense it’s an expense it’s not a tax of course we all know what income taxes and property taxes do to discourage commerce interfering in trade costing jobs things like that less so with sales taxes but you guys still watch those sales taxes they shouldn’t be too high I think 15 percent is outrageous but we’re still living with that too and on top of all of everything else

and of course the other kinds of taxes encourage all kinds of government corruption favoring some while hindering others that kind of thing but a huge thing that I think is a huge advantage of consumption taxes is that you would have debt-free citizens as far as the government’s concern no one would ever get into debt or face criminal charges over a failure to pay taxes because you’re paying them as you go you pay a sales tax you pay a license filing registration you don’t accumulate debt because you’re sitting at home or you got sick or you made too much money which to me is a total contradiction in terms but anyways those are a few of the things

and of course property and income taxes are highly coercive requiring no action on the part of those whom they’re levied and I would even argue that sales taxes as long as they’re reasonable are essentially voluntary to the extent that you can actually choose to buy something or not or even go to another jurisdiction if you really had to to escape a certain tax because then it would get competitive as well but anyways that’s just the tip of the iceberg on the whole tax situation there and one of the many reasons that I believe that just a straight sales tax of some sort would be the best thing and then we wouldn’t have to worry about all these other situations

before we go I just wanted to say a few things about this show we’re just winding down to the last couple minutes calling the show Just Right again if you missed my what would I call it my orientation last week of what the show is about and what do I mean by right versus right wing I don’t regard myself as a right winger as such and I outlined a number of issues where I differed with so-called right wingers last week but basically if we’re still around next week and week after I think we’ll see this show evolve a little bit it’ll get a little more content heavy more variety in it we’re hoping to do and if you have any input or feedback or things you’d like to hear on the show we’d certainly like to hear about them and you can certainly direct them here CHRW at the folks Zoltan and the folks here and hopefully we’ll be here again next week on Thursday so until then I just want to say this is Bob Metz and you have been listening to Just Right on CHRW 94.9 where hopefully we’ll be with you again next week from 11 till noon until then take care and stay right.