043 – Transcript

Just Right Episode 043
Air Date: February 28, 2008
Host: Bob Metz

Station Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this program are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of 94.9 CHRW.

Clip (The Time Machine (1960)):
Time Traveller (Rod Taylor): So this is man’s future. To bask in the sunlight, bathe in the clear streams, and eat the fruits of the earth with all knowledge of work and hardship forgotten. Well and why not?

Bob Metz: It’s Thursday, February 28th, 2008. I’m Bob Metz and this is Just Right on CHRW 94.9 FM, where we will be with you from now till noon. No, no, not right wing. Just right. And welcome to the show today, a very brisk and cold February morning it is indeed, especially for this late in the month. Getting down to highs of minus 10 rather, although the sun is feeling pretty warm.

Today on the show is John Tory, really a Tory. The criminalization of language, official bilingualism, and some of the Quebec laws dealing with language. Is it business or is it government? Another question we’ll entertain today. But the first question we want to talk about is making downtown pedestrian.

519-661-3600 is the number you can call if you want to join in on the conversation, or you can email us at justrightchrw@gmail.com. If you’ve been looking at papers a lot lately, and especially this week’s London, or take a look at the front page of that. You see this big, beautiful picture of the envisaged idyllic downtown that we’re going to have in 10, 20, maybe 30 years. And here we go again, downtown renewal.

Have I heard this all somewhere before I ask myself? So I guess the plan is to make downtown pedestrian, although a lot of us probably think downtown’s already a little bit too pedestrian for their likes. But here we go again, Dundas and Richmond, 2030. Big question mark asks Pat Maloney on the front page of the London Free Press, February 23rd. An unvarnished report says major changes are a must in a truly transformed downtown. Drastic changes to Dundas Street, including its partial transformation into a piazza or square, free of vehicles, are key to transforming downtown, a report says.

That’s the most ambitious idea in a just prepared report, assembled by two downtown business groups, that also contains unvarnished appraisals of what’s wrong with the core and how to fix it.

We’re saying let’s make Dundas the most exciting street in London, says Gord Hume, who led the downtown task force and its 11 volunteers. Reclaim the street for the people, he says. The timeline includes getting buses off the stretch of Dundas between Wellington and Richmond streets by 2010, eliminating parking spots there by 2013, and banning all daytime traffic by 2018. The task force this week gave its report outlining a vision for the core for the next decade to the boards of Main Street London and the Downtown Business Association.

Besides the focus on Dundas Street, the other goals are, according to this article by Pat Maloney and the Free Press, double the number of people living in the core, make downtown London the greenest in Canada. By that they mean plant 100 large trees by 2010 and remove the fence around the Central Library’s reading garden. Apparently they want to get the population of downtown up to 10,000, although I was reading something else today that suggested they might be doing that by expanding the boundaries of downtown. Well, that’ll do it. If you include white oaks you can get it way over 10,000 if you want to.

But to continue, the document from a task force put together by Main Street London and the London Downtown Business Association chides landlord to have, quote, not reinvested in their properties and are, quote, bitter about their property values, end quote. Well, it doesn’t sound like business people talking, does it?

It sounds more like politicians. And in his February 23rd London Free Press editorial, writer Paul Burton writes, quote, it’s time for another debate downtown. And again, he falsely informs us, and this is one of the points I want to make today, that the task force was chaired by Controller Gord Hume, but it was not a political exercise and the city was involved only in a support role. It was the effort of the London Downtown Business Association and Main Street London.

The report outlines what most of us have come to understand over the years, says Burton, that the core belongs to all of us. And the future of the city depends on it. Making Dundas Street the most exciting street in London will require a coordinated effort by government and business, by politicians and police, by arts organizations, landlords, festival organizers, and transit planners. trade unions. End quote.

And yet another propaganda piece penned by Pat Maloney on the front page of the local section, February 25th of the Free Press, entitled High Hopes for City Core, who cites Vancouver architect James Chang, advising us to, quote, think big. Yeah, we’re thinking big, alright.

In Vancouver, he says, a unique, give-and-take relationship exists between city officials and developers. In one example, a developer was allowed to build a high-rise, a few stories beyond the city imposed limit, if he maintained a heritage home on the property. In another case, a developer was offered extra density for an apartment tower, if he gave $3 million donation to a public art display at the building’s base.

You see, I call that bribery and corruption, but they’re calling it, changing the way we do business downtown.

So here we go again, folks, downtown renewal plans. It says if they’re starting all over again.

Gord Hume’s taken a very early attack position in his defense of what I think are outrageously indefensible plans for London’s downtown. It’s not because of the vision particularly, but it’s because of whose vision it is and whose vision it isn’t and who gets a say and who doesn’t.

Make it pedestrian-oriented, says Hume, rather than pedestrian-friendly, he said on the radio station on CJBK earlier this week. And that was an interesting interview.

And the plans extensively focus on Dundas Street and include adding park benches, eliminating curbs, not traffic, he says, but gradually replacing vehicles with people. And an expectation of sidewalk patios with a European concept and an enviro footprint.

Now, anybody who’s opposed to this plan are, according to Hume, people with old ideas, people with closed minds, people, quote, afraid of change. And purporting that the concept has nothing whatsoever to do with the municipal government, he assures his opponents that the initiative is totally private and supported by private business interests. And then says the plan’s been put forth by none other than the taxpayer-funded London Downtown Business Association, the LDBA, and by Main Street London.

Now, I should let you know from a personal point of view that the reason that downtown association is called the London Downtown Business Association is essentially because of myself and because of Marc Emery when we ran a campaign against what were originally called business improvement areas back in the 1980s, BIAs. And we gave BIAs such a bad name and such a bad reputation for the damage they had done to their neighborhoods and the way they conscript their so-called members that they actually changed the name of them. And people still go on believing today that these are private business groups and stuff when, in fact, their taxpayer enforced and funded issues. I’m going to get into that in a lot more detail later on.

But I was listening to Gord on the other station and when he was faced with a flurry of open-line callers who unanimously complained about high taxes and who questioned his authority for even considering these kinds of ideas without consulting the owners in the affected areas, Hume promptly informed them that taxes weren’t high and just dismissed his detractors by categorizing them in the old closed minds, old ideas, afraid of change box, ticked unworthy of consideration, no rational response. And I was rather disgusted, actually, because he didn’t really give us any reasons.

Having worked daily downtown for at least 20 years from about the early 70s to the early 90s, I could see firsthand the negative changes that were occurring downtown during that period.

And I remember when I was a kid growing up in London, Ontario, we had two vibrant downtowns. At least that’s how I looked at them. And there was the downtown on the fork of the Thames, and there was the downtown in London East, just east of Adelaide Street, which had its own unique character, very different from the other downtown, but both of which I always considered very safe and very much alive. They were busy places.

And over the years I watched them both deteriorate. And just to make a long story short, and it’s the long story, believe me, I’ve been involved in it, I think each of the two downtowns were ruined by the same beast. And if there’s a single thing that I could point to, among all the other complexities and challenges that has been the cause of downtown’s demise, I think it’s the intervention of politicians with visions, truly, with visions of what to do with other people’s properties.

You know, from high taxes to heritage restrictions to business activity restrictions and monopolies.

For people wanting to do business downtown, municipal politicians are nothing but an obstacle to their plans. Reclaim the street for the people, say promoters, and it’s like this old environmental thing I’ve heard for years and years and years.

So, of course they’re not saying get rid of all the cars because they don’t want you to panic too much. We’re going to do it gradually. Everything you do gradually before you actually shock people with what you’re actually doing.

But really have to address this, the people, not cars myth, okay? Now, I know you can drive a car, it can be driven remote control, so I guess you don’t need a driver in every car, but most of the ones driving around in our streets do not drive themselves. Inside every car is at least one person. Two cars equals two people, but maybe three, four, or even ten people. Cars have trunks and they have extra seating, if not occupied, and these are great places to put the products and goods that one might purchase, so they don’t have to be carried about.

And of course there is, you can go the other way too, cars are people too. They need to be cared for and fed, automotive products and services and gas.

Anybody tell me where there’s a handy gas station right in downtown London anywhere?

The idea that cars, if you’re going to eliminate cars from places, you’re just killing traffic. And in fact, that’s what a lot of the business people who were reacting to Mr. Hume’s comments were, and he tried to downplay it, so it weren’t important. Listen, it’s not the government involved, it’s just the London downtown business community, etc., etc.

And one caller calls in and says, why don’t we lower taxes so we can fix up our properties and rent them?

And then Mr. Hume replies, well the municipality has no authority to set up one tax category for downtown or for any other neighborhood.

And he talks about this report that we’re talking about here. He says it should be a living document with constant change, updates and improvements and adjustments to certain ideas and circumstances come along.

And he says they’re the ones who are going to have to drive this report. Well, basically that just means unending meddling and everything from people who have to invest their money downtown and somebody else is telling them how to run their business.

And he says the biggest obstacles to making this vision happen says Hume is, quote, the traditional London negativity about we can’t do it and let’s not do it and we shouldn’t try. And he says, quote, I just get so sick and bloody tired of that attitude and that’s the biggest concern I have on this. People coming in with closed minds who won’t even read the report before they react and that kind of thing just terrifies me. It’s not fair for downtown, it’s not fair to the people on the task force, says Hume.

And he also adds, I’m also terrified. He says there was a motion by two members of council last week to stop the development charge credits that we presently have for people who build buildings in the downtown core. And he says that like just minutes after he says that they don’t have any authority to impose special taxes and tax categories for one downtown neighborhood or anything else. And there is one example of it right there.

And again, it gets another caller tells him, hey, taxes are way out of line downtown and Hume just basically doesn’t believe it. And the caller tells him, well, I got a business downtown and I got a business in another place in town and it’s at least 50% more downtown. And he talked about how, if we had fewer taxes to pay, we could really fix up some nice apartments and have some nice places.

And of course, caller after caller called in to complain and Hume reacted quite in his usual fashion. He says, when people say we’re going to shut down Dundas for a pedestrian mall, they’re not right. They don’t understand the concept. What you do is you eliminate curbs, you re-texture the street. What that allows is a chance to reclaim the street for the people.

There we go again. Dundas streets very narrow. The sidewalks are narrow. There’s one lane of one traffic in each direction. It’s a dark claustrophobic kind of environment. And physically that’s not going to change very much because there’s no patios on Dundas Street. If we’re going to reclaim the street for the people, then we have to move out from those buildings and take advantage of the opportunity. And the overall plan is to get the buses off Dundas.

And then he adds that the sinkhole gave him a chance to do a bit of social engineering. I thought that was kind of funny. But they don’t have to actually have buses running down Dundas Street. Well, they’ve been told that for about 20 years.

And he says, then you gradually replace vehicles with people. Hmm. Well, if he really means that, that means he doesn’t want people coming from anywhere else. He wants people coming from the downtown itself. Maybe that’s right where they have to live. But if you don’t need a vehicle to get to downtown, then you’re probably living there. And you just paint this totally romantic image of how people are going to idle days around in these paths. And then there’s the radios that are Euro centered, that use in many streets in Europe and all that kind of stuff.

And of course, people just kept calling him and he kept talking about how well they don’t understand the concept. And it’s just, it’s just terrible. But in any case, you can see what’s happening here is that, really, I think the whole problem downtown is that the business people aren’t allowed to do what they want to do. They’ve always got the city making plans for them, determining everything from zoning to what they can do in their buildings to, I mean, you have no idea what it would be like to be in business. And you really have to wonder at the virtual character of the people who still choose to do that.

Now, when we come back after this break, I’ll explain a little more what I meant about the London downtown business association.

Clip (Dr. Walter Williams):
The free market and voluntary exchange are roundly denounced by today’s defenders of what I call the new human rights. These defenders are in Washington and at your state capitals. They are the chief supporters of reduced private property rights, reduced rights to profits. They are anti-competition and pro-monopoly. These people in Washington and the state capitals, they are pro-control and coercion by the state.

And why? Because they believe that they have more intelligence and superior wisdom to the masses. And they believe that they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Now, of course they have what they consider to be good reasons for restricting the freedom of other people.

But I’m here to tell you that every tyrant that has ever existed on earth has had what he considered to be good reasons for restricting the freedoms of others. Their plan calls for the elimination of the market. Why do tyrants want to eliminate the market? Because the market implies voluntary exchange.

And tyrants do not trust that people acting voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks that they ought to do. They want to replace the market with economic planning, or some have called it industrial planning. You heard that during the last election. Well, I’ll give you a definition of economic planning that will last you the rest of your lives.

Economic planning is nothing more than the forcible superseding of somebody else’s plan by the powerful elite.

Here’s what I mean by that. I might plan to buy a Honda motorcycle from a Japanese producer. The powerful elite will say, Williams, we’re going to supersede your plan through tariffs and quotas because we think you ought to buy Harley-Davidson. Or I might plan to buy a shirt from a Taiwanese producer. The powerful elite will say we’re going to supersede that plan through tariffs and quotas. Or my daughter might plan to work for the hardware store guy down the street for $2 an hour. She says it’s okay. The hardware store guy says it’s okay. I say it’s okay. And her mother says it’s okay. But the powerful elite will supersede that plan because it’s not being transacted at wages at which they think it ought to be transacted right now for $4.25 an hour.

Bob Metz: That of course was Dr. Walter Williams speaking from a bit of an American perspective, illustrating many of the same principles on a federal and larger government scale that we see happening even at the lower levels of government here in the municipality.

Welcome back. I’m Bob Metz. You’re listening to Just Right on CHRW Radio 94.9 FM, where we’ll still be with you from now till noon. 519-661-3600 is the number you can call if you want to join the conversation.

Now just before the break, I talked about these business associations. We hear about them in the paper all the time. And what is now being called the London Downtown Business Association, whatever, is really a creature of statute. And it’s not a business association in the sense that business people went and joined voluntarily and bought dues and have membership cards and things like that. And these things came out of, just to let you know, Marc Emery and myself, when we were getting early in our political days, we fought a number of these BIAs, that’s what they’re called in legislation originally, business improvement areas. And it was required by law at one time that they be called BIAs.

And it’d be very clear that people understood that’s what they were. But after Mark and I thoroughly made the concept disreputable, they changed the law and they changed the names, but they kept the organizations. And basically, they’re the result of provincial legislation, Section 217, of the Municipal Act. And they’re aimed at compelling business people within this arbitrarily selected area to join a, quote, business association, end quote. And as, quote, members end quote of this forced association, they’re also forced to pay an additional tax to the municipality. Largely to do things that their property and business taxes should already be paying for, but more so, they also say that the BIA tax can be used to improve and maintain the appearance of municipally owned property. And again, see, they’re charging the business people to pay for their property with a special tax on top of the ones they already pay. And within the designated BIA area and for collective advertising to promote the area.

Of course, the BIA tax widens the municipality’s tax base by adding it to the already existing property and business taxes. When Mark and I were fighting these things across the province, we beat about 24 out of 26 that we fought. And one of the ones we lost to was this London downtown business one, which started a little bit before we figured out what it was about.

And Mark and I were just a little too late to stop it from coming into being, because once they’re into being, you can’t stop them. And at the heart of the whole issue, of course, is freedom of association, BIA members cannot really independently and voluntarily join or quit the BIA. So they’re just subject to a forced association and where independent planning and action becomes superseded by forced collective planning and action, which of course is what we’re seeing here now in terms of the proposals being put forth, although they’re not going to tell you that that’s what it’s about. And a BIA operates very much like a labor union, requiring a large consensus before it can be decertified or defeated in an initial formation stage, like a union dues or compulsory.

And the compulsory BIA tax is fully enforced by law, and in the same way that an individual worker would have to quit his job to avoid compulsory dues, so too would an individual businessman be forced to leave his business community to avoid the extra compulsory tax for that area. And like unions, BIAs adopt political platforms supporting or opposing various political issues, all while claiming to quote, represent and quote the BIA, quote, end quote, membership. And last but not least, BIAs as legislated under section 217 of the Municipal Act, deny the right to vote to those being taxed. In other words, BIAs are very blatant forms of taxation without any representation, although you may hear that these boards have voting directors and that they do vote and stuff like that. Really you see what happens when they try to vote something that the actual city council doesn’t want them to. They get dismissed and it has happened in communities across town. This is all documented online.

You can just do a Google search and I’m sure you’ll find a lot of examples. So as you might guess, the magnitude and effect that BIAs have on Ontario’s economy and business climate I think are far greater than most would imagine. Documentation and press reports of BIA disaster, which include runaway taxes and some communities the BIA tax got higher than the other taxes combined for some business people. Misappropriation of funds, lack of accountability for funds, outbreaks of animosity within business communities where none existed before the BIA, incidents of fraud, misrepresentation and more.

I got a whole filing cabinet full of examples of this back at my office. Now back in the days when Bob Ray was Premier of the province, I wrote him a letter. I actually said, listen, we got to get rid of this section 217 of the municipal act thinking, well, he’s a new Democrat. He’s going to be in favor of democracy, right? He’s going to insist that these things be at least democratic.

And I got a letter back from him saying that no go. You got to deal with it at the municipal level, which I can’t because it’s provincial legislation and the whole thing gets all fallen in on itself. That’s how they mislead you all over the place. And while Ontario municipalities have over the years established hundreds of BIAs across the province, provincial legislation specifically denies democratic rights to members of a BIA.

They got to pay the extra tax, but they don’t have any really any sort of representation that’s guaranteed them. And yet they were always invariably misled into believing otherwise. And that’s why we had a very successful campaign just by giving them the truth of the matter.

It was an eye-opener for most people. But as a consequence, it’s usually not until an inevitable BIA funding crisis or some disastrous outcome of a BIA project. The Crick in the Road in London East there that killed London East, that was a BIA project. Or a conflict with the objectives of a municipal council that has its own plans.

That’s when members really find out that they don’t really have any guaranteed voting rights. In fact, we took the case so far that we fought one major case in Mississauga, and it was called the Clarkson BIA back. This is again looking, talking about 1989 to 1992-ish there, and I’m sure got to meet Mayor Hazel McCallion in those days. But at the time, the official lawyer, the lawyer for the city of Mississauga, who was undergoing all kinds of problems as the city was with a huge, I guess we started a sort of a riot within the BIA there, trying to get rid of it and the city was reacting.

And they all wanted to know why they didn’t have a right to vote. And at the time, referring to Mississauga’s Clarkson BIA, there’s a fellow named Bruce Thom, who was the city’s Mississauga solicitor, Bruce E. Thom, and he wrote this. He said, quote, the BIA is a creature of statute, specifically Section 217 of the Municipal Act. You will note that by Section 217, subsection 6 thereof, Council appoints a Board of Management. It’s Council who appoints it.

It is, in fact, a local Board of Council, although the BIA is not a democratic process whereby every assessed owner gets a vote, the Clarkson Group in Mississauga has proceeded to some extent as if that was the case. Because, of course, that’s what they were being told, right? And he cleared them up and he told them, he says, listen, in fact, the Board of Management is the BIA, and the general group simply forms the tax base. And that’s what it means to be a member of one of these business groups. You get to form the tax base.

You get to pay the taxes and whoever is on the city appointed group at which Gordon Hume will tell you, oh, I know it’s got nothing to do with the city. You can see the problem right there. Is there any, you really have to ask yourself, why downtown’s in the state it’s in? I wouldn’t do business downtown. I wouldn’t invest a penny there. I’m looking at some of these other issues too. In the Londoner, you can see already that property values have fallen dramatically and they just want to make it go away somehow. Dundas Street properties declined in value by nearly another $15 million in 2006 alone, it says. And of course their rates of taxes are very high. How can you survive in an environment like that?

It’s just outrageous. And as long as we have politicians making plans for the business people, it’s what are you going to do? And meanwhile, while all this is going on, all this planning, quote, city copes with another sinkhole, reads the February 21st London Free Press article heading and referring to yet another sinkhole that appeared on Richmond Street, writer Randy Richmond reports, quote, it sucks.

It’s not good for business, says Carol Vandenberg, co-owner of LA Mood Comics and Games. Looking up and down at the cracks on Richmond, Vandenberg sounded perturbed. That’s my nightmare, that all of Richmond Street’s going to sink, she said. The Richmond Street sinkhole appeared Friday as just a small depression. And it wasn’t a pothole, the road just dropped, Vandenberg said.

She watched a city cruise pump water and filled the hole with dirt and apparently the work was completed by February 22. But can you just see all these people sitting out in the patio out in a nice road there and all of a sudden the road drops? That would put London on the map, wouldn’t it? Now, though this may seem a little detached from what I’ve just talked about, I in the city of Moscow, according to a BBC Inside Russia report I watched on the BBC network a week or so ago, the city’s being transformed much in the same way as being proposed by our own business community here. And interestingly enough, although many people, and I was surprised to learn this, own private property in downtown Moscow, when the city’s mayor and major building developer, who happened to be the same person, and I wish I could remember his name, but he also ran against Putin for the presidency of the party in Russia. But if they want your home and private property, the owner has no rights to the property. And as one Moscow homeowner was told by city officials, quote, in Moscow, private property means that you own the air between the walls. You do not own the walls themselves, end quote.

And that sort of almost tells you which direction we seem to be heading in. The city of Moscow also has an interesting bylaw. Any properties destroyed by fire revert to state ownership, which has apparently made arson a booming business in the city. And not just resorting to state ownership, but the owners and there’s no insurance, there’s no recourse to anybody who owns any of the property. So of course, this forces homeowners to hire private securities and patrols to protect their homes and their property. So am I suggesting any of this may happen to London’s downtown owners? Of course not.

At least not tomorrow, not yet. But if you think you’re the king of your castle or the captain of your ship, think again, because people like Paul Burton and a lot of the social planners of our town think the public owns your castle and your ship. And when we come back after this, we’ll be switching to another subject and be back in a minute.

Clip (Firefly):
Simon Tam: Does this happen a lot? Government commandeering your ship, telling you where to go.
Captain Malcolm Reynolds: That’s what governments are for. Get in a man’s way.

Comedy Clip:
I’m now planning to go to Japan to teach English as a second language. How are they gonna know?

Bob Metz: You’re listening to Just Right with Bob Metz, 519-661-3600, the number to call if you want to join in the conversation.

And next, English as a second language, strangely enough, except in the province of Quebec, where of course you’ve heard about language laws and the criminalization of language in that province, and to some degree of course in the rest of the country as well.

Why English is still the enemy of Quebec, says the front page headline of the Saturday edition of the National Post on February 16th. And inside the paper in an article titled, Lost in Translation, quote, Tongue Troopers Strike Again, end quote, writer Graham Hamilton in Montreal says that 30 years on Quebecers are still hot, about Bill 101.

And the article discusses a resurgence of English that’s being now taught in many Quebec schools, mainly out of a recognition that it’s necessary to do so, but not in a way so that it will be a threat to Quebec’s language police, which is a strange balance that they’re trying to accomplish here. Quote, there is widespread recognition that Quebec’s public schools have done a poor job teaching English. André Houdet, a principal at Gentilly School, where English is taught, said that as long as French is taught well and existing language laws are maintained, knowledge of English is quote, not a danger for Quebec, end quote. No Quebec party wants to appear soft on issues of language and identity.

And Jean Charest’s Liberals are desperately trying to rebuild support among Francophone voters, writes the post. That might explain why the liberal government quickly acquiesced to a pressure group’s campaign seeking to have government phone lines changed so that callers do not hear the option to press nine for English until the very end of the recording. Doesn’t that just bug you when you call a company up and you want to speak in the language of your choice? And it’s at the end of a huge menu option. You know what they’re doing.

It’s a mind game. They’re not doing that out of respect for the consumer. I’ll tell you that Christine St. Pierre, the Minister of Culture and Communications, which sounds very Orwellian just in the name of it, Minister of Culture and Communications. That’s just, I don’t want to live in a country that has something like that, but we have it.

Here we are. Recently insisted that her government is a strong defender of the language. Quote, the defense and promotion of the French language are not only a daily responsibility, but also a source of pride.

And quote. And meanwhile, as André Houdet said, as Quebecers were all aware that if we want to be open to the world and travel abroad, it’s not with French that we’re going to function. It is with English. And quote.

And in another box accompanying the article, we’re offered some examples of how language laws are being enforced in Quebec. One example involves an Irish pub called MacGibbons. And among its wall decorations, they had all these vintage ads. You know, how some of these nice pubs will have ads all over the walls. And they had all these vintage ads for Irish beers and quaint Irish sayings. And there was one that read quote, if you’re drinking to forget, please pay in advance.

But this had to come down according to the Quebec language police because the poster offered no French translation, probably because they weren’t sticking French on those vintage posters. But you get the general idea of how people are being harassed by these laws. And it’s quite unjust. The idea of a person putting a sign up in their store in any language of their choice in this country to be penalized for it is just outrageous. I just, it’s so incompatible with my idea of a free society.

It stuns me that anyone can support this kind of thinking. Now, the whole issue of government imposed French language laws in Canada has been with us for years and years. It’s called official bilingualism. And the whole concept is perpetuated on a fundamental myth.

One of the great Canadian political myths, I think, promoted by both federal and provincial politicians is the following one quote, Canada is a bilingual country. End quote. That is just not true.

Nothing could be further from the truth. An individual is said to be bilingual if he or she is capable of speaking fluently in two languages. These languages do not necessarily have to be English or French. Parlez-vous français? Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Can you speak English? I mean, I can speak in basically three languages give or take. But there can be any two languages. And clearly in this sense, a great many Canadians are indeed bilingual. But usually with English as one of their languages of choice, the other language might be Italian, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Czechoslovakian, Spanish, French, a North American native language, or even perhaps some local dialect that very few would understand. And I haven’t told a story about myself yet, but I grew up with a dialectic language. I couldn’t speak English until I was almost five or six years old.

And that’s a story I’ll say for another day. Nevertheless, the majority of Canadians are unilingual. That is, the majority of Canadians speak only one language of choice.

And here’s where it gets a little tricky. Among unilingual Canadians, there are two politically identifiable languages. And that’s English and French. And that’s hence the myth that Canada is bilingual.

And that’s how it came into being. However, given Canada’s cultural and political heritage, this shouldn’t really be that surprising, should it? But neither I would like to think, should it be cause for the terrible division and animosity expense and public contempt created by something that sounds so innocent as official bilingualism. And in Canada and now in Ontario, where they’re bringing it in, official bilingualism has become authority and emotional political issue, which it always does when you get into issues of race, culture, creed, and religion, as I’ve stressed so many times on this show. And that’s because in theory, politicians call it official bilingualism, whereas in practice, it is forced bilingualism, which means that if you don’t go along with it, there will be a penalty assigned.

And it is that penalty that is often outrageous and sometimes worse than that, what they would do to criminals who are guilty of violent and unacceptable behavior. People like to dismiss what is forced in language. And I remember Brian Mulroney, when he was a prime minister, just outraged that anyone would suggest that official bilingualism was forced bilingualism. And I often wonder if his outrage was a direct reaction to what we were promoting at the time. But here’s what we mean. It’s forced when the government forces manufacturers to package their products in two languages, which drives the price of the product up and prevents many other products from entering the Canadian marketplace. And they have to have it on there. The irony is most manufacturers who want to do business in other countries print their manuals and stickers and everything in multi-languages.

If you get all of these new electronics coming from Asia, you open up the little things that come with them, there’s more languages there than you knew there were people. And so it’s almost a non-issue in that sense, but it nevertheless occurs. And some products are not of that nature.

Of course, some are more perishable, etc. And it’s forced when government forces taxpayers to fund French and English television and radio networks in areas where the demand simply doesn’t justify services. And Canadians end up paying for nothing. And it’s forced when in Quebec the government forces businesses to display signs in French only and threatens to fine and jail business people who don’t comply with some kind of regulation. And across the country everywhere, Canadians are forced to pay for and support a massive unjustifiable policy of official bilingualism under the guise of granting two different languages equal status when the real intention is to promote equal use.

You see, that’s what they want to do. Really funny because at the time official bilingualism came in, we have to have two languages. It’s, it makes the country more cosmopolitan. Well, at that time, this was the same time they were insisting we speak one language when it came to the language of measurement. And we were being forced to abandon the British units to go to metric.

And I’m thinking, what’s the logic in that? We’ve all got calculators. We can do the calculation if we need to. But no, that was another thing that was forced upon us. But of course, that one was really to cover the incredible increases in the price of oil.

And once we switch from gallons to liters, we didn’t know it was happening anymore. Nevertheless, I think unless official bilingualism is abandoned in favor of freedom of choice in language, the future of English, French relations in Canada are just going to be doomed to these bitter never ending political conflicts that have resulted in increased intolerance rather, division, racism, even violence. Taxpayers all get to pay for it. I don’t think government has any business dictating language policy to anyone. Government doesn’t have a, it does have a right however. Now, let’s not go overboard on this as do all individuals to choose a language it uses on the basis of what serves its customers best. There are legitimate reasons for government to designate a language for use, but only for government and administration and affairs, not for restaurants and private businesses and in other people’s property. And obviously, it’ll be desirable that the designated spoken language, official language, if you want to call it that, but you can’t call it that unless there is a penalty attached to it. So if there’s no penalty, it’s just the language of the land. And but it would have to be generally understood. One would assume by the people in the jurisdiction affected. But I think to impose a language, regardless of which one, on individuals whose language of choice is not the one being imposed, I think is just morally and ethically reprehensible.

And so you can see the whole background in all of this. Because it’s being politically forced. Ontario’s policy of official bilingualism as Quebec creates an artificial need for French fluency by government employees and burdens for the already overtaxed taxpayer. You get all these duplications of services and the unnecessary waste and pollution caused by official bilingualism.

I used to get all these government documents and reports and directories that were printed in French and English. Like, some of these things are thousands of pages thick and you only needed half of them. And you didn’t even need that half when it came right down to it.

So you get the general idea. It’s just regrettable, I think, that our politicians have such contempt for their constituents that they don’t even allow them to choose the language of their choice. But then what else is new about politicians and their relationship with the citizens?

When we come back, a number of other subjects that have been bothering me over the weeks. And we’ll be back right after this.

Comedy Clip:
So I woke up about six days ago. It was a good day. And I pick up the newspaper and apparently the powers that be in this province want to have another referendum. Three times the charm, I guess.

Now, I remember the last referendum so vividly because I wasn’t here. I had to spend 15 weeks in Ontario because the judge was a jerk.

Now, what I didn’t know was I came back the Friday before the Monday vote, right? Because I wanted to vote and I believe in democracy and I believe in a people’s right to choose. And also if the vote went wrong, get my stuff before the wall went up.

Well, I didn’t know on that Friday before the Monday vote, there was a huge uni rally in Montreal. 250,000 people from outside the province of Quebec came into Quebec and said, yes to this perfect country, no to our Nazi overlords, right? 250,000 of them or according to the French press, 12. There were fat English, yes. They all came on one bus like clowns.

See, but I didn’t know this. So I’m driving on the 401 East about 10 o’clock at night and driving past Cornwall holding my breath, right? I glance over at the 401 West. There’s 250,000 people leaving Quebec.

Oh my God, the vote was today and we lost.

Comedy Clip (George Carlin):
And we all love accidents. People love accidents. I know you’re just like me. It’s late at night. It’s quiet. You’re sitting in your house. You’re watching TV. All of a sudden you hear that noise outa the blue.

Dammit. You need that last. And when it happens, you’re psyched. It’s like, where are my shoes? Where are my shoes? Shoes. You come out of your house, your neighbors are coming out, you’re all pumped to see each other. What’s up? Let’s go together. Want to skip? Let’s go. It’s an accident. We’re on our way to the accident where someone can be dead.

Bob Metz: Accident waiting to happen. Welcome back. You’re listening to just right on CHRW 94.9 FM, where we’ll be with you from now until noon.

Just the past weekend here in London, we had the convention for the provincial conservatives, progressive conservatives. And with that convention held here in London last weekend, in which party leader John Tory was kept as leader with around a 66% support level, considered low by a lot of people. But I was very surprised at how many people still believe that the PCs lost the last provincial election because of the faith funding issue. Now, I know I picked on the faith funding issue and talked about how silly an issue it was for them to hop on to, etc.

And to be sure that issue didn’t help. And it made Tory seem politically foolish given the public’s extreme rejection of the idea. But if anything, having brought up the faith funding issue, I think Tory opened some real political sores over the issue of separate versus public school funding in which most people almost see as a Catholic versus a non-Catholic issue. But Tory’s problems and that of the Ontario PCs, I think, were deeply rooted not in that issue, per se, but in the party’s lack of a definable ideology and a lack of any concrete issues that would distinguish them from that of the McGinty Liberals.

This is something I complained about a year ago on the show. Tory’s PCs went to extreme measures to even demonstrate that, we’re not Mike Harris, Tory’s no way or we like Mike Harris, which of course was the very kind of Tory that put that party into majority position last time until it chose Ernie Eves, another red Tory to help destroy the party and work just well. And without issues, of course, if you’re just the same as the Liberals, you’re forced to focus on personality and what does that leave you with? Well, you got to make leadership the magic pill that will make Ontario voters let Tory do the very same things that McGinty’s doing. And personally, I think it was for that very reason, I was involved, of course, in the provincial election was watching all the polls and results and the Tory and despite what the little peaks you might have seen, they weren’t doing well. And I think it was for that very reason that Tory introduced the faith funding issue late in the 2007 election campaign. He needed something that would distinguish his party from the Liberals and that might also appeal to some of the blue Tories in his party.

So congratulations, I think he succeeded in both objectives. But I finally found one journalist who seems to have recognized the problem. And that was Laurie Goldstein in his February 21st London Free Press editorial titled Party Should Endorse John Tory, which in itself contradicts what he’s about to say. Tory’s biggest problem, says Goldstein, is that he’s a red Tory and a party whose grassroots and caucus are more conservative than he is. His election debacle wasn’t just that most Ontarians rejected his promise of full funding for faith-based schools. It was that the people most opposed were bedrock conservatives. End quote.

But then Goldstein goes on to contradict this observation. Maybe he’s got some hidden agenda, I don’t know, by endorsing John Tory on the grounds that the PCs can’t find anyone better. Did you see the picture of John Tory and his wife on the front page of Sunday’s London Free Press? I never saw too sad or looks on the faces of people that are supposed to be winners. You can almost say, okay, yeah, we’ll do it. Who else is going to do the job? But Goldstein continues, he writes, he says, quote, who’s a better fundraiser?

Who’s better known? Conservatives waiting for a Harris clone to lead them back to the promised land should remember Harris was right for his time following a decade of fiscally reckless liberal and NDP rule. But today, voters don’t want unending confrontation, particularly in health and education. They want better results, end quote.

And with that, Goldstein himself, I think, sinks into the abyss of simply not seeing the forest for the trees. With the Ontario PCs having political policies that mirror those of the liberals, there’s really no need for a Conservative Party. Its function wouldn’t be based on any principles or ideology or philosophy, but simply to serve as an occasional menu option, allowing some voters to switch from one type of vote to another. And I understand, so you get basically liberal party A, liberal party B, I think there’s no real blue party anymore. Now understand, we’ve got a caller online.

And Taft, let’s connect him up and see what he has to say. Hello? Hello. How are you today? Not too bad.

How’s yourself? Good, thank you. First of all, I didn’t know that… By the way, it’s David. Oh, sorry, I was just going to say, first of all, I didn’t know there was any of this kind of show on CHRW because I’ve never heard it before. It’s a really good show. Well, thank you. I just want to make a comment. It’s kind of the same thing that Rush says.

I like the Williams clip because I totally dig all his stuff. What I was going to say is, that’s the problem. You kind of stole my thunder there because the Conservatives are really not conservative here in Ontario. And an old Mike, Uncle Mike, as I call him, he was the only thing that changed the Conservatives. It just made people, people that I knew that were full-hearted Conservatives rise up.

It was important. But as Rush was saying, the same thing down there in the states is here, is the parallels are that the Conservatives, the so-called Republicans and the PC or the so-called Conservatives are just not conservative enough. That’s their base, same way.

And like you said, they’re not the Liberals. You don’t have to vote. People in Ontario don’t want Conservatives. They’ll just vote Liberal. And if the party doesn’t show that they have true Conservative fiscal values, they’ll just… It’s gone.

True Conservatism is gone in Ontario. Would you agree? Well, I would agree wholeheartedly. I think it’s been gone for many more years than you might even imagine. I think it was gone before I even got involved in politics in the 1980s. But having said that, the whole thing about Mike Harris, he did enjoy a resurgence of Conservatism in the province, which had basically been almost totally conservative for years and years. And you have to admit, it was true that he had one of the worst governments to fall in behind. And fixing up their errors was his main claim to fame, but I don’t think he could ever actually claim to have gotten further than that or made any progress from where we were before the Liberals and NDP were.

And that’s one of the unfortunate things for the province, I think. Okay, well I guess I can’t. Anyways, I’ll just let you go on asking. I guess I can’t see too much other than… Well, I hope you continue listening. Now you discover the show.

Yeah, I’m Walter Williams. He totally rocks. Excellent.

We’ve had a lot of clips by him on the show. Thanks for calling, David. Thank you very much, Emily.

Okay, bye-bye. And that’s David who agrees entirely with some of these observations. And I think Goldstein and others like him will be waiting till the cows come home before they’ll get those better results that they want from these parties that all sound the same. Because basically it’s tax and spend, public ownership, monopoly practices. These not only define the three major parties, it so much defines the history of John Tory himself, too. And it’s interesting because in that respect, I ran into an article called Hello, Tory, Goodbye, Tories, writes Canada free press writer Arthur Weinrebin in his February 25th column, who says, quote, Tory has had several careers during his lifetime, including working for former Premier Bill Davis. Boy, there’s a red Tory for you.

At Rogers Cable, Commissioner of the Canadian Football League, Mayoralty candidate for Toronto, and Backroom Boy for the ill-fated Kim Campbell campaign back in 93. And he writes, he says, two things can be deduced from this. One is that politics is not a strong suit. Tory was a key player in the 2003 election that saw the once mighty Federal PC Conservative Party reduce to two seats, an event which ultimately led to that party’s demise. Had Tory performed that way at Rogers, we would all be adjusting our aerials in an attempt to find one of the three television channels that would still be available.

John Tory’s election of a party leader signaled the death of conservatism in Ontario. The remaining question can be, or will be, can the PC party survive? End quote. To which I guess I respond who really cares anymore since there’s really not much of a difference and don’t see much of one coming. How’s our time, how’s our time doing out there Taft? We almost running out, getting close. Got five minutes.

Okay, I got one more thing I can deal with if I’ve got another five minutes there. This was a little letter to the editor just showed up in London Free Press, February 28th. And it makes a comment that I see said so often that I think just reflects an inappropriate way of thinking like it’s a little backwards to me. And the letter says, time to quit putting the economy first and written by Barbara Jorowski in the February 20th, London Free Press. And in referring to a previous debate that occurred between Paul Burton and Laurie Goldstein about the carbon tax, she argues this, and I think I’ve heard a number of people say this, quote, it has become the prevailing or orthodoxy that the economy always becomes comes before other sectors. If this doesn’t change, we’re in deep trouble. The longer we wait for these emission reduction strategies, the more likely it becomes that they’ll prevent that they will prevent social upheaval that will make us long for the days when all we risked was a recession end quote. Well, it’s clear that the writer completely buys into the global warming religion. And I’ve spoken at such length on that subject already on the show, I’m not even going to bother addressing that. Been there, done that.

I’ve seen the true believers before. But to treat the economy as some separate entity that can be ripped from its area of application like some kind of mind body separation, that’s conceptually handicapping. I think we have to realize that all sectors are economic. Economics is an inseparable element of social life, of private life, of public life, and even of government.

And if history demonstrates anything, it is that ignoring economics is the very thing that produces the cataclysms that so many people fear. What people really mean, I think, when they want to treat the quote economy as some distinct entity, is that they want to introduce injustice into the economy by favoring some people at the expense of other people. We’re still going to have an economy irrespective of whether we choose to have a free capitalist society or an unfree socialistic one.

And I guess the only question is, will it be a free economy or a closed one? Is the money you earn at your job or profession yours, or does it belong to society at large? Ownership and property rights are the foundation stones of any economic system. And under each system, you can always be certain to one thing. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re here in the Soviet Union, the economy does come first. There’s just no two ways about it.

And that’s it for the show today. And we hope again that you’ll enjoy it. Join us again next week when we continue our journey in the right direction. Until then, be right, stay right, do right, act right and think right, and take care.

Comedy Clip (Stewart Francis):
I hope you’re doing okay. Money-wise, I’m set for life. Provided I die next Tuesday.