This debate was organized by the Professional Engineers of Ontario and so focused on the issues of infrastructure, energy and regulation. I had prepared written responses but time allowed only a minute or so for each, so I paraphrased and ad-libbed instead. For the record, here are my full responses.
1. Infrastructure - Ontario
and Canada has under invested in infrastructure for the past 20 or more years.
If elected what would you and your party do to establish secure long term
funding for essential infrastructure projects?
I
note that it is not Canada that has underinvested in anything, but rather it is
government owned assets that are poorly managed and maintained. This is
because the only proper role of government is the protection of
individual rights and when it interferes in economic activities this naturally
leads to a poor allocation of capital. By taking capital away from the
free market and healthy competitive forces, government owned or operated assets
MUST be inefficient, less innovative, and ultimately serve customers worse than
assets in a free market. The idea that government should be building any
infrastructure is one that comes from collectivist ideologies and not from
those who defend individual rights and capitalism.
If
elected, I would work to remove the thousands of obstacles government currently
has in place that prevent Ontarians from planning, financing, building and
operating all the infrastructure they need and want. No project that is
truly essential in a free market remains unconstructed for long. In a
free market, individuals and their companies seek opportunities to create value
that is recognizable by large numbers of citizens being willing to pay for it.
Let
me give one example: hospitals. In Ontario today, it is against the law
for patients to choose experimental drugs they believe may help them, it takes
tens of millions of dollars and many years for new treatments to be approved,
it is against the law for patients to pay doctors, against the law for doctors
to charge patients for services, against the law for companies to build and
operate hospitals in a way proper for a free market. Government has
essentially declared war on innovative, efficient, competitive, lower cost and
widely available health care. Hospitals today contain massive
inefficiencies and struggle to adopt technologies that are rapidly implemented
in the more free market. If Apple was run the way Ontario health care is
run, it would still be trying to sell big, slow desktop computers. If
engineers were all forced to work in a government monopoly, bridges would be
still made out of wood.
2. Energy – Reliable,
affordable and sustainable energy is essential in a modern society. In
the last several years the cost escalation for electrical energy has placed many
Ontario industries at a competitive disadvantage compared to their trading
competitors. If elected what would you and your party do to address the reduced
electricity demand and the rising cost of electricity in Ontario?
Energy
is indispensible for human life. There is a direct relationship between
energy production and quality and longevity of life. Housing, clothing,
food, education, transportation, work, health care and almost every other area
of human life are improved dramatically with access to energy. With
discoveries of new ways to access energy, the industrial revolution lifted
humanity out of a structural poverty that had persisted for all of history.
In
a free market the natural trend is for products to become better at a lower
cost and energy has been no exception. Sources of energy undreamed of
have been brought into reality by scientists, engineers and industrialists and
new ones are being explored every day. In just the last few years, vast
new supplies of natural gas and oil have been identified, enormous supplies of
methyl hydrates have been discovered below the ocean floor, nanotechnologists
are working on ways to multiply the efficiency of photovoltaic panels, biofuels
are being developed and it appears that safe, small scale and inexpensive
fusion may be only a handful of years away. In truth, energy is
essentially limitless if humans are permitted to use their minds to explore for
it.
In
contrast to a free market, Ontario has a monopoly electrical power system that
makes a mockery of efficiency. I have operated solar panels at my
off-grid cottage for 20 years and know how inefficient they still are, despite
large improvements. Over ten years ago it was shown that with steady
progress, solar panels would be able to compete with fossil fuels by around
2030. The current government has spent billions of dollars on
technologies that are far less efficient than existing standard technologies
and saddled Ontarians with associated debt for decades. The government is
taking money from all taxpayers, including those who can least afford it and
paying it to relatively wealthy Ontarians and foreign companies to place solar
panels on their roofs and accept giant windmills in their towns. This
money is completely wasted as Ontario has all the energy it can use and the
excess produced by these projects is taken off our hands by New York and we
have to pay them to take it! Insanity.
The
Freedom Party would move towards a free and competitive market for energy and
remove all subsidies, programs and interference in the energy industry, except
to protect citizens from physical harm. The price of energy would go down
dramatically while the variety and availability of energy would rise steadily.
New technologies that prove useful would be rapidly implemented.
3. Regulation - On June 12th this year, the current
government prevented implementing legislation in the manufacturing sector that
would have ensured publicly accountable professional engineers oversee
machinery that could cause harm to workers. Instead, the current government
chose to favour the interests of business. According to the Association of
Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada, Ontario is the worst province in Canada
for worker safety in manufacturing, with worker deaths more than double the
rest of Canada. If you were elected, what would you and your party do to
protect Ontario manufacturing workers from bad engineering even if there was
some cost to business? There are over 100 deaths in Ontario manufacturing businesses
each year. Is saving one life or preventing one worker injury not worth putting
this legislation in place?
The
protection of citizens from physical harm IS the proper role of government -
it’s only proper role. This does not extend to regulating voluntary
exchange. In a free society every worker is be free to contract with any
employer and to terminate that contract if he believes his workplace is not
safe enough. Similarly, every employer is free to run business as he sees
fit. If he does not offer a safe workplace he will not be able to compete
for valuable employees and will suffer according to his degree of irrational
business practices. Unless it can be shown that an employer is using
force against an employee then government should not interfere.
On
the other hand, a free society has lots of room for standards organizations and
professional designations. Professional engineers must have educational
qualifications and maintain standards to hold their designation. Their
association may reprimand or eject them for violations and may publicize this.
In a free society you earn your reputation through good performance and
serving customers, not through government approval.
A
free market ensures that the opinions of consumers are heard through their
buying choices, the opinions of employees are heard through their wage
preferences and that the most efficient businesses eventually succeed.
Ontario law is riddled with regulations that prevent many goods and
services from being offered, or makes them so expensive they are not accessible
to part of the population. Some people may want the comfort of a
certified professional for a job while others may be willing to risk using
someone with lower qualifications. No one has the right to prevent a
buyer and seller from freely negotiating their own terms. Many jobs have
risks and in a free society compensation rises accordingly. You can’t use
government guns to make the world completely safe, and who would want to live
in such a society?
No comments:
Post a Comment