Showing posts with label Freedom Party of Ontario. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freedom Party of Ontario. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Hudak On The Environment

On the one hand, its good to see that Tim Hudak embraces the concept of green or "emissions free" energy and hence, at least implicitly, the science of climate change. Of course, green energy for him means hydro electricity and more nuclear. Given, however, that the history of nuclear power plant construction typically involves intense NIMBYism (and not just by local Greens), cost over-runs and ever sliding completion dates, its ridiculous to imagine that any commitment to this technology will (as Hudak claims) put a lid on the rate increases that Ontarians have been subjected to over the last few years. Furthermore, Uranium, like oil and gas, will peak--perhaps in the middle of the new reactors' operating life--and so doesn't really count as a renewable in the first place.

On the other hand, Hudak is now exposed on his right flank to kooky denialist attacks from folks The Freedom Party of Ontario, who produced the video below. A year ago I would have argued that there are no votes to be had in this approach. Since that time...


...with the rise of Wild Rose in Alberta and the madness of the Republicans down South, I'm not so sure. Of course the Freedom party are a bunch of no-hopers as far as winning seats go, but they may be strong enough to pull Hudak right towards the full denialist position. We'll see if his small gestures towards environmental policy survive in the run-up to the provincial election.

Monday, December 08, 2008

Good News On Electric Vehicles


Low-speed vehicles such as the ZENN electric car are finally going to be allowed on Ontario roads.

Transportation Minister Jim Bradley said yesterday such city commuter vehicles would be roadworthy – once equipped with additional safety features. Low-speed vehicles 'are a new kind of vehicle and it will take a new set of standards to allow them to be safely driven on Ontario roads,' he said."

The top speed on these things is only about 40K, so obviously they are not highway ready. But if you live downtown in one of the large Metropolises like T.O. or Montreal (where they are already in use), that is usually about all you need (and all you can manage, given the traffic). I can see The City of Toronto itself making use of these things--they already employ a small fleet of smart cars.

The company website can be found here, a good Western Standard piece on Zenn cars can be found here.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Proportional Representation = No More Revolutions

The Freedom Party of Ontario (hard-core Libertarians who usually rake in a good 0.2% of the Ontario vote) has come out against proportional representation, a method of selecting a government that Ontarians will, come this October, be asked to chose or reject in favor of the current "first past the post" system.

What doesn't the FPO like about PR?

"When we replace majority government with minority or coalition government...we move from a system that accommodates ethical decision-making, to a system based on the rejection of ethics and the substitution of whims and numbers...we move from a government guided by reason, to one guided by emotion; one guided not by what's right, but simply what you want.

"[The committee] is not truly dealing with the issue of democracy. It is dealing with the issue of right versus might; with the issue of ethical rule versus majority rule; with the issue of individual freedom versus the tyranny of majorities.

This is a bit unclear, but it sounds like the FPO doesn't like the fact that minority governments, the most likely outcome of voting system that employs proportional representation, require compromise. Under the current system you can get 75% of the seats with 45% of the vote (roughly Dalton McGuinty's seat count and vote total), and this allows the winning party to govern based solely on its own principles of right and wrong.

Proportional representation yields a government that is not ideological enough for the FPO, in other words.

But of course that is exactly the point. If I think Conservative ethics are cock-eyed, then it makes sense for me to want to lay the kind of constraints upon a Conservative governments that PR provides. And vice versa.

Look at it this way: if Ontario had used proportional representation in the 1990s, both Bob Rae and Mike Harris could have been stopped, or at least the damage they caused could have been mitigated.

Now, if you assume (as you safely can) that the days of the Ontario Big Blue Machine are over, then supporting PR seems logical for an Ontario Conservative. If you assume that the provincial Tories will always have enough support to, potentially, form a provincial government, then supporting PR seems logical for an Ontario Liberal. If you assume that the NDP will never otherwise get a sniff of power until the sun goes supernova, supporting PR makes sense for a Dipper. And if you assume that the Greens will otherwise never win a seat in the provincial legislature, it makes sense for Green Party supporters as well.

So, unless you like ideologically extreme politics, what is the problem?