ADVOCATES for CIVIL SOCIETY

Dr. Kerstin Kelly and I have started a new association - an “action pact” to teach and influence politicians, public officials and local City constituents about the CIVIL SOCIETY we want.

ADVOCATES for CIVIL SOCIETY

CHARTER (Draft)

Goals & Vision:

To inform, influence and convince citizens, politicians and public officials to embrace the ideas of a Civil Society.

Civil Society is one in which all community constituents can exercise their freedoms of informed choice to carry out personal responsibilities pertaining to themselves and their charges. Those freedoms require that no unwanted and unnecessary restrictions, harms or aggressions may be imposed on them by others. In practice, this means that all citizens (no exceptions) are equally subject to fair and unbiased laws that are grounded in respect and honour for individual sovereignty.

A SOCIETY OF EQUALS in the vision and the goal in a nutshell.

Purpose

We plan and execute actions at the local level in pursuit of our Goals & Vision. Our advocacy, grounded in Natural Law, is explained and justified as follows.

“Advocates for Civil Society respect the life, liberty and property rights of each individual. This means that no one, including governments, may initiate force against another as that violates those natural rights.

The wisdom of natural laws, the rights of private property and non-aggression was discovered over human history.  These lessons led to less conflict and the advancement of civilization. They were not created by government-made paper laws and edicts, which generally led to conflict and misery.

On the strength of this wisdom, Advocates for Civil Society act to defend and protect individual persons (their mind, body, will and efforts) and their legitimate property (acquired by personal creativity, trade or inheritance) from intentional and unwanted harm and aggression imposed by others.

These “others” generally leverage the resources of institutional power, force and wealth to plunder people inhumanely. They are predators who are usually associated with government entities or other “collective” groups that lobby to sway government policies to favour their own self-serving special interests at the cost to others. Besides the government itself, such organizations may also include government-privileged organizations such as churches, cartels, activist NGOs or ‘for-profit’ entities such as labour unions”.

Strategy & Methods

The Seven Times Principle will be employed to promote specific messages repeatedly until they become familiar to the intended audiences. We believe that such repetition will render recipients more amenable to embracing our Civil Society messages.

Actions that Advocates may plan and carry out include:

• Preparing and presenting deputations to City Council.

• Writing and publishing articles, opinion editorials and promotional materials including public surveys.

• Speaking at events about topics concerning Civil Society.

• Advocating on behalf of non-governmental initiatives that meet Civil Society goals (example: non-government schools, private medical clinics)

• Hosting podcasts with interesting guests who possess expertise in key and related Civil Society topics.

• Arranging and hosting public town hall meetings.

Our actions are governed by the following: 

• Respect for the Canadian Constitution and the expectation that it be applied and enforced diligently in every community.

• Agreement with the Natural Law theory that provides “a body of unchanging moral principles regarded as a basis for all human conduct, and that it is an observable law relating to natural phenomena in the lives of all humans.”

• Acknowledging that Common Law represents a legal compendium best practices where cases involving individual person & property rights have been decided by courts and that the outcomes arising from those decisions were recorded to inform future cases.

• Understanding Econonics as the thread that attracts and engages individuals with other community members.

CIVIL RIGHTS

All Advocate messages of a civil rights nature must be supportable by the Federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Bill of Rights. No Advocate message shall be of a religious or partisan political nature to avoid it being tainted by ideological biases. Instead, our primary underlying theme is that Canada’s #1 Problem is TOO MUCH GOVERNMENT.

We believe that excessive government size, cost and scope of authorities have imposed unwanted constraints on our Individual Freedoms and Personal Responsibility by forcing unfair, disrespectful and biased laws on every citizen’s individual person and property rights.

PROPERTY RIGHTS

Property disputes have traditionally been heard and decided within government institutions.  Institutional Bias is common.  Too often,  the rights of property owners have been under-acknowledged and/or disrespected by deciding judicial officials. Unfortunately, “going to court” is usually the only option considered whenever property disputes arise.

With respect to the resolution of property disputes, alternatives exist. There are better ways to resolve most of these disputes without government involvement, including:

• Respectful and civil discussions & negotiations between affected stakeholders,

• Citizen-led tribunals,

• Private mediation services.

These options, and others that may yet to be devised, share the advantage that they are less hampered by government bureaucratic processes, institutional biases and burdensome regulations. Wherever possible, these must be encouraged instead of relying on government institutions. 

An acceptable alternative at the local level (municipalities) may be to transform Zoning By-laws, for example, into a Compendium of Best Zoning Practices.  Such a Compendium can become the basis upon which City zoning specialists may advise property owners regarding their best and most publicly-acceptable options pertaining to their property uses. Several advantages to this approach come to mind:

• This will replace the labour-intensive, inefficient and autocratic model of government services that forces non-negotiable, “one-size-fits-all” rules on each unique zoning situation.

• The Compendium can draw upon the wisdom of past successful zoning decisions and dispense with those that were out-of-date and had attracted the most public criticism.

• When such a Compendium of well-established, best zoning practices is fully digitized, the emerging ‘large language model’ AI tools can make its contents accessible online to all property owners. This will vastly improve government transparency.

• Online Compendiun access will reduce workload demands on City staff.

• City Zoning Advisors can apply their knowledge and experience to directly serve property owners who wish to negotiate a preferred zoning outcome that their unique situation requires that may differ from past best practices.

• Property owners, with their property rights acknowledged and respected by City Zoning Advisors, with achieve results far more quickly and cheaply than if they were forced to pursue the slow, tedious and frustrating dispute resolutions that exist today.

The above zoning scenario is just one example of the ways in which our local governments can better serve their constituents by combining modern technology with the modernization of their operating processes. These efficiencies can be readily found in provincial and federal institutions too.

Property Rights are the key. Essential for attaining desirable outcomes in property disputes is an unambiguous definition, delineation, understanding and appreciation of individual person & property rights within all relevant documants.

Every citizen must know their rights. For this reason, it must become a mandatory (non-negotiable) curriculum topic taught and reinforced in primary and secondary school education enterprises. This is another goal to be achieved by Advocates for Civil Society.

The Importance of Economic Literacy.

ECONOMICS is the study of people engaged in trade. People act as both producers, consumers and referees.

In voluntary trade, people act to exchange the use of their person (body, mind and efforts) to produce goods and/or services that earn a  return for acceptable compensation which is received in the form of money or equivalents. This compensation represents the earned assets from that trade. It is their legitimate property.

Governments workers act to referee trade between people. They receive compensation for these unwanted, imposed and non-negotiable services through the force of taxation.

It’s with this understanding of Economics that Advocates for Civil Society act to protect and defend their property in all of its legitimate forms. In addition, the widespread knowledge of Economics within the broader population adds a strong foundation for Civil Society to emerge and be sustained.

Group Structure & Legal Status

Advocates for Civil Society will not be registered as a legal entity. We wish to avoid regulations that inevitably arise when a group is registered with government institutions. No membership fees or donations are required to avoid financial reporting requirements to public authorities.

Fundamentally, we are an informal and voluntary association of individuals who share a common vision and purpose:  to reduce the size, cost and scope of authorities that our local and provincial institutions use to “govern us” excessively

.