The CANADA I want.

A friend who reads my Substack articles asked me to describe my vision for Canada - the one that I would create if I could wave a magic wand and see it become my reality.

A single STATEMENT of VISION.

“I want to live in a Canada that is a sovereign nation in which a dynamic, sustainable and just distribution of powers and authorities can exist between each person and the collective entities that out citizens choose to govern the peoples and properties of this nation according to the best ideals of a Civil Society. In such a society, there is no room for any groups or individuals to impose their will on others using force, coercion or violence.“

I am not known as a man of few words, but there is much to unpack in the statement above. I do my best thinking when I write and conduct my thoughts with a magic wand. So, let the unpacking begin…

The Canada I Want

I want to live in a nation in which a fair, respectful, flexible and voluntary balance exists between individual autonomy & self-responsibility, and the powers undertaken by collective entities like governments to govern its people. Politicians and public officials use and sometimes abuse their powers of office to determine and limit the choices and freedoms of untold numbers of Canadian persons they do not know personally. These limits are often unnecessary, unwieldy, unfair, disrespectful and excessively expensive.

Unpacking ‘Civil Society’.

The size, cost and scope of authority undertaken by public institutions are unacceptable to many citizens and much too rigid in their enforcement.

Canadians depend far too much on government services and have been conditioned to do so without paying serious attention to the costs in terms of their money and freedoms.

A Civil Society is one in which the following principles prevail: Individual Freedom, Personal Responsibility, mutual Respect and Fairness (equal treatment for all under a system of governance that applies humane, just and unbiased laws). They are elaborated upon below:

Personal Responsibility

We each come into this world possessing the intrinsic and unalienable assets of our person - body, mind and will.

Initially as children, we are fully dependent on others and are gradually nurtured over decades by caregivers and mentors until we reach adult maturity, and often beyond.

In addition, our community members expect each adult to survive, prosper and thrive independently while participating productively in society with honesty and integrity.

It is an undeniable fact that the autonomy and self-responsibility of every adult depends upon the wise and prudent use of those life-sustaining, intrinsic and unalienable assets.

Individual Freedom

The primary prerequisite for a person to successfully undertake Personal Responsibility is to possess the Freedom of Informed Choice to make wise decisions under any circumstance. The opposite is slavery - a condition that allows few, if any, life-sustaining choices for the individual.

The degrees of freedom to make wise choices that any person may encounter in life inevitably vary by circumstance.  Every individual is uniquely equipped with intrinsic assets (strength, intelligence, creativity, etc.) and extrinsic assets (money, property, tools, social position, etc). As such, each individual’s ability and prospects for surviving and thriving in life will differ from one person to the next.

Freedom provides the social and economic environment for each individual to explore and make the best of these assets through self-discovery and acquired wisdom.

By contrast, the “will of the majority” handcuffs the will of individual. Majority rule tends to prevail in collective social paradigms. Leaders of an electoral majority (see the PDF ‘The Electoral System of Canada’ at elections.ca) determine the rules of engagement between organized groups and their constituencies.

Inevitably, dissenting voices are heard because a true statistical majority is rarely met and the “bull majority” claims power.

In our system of “democracy” by ‘majority rule, the elected majority party leaders have always exercised their privilege to define “the laws of the land”, often with no “give and take” flexibility. However, this autocratic tendency of past party leaders can finally be countered effectively with the tools of the new Digital Age.

The old, archaic models of “bully majority” governments have always suffered from a fatal flaw: the larger the constituency and the rules of engagement, the greater the rigidity and size of the enforcement bureaucracy needed. This is their Achilles Heel.

A new Digital Direct Democracy can render “bully democracies” obsolete.

Respect.

Some people (like me) believe that respect in the eyes of others must be earned on merit through admirable deeds.

Others bestow unearned respect on others according to their social status as determined by popularity, appearances, power, wealth, fame, authority and other unique personal characteristics. 

Mutual respect between persons, earned on the basis of merit, provides the best conditions for establishing trusting relationship between the governed and those chosen to govern.

Fairness.

Like respect, this value is largely subjective.

Fairness is measured against a yardstick that is very personal and often grounded in emotions, faith and/or ideological convictions. For example, the yardstick of a socialist will differ from a capitalist; an atheist from a Christian; a man from a woman; a poor person from a wealthy one; or a strong person compared to a weak one.

In legislation, collectivists want all legal statutes to apply equally to everyone regardless of other considerations.

This attitude ignores the unique realities and circumstances of individuals.

Fairness and the Honey Pot problem.

The Honey Pot is a metaphor for the container of all political power that takes the form of official legislative statutes plus the public monetary resources accrued by taxation, various ‘revenue tools’ and public debt. The custodians of the Honey Pot are very popular figures indeed. They include government officials and the most powerful of elected politicians. Every lobbyist works to influence those custodians in various ways for self-serving purposes.

Paid lobbyists will use any “leverage” they can find to “encourage” Honey Pot custodians to use public money and/or legislation in ways that will favour the group or cause they represent.

The Honey Pot is full of ill-gotten gains.

The accumulated tax revenues, public debt, and all biased legislation it contains represent the financial assets and freedoms which have been taken involuntary from the persons who earned and deserve them.

The misuse of the Honey Pot’s collective assets for partisan and self-serving purposes sets up the conditions for corruption in society. As long as these conditions are tacitly accepted by the electoral majority of citizens, fairness can never qualify as a timeless, objective and universal principle.

2. Honest Money

The best form of money today is Bitcoin. If the reader wishes to understand the basis of my claim, read the Bitcoin Standard and the Fiat Standard by Dr. Saefeddine Ammous.

With my magic ward, I would begin the transformation of Canada’s economy to Bitcoin as a full replacement for Canada’s fiat monetary system based on the dollar.

In a Bitcoin economy, central banking institutions are unnecessary. The Bank of Canada can be eliminated. Commercial and investment banking would undergo significant changes that would benefit citizens and business owners/operators in too many anticipated ways to outline here.

3. A free market economy for all discretionary goods and services. No exceptions.

If every person looked in the mirror, one universal truth would stare back at them:

As a member of the human race, we are each endowed with a unique body, mind and will upon which we depend to survive, prosper and thrive as an individual and a participant in society.

This has been the fundamental reality for every ‘being of consciousness’ that has ever lived on Earth.

Let’s talk “principles” shall we?

The Statement of Principles acknowledges this undeniable reality and lays out the freedoms that every person needs to forge a meaningful and fulfilling life using their intrinsic assets. To the limited extent that external forces of governance may be helpful, the duties of government are also prudently delineated with safeguards to avoid them becoming excessive and harmful to others.

Some people claim that certain CORE DUTIES must be allocated to governments in order to further develop and protect the “commons” “for the greater good”. It is not easy to get everyone to agree with an acceptable nature, cost and scope of these duties. This is the greatest challenge of every politician.

Other DISCRETIONARY DUTIES can and should be provided on an optional and voluntary basis in the same way that we shop for and consume non-government goods and services in every other area of our lives. Any service that can be provided effectively on a voluntary choice basis to consumers via a market of competing providers can be considered “discretionary”

With my magic wand, I would end all government monopolies that provide discretionary “public service” offerings.

To enable every person to exercise his or her Freedom of Informed Choice, such discretionary offerings can continue to be available through voluntary subscriptions or on a pay-as-you-go basis. There is no good reason to prevent competition between government service providers and non-governmental providers as participants in a robust, unbiased (ie. a level playing field) and free marketplace serving the diverse needs and interests of all consumers.

The applicable Principle: If you don’t benefit, then you don’t pay and are under no obligation to comply with related regulations. Example: pay carbon taxes ONLY IF YOU BELIEVE they are beneficial; otherwise, OPT-OUT of obligations to pay and comply.

The Evolution of Democracy in the Digital Age.

I wrote Digital Direct Democracy (DDD) to present one way that The Principle stated above can be realized and implemented. The system design proposed will enable every adult citizen to benefit from the Freedom of Informed Choice.

In a genuine participatory democracy, each person should be empowered to OPT-IN or OPT-OUT of discretionary “public service” offerings.

Note 1.  I envision DDD as a transitionary mechanism intended to gradually unravel the monopoly powers of governments and to empower citizens to take greater control of their freedoms and after-tax earned assets.

It no longer makes sense in this Digital Age that the “will of the majority” remains the archaic paradigm that allows public institutions to impose “one size fits all” policies on every constituent and thereby bulldoze the inherent and intrinsic autonomy of all individual persons.

Note 2. Eventually, under a fully digital Bitcoin economy ‘regulated’ by citizen choice (as described in Digital Direct Democracy), and after citizens have made their economic OPT-OUT choices in a reasonably stable manner, the DDD mechanisms would no longer be needed.

The inherent advantages of the Bitcoin Blockchain network would sustain the Freedom of Informed Choice for everyone in a safe, secure, transparent and accountable manner.

With another wave of my magic wand, I would…

International treaties.

End mandatory compliance to international agreements between Canada and unelected globalist organizations. For the life of me, I can’t understand why any Canadian would agree to sign away our sovereign rights of national governance to organizations like the United Nations (UN), World Health Organization (WHO), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), World Economic Forum (WEF), International Bank of Settlements (IBS) and others.

All global agreements must be considered “advisory only” so that Canadians can learn and benefit from whatever useful ideas they may contain.  

Canadians must be digitally enabled to exercise their Freedom of Informed Choice to decide if the advice given within treaty documents is in their best interests.

I, for one, would OPT-OUT of the Paris Climate Accord as just the first of several pressing examples.

Domestic trade.

End Interprovincial trade barriers today. If I am to believe that Canada is home to one unified nation of patriotic people, then no special economic and regulatory arrangements should exist between provinces and territories. These arrangements serve only to protect otherwise partisan and self-serving interests like cartels.

With the wave of my wand, I would abolish all laws and regulations that sustain the existence of those unwholly arrangements within the dairy sector, for example. I would also repeal as laws and regulations which force gas stations to only sell fuels which contain up to 10% ethanol.

These are both examples of government mandates that are inconsistent with the idea of national unity, fairness, and the freedoms expressly guaranteed in our constitutional laws and documents.

For these and many more reasons, those constraints are unnecessary and counter to the interests of all Canadians.

4. A compassionate and peaceful MERITOCRACY

I favour a society in which excellence and success are rewarded. The Olympic games have traditionally provided an admirable model to emulate. The top-level athletic competitors entertain millions of people worldwide, and inspire countless individuals to make the effort to become better versions of themselves.

Besides sports, there are virtually unlimited areas of life where each person can explore his or her intrinsic assets to identify interests and develop inherent talents.

This can unlock lifelong domains of personal passion, purpose and fulfillment for many individuals.

Yes, I acknowledge that some individuals may never win a competitive contest. But, they can succeed in non-competitive ways.

Yes, I also know that some people cannot even care for themselves and require constant care and assistance.

These are areas where coaching, mentoring, and compassionate giving all fit in the Canada I want.

Ultimately, a culture based on personal responsibility and mutual respect is an ideal. It’s my aspiration for the Canada I want even as I know full well that human nature is imperfect.

Every life lens is unique.

Perceptions and opinions vary. A person may qualify as “a saint” in the eyes of some. That same person may bear “the mark of the beast” in the eyes of others. The realm of politics plays out this very human dynamic of aggressive and unflattering “tribalism” perennially.

I refer to electoral politics as “political theatre” because “the powers that be” do everything they can to make us believe that our one vote every four years is a duty, a right and a privilege.

They repeatedly promote the myth that your single vote matters —that you can determine how you will be governed over the next four years and by whom.

If you always vote for the winner who represents the electoral majority, then you are likely satisfied with electoral democracy. If, however, you never get the government you want, then you may be one of the people I see holding a sign at political protect rallies.

With these thoughts in mind, here are a few non-negotiable features that I want in ‘my meritocratic Canada’:

• Property: the right to defend and protect my person and my justly-acquired property against anyone - person or instutions - who empowers themselves to take it from me without my permission.

• Social Compassion: an understanding between every citizen that our individual beliefs, preferences and even our significant differences of opinion can be expressed freely under conditions of mutual consent and shared in the spirit of peace and tolerance by mutual agreement.

• Peace of mind: a place where FEAR is experienced only when justified by a real and genuine threat. In recent years, FEAR was manufactured, weaponized and propagated by dishonest and unscrupulous authorities and media enterprises. Civil Society must make impotent all agents of FEAR-mongering wherever they may appear.

5. Governance of the commons only.

Minimal taxation is a significant feature of the Canada I want. The average Canadian remits 55% of annual earnings to all levels of government through a variety of seen and unseen ‘revenue tools’, taxes and public debt repayments.

Any time assets or freedoms are taken from a person by force or deception, it is difficult not to consider these acts as theft, embezzlement and coercion.

The only word that is missing in the words ‘taxation’ and ‘regulation’ is the word ‘voluntary’.

Building trust.

Conditions for distrust arise with suspected secrecy and associated uncertainty.

With the wave of my wand, I would hope to cure the serious lack of transparency and accountability which exists within the public sector.

If public officials, agents and politicians cannot or will not operate within an environment of transparency, accountability and integrity, then why should anyone believe or trust them in their roles as planners, enforcers and public goods & services providers?

Of course, some things may be best handled by central planning. BUT, this may only hold true if the people who carry out those duties do so in a transparent, accountable and “value-for-money” (VfM) manner.

Governments are not known to do anything cost-effectively or without self-serving political considerations. The public, for the most part, accepts government central planning as a “necessary evil” with the lack of transparency, accountability and VfM being the most common complaints.

The ideas contained in Digital Direct Democracy can eradicate some of the shortcomings and consequences of government-provided central planning among its other duties.

Humanity has already benefited in the past from technology advances in uncountable ways.

Creative destruction has always followed in the wake of innovation and progress to phase out “the old” and make room for “the new”.

This is a natural process but certainly unsettling to those who resist the inevitable changes that accompany such progress.

Modern Digital Technologies hold great promise for democracy.

As the future of AI and other advances in technologies unfolds, even government agencies and their workforces will likely be able to perform and serve their constituencies in a superior manner.

Unfortunately, politicians, unions, government officials and third-party stakeholders who benefit directly from the status quo will continue to resist change. Such improvements usually go against their vested interests.

The tactics of resistence will become increasingly aggressive as the threats of technological change become more imminent and significant.

For this reason, the adoption of the digital tools and methods of process improvement and superior decision-making in the public sector will continue to be slow to materialize.

Advocate for Less Government

Notwithstanding the possibility of technological improvements for public services in the future, the problems arising from too much government remain today and in the foreseeable future. Many of those problems are also becoming more pressing, especially the unsustainable levels of public debt.

The irony is the willful blindness on display by groups like the Climate Change doomsday advocates.

Those zealots perennially allege dangers that unborn future generations will face, yet they continue to lobby for more public spending today. Such spending only aggravates the very real and immanent threat of an economic collapse that will impact millions of people who are alive today.

Increasing public sector productivity.

It has been my observation, as someone who enjoyed a 36-year career as a a profession recruiter, that INCENTIVES MATTER.

Consider the following scenario.

• If you hire someone for a specific type of job that involves creating rules, policies, procedures (ie. Regulations) and the supporting documentation to be used by other communities of employees who are paid to enforce them, then this is what you’ll get.

• If you provide a robust compensation package with a post-retirement pension after only thirty years of employment, you’ll get a loyal employee.

• If that person sees that promotions up the career ladder are determined more by seniority than merit, there will be no reason to strive for excellence or work longer than a 7 hour day.

• If you hire thousands of people under these conditions, you will get large, unproductive bureaucracies filled with people who believe that mediocracy is good enough.

• Public sector unions protect those ‘positions’ and their incumbents because many would not continue to be employed if merit was the only measure of success and the intended recipients of their work could choose to voluntarily pay only if clear and measurable benefits were evident.

The point of the above scenario was to explain why public institutions are always criticized for by citizens for poor service, monetary waste and confusing processes.

The above scenario is not hypothetical. It is the nature of the workforces found in most, of not all, government institutions.

Expertise over mediocrity = the better way.

In the Canada I Want, there would be no permanent government ‘positions’ for people who create regulations.

Instead, data analytics experts would be hired on term contracts with specific measure-able goals. They would only be hired under contract, likely through consulting forms, whenever a genuine need for regulation reform is evident.

These projects would be awarded to the best and most suitable of competing consulting organizations whose employees are specialists possessing the type of expertise required to achieve the desired results.

PERFORMANCE MATTERS to consulting firms.

Their REPUTATION IS CRUCIAL for enduring success in their markets.

As a key employee for eight years in a Canadian consulting firm that specialized in the planning and implementation of SAP systems integration projects, I helped to ensure that all project teams were staffed with highly qualified SAP consultants. Between 2009 and 2018, our organization successfully completed over 100 SAP implementations at automotive manufacturing plants located across Brazil, Mexico, the USA and France.

I lived the reality of building and protecting our reputation in a very competitive market of providers.

I speak from experience.

Who to believe?

Sources of expertise are many in our modern world. However, what and who is qualified to be a legitimate expert is troublesome.

Everyone is swamped with information today. Most citizens are so overwhelmed by this fact that they lack confidence in their own ability to make sense of readily available information - especially that which is provided by public institutions and mainstream media enterprises. Consequently,

… most people “outsource” their critical thinking to “the designated experts” and trust what they say without bothering to verify claims made.

Designated “experts” like Al Gore and Greta Thunberg became the popular faces of the “scientists consensus” on the Climate Change Crisis Theory, for example.

Everyone was told of an alleged consensus held by thousand of scientists who we never met, heard or saw. The scientifically naive did not know that only political outcomes are determined by consensus; science only relies on sound data analysis provided by numerous scientific investigations and studies.

I trust real science, not the “political science” variety.

Obesity is a modern epidemic and source of great concern to many. I prefer to hear and see the experts that I eventually come to trust on the merits of their work.

This 2-hour podcast discussion between Dr. Peter Attia and Dr. David Allison on the topic of Rethinking nutrition science: the evolving landscape of obesity is a treasure for anyone who wants an up-to-date synopsis on the topic offered by a genuine world class expert.

If I want to feed my critical thinking skills on nutrition topics. I turn to resources like this one.

Targets for change.

Canada’s public institutions have grown steadily since this country was founded. In the earliest days of our new nation, a need for governance was likely quite evident but very little existed. The governance conditions could be described as “wild west”.

Fast forward to today. The growth of public institutions has greatly exceeded their optimal size, cost and scope of authority.

There are many areas of modern life in which Canadians would benefit greatly from less central planning and regulatory enforcement.

This work is often assigned to out-of-touch public officials, and the hordes of under-achieving enforcement personnel.

All of the following domains, while still subjects of perennial public interest, are over-regulated, excessively bureaucratic and unnecessarily expensive today. Our politicians and regulators have already “boiled the ocean” with too many rules, policies, procedures, reports and enforcement documentation: all could use some serious right-sizing, stream-lining and house-cleaning:

• Healthy environments for water, air, soil as well as human and animal living conditions within natural settings, cities, workplaces and residences.

• Energy production and consumption constraints. Price and supply regulations via public policy are just plain dumb: they contribute to the unacceptable rising cost of living for all Canadians and business owners.

• Defence: police services and the Canadian armed forces.

• Infrastructure: roads, highways, bridges, public buildings, communications. networks, sewage, waterways and processing facilities, and more.

• International trade. Establish bilateral and multilateral agreements between trade partners that are simple to understand and acceptable to all partners. The goal must be to facilitate productive and mutually acceptable relationships.

• Taxation. Complex tax codes only serve to create jobs for accountants and to set traps for citizens who are not paying attention to where the land mines might be buried as they traverse the vast taxation and regulatory landscape.

• Global threats: over-stated declarations concerning the Climate Change Crisis Theory and global pandemics are problematic when compared to real threats of sovereign defaults on national and sub-national public debts.

About monopolies.

Max Weber said “governments are legitimate monopolies on violence” and force. There is nothing “legitimate” about violence or force in a democratic Civil Society in my vision for the Canada I want.

As I observe Canada’s economy and culture, I identify many public monopolies that I might eliminate, privatize or re-imagined using by my magic wand.

Monopolies on power, especially those in the public sector, offer sub-optimal services at best or produce inhumane living conditions at worst.

Power monopolies are features of communism and fascism (aka “corporatism”). They are antithetical to historically Canadian ideas of democracy.

The following monopolies on power have no place in the Canada I want. This is not an exclusive list; they are just some of those that bother me most.

• Coercive labour unions. Why is union membership mandatory as a condition of employment in the majority of non-management positions? Why are public sector labour unions allowed to actively promote workplace conditions based of various forms of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Marxism? Why are they allowed to exerts so much biased influence in elections?

• State-owned and state-controlled media enterprises. The CBC must be defunded. All subsidies to non-government media businesses must be abolished forevermore.

• “Socialized medicine” and all monopoly operations in public health must be reimagined. Introduce competition by non-government operators to unleash private sector innovation and to improve the timeliness and quality of services. This will also serve to optimize the use of human and financial resources.

• “Public Education” needs a heavy dose of “creative destruction”. Unleash competition in this vital sector to stoke the market forces of innovation and diversity of ideas.  Every student is different in interests, talents, motivation and more. The emergence of a robust market of non-government education service providers has much greater potential to serve those differences than the status quo. Canada’s current institutions of Education operate largely on archaic models of teaching, planning and administration that are ripe for creative destruction.

• Government licensing of trades and professions. Certifications are no guarantee of service quality. For the most part, offices for their issuance and administration serve only to create government positions that are of little or no value to Canadian consumers, businesses, customers or patrons.

• “Law & Order”. The courts, the laws and the ‘professions of justice’ have too much power and scope authority. Their “public services” fail to provide timely, accessible and unbiased services to average Canadians.  The abuse of those powers of office has become more evident in recent years and had resulted in a serious decline in public respect and trust. These are dangerous societal conditions for an alleged ‘democracy”.

My magic wand is eager and ready to:

• Defund the CBC

• Abolish the CRTC

• Dismantle every government department and offer pink slips to every public servant who works in a tax-funded position that holds any level of regulation planning, reporting and enforcement responsibility associated with the Climate Change Crisis Theory. In other words, eradicate the entire Climate Change Government Complex as described in the Kindle ebook on Amazon “What To Do About Climate Change - A Libertarian Proposal”.

• Abolish the Bank of Canada. It is not needed in a Bitcoin economy.

• Place hard limits on the size, cost, and scope of authority for all remaining public institutions with the goal to limit taxation to the lowest possible level.

• Enact serious penalties to impose on any public servant caught misusing public funds and/or regulations for self-serving purposes.

• Eliminate political parties in Canada. Eliminate Canada’s provinces. Consider a largely decentralized, two-level structure of government similar to the Republic of Switzerland before the year 2000.

While this last item may be a fascinating topic to discuss, it is much too large to address in this essay.

My Wish List for The Canada I Want.

Writing is a ‘stream of consciousness’ activity.

Intentionally composing the contents of my mind into words, sentences and paragraphs serves to unmoor and manifest many of my past and present thoughts, feelings, dreams, memories and reflections.

In effect, the act of writing reveals my Life Lens in the most effective and sincere manner I know.

This essay was written in answer to my friend’s question.

I don’t suspect that many Canadians will agree with all items on my Wish List, and I don’t expect them to. After all, I practice Libertarianism. I strive to hold a ‘live and let live’ attitude towards the people I meet and with whom I interact. Its core principles guide me to deal wisely with life’s circumstances.

Additionally, I believe that safe, effective and reliable Digital Technology can be used to enable the exercise of democratic Freedom of Informed Choice for every adult citizen.

The Digital Direct Democracy (DDD) Kindle ebook (2023), and the 12-episode Substack series posted a few months ago, are two separate offerings of my “citizen white paper” - a treatise that lays out how every Canadian can also identify and realize his or her priorities for the Canada they want.

To fully realize the potential of what I want, the transition to a Bitcoin economy is required to complement the Citizen’s Preferences Database described in DDD.

However, I am stuck on one significant concern:

HOW can I get the Canada I Want?!