Freedom Flyer 12

By Joseph Ruscitti

A London-based organization is selling a product they say is in short supply in Ontario - freedom.

Last year they had only 4,700 buyers.

The count was taken September 10, the day of the last provincial election. The organization is the Freedom Party of Ontario.

Co-founder and leader Robert Metz makes no bones about the party's view of the Ontario electorate as a market - place.

"We haven't lost money on an election yet," he says. "Our job is marketing. We're in the business of selling freedom. If we weren't clear in our minds about that, we'd never have gotten off the ground."

The party got started in January 1984, when it took over the official registration of Toronto's Unparty, a group of disenchanted Libertarians who managed to collect the 10,000 voter signatures needed in Ontario to be recognized as an official party.

Official status allows a party to issue income tax receipts for political contributions, and use its name on election ballots.

Metz and co-founder Marc Emery, the party's action director and the owner of City Lights Book Shop on Richmond Street, both ran as Libertarians in the 1980 federal election. They also became disenchanted with the party.

"But we never really got too close to the Unparty," Emery says. "The name was just too alienating for me. Pick a kooky name and you get kooky people.

"They had one asset we needed - 14,000 signatures."

In late 1983, the Unparty agreed to transfer the signatures to Metz and Emery rather fold the party entirely. They moved the party to London and changed its name.

"'Unparty' promotes a negative, and you can't do that," says Metz. "It just doesn't work. You either represent the product in as clear a way as possible in your name or you're going to lose trying."

Emery describes the product - freedom - as "the right to dispose of your own life and property in a way you see fit, as long as you don't impose on anybody else's similar right."

"And," says Metz, "every political issue is an example of how that needs to be defined."

In four years, the party has grown from 12 members to almost 350. Two-thirds of the membership is in the Toronto - Mississauga area.

"It took us two years to build our product and develop a marketing strategy," says Metz. "In the first year we received $8 to $10,000 in contributions. Last year we got $40,000 and this year we're expecting over $80,00O."

Neither expects to win an election soon. "We won't see results in the vote for another 10 years, but we can see them in the bank now," says Metz.

Emery says they use the money to run campaigns that will win them credibility as an active party. Last summer in London, they picked up garbage during the city strike.