Freedom Flyer 16

Marc Emery began his speech much as one would expect him to, addressing a group of high school students fresh from debating world affairs at a mock United Nations assembly Thursday.

The 32-year-old London businessman, who has "a burning passion for freedom and individual liberty" said he never thought he'd see the day when the Berlin Wall would come down, when one solitary man in Tiananmen Square could hold up a line of tanks for hours, when people would give a global cry for freedom, and sacrifice everything, even their lives, to achieve it.

Then he dropped the bombshell. "Unfortunately, they're being betrayed, because what they want is freedom, but what they're getting is democracy."

All that means, he told his now-captive audience, is that a government decides what the people will get. A democratic government collects various opinions and lays down judgement, just like any dictatorship. And since the government has a monopoly on force, it uses coercion to enforce those judgements.

Business as usual

Emery knows something about judgements. On Sundays, it's business as usual at his used bookstore, City Lights. For flouting the law, he cooled his heels in a provincial correction centre for four days. And while his time there was a mind-numbing experience, "the only important thing is individual freedom, which is why I'll go back to jail."

There was no time to dwell on this seeming paradox. Emery was demanding things of his audience, some quick mathematical calculations. There are more than a million laws in Canada, which seems quite a lot "to keep 25 million people in line. That's a tremendous number for a basic society. Most of these laws restrict individual freedoms. Can anybody name one that gives you freedom?

"People assume we don't need a revolution here, because we have democracy. But that's exactly why we need one, a peaceful one."