Freedom Flyer 17

By Angela Blackburn

Lower taxes, less government spending and more responsible environmentalism is what Freedom Party candidate Bill Frampton is promising residents of Halton Centre as voters prepare to go to the polls Sept. 6.

"We believe the purpose of government is to protect our individual freedom of choice, not to restrict it, whereas all the other parties in this election want to restrict our choices and control us in various ways," said the 32-year- old Burlington resident who is the Freedom Party of Ontario candidate for Halton Centre.

"Taxes are one of the most obvious ways in which we are controlled. The average person in Ontario works from Jan. 1 to July 7 just to pay his combined annual municipal and provincial taxes. If you include the effect of continuing deficits, he works until August 3. That's 59 of the average person's income, he has no choice about how that money is spent, politicians spend that money for him," said Frampton.

The environment and its problems have largely been created by the policies of governments over the last several decades, according to Frampton.

"The basic problem with the environment is pollution and the reason it's a problem is that private property rights are not adequately protected or enforced," he said.

Pollution occurs when one person is able to pass his waste or garbage onto someone else's property without having to pay any damages for it, he said.

In the early 19th century property owners had the right to haul a polluter into court, sue them and secure damages.

"After the Industrial Revolution the law was changed so they could go ahead and pollute with impunity and without any legal consequences. The result is there's no incentive for them to adopt environmentally sound procedures," explained Frampton.

"You don't hear any of the other parties making that connection and talking about the importance of property rights. The NDP thinks private property rights are a terrible thing yet without enforcing those rights there's no real way to solve the pollution problem.

The solutions they advocate are in fact no improvement because they would oppose the burden of cleaning up the pollution and are trying to tack the problem on society at large rather than on the polluters who are responsible for it," said Frampton.

Frampton and the Freedom Party are against official bilingualism in any form.

"Among other things the government has no business telling people what language to speak," he said.

Sunday shopping is another big issue as far as Frampton is concerned.

He said all the other parties want the government to tell retailers what hours they can operate.

"In our view that's totally inappropriate and unjust. A store is the retailer's property therefore it's his decision what the hours are, nobody else's," Frampton said.

Frampton, who represented the party in Mississauga East during the last provincial election, has about $1,000 to put toward his campaign - all of which will come from the Freedom Party of Ontario.

"All costs are paid by the party from funds contributed by our various supporters. We'll probably spend under $ 1,000 per candidate but all candidates will have literature and lawn signs," said Frampton.

Frampton recently moved to Burlington from Mississauga. He has worked for the past year as a computer systems analyst at William M. Mercer Ltd. in Toronto.