Freedom Flyer 28

(To help readers learn more about the Perth candidates for the June 8 Ontario election, Beacon Herald reporters have done in-depth interviews with each of the contenders. Following is the last of those profiles.)

By Donal O'Connor
staff reporter

Robert Smink describes himself as a Randian, after Ayn Rand, the author of such tributes to laissez-faire capitalism as Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and Capitalism: The Untried (sic) Ideal.

A founding member of the Freedom Party of Ontario, the 44-year-old businessman and St. Marys resident is seeking election to the Ontario Legislature as representative for Perth riding.

The party's basic premise is that rights are held by individuals and not by groups or special interests and that government is there to protect the individual's freedom of choice, not restrict it.

"The growth rate in everything that government does has just escalated to the point where it has become obtrusive and is causing more problems than it's solving," he said during an interview at his Victorian mansion where several portraits of Winston Churchill are displayed. His admiration for the British wartime leader spills over into the naming of his three-year-old son, Winston.

consistent with his party's disdain for big government, ever higher taxes and more and more regulations restricting freedom of enterprise, Mr. Smink's election platform supports a flat-rate tax system as opposed to the current system in which higher earners are taxed at proportionally higher rates.

As well, the Freedom Party advocates privatization of various government-owned businesses - Ontario Hydro, the LCBO and Workers' Compensation Board among them - and calls for a privately owned, insurance-based health care system.

The party supports the individual's right to direct education taxes to a school of choice, including private schools, and would have anyone seeking social assistance take a means test to determine whether there's a demonstrable need for such assistance.

It would end government grants and subsidies and all preferential funding for special-interest groups, would repeal employment equity laws, official bilingualism and labor legislation which forces individuals to join labor unions in unionized workplaces. The party would introduce binding referendums on tax increases and balanced budget legislation.

"Our position has not changed in 10 years on anything," says Mr. Smink, a former pro basketball player and winner four years ago of the World Pop-a-Shot Championship held in Chicago, "because we believe that everything we do is consistent with principles that the party is founded on. Ten years ago people thought that we were coming from outer space. Now, all the candidates are starting to sound a little bit like us."

But that's great, he adds, "because we love people to steal our platform."

You don't have to have political power, per se, to influence things, he points out. "What we want is for people to take our ideas, similar to what the NDP has done federally. They haven't had power, ever. But for the last 30 years the Liberals and conservatives have been tripping over themselves trying to implement NDP policies."

A progressive tax system is counterproductive, he contends. "What it does is it penalizes people for being profitable and successful and it rewards those who are unproductive." Like the overtime worker who is taxed higher on his extra earnings and who therefore takes home less than his regular pay for his overtime work, he suggests, the current tax system kills the initiative for people to be more productive.

For those who have a legitimate reason for not working, Mr. Smink said his party has no problem with a social safety net. "But the thing is, if you want to keep a sustainable safety net for those who either can't or won't look after themselves, you have to have a system that has some limits to it."

Although the Freedom Party advocates "a reduction of suffocating bureaucratic red tape and regulation of the business sector" Mr. Smink acknowledges it's government's job to set "reasonable guidelines so that people don't abuse each other or the environment." But he emphasizes that the individual's rights to life, liberty and property are fundamental and notes that under current laws the government can expropriate land and there are really no limits to how much tax money the government can extract.

As far as medical care in the province is concerned, he laments that doctors have been forced into being essentially employees of the state instead of the free enterprisers they once were. He notes as well that the province is now spending hundreds of millions on education for doctors and nurses who are heading south. "This is a prime example - health care - in which the government has absolutely no business," he says. We'd be better off having mandatory health insurance and returning the health care system and doctors back to the private sector as it was prior to 1967.

"You don't create a whole system to look after everybody when only a few people need your help," he argues.

"Government has no business being in health care, they have no business being in education, they have no business being in day care."

Most people don't realize why governments were set up in the first place, he says. They were set up to defend the country from outside invasion, to protect citizens from criminal actions and to institute a judicial system to settle disputes among citizens.

Suggest to him that the reasons governments became as involved as they are in matters such as education and regulating business practices were because those private institutions were not necessarily doing the job of schooling or protecting the environment as well some like to think they were, and he says those arguments are "red herrings."

"What you're buying into is that governments can create wealth, can create jobs, can create a standard of living for a community. Well, if that's true, why don't they just pass laws which give everybody a car, three meals a day, free medical care, free education."

"All governments can do is confiscate other people's money. It's called taxation. And what they're trying to sell you is a bill of goods that says you can rob Peter to pay Paul and make everybody's life better." He argues that without private ownership there is no responsibility and that freedom and responsibility work hand in hand. "When everybody owns something, nobody owns it."

"The Freedom Party believes that private enterprise can do anything the government can do at least twice as well and usually at half the cost," he says.

Mr. Smink ran as a Freedom Party candidate in the 1984 provincial election when he was a London resident. But this is the first time the London-based party has run a candidate in Perth riding. "The whole issue of any election is who is going to spend the money," he suggests, "Is it going to be government or is it going to be the individuals who earned it?"

Mr. Smink owns two businesses. One is a wood recycling enterprise in Lambton which makes wood chips used in landscaping, and animal bedding. The other is The Fabulous Forum strip bar, a business he converted from a money-losing sports bar which he had established in London about 10 years ago.

Mr. Smink and his party reject the idea of the government subsidizing cultural groups or institutions (such as the Stratford Festival) and any justification for such funding based on educational value or "public interest" such as promoting tolerance or understanding of cultural differences.

Funding various cultural groups, he contends, fosters racism rather than promoting tolerance. "It actually institutes a government policy of racism that we're trying to avoid . . It pits one group against another group. I believe in individual rights, not in group rights."

"You can't legislate culture," he says. "Culture happens by the people who live it."

And why should taxpayers subsidize people who want to go to see a Shakespearean play, he asks. "Why should the Festival get $3 million (the reference was to a recently-announced federal grant to the Festival matching a provincial grant for a major capital project) because it generates so much tourism? I generate tourism with The Forum. The government doesn't give me any money. They just take it. They take over half of what I bring in."

Mr. Smink says he believes it's reasonable to balance the province's budget within four years.