A recent opinion piece in my daily paper invoked the image of “Ayn Rand’s Apostles.” It is hard to believe that forty years after her death, a Russian-born script writer from Hollywood is still influencing the right wing of America. And, even worse, influencing the hard-right libertarians in our country to challenge the legitimacy of Canada’s federal government.
It is important to remember the Ayn Rand philosophy of Objectivism was built on extremist levels of libertarian self-interest and self-gratification. It also should be noted that she felt she needed to emphasize her anti-communist leanings in an America after the Second World War.
When foolish Ford in Ontario announced his strong-mayor idea, I must admit I saw little wrong with giving the mayor something to do rather then follow the firetrucks and cut ribbons to get his picture in the paper. It makes little sense when the mayor has no more voting strength than his ward councillors despite sometimes having more citizen votes than all the city councillors combined. I was also under the impression that a strong mayor would be given powers of appointment. I never considered a situation where the mayor could pass legislation with less than 50 per cent support.
Mayor John Tory disappointed me when he made an appointment without council support before the bill had even been passed by the legislature. As much as he might smile at the prospect of an easy third term in office, passing motions with just minority voting is hardly democratic.
But one only has to look at Alberta to see just how bad the situation might be. Danielle Smith has backtracked from some of the extremes of her Sovereignty Act. What she does not seem to understand is how this country is put together. I think I took that level of civics in public school.
Somehow, I doubt that Scott Moe, premier of Saskatchewan, will follow with his province’s sovereignty act. He does like to follow Alberta’s lead.
But the guy who marches to the Ayn Rand tunes in Quebec is the bigot and tribalist, François Legault. He is giving Canada a reputation for bigotry and racism from his forbidding religious symbols, demands in immigration and preventing people from using any language other than French. Ayn Rand would have been proud of him.
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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