2025

We can put all people on a spectrum. On the one side of this spectrum we have people who believe we must navigate this life on our own, and determine how best to interact with others. We can call these people individualists. On the other side, we have people who believe that some over arching committee must guide people through life, and must manage the interactions amongst each other. We can call these people collectivists. In Canada today, collectivist mentality is pervasive across all of our governments where bureaucrats believe that they can regulate our way towards perfection.

As an example, when I came to West Vancouver in the 80's, we bought our house from a young West Vancouver developer who's career was building a home, living in it for 6 months, then selling it income tax free. That avenue is now being closed through regulations, which means there are fewer homes being developed. Furthermore, at the time, it was not uncommon for an immigrant to open up a pizza shop as it required limited skills and the taxes were sufficiently low that it was financially viable. Today, it would take months to get a business license and a permit, and the taxes make the venture an impossibility. The same could be said of the multiple clothing stores that used to occupy Bellevue, but which are all gone now. Although part of this is a change in purchasing habits where residents are opting to go to big box stores and big restaurant chains like Cactus Club, another part of it is a city hall that is creating complex licensing and occupancy requirements that only larger corporations can afford. The end result is a population that lives in the community, but which works for a company that lives outside the community.

Admittedly, many of the regulations mentioned above fall to the provincial and municipal level. However, they occur at the federal level too with the current regulation on natural health products through Bill C-47 as well as the punitive regulation of the tech industry through Bill C-63. I believe that we must repeal these draconian bills. Thereafter, we must audit all our legislative and regulatory bills to determine which are necessary and which are unnecessary. Finally, we need to come up with a long term solution to cap the growth of legislation and regulation introduced by successive parliaments and governments. As one example, the Trump administration in the US came up with an ingenious rule whereby for every regulation introduced, two had to first be removed. Perhaps a similar rule could be introduced here.