Interview with Peter Jaworski

Institute for Liberal Studies Executive Director Peter Jaworski sits down with Windsor blogger Paul Synott to discuss the Institute.

Paying It Forward

The U of T Laissez-Faire Club, founded by 2006 Windsor Liberty Seminar participant Seyitbek Usmanov, will be hosting a talk by Tom Palmer of the Cato Institute this coming Monday. Cato is a public policy think tank based in Washington, DC with a reputation for producing some great work.

I hope you can attend, but even if you can't please help Seyitbek out by spreading word about this excellent event by email, blog or any other means.

Details as follows:

Dr. Tom Palmer, Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute
"The Morality of Globalization: the Faster the Better"
Monday, April 2nd at 4:00pm
University of Toronto, Mississauga, North Building 134

(x-posted to the Calvinball Diaries)

Some of my photos from the seminar this weekend...

... and a brief explanation of how things went down.

Seminar format is borrowed from the Fraser Institute's student forums, and is pretty simple but conductive to participation by all seminar attendees. First, everyone watches a speaker's presentation, as seen here:




After each speaker, seminar participants are broken into groups for guided discussion of the topic with group leaders Peter Jaworksi and Jamie Tronnes while I peskily hung around snapping photos and occasionally jumping in to contribute a point or two.
Some shots from breakout discussion group "B":






Slap some lunch in the middle of the day and a few hours spent in the room for continued, unsupervised discussion when all was said and done and you've got yourself a liberty seminar.

Thanks again to everyone who made it out this year!

another monopoly worth ending

Hey, look! It's yet another reason the government shouldn't be in the business of... er... business.

Time to privatize, open up the market and let competition sort this mess out.

(x-posted to Liberty is Good.)

Windsor Liberty Seminar

Thanks again to all those who came out to yesterday's Windsor Liberty Seminar. It was a great success because of you. Thanks also go out to speakers Brett Skinner (pictured), Malkin Dare, Jim Watkin and Fred Miller as well as discussion leaders Peter Jaworski and Jamie Tronnes and co-host (and videographer) Janet Neilson.

For those of you who missed it the event (shame!) we had about 40 people from all areas of the province (Ottawa, Sudbury, Toronto, Waterloo and more) and some friends from north of the border courtesy of the Mackinac Institute.

I know first-hand that all of the speakers were great and, although I was't able to see much of the discussion groups, from what I'm told the level of conversation in the breakout groups was excellent.

As for the after party, huge thanks to Lindy (awesome as always) and to Phog Lounge who hosted an incredible evening and poured some delicious beer.

(x-posted to The Calvinball Diaries)

Jim Watkin on AM 800

Jim Watkin, with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, talks about why the war on drugs needs to end on CKLW AM 800 (you can listen to it here, courtesy of Blue Blogging Soapbox).

He will be speaking at the Windsor Liberty Seminar this Saturday (later today).

Take a listen to the interview, and come out to the Seminar to talk to him in person.

(x-posted to Adventures in Bowling Green)

A Good Day for Liberty

As we near the end of what has been a very bad week for liberty (federal spending up 7%, Ontario announces plans to hike its job-killing minimum wage) a couple of bright spots emerge.

In Ontario, a group of prostitutes challenge a set of laws that make life very dangerous for some of society's most vulnerable. No matter what your views on prostitution I think it's clear here that the laws against cause more problems than the acts they're designed to prevent.

New Brunswick's Liberal government opens up a dialogue on private health care delivery, and federal Conservative Minister of Health Tony Clement gives a vague answer sure to upset those on both sides of the debate.

Both look like great conversation starters for the festivities following Saturday's Windsor Liberty Seminar.

ethanol fuels beginning of the end for farm subsidies?

From Small Dead Animals - here is something that never occurred to me, though it seems obvious now that I've thought about it - as research makes ethanol fuels more plausible, they are going up in demand, and the grains that are used to produce ethanol are (naturally) becoming more expensive worldwide.

Could this be the beginning of the end of farm subsidies? Will ever-higher demand for grains allow African nations to make a significant entry to the grains market and begin to pull themselves out of poverty?

It will be very interesting to see how this develops.

(x-posted to Liberty is Good)