2017/06/15: 12 principles for a 21st century conservatism

Good evening everyone. I hope everybody can, uh, hear me. Everybody's speakers are working fine; everybody can hear and listen? Thank you very much for being here. It's lovely, wonderful to see such a large audience here in Carrton Place tonight, and I want to indeed thank everybody for being here.

Um, I'll just with the official timer. Bruce, did we get it within 5 minutes? All right, had a schule. Um, for those who don't know, my name is Randy Hillier. I'm the member of provincial Parliament for Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington, and of course I represent this area at Queen's Park. I'm trust and expect and hope that everyone will find this evening very informative, very interesting, and very enjoyable.

Um, I'd like to just recognize a few other people who are here this evening. For tonight, um, I see that we have Councillor Fay Campbell and Councillor Brian Dowle from Beckwith Township in the audience this evening. Thank you very much. We also have the Deputy Reeve and Reeve, Deputy Reeve Sharon Muso and Reeve Richard Kidd from Beckwith Township here this evening.

Evening, and last but not least, uh, his Worship and Mayor of Carleton Place, Louie Antonak, has joined us this evening as well. Thank you very much for being here tonight. I hope I didn't miss anybody. Did I miss somebody? Oh, pardon me. Uh, the Mayor of Mississippi Mills, Sha McGlaughlin, is here. He snuck in; I don't know how he got in here without me seeing you, Sean, but uh, thanks for being here as well.

Um, I should, uh, also mention just a couple um, items before we begin this evening. Um, there is, uh, washrooms outside the main doors and to the right. If anybody is looking for the washrooms, there's also U. Um, trying to keep the flashes and the recordings, uh, to a minimum. We do have a couple photographers here tonight. Um, there, this evening event is being, uh, fully recorded, uh, video and audio and will be published online in its entirety. So, uh, don't need to do any other recording; it will all magically appear on the internet, uh, sometime tomorrow, I would imagine.

So, um, and it, of course, will be free and available to everybody after tonight's presentations. Um, and I guess I should also state that this is not a partisan or political uh, event tonight. Um, we will have a question and answer period after Dr. Peterson has made his presentation, and I know many people here, um, know much about Dr. Peterson.

Um, he is widely read and, uh, knowledgeable and insightful on a great many subjects, but we would like to see the questions, um, uh, relevant to tonight's topic. Um, so, and with that, I think I'll, um, um, just start a little bit about myself.

Um, before being elected, before entering politics, I, like many other people, was increasingly getting disappointed with the way government was conducting itself, with the ever-increasing government laws, their rules, their regulations that, in my view, were unduly infringing on what I considered my own personal jurisdiction, my own personal responsibility.

And, um, and also how these increasing role of government was shifting and altering society in ways that I felt uncomfortable with, that I felt were, um, contrary to my beliefs and my values. And like most people, um, I grumbled about it and grumbled and spoke with other people who grumbled about things, but we didn't do very much about it. We just bore, grinned, and bore the ever-increasing role of government.

But back in 2002, very fortunately, I came across a few other fellas who had very much the same attitudes and views as myself. In 2002, four of us, four of us met around a kitchen table, um, at Merl and Ruth's Bose home out on the concession four of Ramsey, and we decided that it was time to act.

Now, none of us actually knew what that meant; none of us had actually ever done anything about government. But we knew that we needed to speak out, and we knew that we needed to make a difference. So we formed a group, and we called it the Lanark Landowners Association. And I was asked to be the spokesperson and the president of that new Association of four people.

And of course, we said, "That's great! Now what do we do?" Well, we decided to hold a meeting not far...