Flemming Holm's Blog

Sent to: The Hon. Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finance, Ottawa, ON

Dear Mr. Flaherty:

I hear that you are consulting widely prior to finalizing your budget proposals. I trust that you are giving adequate consideration to two groups of people: those whose life experiences and convictions are different from your own; and those who know poverty.

For at least the past thirty years I have been reading periodically that the poverty gap has been growing in real terms. Typically the information has stated that the 20% with the highest incomes have seen their average incomes rise by 20% or more over a 10 or 20 year period, while the incomes of the lowest 20% have remained the same or have dropped during the same period. This in spite of a unanimous resolution by the Commons to abolish poverty in Canada.

The numbers of the homeless have been growing in recent years. Many of these people are employable; many others are marginally so, but with proper support systems can become contributing members of society. More and more people – employed, underemployed and unemployed – are resorting to food banks, in a time when increasing numbers of us are financially unable to contribute to such voluntary organizations.

In the rural society of fifty years ago, we knew our neighbors and often cared for the needy through informal ways, and an unskilled or marginally employable person might contribute by tending a garden, chopping firewood or doing housework. Today, in our urban society in which we don’t always know those next to us, we have to organize and depend on government (at various levels) to support the needy.

Conditions on many Indian reserves have improved somewhat in recent generations, but the rates of unemployment, addiction, incarceration and suicide are still far higher than in the near-by majority communities. Settling of land claims proceeds tragically slowly, and industry takes advantage by developing on disputed land. The very progressive Kelowna Accord was garbaged by the Conservative government.

The average income of women who are working fulltime is still less than 70% of that for men; the situation has improved only slightly over several decades. Many single mothers are unable to get an education and so improve their lot, care adequately for their children and contribute fully to society; and another generation grows up, often ill equipped and disadvantaged.

Employment insurance has been largely decimated in recent years. We have heard recently of a couple, both of whom had lost their jobs, in despair and hopelessness entering into a murder and suicide pact; four lives were lost. I wonder whether these people would be alive today if EI had been maintained at the 1980 level.

I wonder also how many people have been robbed of the ability to contribute fully to society by the financial starvation of our educational and health care institutions and counseling services. We deplete our resources by our neglect.

In the meantime, we have more millionaires and billionaires than ever, taking more and more expensive junkets to distant places, and receiving exorbitant bonuses in addition to huge salaries. Surely no CEO needs to make more than fifty times the salary of his most humble employee. Such exploitation is tantamount to robbery and should be prohibited by law.

I am well aware of the need for a concentration of wealth and power if the wheels of industry are to rotate adequately. But surely such concentration can be achieved by other means. I am also aware that our largest trading partner – the elephant with us in the bed – does not have the levels of social programs that Canada has, and therefore is hard to compete with.

I do not have the knowledge and understanding to make concrete suggestions in this field, but I understand that there are some who do; that some world famous economists, such as Jeffrey Sachs, believe that we have the resources to feed the hungry and abolish starvation and save the planet, if only we have the political will. Over the years I have read recommendations by the Canadian Council of Policy Alternatives and other such bodies that criticize our system and make suggestions that sound good to me. And I am aware that about a dozen denominations of the Christian Churches in Canada cooperate in “Kairos”, an organization that studies and promotes social justice.

I am also aware that in Denmark, a land that does not have the extremes of wealth and poverty that Canada has, the population has recently declared its satisfaction with its country by a higher margin than any other population in the world, including Canada. (A well known Danish patriotic song, written about 200 years ago, holds up as an ideal a society in which “few have too much and fewer still too little.”)

I deplore the assumption that we have to bribe millionaires to get them to do their job. That is a shaky foundation for a society; witness the present economic depression.

We need to ensure that the most vulnerable are not made to bear the costs of the depression and of the mistakes and greed of the wealthy.

Sincerely yours,
Flemming Holm

Dear Prime Minister:

I must have been asleep at the switch – or wherever I was at the time – to have missed Silver Donald Cameron’s article in the NovaScotian on July 30. But the letters in today’s Chronicle Herald have raised my blood pressure and disturbed my Canadian soul to its roots. And then today my son, who is visiting from Toronto, and reads other newspapers, expressed extreme pessimism concerning Canadian sovereignty because of the “Security and Prosperity Partnership” and similar agreements. How despicable of the Federal Government, and of those who pull its strings, to schedule its ratification in the middle of vacation season, particularly when there has been no debate in Parliament on the subject and the public is largely ignorant of its existence. What would John A. Macdonald say?

Recently one of my relatives in Denmark wrote me concerning Canada’s position on Hans Island; he couldn’t understand how we could oppose Denmark’s claim to sovereignty of the island. So I wrote him about it, and I am enclosing a translation of my letter. Anyone who knows anything about the reasons for building the CPR will understand what I am saying.

The US is using security (and 9/11) as an excuse for empire building. It is a wonderful country, with many good qualities and ideals. But it is more and more being ruled by Big Business – economic imperialism – government has to support its business interests abroad, if it is to be reelected – a subversion of democracy. This is a feature of capitalism, not necessarily a policy of government. “Government of the people, by the people and for the people” must not be allowed to perish in our country. I am happy that we in Canada have put caps on individual and corporate political donations. Let us not circumvent such safeguards. There are other ways of securing peace than by subverting our democracy and letting the business interests of another country control us. Giving in to the US in this matter will ensure that our water supply and our public health system will be privatized and that American controlled business will reap the benefits. (I am all for supporting other countries, but let it be the poorer nations – not the wealthiest.)

Enough of my tirade for this time. I will find other excuses for writing you another time. (Blessings on Silver Donald Cameron, Harry Bruce and Ralph Surrette! They speak truth to power!)

Excerpts of a letter to a Canadian politician

There is no question in my mind that we had to divest ourselves of the corrupt Liberal Government. Not that everyone at the top of the Liberal Party was complicit – far from it. But the climate of entitlement was far too prevalent, and we should have left such venality behind generations ago.

In some ways however we have merely gone sideways, into other kinds of stupidity.  Nearly every day I read of some inanity produced by the authorities, and I want to write someone about it. I have been quiet for months, so let me share my ignorance and indignation with you.

I am bothered by the emphasis on ethanol and the withdrawal of support for solar and wind power. Using ethanol as an energy source is in competition with food production, and therefore suspect in my view. And I understand fossil fuels will be necessary to convert it into energy. But I am not a scientist, so what do I know! However, it will be more expensive in the long run, as it will require government subsidies and will eat up agricultural resources. Meanwhile the sun is shining and producing free energy, and to use its heat in solar panels will surely reduce global warming; and the wind is blowing so it should be able to supply some 20% (so I have heard) of our energy needs. Sun and wind are free; we merely have to pay for delivery.

The maintenance of the environment is of paramount importance. I have a six year old grandson who is very aware that many species of animals and plants have become extinct over the past millions of years. The other day he voiced his concern that the human race might also become extinct eventually. It is a distinct possibility – indeed, a probability. Some climatic changes are inevitable, but let us not hasten the process! Someone has said that we do not own the earth; we hold it in trust for our grandchildren. If not Kyoto, then what? The government seems to be following that of the US in protecting big industry to the detriment of the environment and of the population of the world. We are going the way of the Scandinavians in Greenland in the late Middle Ages and of the native people of Easter Island in more recent times. Conservation is desperately important to the survival of our species. Erosion and deforestation, as you must well know, will cause lasting and cumulative shortages in the productive power of the earth, and if world population continues to grow the human race will be in deep trouble. It is bad enough now!

I have heard recently that over the past several years the top 20% of the Canadian population (incomewise) has enjoyed a 15% increase in real income, while the bottom 40% have seen their real income decrease. In other words, the poverty gap is growing. And I understand that the latest federal government budget includes a reduction in taxes for the wealthy and an increase for the poorest. The poorest nations also become poorer and the richest become richer. This is unconscionable! It is sin! But of course it is very difficult for Canada to do anything about it when the US Government refuses to acknowledge the injustice. I hate to inflict the words of a Liberal politician on you, but Trudeau’s remarks about being in bed with an elephant come to mind. (Foodbanks are not the answer – they are a sign of moral, financial and governmental bankruptcy.)

Isaiah railed against the concentration of wealth in his day (See Isaiah 5:8-13). And Jesus was put to death because he took the side of the poor against the powerful. The Babylonians conquered the little kingdom of Judah in 586 B.C., and Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 and 135 A.D. Direct results, in both cases, of poverty gaps, concentration of wealth and governmental ineptitude. Some things have changed very little over the centuries.

Is there any good reason why one family should have more than five times the income of any other family? Such disparity can only weaken the fabric of the nation. Trickle-down economics doesn’t work – too little trickles down, it trickles up instead!! Jesus said that we would always have the poor with us, and that to him who has will more be given – but he didn’t say it was right that it be so. An important purpose of government is the protection of the poor against the rich and powerful, and this includes economic exploitation. Under the Harper regime Canada seems to be following the United States and weakening the social safety net. Please prove me wrong!

Canada is desperately slow in settling Indian land claims. If we had moved more quickly, the debacle at Caledonia need not have happened. The water problems on a reserve in Northern Ontario (the name of the place escapes me) could also have been averted if action had been taken in timely fashion. The Kelowna agreement has been abrogated, nothing worthwhile has taken its place, and Native leaders are disgruntled. Again we neglect the disadvantaged, so that the rich and powerful may prosper.

In international affairs (as in internal matters) we cannot protect freedom by denying freedom. We cannot protect rights by denying rights. International law must be maintained; we fought for it too hard and too long to let it go now. Guantanamo Bay is a blot on the Western world. So is Abu Ghraib. So is Denmark’s Jyllands Posten with its caricatures of Mohammed. Let us take the high road!!

The Israeli government has a policy of acting unilaterally in dealing with the Palestinians. And it is being supported in this by the American government. The Zionists want to strengthen Israel to the detriment of other people who have lived in the same area for thousands of years. They are supported by millions of fundamentalist Christians who misinterpret the Bible to promote the belief that there has to be a major war between the Judaeo-Christian world and all others before Christ returns and the Kingdom of God begins. And the Government of the United States, in its effort to maintain power and avoid the charge of anti-semitism, bows to this coalition.

(“For not with swords loud-clashing, nor roll of stirring drums,
but deeds of love and mercy, the heavenly kingdom comes.”)

Still – we live in the best country in the world. We have much to be thankful for. And we have many to be thankful to. If you have any influence in such matters, please support the movement to award Stephen Lewis a Nobel Prize!

Yours for an even better country in an even better world!