POWER PLAY

Re “Thomas d’Aquino’s Private Power, Public Purpose challenges next generation to build on the ultimate Ottawa insider’s legacy” (Arts & Books, March 18): Thomas D’Aquino inadvertently reveals a fundamental problem I have with the annual Davos gathering of the very rich and very powerful.

Mr. D’Aquino describe a 1995 Davos dinner with George Soros and Peter Munk, two of the world’s wealthiest men. Together they decide to warn then-finance minister Paul Martin that Canada’s deficit was (according to them) dangerously high and the country must decrease spending. Only a few weeks later, Mr. Martin’s budget made some of the most drastic cuts to public spending ever.

There happens to be another way to decrease a deficit: increase taxes, especially on those most able to pay. Heaven forbid at least one of the wealthiest men in the world volunteer to pay higher taxes to save the country.

Thanks to Davos for facilitating this way of running the world, where it seems the very rich get to tell the less powerful what to do.

Olga Eizner Favreau Montreal

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