Welcome to Johannes Remy's homepage.

I am a Finnish immigrant in Canada, historian, husband, and father of three. Like many other immigrants, I am struggling to find my place in the new country. In Canada, I have worked in my own profession, but also in other fields which have rather little to do with it. In the winter term 2012, I am teaching European history at St. Thomas University, Fredericton, New Brunswick.

I opened my website in 2008, when I ran as a candidate of Social Democratic Party in municipal elections to the council of Helsinki, capital of Finland. The campaign was unsuccessful. Having moved to Canada in 2009, I have continued commenting on Finnish affairs. In the future, I am going to write also about Canada. So far, I have not joined any Canadian political party.

In Finland, I am interested especially in children's rights, other human rights, general transparency and accountability of administration, immigration, and equality of citizens and other residents of the country. In these questions, Finland is not so spotless as we Finns often tend to imagine. Finnish national mythology contains the ideas of Finns as exceptionally honest people compared to other nations. These myths have harmful impact on the government and society, since they too often prevent rational and sober approach to dishonesty among the authorities.

I find alarming the situation and fate of the victims of violent and sexual child abuse in Finland. The laws and administrative regulations concerning this question are very often written without taking the victim's rights into account. In this year, I wrote about two new bills passed in the parliament. Although the criminal background of persons who work with children is checked, the employment in child work of persons guilty of crimes against children is not proscribed. In the court cases concerning child sexual abuse within the family, the protecting parent is not permitted to represent her or his child. This makes the rights of the suspect in such cases better protected than the rights of the protecting parent.

To be sure, most Finnish MPs have no sympathies to the child abusers. The problem is that the harmful clauses were smuggled into the laws in a few words within texts several hundred pages of length. The MPs could not be aware of all the aspects of their own decisions. Passing of these bills brings forth another serious problem of the government in Finland: civil servants who work in the administration usurp legislative and political power, but do not bear political responsibility. Cases of child abuse are also often investigated in a rather passive and even slack way. That is why many Finnish child abusers go unpunished.

Child abuse is not the only field in which the state is lacking in transparency: rather, it is symptomatic of the incomplete rule of law in Finland in general. These problems are not often discussed in the mainstream press. Journalists receive their information from the representatives of the government and do not easily accept any other viewpoints. Indeed, because of the prevalence of the national myths mentioned above, those citizens who encounter arbitrary action by the authorities have difficulties in getting themselves heard in public.

I have written also against the emerging atmosphere of xenophobia and racism in Finland. These tendencies are represented especially by the True Finns party. I find that the Finnish immigration policies need revising, but to increase transparency and accountability in the choice of immigrants rather than to reduce the immigration in general. 

My general approach is of a moderate leftist: I support market economy based on private ownership of the means of production. At the same time, I am an adherent of welfare state which must assist also those who have less economic success. Market is good, but it cannot take care of everything, like, for instance, medical care. I find it essential that the social democratic welfare state is complemented by a dose of liberalism in order to protect citizens against arbitrary tutelage.