Who can forget this classic scene in the film Canadian Bacon?
Finance Minister Flaherty has given explicit permission to the IRS to collect taxes from Canadian citizens living in Canada. While this strips them of their protection as Canadian citizens, it nevertheless presents a new challenge to the IRS. Should we presume that the IRS can operate in Canada while ignoring all the laws of Canada? Or shouldn’t they have to obey, just like all other government agencies, the laws of our land. One rule that I’d like to see them obey is our official languages law.
The Official Languages Act assures the equality of English and French in usage in Canada,
The purpose of this Act is to (a) ensure respect for English and French as the official languages of Canada and ensure equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in all federal institutions, in particular with respect to their use in parliamentary proceedings, in legislative and other instruments, in the administration of justice, in communicating with or providing services to the public and in carrying out the work of federal institutions;
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms also sets out strict rules about language; Article 20 is particularly interesting:
Any member of the public in Canada has the right to communicate with, and to receive available services from, any head or central office of an institution of the Parliament or government of Canada in English or French, and has the same right with respect to any other office of any such institution where
- (a) there is a significant demand for communications with and services from that office in such language; or
- (b) due to the nature of the office, it is reasonable that communications with and services from that office be available in both English and French.
Perhaps it is time for Canadians to insist on their language rights. The Canadian Federal Government has given permission to the IRS to act as a quasi-federal instution, or perhaps better, a de facto branch of the goverment. Here is a sample letter that one should send to the IRS to see if they will begin to correspond and bill Canadians in their official language of choice:
Cher IRS:
Je ne parler pas American, s’il vous plait, envoyer toute correspondence to moi en French.
Merci beaucoup, your esclave american, Pierre Fini
I think all Canadians, not simply francophones, should exercise this right. If the IRS refuses to cooperate, by sending not only all its correspondence to you in French, and not only that but all the accompanying instructions for filling out the hundreds of complicated tax forms, the IRS is violating your official language rights. The IRS should receive the same welcome that John Candy received in Canadian Bacon. They should have to collect their taxes in Canada only with respect of our cultural diversity.
Now I am not exactly sure whether the IRS would willingly go along with it. It is their goal to provide such services within the limits of their resources. Here is document setting out their language priorities and French is pretty much neglected. Furthermore, I cannot find instructions, for example, for Form 1040 or 8854 in French or even Spanish, the second most common language within the United States. This is also a violation of our French language rights. Therefore, I believe that Canadians can sue the IRS in a Canadian court for violating the Official Language Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms provisions on French language. I would start insisting on French.
We should also make a complaint to the language commissioner:
Subject to this Act, the Commissioner shall investigate any complaint made to the Commissioner arising from any act or omission to the effect that, in any particular instance or case,
- (a) the status of an official language was not or is not being recognized,
The IRS has not recognized the status of French as an official language and this must come to an end. Otherwise, the USA and Minister Flaherty destroy the rights of French language rights in Canada just as they destroy the treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples in Canada.
@Petros wrote: “Lawyers are supposed to be advocates, not judge and jury.”
That’s once a barrister or trial lawyer has your case. Long before that s/he is supposed to tell you what the law is, not how to evade it.
But anyway I am an academic and I write a reasoned statement of law for whoever cares to read it.
Only the Supreme Court (US or Canadian) establishes the law. Other judges, outside of Quebec anyway, reason from the case law and the statute books but can be overruled.
What I told you about sovereign immunity is a fact of life. You can’t sue a foreign government in the Canadian courts with the foreign government’s consent unless that foreign government is trading as a commercial enterprise.
I would dissuade anyone from doing anything so foolish as to complain to the Language Police about a foreign government, however nasty that government is. The War of 1812 is over.
And hey, I went to university in French and have dealt with the Quebec Language Police on the francisation issue. Quebec even translated my name into French on my driving license with thus differs from my passport. But such is life; why worry about trivia.
@Petros:
I am sorry, but I am not your barrister or advocate. I report on what the law is and may say in passing how it might be bettered. But I will not engage in wishful thinking on a public forum.
I have, as it happens, dealt with the French Language Police on francisation matters. I love French, and went to University in French. But that doesn’t give me the right to demand non-French speaking foreign government officials to engage me in that language.
Tout va pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles.
–Pangloss
@5thSwiss, No one here is evading the law except the Jim Flaherty and the IRS. The War of 1812 is not over but had experienced nearly 200 year hiatus until 1812. I don’t just accept that you are law professor, without knowing who you are. If you want to send me a message, I can find out if you are really who you say you are. But even if you are, that doesn’t mean anything. There are many incompetent professors and lawyers. So if you are a lawyer, then please work with us–and you may express your objections, but I ask that you express them in a manner which is not categorical: i.e., you can’t do this or that. Actually, law is subject to interpretation and context. The body of law in Canada is quite significant, and the IRS is likely violating a hundred Canadian laws every few seconds. Because our government has always been as stupid as the present one.
Here are the premises by which I am working: (1) the IRS is violating the language rights of francophones in Canada by imposing a federally applicable tax code throughout Canada on Canadian citizens living in Canada; (2) the Canadian government would never be allowed to do this; (3) Complaints to the commissioner can be made for abuses of the federal Government and Crown corporations; (4) the Federal has permitted the IRS to operate in Canada and said that their taxation of Canadian citizens in Canada is legal; (5) the Federal government has even agreed to send the IRS banking information of Canadian citizens to the IRS to aid the IRS in collecting this federally applicable taxation.
It may just be as simple as complaining that the IRS is using the Crown corporation Canada Post to perpetuate its language rights violation. Most bills and communications with clients in Canada are passed through Canada Post. Why not complain that this Crown Corporation is aiding the IRS violate the French language rights of Canadians? Help me please.
@5th Swiss wrote: “What I told you about sovereign immunity is a fact of life. You can’t sue a foreign government in the Canadian courts with the foreign government’s consent unless that foreign government is trading as a commercial enterprise.”
A man sued Eritrea in a Toronto court over Eritrean expat tax: http://listserver.ciesin.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0711d&L=int-law&P=319
I enjoyed the reference; “Tout va pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles.”
–Pangloss
I am no academic, and thus I may be mangling this reference (which I read on my own as a child many decades ago), but (accurate or not) it reminded me that Voltaire, via Pangloss also said in Candide (Chapter One)
“…..It is demonstrable,” said he [Pangloss], “that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. Observe, for instance, the nose is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles. …”
http://www.literature.org/authors/voltaire/candide/chapter-01.html
“..Spectacles fit noses not because God created noses to fit spectacles, as Pangloss claims, but the other way around.” https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/candide/quotes.html
In the Panglossian philosophy of the US government and its subsequent actions; we who reside abroad are claimed by it extraterritorially – just as if we were actually US tax residents. And in this belief system, no matter where in the world we were born, live, earn and have other citizenship, we were ‘created’ and are deemed to be ‘US taxable persons’, existent for no other purpose than to be US taxpayers. In this worldview, the mere existence of the US as an entity is enough to justify taxing any and all of those deemed to be ‘US taxable persons’ as its mere existence is sufficient ‘benefit’ to those born/and or living abroad – no matter where in the world they may be found. Thus, everyday, all day, (including before birth and after death) we partake of the vast intangible metaphysical *benefit of the mere fact of US existence. No more justification is necessary – either for our lifelong designation as ‘taxable persons’, or for ALL things that flow from that (ex. CBT, FATCA, presumption of guilt before innocence and criminalization of ALL of our local legal ‘foreign’ accounts). Since the US is the best of all possible worlds, therefore, any and all ‘unintended’ consequences of its presumptions and actions must be the best of all possible outcomes. Any deficiencies and pain we suffer are the result of our misperceptions.
FATCA and US extraterritorial taxation exists because US citizens and US ‘taxable persons’ exist;
in the ‘best of all possible worlds’ – as in the official US government’s worldview. We abroad exist only as we are deemed US taxpayers. And because the US worldview is the only worldview, and because the US is the center of the universe, citizens and all other persons exist only in so far as they are defined in relation to the US worldview.
The US exists, therefore we derive benefit. We exist, therefore we are taxable persons.
*See Cook vs. Tait:
“……that power, in its scope and extent, it was decided, is based on the presumption that government, by its very nature, benefits the citizen and his property wherever found, and that opposition to it holds on to citizenship while it “belittles and destroys its advantages and blessings by denying the possession by government of an essential power required to make citizenship completely beneficial. ……..”. http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/265/47/case.html
and also;
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2013/01/05/cook-v-tait-2-the-presumption-of-government-benefit/
http://renounceuscitizenship.wordpress.com/2013/01/04/does-cook-v-tait-really-mean-that-citizenship-based-taxation-is-constitutional-in-all-cases/
@5thSwiss @Petros
For me, this would not be so much about suing the IRS in a Canadian court for violating my language rights. There are 2 issues at play here: 1. The Canadian government is telling me I have to respect the laws of a foreign government (bad enough) AND that I must interact with this foreign government in a language that is not my official language as a Canadian citizen living in Canada. I think this is uncharted territory, but should provide grounds for yet another complaint against Canada and the IGA (along with Charter violations, privacy law violations, etc). 2. I expect that any interactions I have with the IRS will be in French. No, I cannot force them to communicate with me in French, but they also cannot force me (as a Canadian on Canadian soil) to respond to them in English.
Since a spammer brought me to this page, after reporting the spam (why wasn’t it Canadian bacon) to abuse@hostus.us, I guess this question needs a retort:
“Should we presume that the IRS can operate in Canada while ignoring all the laws of Canada?”
Yes. The IRS can operate in the US while ignoring all the laws of the US, so why should it be any different in extraterritorial internals?