Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed
~ Martin Luther King Jr.
Please help. Donate to the Canadian Charter Challenge Fund.
February 5, 2014 was the day we thought we would never see. It was the day the Canadian government announced it had caved to a foreign nation’s demands to invade our honest, law abiding lives as Canadian citizens and residents to seize our private and legal financial records. It was the day we learned the Canadian government considers us second class Canadians with limited rights under Canadian laws and Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Today is the day we begin our drive to fight back. February 28, 2014 is the day we launch our Canadian Charter Challenge Fund to raise money for a legal opinion from prominent constitutional lawyer, Joseph Arvay.
We must demand freedom. We must demand our government uphold our rights. We must demand the government place its citizens and residents over the demands of a foreign power.
We must demand our government place our rights over those of the bully oppressor. We must band together to fight for our cherished Canadian rights and freedoms. We must do it now.
Remember, the War of 1812 was not over until 1815. We should likewise expect our battle to be long, messy and expensive.
First published on 28 Feb 2014
@wren this is a temporary site only for phase 1. We plan to have this up only as long as we need to (up to 3 weeks) to get to the $18,500 that we need to pay for that phase. We do not know yet what the determination will be by Joe Arvay and we cannot accept more than the required amount until we get that determination. IF we get the determination that we want, then we will move on to phase 2. At that time we may or may not use this site. As it is, even if a domain name is cheap, hosting will cost money. Unless we know we are going to keep this up much longer we won’t do that.
I need more coffee. There’s a 6-month minimum, so I guess I’m sending $20 + $60. I don’t think you can transfer Webydo sites to another server can you? Because I can arrange to have it hosted for free. Anyway, if someone says “go” I’ll send that cheque.
@Wren – I changed the names of the pages. Thanks for the reminder. There are so many moving parts to this and we got this up in 3 days…so obviously some details will have been overlooked! 3 nights of working on something til 4:30 am tends to do that to a person!
@Steve Klaus
You do not have to have a PayPal account to pay through the PayPal button with a credit card. Just click on the “don’t have a PayPal account?”. Why do you think PayPal is not confidential? In what way is it not?
We do not have the budget to set up a credit card account at this time.
@GwEvil – I’ll bet! I can’t believe you managed to pull that off. FWIW at this stage, if I can be any help with the technical bits let me know. We have a couple of web developers and a server guy here.
Go get some sleep!
@SteveKlaus: I think we had to be an organization or business in order to accept credit cards. I’m not sure of all the facts, but I know Dr. Stephen Kish who opened a personal account specifically for this fundraising effort looked into that.
We really scrambled to get this up and running in five days. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to do everything we would have liked to have done.
This is all new to us and we are learning on this go-round so hopefully we will be better able to have all the bases covered if we move to the next stage.
GwEvil in particular has been amazing. She has literally worked day and night on the site. I received many e-mails from her at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. on different nights. She did the launch around 2:00 a.m. today. I thought she was going to try to get some sleep, but she was back commenting soon. Thanks GwEvil.
@calgary411.
You asked:
“Can someone convince me they (RDSP, RESP, TFSA, etc) really are exempt — we never have to report them to the IRS? I don’t think so, but I would love to be proven wrong.”
I don’t know why you are still not convinced about this. The above accounts are exempt from FATCA reporting. The CRA does not have to report these accounts to the IRS. However, there is no change to US tax law and all of these accounts must still be reported on US IRS tax returns. The Canadian IGA does not override US tax filing requirements. Yes, journalists and MPs are mis-stating the facts.
The big question is why did the IRS agree to these FATCA reporting exemptions when FATCA’s intent is to find violations of FBAR and tax returns? I think the answer is that Flaherty et al convinced the IRS that such accounts have little or no risk as money laundering and tax evasion tools involving huge sums of money. As I have posted before, that is a curious thing. If all US persons in Canada are properly reporting such accounts on FBARs and taxes, then the only people who benefit from the exemption are people who are _not_ complaint. As discussed before, there is also the comfort that the exemption will reduce accounts of non-US persons reported in error, but surely the potential of such errors was not a big part of the 2-year-long negotiation. Why then the exemptions? Perhaps the government planned all along to give misleading public statements to soften the blow to their upcoming election campaign?
Thanks Blaze! I am pretty bleary-eyed right now but I have a deadline for a paying job!
@Wren thanks for the offer and we may take you up on that IF and when we decide to do a more permanent thing. I cannot transfer a webydo site to another host but I can use a custom URL…but as I said that does require hosting costs. Since I knew this site was temporary, I wanted to use the free offer. Oh… and I was not able to change the page names…screwed up my buttons instead…nvm!
@all I have added a share button on the donation page now.
@GwEvil: Looks like it might be under Page Settings > Page Setup? Let me know if you change your mind. With people sending this link to media and politicians it seems like a worthwhile investment to me. And protectcanadians.com is a peach of a domain, IMHO. Even if you don’t set it up now, someone might want to grab that one for later use.
Apple is warning users today not to use its devices for personal banking and to avoid public Wi-Fi. so be careful out there.
http://www.thestarphoenix.com/technology/news+ignored/9562340/story.html
Listen to Wren, GwEvil — catch up on some sleep. We so appreciate all your very, very hard work on this effort, as well as the others involved: IRSCompliantForever, Blaze, Trish.
(I see your paying job calls.) Take care!
Done, I’ve donated.
@Wren that’s where I changed the names, but it screwed up the navigation button names instead. Thanks for the techy offer…I may be asking for help on other things down the line as I am NOT a programmer. The whole URL/hosting debate is not up to me. I am just the vessel that delivered the message that others wrote. Lets see how the effort pans out before we decide to start putting up a permanent(ish) site. All the money we are getting via donations is going towards the effort, not to admin (other than what we cannot escape, such as PayPal and banking fees).
@Blaze…ok, ok…I am going back to bed for a bit. I can’t keep my eyes open anyway and am of no use to anyone right now!
Done! Count me in. I won’t send one red cent to those bastards to the south, but I’ll gladly contribute to a serious attempt to stop them at the Canadian border! May the force be with us.
Cheque is in the mail.
My contribution has been made. Thanks all!
@brockers…. i fired up paypal before realising I dint have account……. so asked hubby and he and GWevil reminded me u did not need paypal ac….so have just now donated CAD100 via credit card…. if the NSA is watching… well hey nsa guys and gals… this is after tax UK income..and u already havemy 100 pages or so of tax return to prove i O 0 tax…… happy journeys all……… thank u GWevil for the time spent from earning activities .//…. truly appreciatted..unlike the BureauJoes in Gubbermint.././/////////////////
I’ve just sent a check in the mail for your very worthy cause.
@All
I withdraw my comments on RESPs! Several of you have made a good point, in summary that RESPs etc are exempt from FATCA reporting under the IGA, but that says nothing about their tax status.
@northern shrike
this is why i adore reading IBS posts……..the level of knowledge combined with humility and awareness of the world is truly astounding……….thanks for yourpost.
“Remember, the War of 1812 was not over until 1815.”
Deep down, a lot of you are still Yankees. The War of 1812 ended with Treaty of Ghent Dec 24, 2014. The Battle of New Orleans which was the biggest American victory was after the war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Ghent
@northernshrike: When I was pulling photos from We Are Not A Myth to send to GwEvil, I thought the same as you RESPs are not being reported under FATCA.
Then I thought about it and realized RESPs still must be reported on an FBAR and may be taxable by RESPs. Flaherty and the Cons love telling us nothing has changed about tax obligations to the IRS so I decided to include it in the group that I sent to GwEvil and let her make the decision which ones to use.
Donated. Tweeted, and spreading by email.
Volunteerism and grassroots work at its finest. Here’s to hoping that one day this legal analysis is known as the tipping point for an anti fatca explosion of global proportions.
done
PROUD to know i have helped set in motion a change in canada’s history 🙂
Emailed donation. Appointment in March in Calgary- earlier than the Consulate first suggested. Will post experience. Thank you all who worked on getting the Charter challenge preliminary started.