DONORS: We Did It!!
We just made our target of $18,500
PLEASE STOP FURTHER DONATIONS
The Donation button is now closed, only six days after the launch of the Canadian Charter Challenge Fund ~ and well AHEAD of our three week schedule.
Thank you all so much for being part of this important first in fighting the FATCA invasion into our honest, productive lives as Canadian citizens and residents. Together, we can make a difference.
NEXT STEPS:
- We will sign today a contract between Lynne Swanson and Stephen Kish, on behalf of all of the donors, and the Vancouver law firm of Farris, Vaughan, Wills & Murphy, which will provide a legal opinion on the constitutionality of the proposed IGA legislation. We are issuing a bank draft to pay most of the legal fee with the remainder provided once the cheques and donations still in the mail have cleared the bank.
- We are hoping that there will be little if any money received beyond the requested $18,500. Should there be extra monies, these will be distributed per the details provided in the CCCF website.
- Approximately 30 days from today we will conduct a final accounting of all monies received, expended, and all fees paid and publish this information on the CCCF website.
Remember, this is just the first step, and we all know that the next step will be much more difficult.
“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step” ~Martin Luther King Jr.~
Stephen Kish and Lynne Swanson thank you for having the faith to take that first step with us.
Fantastic news!!!!!!!! Thank you all so much for organizing this and thanks to everyone who donated to make this happen!!
I just emailed the happy news to Flaherty, Harper, and my MP.
Excellent news! I shall get to work sending out the word to my contacts. We can fight this injustice.
WhiteKat,
I did too — and everyone on my email contact list, this important update. Hopefully, full speed ahead for Chapter 2 of the Canadian Charter Challenge, a fight which will affect every Canadian and they should be interested. By extension, our US Person friends the world over. Thank you again. My soul has not felt this good since the start of our advocacy, our fight.
THANK YOU CCCF!! and Huzzah to us all!
Onward!
Congratulations everyone!!!!!!!!!
I am super excited today I am grateful that I had the opportunity small part of this. Let’s keep moving forward with this and stay unified as a group. This is step one and hopefully we will receive the news from the lawyer that we can proceed step 2-100 until we have it in the supreme court with victory on our end.
Cheers!
@Blaze and IRSCompliant, Do either of you have any idea it will take for Joe to form the legal opinion?
Great news especially since yesterday the government of Chile signed FATCA IGA2
Bravo! Congratulations to @Blaze and @IRSC…and to all of us who helped reach this stage.
@Blaze and @IRSC
I hope you have protected yourself from being liable for Canadian taxes on these donations. That is, you have just received $18.5K, to be used for a specific purpose. You want to be sure that CRA doesn’t treat it as personal income and a personal tax liability for you. In the absence of an organisation, I am not sure how these things work.
One word — WOW !!!
After what seems like an endless number of steps backward – a big step forward. Thank you to the many who have made this happen. With this is the sickening realization that we may one day be fighting a government bankrolled with our own tax dollars. GEEESH!
A minor correction:
I just went to the bank, deposited the cheques and cash, and was told that enough of the cheques have cleared so that we can pay the ENTIRE amount to Mr. Arvay’s law firm today. Tricia and I will be getting the bank draft this afternoon.
IRSCompliantForever, Tricia — what a good feeling that job will be for you today. Thanks for the further update. I’m sorry, I can’t stop saying THANK YOU!!!
Wonderful!!!!
Excellent News! I’m investigating setting up the same thing for Europe. The Euro IGAs need to be struck down in a European court as well and send the issue back to each respective Parliament.
A big fat THANKS! Hope the lawyers get crackin’ quickly with their response. I’ll send them an endless supply of home baked goods if they will work like little bunnies on this. Now that we’ve reached our goal I am impatient for an answer. I’m praying to every deity known to man for a positive response.
I don’t think Mr. Em’s cheque will be there yet but I sure hope mine (mailed Feb. 28th) is among the deposits today.
Thank-you to the organizers. I am grateful tor your talent, hard work and dedication. The fact that this was accomplished in such a short amount of time is remarkable.
Never doubted and offer heart felt thanks to organizers and mainstays at Isaac Brock – this is true citizen engagement and what our government and political parties failed to do.
This is a WONDERFUL DAY for all of us!! Thank you so much!!
Please give me an address so I can send a check (in US$)
Well done, one and all!
FYI – the next step is going to be bringing an actual court case by the lawyer. This will involve raising further funds (although there is the prospect of getting costs paid if successful and this has every likelihood of being successful). I would be slow to send funds back.
This should be a VERY good Charter case. S. 15 (discrimination/equal protection of law) and s. 8 (privacy, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure) are the main grounds. Once prima facie case of breach and prejudice, government has burden of establishing justification. Breach and prejudice are both pretty self-evident here as one group is singled out to be identified (Canadians who may be US Persons) and their privacy rights are thereafter pretty massively breached unlike every other Canadian who is not a US Person. Their only possible justification is pacifying a foreign government threatening other Canadian interests. Very sorry, but you can’t sacrifice Peter’s Charter rights to save Paul’s economic interests in a foreign country especially where Paul chooses to carry on business in the US and Peter didn’t choose where he was born (or his parents). Somebody had put in a comment about mobility rights (s. 2) – not likely the strongest ground here, but not a problem. S. 15 and 8 are pretty darned good.
Re Privacy Rights – consider that the government can’t break down your door just to see whether you might have broken the law (still less to see if you broke the laws of some foreign country). For better or worse, our courts release drug dealers and worse every day of the week where the evidence against them was obtained by searching without probable cause and a warrant. How they think they are going to justify this massive fishing expedition against people not alleged to have breached any Canadian law is beyond me, but I have every confidence that this rotten edifice will be knocked down in court. As I have written before, I can’t believe the government will defend this with any enthusiasm – they have been pushed into enacting this and should have no difficulty in accepting the court’s verdict that what the US has demanded simply can’t pass Charter muster.
Everyone should take a deep breath – this really is a very good case. It is a pity that a million Canadians have had their peace of mind disturbed by this ridiculous and unjust threat, but have faith in our courts.
@Eric please hold off until we get a determination from the lawyer. We will need to raise funds for the next phase (2) once we hear back from him.