@PeggyNashNDP Calls for debate in the Parliament regarding #FATCA https://t.co/cRGUYrMsz3 …
— USExpatCanada (@USExpatCanada) April 3, 2014
With thanks to Blaze!
@PeggyNashNDP Calls for debate in the Parliament regarding #FATCA https://t.co/cRGUYrMsz3 …
— USExpatCanada (@USExpatCanada) April 3, 2014
With thanks to Blaze!
Swiss banks continue to block resident USC accounts until they can prove that they are US tax/ FBAR compliant. As these bank account blocks can occur rather suddenly, some USCs are responding by stockpiling cash for use if necessary. Yesterday this message was posted by “zuridri” (#100):
“I plan to go to the ATM tomorrow and withdraw the maximum amount allowed per day (assuming my debit account is not blocked) I don’t want to run into any problems when it’s time to pay my rent next month. And I actually considered asking my HR department if the company can pay me in cash, but I assume that I would be laughed out of their office.”
http://www.englishforum.ch/finance-banking-taxation/200706-postfinace-demands-past-fbars-5.html
Disclaimer, this comment is NOT intended to ruffle feathers, so if your feathers are ruffled easily when you hear the term ‘Nazi’, please don’t read further.
@ Innocente
Principia Discordia comment: “Some people I know at Kassensturz at SRF who’d like to do a story about how the banks are treating “US persons”, but they don’t really know the extent of it and need to convince their bosses to give the story a green light.”
SwissPinoy comments re Principia Discordia’s comment:
If one replaces “US person” with “Jew” and “America” with “Nazi”, then the extent of such problems of extraterritorial extortion become easier to comprehend. Why did the banks yield to “Nazi” demands this time around while they were able to fend them off during WWII? I’d say that the problem today is that the “Nazis” enjoy much wider support than they did 60 years ago. The “Nazis” of today are much more profitable for the banks than they were in the past. As such, the “Jew” of today has nowhere to hide. It appears to be tempting to turn a “Jew” over to the “Nazis” in exchange for big business. What a bummer for these “US persons” who are left hanging with nobody to turn to.
As a former “Jew” who converted to Swiss-only status to flee persecution, I don’t have an issue with the banks. One simply has to discard the identity that the “Nazis” are hunting for. Tear off the yellow star and one won’t be identified or rounded up. It is for this reason that national origin discrimination and citizenship status discrimination are federal crimes in America, but sad that the “Nazi” doesn’t comply with their own rules which prohibit this behavior.
Transcripts of yesterdays’ proceedings are now available:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=41&Ses=2&DocId=6513111
Mr. Peter Julian (House Leader of the Official Opposition, NDP):
Mr. Speaker, I find it passing strange that the government House leader stood up and gave a speech, one of the few from the government side, and then promptly shut down debate for most of the government and most of the opposition members by putting in place time allocation measures, which means that most Conservatives and most opposition members will not have an opportunity to speak on the bill.
We might ask why, when it is a Conservative budget bill, the Conservatives would want to shut down debate on it. Here is one of the reasons: the foreign account tax compliance act, which is something that has been protested by a million Canadians of American origin in this country, Canadians upon whom penalties are being imposed unilaterally by the IRS.
The Conservatives said that they would stand up against this kind of unilateral action by the American government. In fact, I went to see the American ambassador myself, along with a number of NDP MPs, and we advocated strongly for those one million Canadians.
This Conservative government has sold them out. Basically it is shipping that information to the United States, even though there are constitutional issues and privacy issues.
My question to the hon. government House leader is simply this: is that why the Conservatives want to shut down debate? Is it because they are afraid of those one million Canadians finding out that they were sold out on FATCA?
And More:
Mr. Mike Sullivan (York South—Weston, NDP):
One of the things that is most frightening about this budget implementation bill is the attachment to FATCA. For those who do not know FATCA, it is the way that the U.S. government is going to tax some Canadian citizens, about a million of them. Some of them are accidental Canadian citizens, who have never lived in the United States in their lives. They were born in Canada, lived in Canada all their lives, and now are being told that they are somehow American citizens because of their parents.
The government has in this bill suggested that it will now be all right, without notice to the individuals, for the banks to give information about the RRSPs, RDSPs, RESPs, and other assets that individuals have, to CRA, for the purpose of giving that information to another country. One assumes that the reason they are giving that information is so that somebody can come and take that money out of their bank accounts.
This is outrageous. We are a sovereign nation. Canada is a country unto itself. The ability of this country to protect its citizens should include the ability against another country coming after those citizens’ money. I am talking about Canadian citizens here, not persons who are living in the United States and who are American citizens. Let the U.S. government come after them, but not Canadian citizens. We should not be assisting another government to manufacture a reason to come into a Canadian citizen’s bank and take that money. That is not something we should be doing, and it should not be in this budget implementation bill.
If we need to have that discussion, let us have that discussion, but let us not do it in a budget implementation bill.
Thank you for passing along the words of NDP MP Mike Sullivan, Tim, And, that of Mr. Peter Julian (House Leader of the Official Opposition, NDP).
We should all be asking if every other Canadian wants this to happen to Canadians who are US citizens — by letting other Canadians put themselves in our shoes and to imagine why they would want to oppose this. Do they really want a two-tiered Canadian citizenship model? Would they want a say in this or just accept that it is passed in the middle of the night? Would they want theirs to be the next families so discriminated against by national origin? Would they want their private financial information turned over to a foreign country?
Why don’t all Canadians hear this story? Why is the FATCA IGA implementation hidden in a budget / omnibus bill? Why was it not even mentioned in the Government of Canada’s press release?
Again, why is this not a big story — not just for US Persons in Canada but for ALL Canadians? Is this what our country is to become? Where is the media — I mean some really big media discussion? (No, we get more of Rob Ford type journalism.) It is so very discouraging.
What will be discussed? Can anyone from here be there?
http://www.fin.gc.ca/notices-avis14/2014-04-04-eng.asp
First of all, a huge “thank you” to the MPs who are standing up and speaking for us!!
Now, a comment about Roy Berg’s article posted here by SwissChocolate:
I take particular issue with Berg’s last sentence: “We can’t go back: FATCA has changed the global banking and business and tax landscape and more changes will follow.” Yes we CAN go back. Human beings can do anything they have a will to do. What Berg is really saying is that the world can’t be BOTHERED to go back and THAT is what we’re going to change!
@Anne Frank:
I love your “notwithstanding clause”!! I hope you’ve sent that along to your MP, the Prime Minister, the Finance Department et al.
@nervousinvestor:
Yes, we are, indeed, in a long, historic line of the persecuted!
To WhiteKat:
You said, “As a former “Jew” who converted to Swiss-only status to flee persecution, I don’t have an issue with the banks. One simply has to discard the identity that the “Nazis” are hunting for. Tear off the yellow star and one won’t be identified or rounded up.”
Sorry, but that wouldn’t help you escape the Nazis. Some parents who had lived through WW2 and then moved to Canada didn’t let their children participate in classroom projects to make a family tree, because that’s one of the first things the Nazis did in Germany. The children were told to make family trees, and these were inspected to find Jewish-sounding names among the child’s relatives, including grandparents or great-grandparents. This identified the child and family as “Jewish” regardless of their religion. The Warsaw ghetto had a Catholic church for the “Catholic Jews”.
Sound familiar? You can change your religion/citizenship, but according to the Nazis/Americans you can’t change your “race”/American personhood or that of your children,etc.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Go to the transcript found by Tim dealing with April 3 FATCA questions in Canada’s House of Commons.
Use your search and find to look for FATCA hits. I found 23.
Read all the good FATCA questions from the Opposition and the poor responses from representatives of our present government of Canada.
“This is outrageous. We are a sovereign nation.”
http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=41&Ses=2&DocId=6513111
The many mentions of FATCA in the House yesterday certainly deserve their own roundup post. Ctl-F for FATCA here: http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Pub=hansard&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=41&Ses=2
@calgary411 –
I’m planning to show up at Joe Oliver’s luncheon on Monday with a protest sign. I hope others can join me.
Have a look, we remain the only party who is vocal on this, and our
budget response is one of our few chances to get media coverage, so
highlighting this as the issue we mention is a big thing for us, when
there are so many things wrong with this budget that we could point out.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/budget-bill-debate-cut-short-will-wrap-up-next-week-1.2597173
Regards,
Erich.
Also notably vocal in the House.
Erich.
——– Original Message ——–
Here’s what Elizabeth May had to say in the House of Commons.
April 3rd, 10:45 a.m.
Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1
http://openparliament.ca/debates/2014/4/3/elizabeth-may-3/
———————————————————-
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley for
raising the fact that one of the larger offences in all of the last number
of years of omnibus budget bills is buried in this omnibus bill. This
complex piece of legislation should never be put in an omnibus bill.
I have previously mentioned to the House Peter Hogg, one of Canada’s
leading constitutional experts, who warned the Minister of Finance that this
bill would violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
I also want to draw the attention of the House to the opinion of Allison
Christians, who is the H. Heward Stikeman chair in tax law at McGill, and
Arthur Cockfield, a professor at Queen’s University. I want to put their
opinion on the record:
The proposed Implementation Act and the IGA do not enhance the reciprocal
tax information exchange between the United States and Canada, nor do they
create a workable regime for Canada to enhance its international tax
enforcement efforts going forward.
Further they state:
Instead, the Implementation Act and the IGA raise a number of serious
issues ranging from likely Charter violations to violations—
April 3rd, 11:15 a.m.
Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1
http://openparliament.ca/debates/2014/4/3/elizabeth-may-4/
———————————————————-
Mr. Speaker, there are many complex aspects of this omnibus legislation.
Certainly, even the title, FATCA, foreign accounts taxation and compliance
agreement, is one of the most complex.
It certainly would, as the hon. member stated, affect people who have no
idea whatsoever that they could be caught in this broad ambit of people who
are considered U.S. persons, people like me who were born in the United
States but have nothing to do with the United States, who in my case has
never lived there as an adult, but purely as a Canadian citizen and
renounced U.S. citizenship.
This could apply to me, or my daughter. Then the information is handed over
to the IRS without our knowledge.
Now, I want to draw attention to the charter argument, specifically section
15 of the charter, which says “Every individual is equal before and under
the law…”. As my hon. colleague mentioned, the leading constitutional law
experts of Canada have said that this will violate the charter.
So, as with other legislation, it will get pushed through this place. As in
the case of the Nadon appointment or with some of the mandatory minimum
sentence laws that were passed, we have clear evidence that we are being
asked, as parliamentarians, to push through a piece of legislation that
would be offensive to our fundamental rights of equality under the law,
under section 15. I ask for the member’s comments.
April 3rd, 1:05 p.m.
Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1
http://openparliament.ca/debates/2014/4/3/elizabeth-may-5/
———————————————————-
Mr. Speaker, I regret very much that the hon. government House leader
decided to shut down debate. He made a speech and then, well I cannot remark
on where he might be, questions are being taken by the hon. parliamentary
secretary.
The hon. government House leader had the gall to tell the House, on behalf
of his constituents, that the government did not believe in big government.
What is not “big government” about it asking the banks to root through the
private information of Canadian citizens and turn that information, without
their knowledge or consent, over to a foreign government? That is not just
big government, that is big brother government. This measure deserves
treatment in something other than an omnibus bill that has limited debate
time.
I will not be able to speak a full 10 minutes because with time allocation,
debate never comes around to the smaller parties. This is both an affront to
democracy and a violation of the charter, as well as further abuse of our
parliamentary system.
April 3rd, 3:55 p.m.
Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1
http://openparliament.ca/debates/2014/4/3/elizabeth-may-6/
———————————————————-
Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her very important speech.
They are sneaking these things in, as she said. This omnibus bill includes a
lot of changes.
I especially appreciated her analysis of division 29, because that is one of
the divisions that I have not yet read.
I have just one question for the member. How can we handle a bill as big as
this one when we are facing such a quick process, which flies in the face of
true democracy?
@AnanAnon
I wish I lived in Toronto (not really).
VOTE ABC in your riding in the next election. Vote Anyone But Conservative. The Anyone should be the candidate best-placed to defeat the Conservative, especially if you’re in a riding currently held by the Conservatives.
The rationale for this is stark and simple. Read the Hansard links that Tim posted and the quotes from NDP and Liberal MPs as well as Elizabeth May who also weighed in, then read the Conservative replies. Which basically boil down to, “we had to do this to protect the banks.” The banks are more important than the Charter and privacy rights of a million Canadians. And this issue isn’t worth debating separately from an omnibus budget bill, even though the IGA has nothing to do with the budget (except for the fact that, as a couple of opposition MPs noted, the government has no clue and did no study of how much it will cost the government and hence taxpayers, never mind the banks, to comply with FATCA, exhibiting proof that even the vaunted economic expertise of Flaherty (not to mention the non-existent credentials of Harper as a real economist) is a sham and a joke. What kind of Finance Minister or Prime Minister surrender our sovereignty at all, but not even with any serious costing of what “saving” the banks will cost Canadians and taxpayers?
There are plenty of good reasons to turf this government out on their butts, in fact to exterminate them politically, but the FATCA IGA and the omnibus attack on parliamentary democracy are both stellar reasons IMO.
I’d have more respect for them if they’d just admit that they chose the lesser of two evils and that the stability of Canada’s banking system is more important that 3% of Canada’s population and their families. But a coward is a coward, I suppose.
Nathan Cullen really slammed the Cons on FATCA.
http://maplesandbox.ca/2014/ndps-nathan-cullen-slams-cons/
Stop the delusions folks. The USSA financial system was taken over by actual flesh and blood NAZIS (Prescott Bush was one of the main NAZIS) in the WW2 period by Brown-Harriman and from then on all US banks and the IMF, the Federal Reserve, the BIS and the CFTC in Washington have embraced obvious fascist policies and have dealt treacherously with its customers. Then they say as does Scotiabank “You’re Richer than you Think”
Prescott Bush was a NAZI and in my opinion his sons were as well but none are matched by Obama and Harper. Obama needs to be charged with TREASON, Harper as well. The REAL America: An elaborate scheme to kill thousands destroying 3 towers in Manhattan on 9/11 and blaming a camel jockey supposedly living in a cave. That was a typical NAZI style false flag attack similar to Hitler burning down the Reichstag and blaming the Russians who had nothing to do with it. NAZIS and other dictators will have no compunctions about murdering their own people as an excuse to invade and steal resources and destroy other cultures in order to pave the way for US corporations to fill the vaccum.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyKR2-A0KPU
How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to power
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
Thanks for those MP’s identified in the transcript of yesterday’s Canada Parliament, as well as Eizabeth May’s comment on April 3rd, as provided by Chears. Well worth the read. I’ve pulled the FATCA occurrences out into a separate document.
Schubert, you are SO wrong. No party in Canada has any ethics save the Green Party. Voting is a farce in these so called democracies and by voting you show you believe in the system. Hmmmmm this is where Jehovah’s witnesses are 100% correct by not voting in any elections in any country on this planet. I’m Jewish and not at all religious but even I know that those who vote have the number 666 on their foreheads (designating belief) and on their hand (designation you are ready to take action for your beliefs).
The problem with this issue is complicated. The idea that we can simply “vote out” the Cons is useless right now. they are in power and will do whatever they want with Fatca. They have succeeded in keeping it quiet, muted the media and have it kept secret. They have underhandedly passed it to the point it is at now and have avoided our efforts to make it public and create the outrage needed to stop it. It is quite clear that anyone in Canada who truly knows how much this will cost Canada as a whole would be incredibly angry and would possibly get involved to stop the USA. The problem with the Canadian government “laws” is that you have virtually no way to stop them once they form a group and plug their ears to your issues. Even my local MP in St Thomas, Joe Preston does not even have the decency to return a phone call or answer my written concerns. Why? because he cannot “honestly” answer them. So, why is he allowed to not bother to answer? Well, where is the law that he must? This kind of government has to stop. There is absolutely NO accountability to the people. We need a complete government overhaul of laws and stop the loopholes that our “Elected” MP’s can get away with. Right now, the idea is that “united we stand, divided we will fall” is our only power against this. Large scale protests, stop traffic, get the media there and do whatever we can to cause people to stand up to this. Show people how these “MP’s” treat important issues and leave us for stupid. Someone needs to grow some balls and fast……
@Queenston,
FYI, those were not MY words. I was quoting the comment of SwissPinoy.
But yes, it sounds familiar.
NEWS Obama caught laundering money in Brussels
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/15m-hotel-bill-president-obamas-one-day-visit-brussels_786515.html
bubblebustin, “I’d have more respect for them if they’d just admit that they chose the lesser of two evils and that the stability of Canada’s banking system is more important that 3% of Canada’s population and their families.”
So would I because thats what a leader in a leadership role does.
But these are not leaders they are politicians.