New Democrats are calling on the Conservatives to acknowledge the concerns with the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and agree to remove it from Budget Bill C-31.
“Despite broad opposition, the Conservatives are charging ahead with the implementation of this agreement,” said NDP National Revenue Critic Murray Rankin (Victoria). “Serious concerns remain about the potential violation of privacy and constitutional rights, as well as unknown costs to Canadians.”
Bill C-31 moves to implement the Canada-US intergovernmental agreement on the FATCA and also to grant the Minister of National Revenue sweeping powers to make any regulation necessary to carry out the agreement.
“How can the Conservatives justify burying this agreement – that could negatively affect 1 million people and that has nothing to do with the budget – inside a 359-page omnibus bill,” said NDP Finance Critic Nathan Cullen (Skeena—Bulkley Valley).”There’s no excuse. FATCA must be removed from the budget so it can be properly scrutinized.”
http://www.ndp.ca/news/conservatives-must-remove-fatca-budget-bill
@OMG: BE’s answer confirms my strong belief the government will make this as long, costly and brutal as possible to fight us on the Charter issue. We need to be prepared it will be long, expensive and nasty. The government will use our tax dollars for their lawyers, forcing us to spend even more on legal costs.
Anyone here still believe in this system? SHAME ON YOU
@Blaze, at least he didn’t lie and say there is no charter issue. He said he was not at liberty to speak about it. Somebody told him not to talk about the fact that they’re doing something illegal. They’re already treating us like we are the enemy and they’re getting ready to fight us. They know we are 1 million strong. If you include the non-US spouses and non-US children of US persons we could be talking about 3 million or more people. They are taking on 10% of the Canadian population. This is war!
We’re not just going to fight them on the charter issue we’re going to make sure their party dies because of this! This the party I have supported all my life. Now I wish nothing but the complete destruction of the Conservative party.
Glad he spent most of the session with his eyes down in shame
Rankin asked good questions. However, I wished he would have mentioned that many people are non-compliant both Canadian residents and Canadians green card holders in the US, and that the response from the treasury department is BS when they said they addressed the FBAR issue with the streamline procedure.
Many high net-worth dual Canadians / accidental Americans would not qualify if they wanted to get compliant.
Same thing for non-compliant green card holders. The IRS will go after them with potential FBAR penalties.
Brian E mentioned Hogg’s letter. I can’t believe they think the leading constitutional lawyer is wrong.
And lastly, I don’t understand why no one mentioned the potential recourse that Canada could have done, had they not signed an IGA – i.e the numerous points that Just Me put in a post, like contesting the sanctions at an international level, or possibly equivalent level of sanctions instead of just taking the penalties.
I posted my comments on today’s hearing on the “Kevin Shoom testifies” threads a moment ago.
Anyone want a “down home sayin” today?
De-quilling a porcupine by offering your heinie to it is assinine. Best to tell the prickly rodent to back off and be gone. Canada: Don’t accept the IGA barbs. Tell the USA to FATCA off.
@NoOne: Murray Rankin has put my name forward to testify on May 13 or 14. I will try to cover as many issues as I can, but I plan to focus on FATCA and not FBARs, CBT or any other issues.
FATCA is something the Canadian goverrnment can and should be doing something about.
There was one part of the meeting when Murray Rankin asked about Canadian citizens. One of the Con MPs corrected him and said he should have said “American citizens living in Canada” or something like that. I will see what the exact words were if the video or transcript is available tomorrow. In any case, it made me feel sick.
@OMG: It is quite common that people do not speak publicly about legal opinions. For example, Stephen Kish and I are not able to share the legal opinion we received from Joe Arvay–not even among our supporters.
I did, however, have the sense BE was squirming on that issue. if i am asked about it when I testify, I also will not share the opinion, but i will not squirm either.
The most sickening thing to me was how they cheered on violation of our privacy by insisting there are no issues because they just simply going to override PIPEDA and the Privacy Act. How can these people call themselves Canaans?!?
@Anne Frank, thanks for your notes on the other thread.
I think in the proposed amendment that the exclusion of permanent residents be provided, that be deleted. Why? The cons will vote anything down so force them in the most difficult corner possible.
There is no way they can dig themselves out of this hole and I think it would cause some cons to panic and run from the herd.
To vote down the following is poison;
“section 4 (1.1) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act or the Agreement, for all purposes related to the implemenation of this Act and the Agreement, “US Person” and “Specified US Person” shall not include any person who is a Canadian citizen ordinarily resident in Canada.”
@Blaze. “How can these people call themselves Canaans?!?”
Though I think you had a typo, the words were in fact correct.
The Canaans were in fact cursed and the curse came from Noah. Biblical scholars sometimes define the curse of Canaans in terms of “slaves of slaves.”
These people are not Canadians, they are indeed Canaans just as you wrote.
@George re: ” To vote down the following is poison;
“section 4 (1.1) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act or the Agreement, for all purposes related to the implemenation of this Act and the Agreement, “US Person” and “Specified US Person” shall not include any person who is a Canadian citizen ordinarily resident in Canada.” ”
I agree.
@Furious AC, re ” So, lets not kid ourselves that going from CBT FATCA to RBT GATCA will be anything BUT jumping from the frying pan into the fire.”
I wasn’t clear in my remarks. I should have said that I was alluding to the US, Canada and OECD public PRETENSE of a VOLUNTARY, DESIRABLE, MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL global multilateral information sharing agreement based on RBT.
I know it is all suspect. I was trying to call attention to how the naked use of FATCA as a Weapon of Economic Destruction against Russia in this case poked holes in the thin and shaky facade of both FATCA as a desirable model to emulate for anyone, and as a necessary precursor to the OECD Common Reporting or GATCA – which was one of the lame and illogical rationalizations offered for Canada signing the FATCA IGA. Unless what Finance and the CRA meant was – “we’re going to give EVERYONE’s data over to GATCA courtesy of the OECD, so why not start with the personal and financial data of the subset of Canadians with a US taint first”?
@Blaze “Murray Rankin has put my name forward to testify on May 13 or 14. I will try to cover as many issues as I can, but I plan to focus on FATCA and not FBARs, CBT or any other issues.”
That is great news! However, it seems difficult to talk about FATCA without talking about CBT and possible penalties to the persons impacted. We expect the Canadian government to protect us against those. And without CBT, FATCA would be a non event. Without the US being unreasonable with penalties and bringing people back into compliance in a reasonable manner, FATCA would not be as bad.
They mentioned briefly that the US might share the info to the other agencies. They seem to think that it is not allowed under the IGA. You should share with them the letter of the US senators who ask for it.
The USG going after the people whose names will be transferred is also what we’re talking about. It pisses me off that they keep saying it’s ONLY about information exchange. It’s way more than that. It’s about penalties. It should be the Canadian government’s problem how the US is going to treat the Canadians that THEY are going to rat out. Contrary to what one of the guys said, most people are not compliant.
Did I miss something or not much has been said about the spouses of US persons in Canada. Given the fact that FATCA requires joint accounts to be transferred, I think this one is the big elephant in the room.
It cannot be allowed to transfer joint accounts information. How is that constitutional?
@WhiteKat, please note that in my heart of hearts all residents of Canada should be excluded.
It is with a political mind that I would want to see the cons vote down the most poisonous amendment possible where they would have no wiggle room.
It would also force them to go to their US partners and try to make a deal. That would put the US in a difficult corner with their Canadian partners because they would be forced to demand paramount allegiance of accidentals.
The opposition parties could go into the next election on a single platform that the cons sold Canadian Citizens down the Niagara River with the bodies washed up on the US side.
But as Blaze wrote, they are in fact canaans, slaves of slaves….cursed.
@NoOne: There are a herd of elephants in the room. I think someone raised the issue of spouses, but it wasn’t dealt with in detail. I certainly intend to raise it if I am able to testify, but I don’t know yet how much time I will have.
@George: In most sections of the Charter, Canadian residents have the same rights as Canadian citizens. I won’t put forward an argument “Protect my Charter rights, but ignore the Charter rights of others.”
If I testify, I will certainly raise the issue of paramount allegiance and predominant claim. In fact, in my submissions to Finance Canada, the Senate and to Finance Committee, I said clearly that for most Canadian citizens, our paramount allegiance is to Canada. I also said: In fact, for many of us, our ONLY allegiance is to Canada.
@NoOne: I also plan to ensure they know about the letter from Levin on behalf of the Investigations Committee of Congress. Again, how much I can say will be determined by how much time I have. I will do my best to cover as many issues as I can within the time limits.
I understand a couple of other significant individuals have also been asked to testify.
How’s this for a sound bite:
Finance claims that this is JUST an information sharing agreement and has nothing to do with FBAR, citizen based taxation and the like. All breaches of privacy are “just information sharing”! By Finance’s logic, we should have no issue with the neighbour who turned in Anne Frank to the Gestapo because he was just “sharing information”. Without CRA actively providing the IRS with oxygen in the form of names and addresses through the IGA and FATCA, the US would have no ability to attempt to identify victims for its extraterritorial tax. For 100 years, Canada has NOT helped the US in that task because it is wrong and because it is directly contrary to Canada’s interests to allow Canadian citizens to be taxed on their Canadian income and property by a foreign government. When is a breach of privacy ANYTHING but information sharing? Canadians have a right to live in Canada in peace without their government selling their private information to hostile foreign governments.
(I know the Nazi analogies get stale real fast, but it IS appropriate here!)
Admittedly, the
@AnneFrank,
Anytime someone at Brock mentions a ‘Nazi analogy’, some people get really upset (not me)….just sayin.
Have you ever been on a flight somewhere and found out from your seat companion that he or she paid half of what you paid for the ticket? It gets your goat a bit doesn’t it? If you have a US taint but your neighbour does not then your neighbour is protected by bank confidentiality and privacy rights but thanks to FATCA you are not. That’s going to really get some peoples’ goat and they are bound to want to start butting some heads — bankers who lobbied for FATCA, bureaucrats who facilitated FATCA, politicians who voted for FATCA, media apologists, compliance condors, etc. Hopefully the neighbours will unite to protest against FATCA and let the butting begin …
@Anne Frank – is there any chance of you being able to testify along with Blaze?
@Mr. A – luckily we have some great people who have been able to defend all our interests in public and have been at this a whole lot longer than I have. We are very lucky to have Blaze willing to do this.
I am not happy that any Canadian should have to fear reprisals for engaging in public debate, but my relatives are in a more delicate position than I and I cannot jeopardize their peace of mind. I salute Blaze and Calgary411 for having been willing and able to put their faces and stories out there.
After listening to John Richardson’s NZ submission, I really hope his is one of the surprise submissions.
And here are a few more reasons FATCA should be removed and stomped into the ground in Canada and around the world:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/hsbc-demands-to-know-how-customers-spend-cash.html
HSBC Demands to Know How Customers Spend Their Money
Print The Alex Jones Channel Alex Jones Show podcast Prison Planet TV Infowars.com Twitter Alex Jones’ Facebook Infowars store
Banks are becoming spies for the state
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
May 1, 2014 HSBC Demands to Know How Customers Spend Their Money 010514hsbc
Image: HSBC World HQ, London (Wiki Commons).
Who needs tax authorities keeping tabs on people when banks are increasingly taking on a similar role?
An HSBC customer who wrote to economist Martin Armstrong related how the bank, which itself was culpable of acting as a conduit for “drug kingpins and rogue nations” in 2012, is now interrogating its account holders on how they earn and spend their money.
I just got a call from HSBC Jersey conducting a ‘risk assessment’. They wanted to know why I had 6 different currency a/c’s & where all the money came from as well as how much money I earn in Asia & how I spend the cash. The funny thing is I only keep GBP 1,000 in the HSBC a/c’s anyway!!!!
I managed to speak to a ‘manager’ & asked if he knew how much HSBC were sued for last October, he had no idea HSBC even had a case brought against them. Accordingly every expat is being interrogated as to what they use their money for while HSBC can continue it’s blatant misuse of funds.
The story is yet another illustration of how major banks are beginning to function more and more as spies for the state, quizzing their customers on their income and spending habits while demanding paperwork and explanations for them to take out their own cash.
In January it emerged that HSBC was restricting large cash withdrawals for UK customers from £5000 upwards, forcing them to provide documentation of what they plan to spend the money on, a form of capital control that more and more banks are beginning to adopt.
As we reported back in November, Chase Bank also recently imposed restrictions which prevent its customers from conducting over $50,000 in cash activity per month, as well as banning business customers from sending international wire transfers.
In the same month it was also reported that two of the biggest banks in America were stuffing their ATMs with 20-30 per cent more cash than usual in order to head off a potential bank run if the US defaults on its debt.
The recent spate of unusual banker suicides and mysterious deaths has also prompted concerns that the financial system isn’t as healthy as it is being portrayed by the mass media.
When journalists Pam Martens and Russ Martens attempted to uncover whether the deaths, which seem to be concentrated amongst JPMorgan Chase employees, were a statistical anomaly, they were told by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) that the information was being withheld because it pertained to “trade secrets”.
You see it is this criminality and corruption that is ok when they do it but those of us who live normal lives and obey the law of the land are going to get skinned by these miscreants all with the help of those blathering , blithering idiots on the Finance Committee in Ottawa.
I could have smacked Finance Chairs face hard with his smooth assumptions that there was nothing that could have been done or will be done without protecting the banks from the IRS and their threats of 30 percent sanctions but the ordinary folks can go straight to hell because you know the”US has the right to tax it’s citizens” !
From the article it is clear who are the criminals and who is doing the stealing.
As far as the comparisons to “Nazis” that some here don’t like and want to soft peddle or use what they consider an extreme viewpoint diminish our role in the new world order run by the fascist empire to the south, I say too bad. Stop trying to deny comparisons to ’30s Germany. I’m Jewish and have been censored here for bringing up the obvious comparisons and I don’t like it a bit. If anyone here wants to listen instead of trying to control the thoughts some of us express I would be happy to spend the time and gather all the proof but some here won’t listen until its too late anyway. These ones need serious updating on history. Unfortunately it is going to take some major headline grabbing incident that gets the world’s attention in order to pave the way to the rebellion needed to destroy the plans of the controllers. Here is what we are up against in our ignorance or reality
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-true-story-of-the-bilderberg-group-and-what-they-may-be-planning-now/13808
The reason the USA is able to promote this financial takeover is because they have become experts on propaganda and lying. Until we start fighting them with the same things we are never going to wage war on a level playing field. Does anyone imagine that the USA went to Hitler with hat in hand asking him to please tell the truth and reveal his ultimate strategy for the world? NO! The USA also waged a propaganda war and lied wherever possible in return. There is so much naivety among Canadians and among some here that I do not feel like some here are even qualified or equipped to defend us and we will be lost. THOSE WHO FORGET THE PAST ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT.
***###***READ THIS AND BOOKMARK IT IN CASE YOU BACKSLIDE***###***
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2012/08/14/both-our-forefathers-were-slaves-when-is-a-comparison-correct-and-when-isnt-it/comment-page-3/
Don’t have the stomach for REAL war? Too bad, you have no choice anymore. Most came to Canada to escape from the war mongers and thought they were safe. Perhaps you are one yourself. Well, guess what? It was great while it lasted but it’s over now, they have followed us and are putting us on the front lines. Let me say this. Those here who are working within the system do NOT speak or act for me. Sorry, I don’t appeal, like a little mouse, to fascist dictators like Obama and Harper and that asshole NZ PM and some others in Europe. How do we acquire real guts like many Americans south of the border who many Canadians view as extreme? How can we reverse the cowardly image of Canadians that has rubbed off on many of us. Some say this battle over FATCA would have been decided for the world based on the outcome in Canada.
Sorry, I have to stop writing now because I’m laughing too hard. Bet this post never sees the light of day (truth).
@Blaze
RE:”There was one part of the meeting when Murray Rankin asked about Canadian citizens. One of the Con MPs corrected him and said he should have said “American citizens living in Canada” or something like that. I will see what the exact words were if the video or transcript is available tomorrow.”
Yes, please let us know who that was as he is going to get a very STRONGLY worded email from me.