I am calling on Stephen Harper to resign. He is no longer fit to lead Canada, for he is planning to enact a law which will result in the extraordinary rendition of the private account information of Canadian citizens to the IRS in Washington DC. Canada is not a tax haven. FATCA is not the answer.
YEAHH! The counter-attack begins..
Ha! I’d like to see Joe Oliver hold a press conference on FATCA just so we can see how fast and how often he stumbles and stutters. He should be told the press conference has to be at least 15 minutes long and he must take 5 to 10 questions from reporters or even every day citizens.
He can have one other person with him during the conference but he must speak at least 50% of the time. I bet he’d rather submit his resignation than hold a press conference on FATCA. He’d have a nervous breakdown.
Where are the Liberals on this?? Asleep???
If the Liberals aren’t going to speak as intelligently as the NDP on FATCA I’d rather they keep their mouths shut.
Thank you NDP!!!!!!!! Merci!! I am so happy to see this response to hear about this. Most especially to hear them mention there is no reciprocity. They really covered the privacy concerns well. “Lack of transparency and fundamental credibility gap. Making a bad problem even worse by opening up the door to Washington.” Thanks so much NDP!
Made my day! Has there been even a peep from the Liberals? My Lord, I think the NDP actually, totally, for-real understands! I often thought we were just talking to ourselves, our submissions have at least been heard by the NDP. What are the chances they can do something? (Please tell me they are good).
These two truly do get it. I wish that they’d also make reference to those non-Americans associated with US persons, namely family and business partners who will also be negatively impacted by FATCA.
@bubblebustin said: “I wish that they’d also make reference to those non-Americans associated with US persons, namely family and business partners who will also be negatively impacted by FATCA.”
That’s for the next FATCA press conference. The public can only handle so much shock at one time.
Hopefully there will be a series of NDP press conferences continuing to highlight not just the plight of so called US persons but their non-US spouses, non-US children and non-US employers.
FATCA is like that gossipy neighbour who has no limits on where they insert themselves. It won’t be long before all of Canada hates FATCA.
The FATCA IGA is just the immediate battle here in Canada. I hope the NDP opposition helps to defeat it, and like NativeCanadian I wonder why the Liberals aren’t speaking up about it.
The larger battle, as we know, is with US citizenship-based taxation. That should be an agenda item for the next G8 summit: Why should the US be the only major country that sucks money out of the economies of other countries by taxing its citizens who reside in those other countries? There should be international pressure to get the US to switch to residence-based taxation, and to achieve that, we should put pressure on our own governments to stand up to the US about it.
As I’ve said before, the elephant in the room is the breach of privacy right of Canadians married to US persons. How could it be OK to transfer joint account info?
There are also huge issues with USPs having signatory right on some companies accounts.
It cannot be OK for these accounts to be transferred.
This IGA, in Canada and other countries was all about protecting the banking system and avoiding sanctions.
I don’t understand why instead of negotiating by themselves with the US, foreign countries did not unite.
It was obviously something that should have been dealt with at international level – not on a country by country basis. It was despicable that the European parliament openly said that it was each country’s problem to deal with the US. For European countries, it should have been negotiated at the EU level.
The problem with FATCA is that it assumes that Americans only marry Americans and work only for American companies. At it’s core FATCA is racist. It does not recognize that US persons living abroad are often married to non-Americans and working for non-Americans.
@AnonAnon, the problem is that the message of all foreign governments right now, is that they recognize the right of the US to tax based on citizenship. Everyone thinks it’s their right, that it’s OK, and even some wish they would do it too.
This is the beginning of the end of dual citizenship.
@noone, if other governments concede to the US the “right” to tax its citizens in their countries, then the US can argue that it has a “right” to the financial information on which to base its taxation — hence FATCA.
Have you seen this??? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hTIoSEnk5Q
@omg, “like that nosy neighbour” FATCA is the Gladis Cravits of the world then? Yes, I’m old enough to remember that show.
It would only take Canada demanding full reciprocity I think for FATCA to be amended for this country. There are so many ways it could be with drawn and an exception given. If the Harper government had even tried any of those ways. Demand in writing full reciprocity or no deal *the U.S. is never going to give full reciprocity* Tell the U.S. to restrict FATCA to accounts held where you do not live and stick to it.
Harper did not play hard ball with a current U.S. government that certainly does. The NDP standing up for the rights of Canadians and OUR laws makes them the hero of this situation right now. This is exactly what every party should be doing regardless of anything else. Call the U.S. bluff!! How bad will they look sanctioning Canada? I don’t think they’d want to from their perspective actually do that. When Flaherty asked for an exemption for Canada the Harper cons should have stuck hard to that position.
And yes, where ARE the liberals nowadays on this?
Another one…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-UaqGKvxNM seems people in the USA are seeing Fatca for the first time….
@AtticusinCanada, yes I wanted to say FATCA is like everybody having Gladis Cravits as their neighbour but I didn’t think alot of people would understand the reference. We are are getting old. Nobody liked Gladis and nobody will like FATCA.
So pleased with the NDP press conference on FATCA; they get 1 million kudos!!! But it will be interesting to see if any of this makes any CBC or CTV or other Cdn TV or radio news station; I mean, that is part of the problem too……
I have been a loyal Conservative voter my whole life. I will now be voting NDP simply because of this one issue. I would hope that the 1 million Canadians affected by this will also abandon the Conservative Party.
@MontrealFactaOFF, for that to happen, we need massive press coverage on MSM, which right now is pretty much non existent.
I think if the majority of people living in the U.S.A. FULLY understood what this thing is and is doing they would not support such a thing. The problem is just like in Canada they hid it in a huge omnibus bill and then said it was about “tax evasion” when in fact it is about data collection.
The NDP seems to get it. It violates the laws of Canada. Full stop. If they don’t address that now then later they will be threatened even more sanctions when the U.S. wants something else. That’s the purpose of this thing.
If you want the NDP YT video to get coverage share it everywhere all day and all week. Share it with news media, put the link on every post outside of this page. Share it with your MP. Share it with reporters who have covered FATCA in the past.
I was thinking the fact that FATCA will cause non-US employers to discriminate against high level US persons might make the government concerned. Then I remembered what the Canadian government condones in the Controlled Goods Program. There is out and out discrimination being practiced by employers in this program and the Canadian government at the urging of the US government is what’s behind this discrimination.
I read the Controlled Goods Program questionnaire and was shocked at what I found. I said to my husband “Honey this is like the handbook for how to discriminate against non-white people while claiming that you’re not discriminating.”
My husband was nervous that he might not pass the Controlled Goods Program test. After I read the questionnaire I said “It’s impossible for you to fail because you’re WHITE.”
Actually I was a tiny bit concerned that they might fail him because I’m Indian and my parents live in India. In-laws are considered immediate family members and they ask you if you have any immediate family that lives overseas.
The NDP mentioned that all Canadians will be paying the FATCA costs incurred by banks through increased banking fees. When I opened my business accounts at my new bank about a year ago they gave me overdraft coverage even though I didn’t ask for it. They said it was free. I never use overdraft. They have recently started charging a monthly fee for having overdraft coverage even if you don’t use it. When I noticed the fee, I quickly cancelled my overdraft. The fee was only $60 per year but if it’s for something you never use, why would you pay for it?
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