On Friday, November 7th, I attended the Remembrance Day ceremony at the elementary school where I live. I wore my ceremonial dress, as requested, and joined a couple of veterans who were also in attendance. During the singing of “O Canada”, for the first time in my life, I felt really conflicted. After 30+ years as a law enforcement officer in Canada, during the singing of our national anthem, it started to really hit home that the current Canadian government does not consider me to be a Canadian.
On Sunday, November 9th, the church I attend invited the veterans from the community and honoured them. Once again, as we sang “O Canada”, a series of unexpected emotions surged through me. I am 55+ years old and have spent over half of my life serving my country, only to find out that my government does not consider me to be a Canadian, but has rubber-stamped the US designation of me as a US person who just happens to be living in Canada.
I grew up on Campobello Island. When it was time for me to be born, my “pure” Canadian parents crossed the border to the nearest medical facility in Lubec, Maine where I was born. After spending a couple of days there, we returned home to Campobello. During my teen years, sports teams I played on often competed against American teams from Lubec, East Machias, Eastport, Machias and sometimes Calais. These games often took on special significance because, on our own small scale, we were representing our country. When in the US, if we spoke of Campobello, we would always refer to it as “over home” to the point that some of our closest American friends referred to us as “ovah homahs” (over homers).
I spent 4-5 summers while I attended university working at Roosevelt Campobello International Park. The park’s motto is, “A Legacy of Friendship”. To quote from the park’s website, “Roosevelt Campobello International Park is a singular example of international cooperation – jointly administered staffed and funded by the peoples of Canada and the United States.” Canadians and Americans worked side by side at this park commemorating an American president but located on Canadian soil (Roosevelt’s “beloved island”) – the Canadians got paid in Canadian money and the Americans got paid in American money. We were all the same, except they were Americans and we were Canadians (ovah homahs!). No one really differentiated much, except on the sports field – there we competed fiercely to do our respective countries proud!
I have never questioned my “Canadian-ness” and still don’t. Yet, the last two times I have sung our national anthem, I have felt strangely conflicted. I have been thinking about the fact that the Harper conservatives do NOT consider me to be a Canadian, as clearly stated by their spokesman Gerald Keddy when he made it clear that the government position is that I am a US person residing in Canada. I thought about all the comments I have read from people who consider themselves “pure” Canadians, who basically scorn my situation so much that they support giving away Canadian sovereignty to the IRS just to punish me. These people seem to have such disdain for people with some possible clinging US connection that they celebrate allowing the CRA to become a foreign office of the IRS.
Tomorrow, I will once again don my ceremonial uniform to commemorate Remembrance Day and honour those brave men and women who have paid with their lives to protect the freedoms we enjoy. I will once again proudly sing “O Canada” and undoubtedly struggle with the fact that our government has capitulated and sacrificed a portion of the population who are not “pure” enough because the US has deemed this to be the case.
But as I remember the brave men and women who paid the ultimate price to make me free, I will also remember that, if there is a hierarchy of “how Canadian” we are, it is not based on how “pure” we are. If there are “degrees” of Canadian-ness, those who are “most Canadian” are not necessarily those who are most “pure”, but those who are willing to take a stand to protect Canada from foreign governments infringing on Canadian sovereignty. By this standard, our current government and those commenters who are supportive of its actions regarding the FATCA IGA hidden in omnibus Bill C31 are “not very Canadian”.
If there actually are now degrees of Canadian-ness, to me those who are “most” Canadian are those who are going above and beyond the call of duty to force back the IRS barbarians at the gate that the Canadian government left open for them. Most (if not all) of them are not “pure”, but have some US taint and include (in alphabetical order): Gwen Deegan, Peter Dunn, Ginny Hillis, Stephen Kish, Tricia Moon, John Richardson, Lynne Swanson and Carol Tapanila (and others – those I have overlooked, please forgive me). Also included are the many who work tirelessly behind the scenes, most of whom I know only by the nicknames they post. They moderate and administer websites, post ads and articles and battle it out in the Comments sections following FATCA stories. Inch by inch, these warriors are gaining the upper hand in the battle for public opinion and educating those “pure” Canadians who seem only too eager to relinquish Canadian sovereignty to the US.
Tomorrow, I will do my best to focus exclusively on those brave men and women who gave their lives to protect our freedoms. But I know, during the national anthem, when those conflicted feelings again start to arise within me, I will also think about those who are continuing to fight for our freedoms. I hope I can eventually put those conflicting feelings behind me, knowing that the problem is not with me but with my government.
This post is not meant to in any way trivialize Remembrance Day and the sacrifices of our veterans. We cannot control the thoughts and emotions that confront us, and writing this was therapeutic as I struggle to come to terms with being a second class Canadian.
Canadian Cop
If Stephen Harper and the MPs that voted for FATCA think it’s such a goid idea, why don’t they offer to publish their own FATCA data allowing every tax authority in the world to examine it.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander as they say.
Ron Paul was the voice of reason that shone above all others for me yesterday.
http://www.voicesofliberty.com/audio/a-message-from-ron-paul-speak-truth-to-power-on-veterans-day/
@LSG
I met with our riding’s Liberal nominee, Pam Goldsmith-Jones some time ago to discuss all of this. She asked me for what I thought would be a good Liberal Party policy statement re Harper’s FATCA IGA (is there a tune for that, EmBee?).
A few of us came up with what we thought was an excellent policy statement for the Libs, submitted it some weeks ago, were told that it’s been forwarded to headquarters but haven’t heard anything since. I’ve emailed Pam since, but it was the day before the Ottawa shooting and am not surprised if my email got overlooked or lost in the fray.
If others wanted to drop Pam a line to ask where the Liberal Party’s policy statement on the Harper’s government’s FATCA IGA has gone, I would greatly appreciate it!
pgoldsmithjones@gmail.com
BB. Don’t hold your breath. The Libs are just as beholden to the banks as the Conservatives.
@DOD
So we just give up?
@Cheryl
Please feel free to send my story to whoever you like. I wish I was as brave as those I referred to in the story and felt safe putting my actual name out there – in the interests of protecting my family, I am not prepared to do that at this time. Having said that, there are very few serving police officers from Campobello. I am still gainfully employed (as of today) and my employer (obviously) does not want to be associated with this situation through me. I just stopped home for lunch and saw your post. I got called upon to place a wreath at the cenotaph yesterday “on behalf of the federal government” – the irony was not lost on me…
@Canadian Cop,
Thank you for this and the risk it might bring you. Think about it for a bit and be sure that the risk for you and your family is acceptable. I will draft something up and present it back here before I send anything in. You will have time to change your mind then.
http://news.sky.com/story/1371972/us-sailors-attacked-by-protesters-in-istanbul
The Turks attacked 3 US sailors in Istanbul – how would they feel about the Turkish government sending their bank data to the IRS?
BB no we don’t give up. I support the challenge and I will vote for whoever has the better chance of defeating John Wston.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-10/petrodollar-panic-china-signs-currency-swap-deal-qatar-canada
Signing currency swaps with China seems to becoming the mirror image of FATCA. After Canada, Qatar has now signed a currency swap with China – first OPEC nation to do so.
Every step forward for the RMB is a step backwards for the USD + FATCA.
with the upcoming federal election and the dog and pony show it entails, i am hoping that there will be a public all canidates meeting whereby i can ask john weston to explain to the voters why he was so “thrilled to bring an american law into canada”.
and if there are more than one of these meetings on the mainland i am will to attend all of them and ask the same question.
you reap what you sow john………
I agree with Sid. I don’t feel I have any country anymore. It’s a piece of paper and no country is going to stand up for you when you’re the under dog no matter what they taught you or told you. I am just a human being in the world and I won’t salute any government ever again nor will I have any faith in a thing they say or do. That’s what this experience taught me. My comfortable delusions are over with.
Thank you Canadian Cop from across the pond for your moving words
There is no such thing as a country anyway, or a government for that matter. It’s all in people’s minds. So-called international boundaries are nothing more than lines on a map. You go there, you see a monument, but there is no living creature called “Canada”
There are persons, and there are physical objects such as weapons, police cars, tanks and prisons, which are used by persons. In colonial times, boundaries were described in royal charters, whose authors were not familiar with the terrain and the colonial boundaries were described as extending from the Atlantic coast all the way to the Pacific Ocean, or “South Sea” but the inhabitants in the western parts of that land just kept on doing what they were doing, and never even found out.
Catholics believe that when the priest consecrates the bread and wine, these miraculously become the body and blood of Jesus Christ, which is called TRANSUBSTANTIATION; and statists believe that when politicians vote to manufacture a document embellished with a fancy seal, and the chief politician scribbles an autograph on it, it becomes a law, which is called LEGISLATION and many persons hold that everybody has a sacred duty to obey the document, even after its authors have died. They honestly believe that bureaucracies can acquire authority by manufacturing documents.
Contributing to this is the habit of using the names of abstract concepts as the subjects of action verbs, (The bank still thinks I work at the factory.)
In the 1850’s, there village of Boston Corner, Massachusetts was the site of anarchy because it was cut off from its town officials in Mount Washington, Massachusetts by a mountain ridge, preventing Mount Washington law enforcement from reaching the village except by a very long route extending across those nasty lines on the map called state borders. It took a lot of babbling and scribbling by a lot of politicians in Boston, Albany and Washington, but they waved their magic wand and now the New York bureaucrats can enforce New York documents there. To this day you will see a nick in the lower end of the left-hand edge of Massachusetts on the map. The only thing that happened was that New York bureaucrats knew they could now enforce New York documents without getting in trouble with Massachusetts bureaucrats, federal bureaucrats of even other New York bureaucrats.
I feel great sympathy for those who were marched into wars which never should have happened but this November I could not bring myself, for the first time ever, to wear a bloodied poppy. I don’t want to glorify war. I want to see the world at peace and I want to see those who profit from wars put out of business.
I am feeling like an alien in what is supposed to be my own country. It’s not just the FATCA thing either. It’s what our government is turning the populace into … dumbed-down, spied-upon, debt-enslaved, war-worshipping packs of propagandized little poppets who can’t summon up enough curiosity to pursue the truth and enough courage to protest the government’s relentless drive towards the elite’s vision of total global domination. It’s pass the puck and don’t say anything, don’t even look, when yet another gross injustice takes place. Soon the Harper government will have all the legislation in place to criminalize even our thoughts if they stray beyond HIS comfort zone. Even though below is an example of an unjust court system in the USA I worry that this is what we may be facing in Canada too. Will US persons who dared to move outside US borders become the new Palestinians — demonized, hunted, convicted and deported because the US government is offended by their very existence and all countries must now kowtow to US diktats? I know that sounds over-the-top but when I found out the full extent of the torture Rasmea Odeh endured in Israel and how the US judge would not allow that evidence to be presented in court I could not help but wonder about the state of our justice system here in Canada. Is it as bad? Will the judge Ginny and Gwen face be fair or will the government be able to insidiously compromise the system in its favour? This is why I watch the USA so closely. It seems what is rotten down there almost inevitably finds its way here.
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/defense-promises-appeal-guilty-verdict-against-rasmea-odeh
@Don
“Signing currency swaps with China seems to becoming the mirror image of FATCA. After Canada, Qatar has now signed a currency swap with China – first OPEC nation to do so.”
It shouldn’t be too hard. Did you know that Scotiabank branches in the Dominican Republic don’t even accept Canadian dollars cash for exchange into Dominican pesos? Neither do they offer accounts in CAD. Of course, it would be simple enough for them to offer CAD accounts and a trading platform where depositors with DOP would buy CAD and vice verse among each other. Then a banana dealer (such as my brother-in-law) could get paid in CAD and sell the CAD to somebody who has DOP.
Thank-you Embee for your inspired comments. This year I painted my poppy white to remember conscientious objectors, non-combatant victims and to promote peace.
I (a former mainstream media-aholic) have shut off my TV and radio, and am refusing to buy into the utter and complete nonsense being passed off as news. I am so angry I could spit….we are so headed in the wrong direction, that I fear FATCA is the least of our worries.
@Duke of Devon
Another constituent in our riding heard this from Pam just today:
I have been doing some homework on it. There are great advocates in our riding as you know. The candidates go to Ottawa Dec 8-10 for training. I am staying for another day or two and making appointments with critics and policy people. FACTA is on my list.
Yes there will be all candidates meetings for sure. I am hopeful that they will be of a format where we can really debate/question one another.
Pamela Goldsmith-Jones
c 604 809 7130
pgoldsmithjones@gmail.com
PS
If you happen to live in the Sea-to-Sky Corridor, there’s an opportunity to meet Pam in person to discuss your FATCA concerns. She wrote:
FACTA is definitely on my radar. Our team is having an event in Squamish Nov 19 at the Howe Sound Brew pub. Here’s the link to that. I’d love to see you, and your friends!
http://events.liberal.ca/Event/pints–politics-sea-to-sky-country.aspx?Lang=en&mi=A
Bubbles
Keep fighting you have great encouragement from across the pond
More later to all
Thanks, George. It’s not something I could do alone, so thanks to everyone else for their efforts, big and small!
Off topic but the reason many left the USA — never-ending wars of the Military Industrial Complex as warned by President Eisenhower,
Footnotes to November 11, 2014:
Rewriting history of the Vietnam War — from Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity “Kicking Vietnam Syndrome Once and For All“???????????
****************
AND words are not adequate for “Iraq War Veteran / Outspoken War Critic Tomas Young Dead at 34” November 10, 2014
Insights from a 91 year old war vet Harry Leslie Smith
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/08/poppy-last-time-remembrance-harry-leslie-smith
http://www.pressprogress.ca/en/post/why-91-year-old-veteran-fears-were-losing-what-we-won-after-wwii
Does anyone care to speculate what Paul Martin would think about Harper’s FATCA IGA (there’s that tune in my head again)?
I wrote to my riding’s Liberal nominee today and this is the response I got:
“I am heading out to Justin Trudeau’s book signing, in meetings all day today. I am having breakfast with Paul Martin on Friday morning, and am going to specifically ask him about this, don’t worry.”
I recall writing to Paul Martin a couple of years ago about FATCA and asked Pam to give him heck for not responding. Paul Martin was one of the best finance ministers Canada’s seen. I’m sure he’ll have some pretty sharp words for what’s going on, and perhaps a strategy.
@ Bubblebustin
Is that tune “Harper Valley PTA”?